How to Make a Sales Team More Effective

Putting more effort and time into creating a successful sales team will affect all aspects of your business, particularly in terms of fulfilling its objectives. This article provides expert insight on how to make your sales team more effective.

Set expectations at the beginning

Employee engagement suffers when they don’t know what is expected of them or when requirements inexplicably change. Make sure your sales team knows what the company’s priorities are. The expectations must be very clear so your team knows what they are working to achieve.

Give them a clear idea of quality work as a frame of reference. You could conduct regular reviews of successful sales calls so your team can change their behaviour accordingly.

Monitor important metrics

You must be capable of managing key metrics and holding your sales team accountable to them. Keeping them measurable, simple, and visible is essential. Let’s say you have an annual revenue goal. You would need to monitor the average sales cycle length to guarantee that everyone is on track and not stuck on unqualified leads, which only prolongs that cycle.

Explore the benefits of mapping software

Sales mapping software is a powerful tool that transforms location, real-time, customer, and historical data into interactive maps. It visualizes data using information from CRM, Excel, or ERP systems. This allows sales reps and managers to gain valuable insights that tabular data would not enable. This makes it easier to improve decision-making, track sales performance, create balanced sales territories, and identify new opportunities for sales growth. Sales territory mapping apps save you the trouble of manually entering addresses into a Google map.

Use feedback to identify problems with engagement

Even if your sales team is small, you shouldn’t use your “intuition” to make decisions about the whole team’s performance. If employees with various performance levels flag the same problem, be attentive. An example is if you ask for engagement feedback and your best- and worst-performing team members mention an issue like business hours. You need solid engagement data to identify your team’s issues.

Implement the right tools

Modern sales platforms have features like click-to-call and personal email sequences. With the former, calls are automatically made and recorded when you click a number in the database. When they end, they are stored for future reference. Personal sequences involve sending automated email templates to your contacts.

Technology is always improving, and sales teams have access to collaboration software, cloud-based CRM, and automation tools to make their jobs easier and quicker.

Track progress

You need to measure real numbers instead of recording the number of calls made. If only one person converted, it doesn’t matter if the team made 1,000 calls. Not all leads are created equal. Your team needs a sales funnel with potential, not a random list of people.

Build a marketing campaign to generate leads organically, buy contact lists in your niche, or invest in targeted advertising.

It’s easier to sell to an existing client than a new one. Monitor what happens after a sale is made. If your sales rep had a good relationship with the client, they might keep returning each time they need something new. Monitor the retention rate – this is an effective way of measuring sales performance.

Create a healthy work environment

Yellow lighting, rooms without windows, shared desks, and miserable pay are among the typical features of an unhealthy work environment. Try to provide your sales team with remote work opportunities, a culture of open communication, professional development courses, feedback, encouragement, company events, and, most importantly, recognition of their achievements.

Final thoughts

A healthy company culture starts with the people at the top. They want to make sales teams more effective and successful and bear the responsibility of supporting them. An unhealthy work environment leads to high staff turnover, which hurts sales because you’re always looking for new employees to hire and onboard.