Is Your Sales Team Effective?
Your Sales Team is the face of your business. So nothing should go wrong when hiring them!
But, they are humans and “to err is human” after all.
However, you can’t always blame your sales team for their failure to meet targets on time. That’s because customers are whimsical. Often their purchase decisions are based on their whims and fancies.
It is hard to predict how your customers will react.
There you have no control. But, what you can control is hiring the right people and giving them the best training possible.
Also, it would help if you had a proper mechanism in place to check how the team is performing in the field.
Understanding the effectiveness of your sales team is important. This is because your brand’s reputation is at stake. Nothing can go wrong there. Else your brand will gain a lot of publicity but for all the wrong reasons.
Yes! We often say any publicity is good publicity. But, that doesn’t mean your business will thrive on negative publicity. Instead, it will wither away in no time after gaining the spotlight for a bit.
Like we said, having a comprehensive and effective mechanism in place is important to find out – Is your sales team effective or not? So here’s a list of things you can do or implement to keep them under 24 hours constant surveillance (not literally meant!)
How’s Your Sales Team Performing?
Two important things that you should focus on –
Is your sales team meeting targets on time?
Do they lack the motivation to perform better?
According to Hubspot, “66% of salespeople are not reaching their quotas”.
That should be an area of concern for you too!
But, you can measure their performances by how many leads closed in a day? Or how many new leads are bought onboard by your team every day?
To do that, you need to set a few golden rules in your company first –
#Golden Rule 1: Arrange for Daily Team Hurdles
You can start every day with an interactive Team Hurdle.
Such meetings should not be a one-person show entirely.
Instead, it would help if you encouraged every team member to equally contribute to setting team targets and strategizing marketing/sales tricks.
Always remember! You can’t possibly define sales team targets without consulting with the team itself.
Afterall, it is your team’s responsibility to realize those targets. Setting unrealistic goals will only drive them away from your company.
In a business, one can expect positive outcomes only if the entire company works together in collaboration, including planning and setting team goals together.
They are not the Bible’s Ten Commandments, you know! So they should not be mandated with ruthlessness. Instead, there should be enough room for negotiation and discussion.
After all, you will never gain by overburdening your team.
No one performs better under pressure. So, don’t pressurize them. Instead, be open to hearing their suggestions and create targets accordingly that suit both your team and you.
#Golden Rule 2: Use Team Hurdles to Identify Areas for Improvement
These team hurdles should be optimized properly to gain the best possible results.
As we said, you should encourage your team to be vocal about their issues and challenges. That will give you enough insights into areas that need improvement.
Understand – what kind of support they need or what kind of training they require. Then, accordingly, arrange for training or support to help your team achieve their goals effectively.
#Golden Rule 3: Have a Proper Sales Dashboard in Place
Believe it or not, team members often find ways to work around loopholes in the system.
You have their word to believe what is exactly happening in the field. But, do you have any mechanism in place to verify whether they are saying the truth or not?
Why do you want to leave the fate of your company on such chances?
Instead, it would help if you had a proper visual sales dashboard in place. Make your team fill up all those fields at the end of each day. Fields like how many new prospects acquired, how many potential clients in the pipeline, what was the outcome of every sales call/sales meet, which leads successfully closed, and so on, along with their contact details.
Such information is extremely valuable for you to get a clear picture of how your team is performing. The customers’ contact details can help you anyway to verify.
Do not hesitate to contact them to understand if they were well-served by your team. As a manager or owner of your company, you can always reach out to your clients/customers and get their feedback.
Clients will never lie, and you will know if or not your sales team spoke the truth.
The dashboard also works as a database to help you to get a clear picture of how your products and services perform in the market. In addition, that same dashboard should allow you to download sales reports in PDFs or otherwise when needed. And, the same data will help you during employee assessment sessions.
Most importantly, you will be able to identify who is performing better in the team and which members need help or guidance to improve.
#Golden Rule 4: Develop the Ritual of Weekly Followups
Apart from the regular team meetings, you should also follow up with your team weekly.
All those data that your sales dashboard provides will deem meaningless if no action is taken.
Use the daily and weekly meetings to share the insights you have gained from the data. Figure out the recurring patterns and issues and indulge your team in an open discussion to develop solutions for the same.
Also, you should have one-on-one sessions with each member. Compare their performance against the team’s targets. Highlight specific areas of improvement and offer training or support of any kind to help them perform better.
#Golden Rule 5: Incentivise Your Team
Perks and incentives are great motivators.
Everyone likes to be the ‘top performers in the team and loves to see themselves in the ‘wall of fame.’ So, top it up with attractive perks that will work as a spark and ignite their passion for better performance.
The bottomline is …
There’s no doubt that hard-working employees will never disappoint you.
But, in sales, only smart employees will survive.
Marketing and sales is not an easy task. Convincing regular customers might still be less cumbersome than tackling business clients. Here you need smart and diplomatic employees to get the clients to sign those hefty checks.
Your unhindered focus on the sales team will pay off. That is one department which you cannot ignore. You have to keep them on their toes if you wish to survive the rat race for a longer period.
The above-mentioned golden rules are not a one-size-fits-all strategy. That can change per your company policies. But, there should be a mechanism to always understand how effective your sales team is to keep those 6-figures reflected in your balance sheet!
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