Most businesses operate on models that allow them to track their sales activities and compare them with their sales expectations. This paints a fair picture of how well your business is achieving its sales objectives and also offers both a qualitative and quantitative measurement of the sales team’s performance.
Where the sales team’s performance has to be improved, there is a need to consider the areas that should be targeted. Are the sales objectives unrealistic? Is the challenge in getting prospects to trust your business? Once you have pinned down the problem areas, it makes it easier to know how to channel the changes required among your sales team.
In this article, you will learn 4 strategies that most sales managers adopt to improve the performance of their sales team.
1. Develop a peer coaching model
The challenge with trying to improve the performance of a sales team is that every team member has their strengths and areas of weakness. This makes the issue of addressing any possible lapse in the team multi-dimensional.
The implication of this is that a sales manager may have difficulty expanding their resources and insight to reach everyone on the team. It is even more challenging to synchronize all these efforts to create a productive and cohesive team effort.
To fix this, it is best to develop a sales coaching model among peers in a team where representatives with more experience are paired with those less experienced. This structure has the advantage of letting the less experienced rep acquire more skills while the more seasoned rep assuming coach status learns how to manage people better.
2. Ensure core values are aligned across board
Beyond setting sales objectives that must be met, your business should have core values that employees should key into. When the core values of your business are aligned with that of your employees, especially those in the sales team, they become more accountable.
3. Analyze team data
It is relatively easy to tell when a sales team is not performing well, the expectations are always higher than the quota met or objectives achieved. But what is more difficult to spot is where the performance issue stems from.
This can be addressed by critically analyzing sales team data. If you discover from your analysis that the break in the sales funnel structure is due to prospecting in the awareness and interest stages, then that focuses the beam on the group in the team charged with prospecting.
If this fall in the data graphics is observed with the closing part of sales then, efforts have to be focused on the decision-making aspect of sales.
4. Create an inclusive environment
While it is important to maintain a professional setting among employees in the different departments of your business, room should be made for a more personal work relationship. This can get the sales team to be more vested in their sales efforts as they regard the work on a more personal scale.
Owing to the diverse strengths and weaknesses of the reps in the sales team, creating a more inclusive work culture and environment where these reps can come to you for professional insight should be an ultimate goal.
It eliminates the fear that comes with acknowledging weakness or speaking up about concerns and suggestions that can improve sales performance.
Bottom line
After you have implemented these strategies, you must have KPIs that will guide your sales efforts and track the performance of your sales team. Performance indicators such as the percentage of closed deals and the time it takes to complete a sales cycle can be monitored for this.
Above all, consistency is what it takes to record significant results in your sales team’s performance.
Author Bio
Andrew Jones is an experienced content writer heading the Content Department at Outreach Monks. He has an active interest in marketing, sales, and business. Thus, he keeps updating his knowledge on improving sales and team performance to benefit the company. You can find the info in an easy-to-understand language and implement them in your business.
