Whenever I meet with business leaders, one of the things they highlight is the poor performance of their sales team. Personally, I understand because sales is the lifeblood of any organization.
I always tell entrepreneurs that nothing matters in their organization until something is sold.
You might have a great factory with the latest machines and latest designs but until a customer comes in to order a service, the machines will not run.
Getting and keeping customers is the primary function of any business regardless of what they specialize in.
If you want to build a high-performance sales team, then work on the following 5 things.
1. Personalize Your Training and Coaching
As a business leader, your role is to lead and coach your team to develop them into high performers.
The secret to coaching lies in personalizing your approach. No two people are the same which means that the way you train them shouldn’t be the same.
As the sales leader, find time to sit down with each person in your sales team and address their concerns individually. Learn what their obstacles are and come up with a plan to overcome those obstacles which you can review weekly.
2. Standardize Your Sales Process
Does your business have a documented approach to how you sell? If a customer requests a quotation today, what’s the next step? If I were to ask your salespeople these same questions, would I have the same answer?
Effective businesses operate on processes and systems, not individuals. You can have great people, but if those people are not supported by a great system, then they are not going to perform as well as they should.
You have to put your sales process on pen and paper and train your people to follow it religiously.
Selling at the end of the day is not about having people who speak eloquently but having a system built for scale.
3. Have a list of the top 5 sales behaviors
I call this measuring behaviors. It’s not just numbers, behaviour matters too. Most people tend to believe that behavior can’t be tracked but it can!
As a leader, the 5 behaviors I track daily in my team include;
- Lead Generation. This includes prospecting, the activity that makes everything else possible.
- Relationship Building. You need rapport to sell effectively. Someone who can build open, trust-based relationships with clients will be effective in selling.
- Customer Service. I look for this before the sale(how they follow up), during the sale(how they update the customers), and after the sale(how they take care of customers post-sale)
- Self Learning. An effective salesperson should invest in their continuous self-learning and development.
- Sales Process Execution. If you have a sales process, it’s paramount that your salespeople execute it daily.
4. Encourage and Develop Effective Thought Leadership
There are people who are able to easily identify market trends and spot new techniques that can be used to grow your customer base.
If you spot these people, encourage them and take full advantage of the knowledge they bring to the table.
Encourage them to research further for the benefit of the whole team.
5. Hire For Attitude
Degrees do not sell! When hiring new salespeople, look for people with the right attitude and train them for the skill.
Do not look for qualifications or some other BS people parade.
You need someone who will fit with your organizational culture and value the same things your organization values.
It’s easy to teach someone how your product works than it is to change their attitude.
A team of people with a can-do attitude is literally unbeatable.
To conclude, building a high-performance sales team is not something that can be accomplished in a single day, week, or month. It’s a continuous pursuit that should be approached with patience and a lot of iteration.
PS. I will be hosting a Sales Seminar for Entrepreneurs and Salespeople on the 25th of May in 2022. Visit this page to learn more and sign up to have your seat reserved.