Getting the most out of your team as a manager is quite a task. It can be extremely challenging, and at the same time, it’s crucial for the wellbeing of any organization. Only in the U.S., disengaged employees cost companies around $500 billion each year. Given that 85% of workers across the world are not engaged in their work, getting at least a portion of them to work as a team and produce results can make all the difference.
Contrary to popular belief, a low salary is not the main reason why people don’t give their best at their workplace. The fact that only 12% of employees who left their companies did that because of money is quite indicative. It seems that there are more important things a manager should think about when building and maintaining a team. Especially in sales. Let’s take a quick look at several vital ones.
Set clear goals
First things first. You have to be very transparent when it comes to what you expect from each and every one of your employees and from them as a team. Hence you need to set quotas and objectives carefully and methodically.
Keep the bar high, but not so high that your employees can’t possibly reach it. They should feel a little bit of pressure that will make them work hard, and yet under too much stress, they could end up underachieving. Try to balance this out and have their individual abilities and characters in mind when determining these goals. In this case, one size doesn’t fit all.
Good company culture
The concept of company culture has gained much significance in the recent period, given that millennials have turned out to be a generation that rates it very high. And as of last year, millennials make up 35% of the US workforce.
There are a lot of businesses looking to hire top talents, so you’ll have to find a way to stand out. You have to provide a pleasant work environment and show employees they’re not there only to make money for the company. Offer flexible hours, opportunities for professional development and an overall culture of appreciation and care for your employees.
Continuous training
There are multiple benefits from offering your team all kinds of training, workshops, and seminars. Apart from learning new skills, they’ll also develop a habit to always learn, improve and set new goals. That’s why it’s crucial that these training courses are regular and continuous.
Don’t forget that different employees will need to improve in different areas, so they’ll need different programs. Making these training sessions as interactive as possible can do great things for salespeople, so have in mind that methods like simple roleplaying or call shadowing never get old.
Understanding different characters
Members of your team are not different just in terms of their skills and abilities, but also in terms of their personalities. Pay special attention to this fact in the hiring process and try employing people with complementary characters. Teams that lack diversity in this respect have a harder time coming up with creative solutions when facing new problems.
Furthermore, you should respect their character and let it work for them. When it comes to sales reps, their methods will largely depend on their personality. Just because you don’t do things the same way doesn’t mean they should blindly follow your footsteps. If it works – it works, and if you strip a salesperson off of their individuality and creative freedom, it will probably stop working.
Be transparent and result-oriented
It’s not all about numbers, but numbers do tell a whole lot of stuff about sales reps’ capabilities. They’re the most reliable objective indicator of an employee’s performance.
Members of your team should also be able to see each other’s results. Having them engage in a sort of competition can significantly boost their motivation. Here you’ll need to bring in some technology. CRM software with it’s features will enable your employees to track each other’s numbers in all key areas.
It will also provide you with some critical info. You should base your decisions about rewarding, promoting or even firing people on cold, hard facts. Finally, use what you learned from these facts to strategically assign your tasks to sales reps that will make the most out of particular accounts and prospects.
Provide feedback
Naturally, you shouldn’t just keep your reasoning and comments on these measurements for yourself. Employees want honest and consistent feedback from you. You may think you’re too busy for individual meetings with each one of them, but devoting some undivided attention to your employees is a very powerful way to show them respect.
Also, never forget to recognize talent and hard work. Praising and rewarding your hardest-working players won’t spoil them. In fact, 78% of employees admit that recognition made them more motivated.
Final thoughts
Of course, all this won’t work if you’re not capable to give them an example by showing competence and dedication. If you’re bad at your job, there’s no trick in the world that will make your team respect you and stay efficient. The only way to gain authority is to show credibility and passion.
And finally, you have to respect their individuality. Your team will be full of very different people, both in professional and personal terms. Treat each and every one of them as a separate, living person, not as an army of robot soldiers. Only then you’ll be able to get the most out of them and deliver the best results.
Angelina is a content writer and editor for various tech blogs. She could also be tagged as someone who enjoys reading, outdoors and chocolate. She is positive and hard-working, but can also be very geeky.
