The Secret to Building a Highly Successful Sales Team

Here’s another quick tip from the coal face! Several of our clients have been amazed at how this easy but effective method has worked for them.

By following this simple process you will quickly identify where major improvements can be made - apply these and you immediately increase your sales.

The Steps to Improving Your Sales

Step 1: Assess your salespeople and sales process

Assessing your current situation gives you your ‘start point’. So, how do you assess your salespeople and process? Firstly, you need a straightforward way to benchmark their skills and performance against the capabilities below. We recommend you score each individual salesperson on the nine capabilities below on a scale of 1 to 5 (where 5 is the best example you have seen of the capability working well).

The 9 key capabilities (or mindsets) for a salesperson is that they:

1. Believe in your company and products
2. Prospect, identify, build and progress a qualified sales funnel
3. Build rapport with customers
4. Build credibility with customers
5. Question and qualify customers’ requirements
6. Explain solutions in a language that the customer understands
7. Handle objections by being prepared for them
8. Close – being able to literally ask for the business
9. Develop accounts by understanding the customer’s long term goals

Step 2: Train by sharing best practice

Reviewing these scores will help you identify how each person in the team can improve and in which capability areas. These improvements could be achieved through one or more of the following:

• Adopting methods other team members find work
• Peer-to-peer mentoring or coaching
• Team building exercises to share learning and best practice
• Sharing and celebrating success as a team (teams that celebrate together are typically more effective)

As a general rule, we find that sharing experiences of what ‘works for me’ within the sales team improves morale, ensures best practice percolates throughout the team, and increases everyone’s motivation. These will combine to generate extra sales for your business.

Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2 regularly

It’s best to be focused, and not try to implement too many changes per person at once. Identifying one or two areas for each person at a time will always get you the best results. Regularly reapply the process above and you will be amazed how quickly the effectiveness of your sales team grows.

Click here to find out how we support our clients and help them unlock their sales potential.