As a small business owner, you’re likely to understand the frustration that comes from not having an effective sales team. Your employees – and especially your sales people – are an essential key to your company’s success. That’s because their collective involvement in the company’s goals is directly proportional to the company’s performance and stability.
Good business people tend to take the matter on their hands and do the selling themselves. However, great business people prefer to leverage the power of their teams. When you have a competent workforce that follows your guidelines without making mistakes is a winning ticket towards a great business performance.
In today’s post, we’re sharing some great insights that’ll encourage you to assess, adjust, and eventually optimize your sales team.
Want more sales? Better performance? Then you need to start looking right under your nose where your salespeople are at. Let’s get straight to action:
1. Does Your Sales Team Suit Your Long-Term Objectives?
The first things you have to do is figure out what exactly you want from your team. Each company is different from many points of view. First, it is the domain of activity. Then, it’s the way the brand is positioned according to the competition. Lastly, each company needs different marketing channels for acquiring different types of audiences.
The key to building a powerful sales team is to assess your sales team properly. Who is working for you? Are they competent enough to execute your plan and bring your company to the next level?
For example, in case you figure out that social media promotion is the best traffic channel for your business, you might consider hiring a talented social media marketer. If you need SEO, then an SEO specialist it is. Figure out what it is required for your company to reach its higher objectives.
2. Carefully Select Your Employees
Your employees represent the engine of your entire business. If you want stable business growth, your engine has to work properly and without interruption. Having great employees is not an easy thing. People are complicated and hard to motivate. Your company needs individuals that actually care about your organization’s mission.
Make an assessment of your current team. Is everyone fit in the team? Do you need more workforce? In case you do, be very strict with your recruitment criteria. You only want the best people, so you should be selective. Well, better selective than sorry for hiring the wrong person.
Here’s what I always look after when looking for new individuals for my team:
- Their skills – I care most about skills rather than diplomas and experience, because skills and expertise are the elements that count the most in any possible business.
- Their personality – I usually like hiring individuals who smile a lot. They should be positive and optimistic.
- Their interview answers and reactions – I can usually tell within a couple of minutes whether someone is suited or not for my company. How? I ask good questions and pay close attention to the answers.
- Their creativity and proactivity – I often like to put my prospects through a state that forces their creative mind to skyrocket. If I see someone who has no problems figuring out solutions and coming up with tough answers, he or she is mine to take!
3. State Your Expectations Loud and Clear
When it’s not just you, but 5 or 7 or 20 more other people, the company is heavily influenced by each entity. So if your marketing manager has some bad weeks and decides to “relax” a little bit, your sales will suddenly drop. The worst part is that you won’t know the reason for this happening, so everything’s going to turn into a mess.
George Mitchells, CEO at Careers Booster, gave us a powerful tip:
“In order to avoid such unpleasant situations with your employees, state your expectations loud and clear. It would be ideal that every employee understands how much your standards mean to you. Once your sales team understands your expectations, your clear objectives regarding the company’s growth and the ground rules that they have to respect, the company should stay out of conflicts for a long time.”
4. Get Actively Involved in Your Sales Team’s Development
If you’re wondering why your sales team isn’t evolving too much, that is because you’re probably not even helping them achieve progress. How involved are you in the personal and collective development of your sales team? From 1 to 10, how much are you helping your employees develop themselves professionally?
Answer that question right now. Are you satisfied with that? If you’re not, I’d suggest starting with a plan. Think of each employee in person and note down his PROs and CONs. Add ideas and suggestions for improvements in your notes, as you’ll use it later.
Moreover, you should also pay attention to the sales strategies and sales methods your team tends to use. If you have a higher knowledge, you should immediately contribute to the developing of your funnels, offers, and angles.
5. Monitor Sales Performance & Deliver Solutions
You need to keep an eye on your sales performance, just to make sure that you’re not losing your money, time, and energy on useless actions. As you might have noticed, business is always unpredictable. You never know how people will react to a marketing campaign – you just sit, wait, and see.
As a businessman, once you’ve reached the point where you’ve seen what your selling performances look like, you should begin to dig deeper. Assess what’s bringing the most sales, see what’s wasting the most money, and figure out solutions for optimizing your sales process.
Lastly, take all of your assessments and present them to your sales team. Encourage opinions, and make a collective decision about what’s going to change and what’s going to stay.
Takeaways
Building an exceptional sales team is likely to guarantee you long-term business stability. Imagine this. If you:
- Develop the perfect combination of people within your sales team (traits, talents, executioners)
- Actively analyze your sales team and your sales performance
- Commit to optimizing the process in time
Well, your company’s going to rock. It doesn’t matter how small or big it is, you’re still going to enjoy the benefits of a stable sales performance that have big chances of growing.
About the author
Eva Wislow is an HR Manager and entrepreneur from Pittsburgh. She loves to help people challenge themselves and achieve their most ambitious career goals. Eva enjoys to stay up to date with the latest tech news. Follow her on Twitter.
