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Having a well-chosen, fully trained, sales team with the right attitude is essential if your organization is trying to increase sales. The sales team is the last line of defense. After all the investment your company has made toward developing, testing, and perfecting the product, branding, and promotional campaigns, it is the sales team who will ultimately make or break efforts to increase sales because they are the ones who will have direct contact with the customers. At Cydcor, a leader in outsourced sales, we’ve had more than 25 years’ experience building and growing great sales teams fully prepared to increase sales and achieve clients’ revenue growth goals.
Be Selective
Take the time to hire the right people. Be sure everyone on the team has clear expectations of what’s expected of them, simple goals, and ambitious but achievable targets – both for the team as a whole and for each individual salesperson. It’s okay (even great!) to have high standards, just make sure both sides are clear on those standards, nobody likes that kind of surprise.
Don’t be a stranger. Building a sales team positioned to increase sales is not a set it and forget it process. Hiring well is just the first step. Get to know your people. Talk to them. See them as individuals who bring their own individual strengths to the overall team. This will allow you to use them most effectively.
Get Everyone Trained Up to Speed
Once you have the right team in place, it’s important that they’re well trained and up-to-date on all sales strategies. Keep it simple, train your team only on what’s necessary to improve sales without added fluff, twists or turns. Since turnover is inevitable, make sure you have frequent trainings that are easily repeatable.
Also, remember that not everyone learns the same way. Some people learn better through presentations, others through reading materials. Some people have no problem just learning things conceptually and can then repeat them, but others may need to take a more hands-on approach with training. Have the most successful reps train the others and pay attention to make sure they’re getting it. You may even ask your team how they prefer to be taught. By involving them in the process you will get more buy in and participation.
Keep the Team Motivated
A team that’s eager to succeed is a must if you want to optimize your sales program. By keeping goals simple, clear and refreshed, you can always make sure your sales team knows what’s expected of them. Talk about goals daily. Reward and recognize those who increase sales and meet goals frequently. Healthy competition is good, but a collaborative environment where people are willing to help each other serves everyone, and that comes if everyone feels like their hard work is being rewarded.
Much like with training, different individual sales people will respond to different things. Everyone has their own carrot. Some are looking for recognition and respect, a star on the wall with their name on it. For others, bonuses and financial incentives may be the way for them to meet their full potential. Again, ask your team their preference. Get them involved in the process!
Ensure They’ve Got the Right Stuff
You’ll want to be sure to review your strategies to increase sales with the team to make sure all essential steps and needed communications are present in the sales process. Does the customer understand the product and service? Do they understand when they will receive the product or service? Will they need to do any follow-up? Don’t walk out the door until all of the customer’s questions are answered or, at least, until there’s a plan in place to get them answered.
Make sure your sales teams have the right tools, they need to be efficient. Making sure they have the right product information including pricing, a snapshot of the product or service benefits, pricing, and offer information is essential to help them improve sales and succeed.
There’s no one way to improve sales, but these strategies to build and maintain a great sales team should set you up for success. Hire the right people, train them well and keep them motivated, learn your customer and your product backwards and forward, and you should be well on your way to increase sales and achieve your business goals.
Shirley Levine was an incredible educator that I had the pleasure to work with and learn from. She once asked some teachers, “What is your job?”
The teachers responded, “Teach the kids.”
Shirley said, “That is not it.”
The teachers responded with, “Educate the kids,” and similar concepts.
Shirley said, “That is not it either.”
After a while, when the teachers were perplexed, she said, “Your job is to get the kids to learn. There is a big difference. If your job is to teach, once you deliver your great lesson, you are done. If your job is to get them to learn, you are not done after the lesson. You are only done when they learn the material. Also, kids can learn a variety of ways. They can learn on their own, from their peers, from a book.”
I frequently need to remind myself of this concept. I too often get into teaching mode. My eldest daughter reminded me of this hearing me go over one of my presentations. She thought it was bad. I asked why. She said, “I felt like you were talking at me, not involving me. Millennials like to be involved to learn.”
After the initial shock of her dissatisfaction with a presentation I have given for over 25 years, I remembered this quote frequently attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”
Did Benjamin Franklin know about millennials 250 years ago? Or, is it always that we learn best when we are involved? It is much easier to teach than find a way to involve. But who wants easy?
Gary Polson is Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at Cydcor, the market leader in outsourced sales. With more than 25 years of business operations experience in accounting, legal and senior management, Gary has propelled Cydcor to unprecedented achievement with clients, culture and philanthropy since 2001. Under his leadership, Cydcor has increased its revenue more than six-fold since 2001 and has been recognized as “…the most respected sales outsourcing company in the world” by Datamonitor and The Black Book of Outsourcing, and one of the “Best Places to Work” by the Los Angeles Business Journal for eight consecutive years. Gary’s passion for excellence and never-satisfied approach has led Cydcor to earn both industry and employer recognition. With Gary at its helm, Cydcor has built its reputation on maintaining long term relationships with clients by consistently delivering results and by going above and beyond to help Cydcor’s clients gain market share and grow.
Sales is a unique profession that requires passion, extroversion and charisma. Leading a high-performing sales team and helping your direct reports get the best out of their own skills takes a little something extra. The good news is that as a sales team manager, you have that extra something inside you. Here are some tips on how you can take your own passion for your product or service and pass it along to your team members.
Set them up for success
Authenticity matters when it comes to sales. Few people come in with a fully developed talent for sales, so it’s important to meet your team members where they are and ask them what would be most helpful to them so they can achieve success. For some it will be a need for more product knowledge; for some it may be coaching or a “walk-along” with a high-performing team member.
Give them context
Your team will get better results if they have more information than simply a list of names or addresses. Help them understand the product they’re selling and how it compares to other similar products. Then assist them in finding reasons to be passionate about that product. This will drive good conversation, and thus increase conversions.
Provide them with training opportunities
It’s critical that you not only understand your team members’ unique needs but that you provide ongoing training to help them meet their goals and build confidence. Leading by example means that you also take training courses to enhance your knowledge of the latest news and best practices. That will help you to be a better mentor and a better sales professional in your own right.
Have high expectations of them
Your team will rise to the expectations you set, so set them high! On the other hand, don’t set them so high that your direct reports think they’re impossible to achieve. In order for those expectations to be met, you need to help your team feel supported and positively reinforced. Clearly articulate your goals and expectations and hold your representatives accountable for achieving them. Also, check out these motivating sales quotes that deliver motivation!
Let them specialize
Don’t treat everyone on your team the same. Some people understand certain business sectors better than others. Allow your specialists to take the lead in the area of their expertise. They may be able to help your other team members as well. The more your team understands about the product or service they’re selling, the better they’ll be at selling it.
What other tips do you have for leading a high-performing sales team? Share with Cydcor on Twitter @Cydcor.
We are Cydcor, the recognized leader in outsourced sales services located in Agoura Hills, CA. From our humble beginnings as an independent sales company based in Canada to garnering a reputation as the global leader in outsourced sales, Cydcor has come a long way. We’ve done this by having exceptional sales professionals and providing our clients with proven sales and marketing strategies that get results.
About Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal
General Stanley McChrystal ran into a dilemma when he took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in 2004. McChrystal and his colleagues wanted to go against conventional ideas and remake the Task Force into something new: a network that combined transparent communication with decision-making authority that wasn’t just coming from one place. This book is not just focused on the military, but is instead a collection of insightful ideas told through entertaining stories ranging from the business industry to the emergency room. The challenges that McChrystal and his force task faced in Iraq are relevant to countless businesses, nonprofits, and organizations. The world is changing faster than ever, and the smartest response for those in charge is to give smaller groups the freedom to experiment while driving everyone to share what they learn across the entire organization.
Why Cydcor Reviews recommends this to future leaders:
The principles of traditional leadership struggle to deal with today’s pace of change, free-flow of information, and the entrepreneurial spirit of the digital age. Team of Teams utilizes the new way of leading a team: providing a leadership framework to produce and adapt, such as a fast-moving start-up, for organizations of any size. The book provides a blueprint for how to cope with increasing complexity in the world of running a team.
Our favorite part:
This book is recommended for leaders and associates from any type of organization that need to break down the effects of the information flow to make better decisions. Today, many ways of leading are ineffective in an increasingly complex environment. But this is not just a book about the latest way to become a great leader, the book hits its stride when it focuses on becoming the kind of leader that can develop and run an entire workforce of other great leaders. McChrystal challenges leaders to create organizations that are agile, transparent, and united rather than hierarchical, and which empower their people to work together for a better solution. A team needs to be trained well, and allowed to trust their gut. They need to be able to use their best judgment based on their training and knowledge.