As a business owner, you likely understand how important it is to have successful salespeople. Productive and successful salespeople will close more sales, which means more profits for the business. With more profits there will be many benefits seen. All departments will see growth and success. With more sales money coming in, there will be more money to support other departments. Your business can expand and see more ways to meet their goals. However, there are far too many organizations that don’t provide the support salespeople need to ensure they meet their quotas. Make sure your business doesn’t make those mistakes, or not focus on the importance of a happy staff.
You have to figure out what steps you can take to support your sales team better and ensure they have the tools for success. The good news is, there are quite a few things that can be done.
Implement a Sales-Friendly CRM System
A quality and sales-focused CRM system can help the sales team remain focused and organized. With features such as notes, lead nurturing, automatic reminders, and lead prioritization, you can help increase the team’s closing ration and improve overall productivity levels. Another benefit offered by implementing a CRM is that you can see how quickly leads are contacted, the number of attempts made by the sales team, and the idle time.
There are CRM solutions that can be applied on-site or on the cloud. Often, businesses find out what is hybrid cloud
and see that it is a good option for this solution. Learn what is a hybrid cloud to see if this solution would work for your sales team.
Qualify the Leads
Determine your business’s target audience and recognize that people beyond that definition are probably going to waste your time, rather than result in a sale. Third-party behavioral and demographic data can be used to determine how well a prospect fits the set target profile.
It is not a good idea to send leads to your sales team if those people are not ready to convert. This means you must get to know your buyer’s journey. Provide useful content to prospects and then send them to sales when they show they are ready to convert.
Provide Collaboration and Mobile Communication Tools to Your Salesforce
Many salespeople spend a lot of their days out in the field. This means you must provide them with remote access to customer data and sales information. The best way to do this is by using a mobile CRM solution or a specialized app. With this, your sales team is always working with real-time data and can see updated information about a prospect right away, rather than having to wait to get back to the office. This allows managers to keep track of data through the entire sales funnel.
It is also smart to make it easy for your sales team to have instant access to the latest product specs and contracts from any device – phone, tablet, or laptop. Also, since the sales team will need to edit or draw up documents onsite, make sure they can do this without having to move across several devices or apps.
Provide Ongoing Training Opportunities
The top-performing sales organizations are going to invest in their team’s development. From sales process training to technical training for services and products or gathering regional teams together each year to share best practices, having a well-planned development and training program offers a measurable ROI. Also, training works to retain your top performers and shift the essential middle performers to the top-tier position.
Reduce Time on Administrative Tasks
Virtually all sales roles will have non-selling aspects. However, there are many situations when these activities require more time than the actual selling activity. You must reduce the amount of time your salespeople spend on administrative tasks. By doing this, you can increase their productivity levels.
Use Gamification Strategies
With gamification, you can tap into the competitive streak that occurs naturally in your sales reps. This can help to deliver more positive results as your sales team begins to see their name rise on the leader board. Make sure to not only give points for bringing in new customers but also for sales activity. This includes things like generating new face-to-face meetings or new leads.
According to some studies, businesses see significant growth when they implement gamification strategies. In fact, when it is implemented up to 85% of sales reps will be able to reach their quote and up to 51% of all new hires are able to achieve their goals within their initial year. Compared to businesses that have not implemented gamification, where only 75% of all reps make quota and only 42% of new hires meet their numbers, the results are staggering.
Identify Areas for Improvement and Track Performance
An essential thing a person can do to help improve the performance of their sales team is to determine how well they are really performing. Once this is known, it is possible to create a plan to help them achieve even higher goals and to do even more. It is necessary to have a system in place that will track your rep’s sales performance throughout the sales cycle. This allows managers to measure and analyze how well (or bad) each of the members of the sales team is doing. With this information, it is possible to determine where the individual or team needs assistance.
Provide Ongoing Motivation
In the realm of sales, things can get mundane and tedious, especially after representatives hear “no” repeatedly throughout the day. This is when managers need to ensure they are providing motivation. This could be by providing lunch or coffee for everyone or just providing words of encouragement. Remember, everyone wants to feel like their efforts are noticed and appreciated. Find new and exciting ways to ensure that your sales reps remain motivated and keep their “head in the game.” This is going to result in much better results for your business and bottom line.
Support Your Sales Team to Achieve Better Results
When it comes to supporting your sales team, there are more than a few steps you can take. Use the information mentioned above to create a sales team that is productive, efficient, and better at closing sales than ever before. This is going to pay off and ensure you have a sales team that is closing sales and helping your business achieve a higher level of success. High sales numbers can help motivate your sales team and everyone else in the company feels the higher energy. With more sales, the company can see new growth opportunities.
