7 Ways To Develop a Great Sales Team
Hire the Right People
The first and most important way to develop a sales team is to hire people with drive and determination. Some people aren’t meant for sales even if they are drawn to sales. Some can sell anything to anyone anytime. It’s vital to hire people who have the ability to sell, but they should also want to sell. Closing the deal should be exciting for them. They should also be the kind of people who will mesh with your company’s mission and goals and want to succeed within that framework. Without drive, even natural salesmen will rest on their laurels. You want people with fire – a fire you can stoke.
Invest in good training
Once you have a sales team, transforming it into a great sales team takes investment. It sounds cliché, but there is always something new to learn, and there’s always room for improvement. Emphasize the need for everyone to learn new skills or techniques, whether that’s learning sales techniques or new software.
If you invest in training and professional development for your staff; it will reap dividends for as long as they are with your company. This is what we have referred to before as intellectual capital. Training will both develop the skills of your team and increase their confidence in the work they are doing.
The Sales Playbook Advantage
A sales playbook is a method that a company uses to collect and communicate sales best practices to its sales team. It highlights the company’s objectives and gives team members instructions on how they should react to different situations. While every team member will have his own strengths and sales style, the framework of the sales playbook, offers useful guidelines to follow for success. The goals of a sales playbook include driving new business and working to maintain relationships with current customers.
A sales playbook does not only come down from on high. Smart managers will foster collaborative thinking between the sales team and company leadership. It will evolve over time as the business and the market evolve. The company’s mission may remain the same, but its objectives can change especially if the market or the economy experience fluctuations.
Whose feedback matters to the sales playbook? All of the players in the sales equation matter, so all of their opinions and experiences matter. The board of directors may weigh in on performance, and that will impact the sales playbook. Customer feedback about products, services, or company processes will directly affect it too. Individual members of the sales team will share their successes and failures following the playbook’s guidelines.
Over time it will become clear what works and what doesn’t both generally and under current market conditions. No sales playbook should be created and then left on the shelf. It should be a living document that will be altered when team sharing, learning, and collaboration produces results and wisdom worth recording.
If your sales team is not performing like you think that it should or you would like more information on creating and implementing a sales playbook, please call us at Prometis Partners. We would be happy to discuss any business issue with you and give you ideas on directions your company can take to increase sales and build your company’s value over time.
