In today’s business development world, a company is as successful as its sales team is. One wrong hire can lead to the loss of a promising contract (many contracts!), and a team of A-players can help boost your revenue far beyond your initial predictions! In this blog, you will know 8 tried and true methods for creating a champion sales team.
The process of creating an excellent sales team begins with hiring new employees and continues throughout the entire life cycle of these employees. Now we will tell you how and what people to hire, how to create a team of strong players, provide them with constant motivation and grow a champion sales team of leaders.
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Create a sales playbook
A sales playbook is the compilation of tactics and methods that serves as a guide for sales reps, collecting best practices for every potential sales situation they may face. A sales playbook guides salespeople through different scenarios of prospecting, choosing the best time to sell what product/service, overcoming common customer objections, choosing s negotiation tactics, etc. So, a good sales playbook turns a guesswork approach to sales into an approach, based on best, proven selling practices.
Today, 42% of top businesses benefit from using sales playbooks. Creating a decent sales playbook will be of great service for you because it:
- helps new hires get on board fast;
- improves efficiency and productivity across the sales team;
- standardizes best practices;
- reduces ramp-up time;
- make your reps more autonomous;
- clarifies roles and Integrates team efforts;
- translates strategy and vision to tactics;
- giving salespeople everything they need at their fingertips, allows them to sell smarter and faster;
- helps boost conversion rates and revenue.
But there are certain challenges on the way of creating a perfect sales playbook: it can be difficult to create, not easy to update, it can be hard to find the content salespeople really need, it can include too much information that is difficult to consume.
If you face some challenges with creating a good sales playbook, Revenue Grid, the famous award-winning revenue operations, and intelligence platform offers you to get its White Paper, that will help you to discover a sales playbook blueprint for matchless growth.
By downloading Revenue Grid’s white paper, you will get crucial knowledge about the following:
- Surrounding yourself with forward-looking salespeople and grow sales champions: know where to start and who to involve, find out how to harness the selling strengths of every person on your team.
- Arming yourself with winning strategies: replicate the perfect selling strategies and successful formulas.
- Discovering the effective techniques: find out how to make sure your reps are following the plays.
- Using proven data: the white paper is based on data, research, and expertise from Highspot, Aberdeen Group, Salesforce, and more.
Simplify the onboarding process for new hires
New hires will benefit greatly from using the sales playbook, since it is a guide with all data on best selling practices collected in a convenient form in one place and available at any time.
Together with basic training, this will give a powerful boost to sales reps and show them where to look for leads, how to create efficient content and clearly communicate product value, how to act before, during, and after meetings with clients, and much more, achieving better results faster.
Moreover, the sales playbook will set each new employee up for early success and motivate him!
Give your reps a level of autonomy they earn
If your sales reps have some issues with sales performance, a lack of autonomy may be the reason for that. Very often, young and talented salespeople simply cannot reach their full potential while they are under tight constraints.
Let your sales reps perceive each deal as their own business, where they are both the head and the executor at the same time. In this way, team members will be able to develop a sense of responsibility for their actions and will be more focused on successful outcomes. You’ll just have to keep an eye on them and direct them, if necessary.
Encourage collaboration, not competition
Some companies encourage a competitive spirit with sales teams, and in some, they work side-by-side. The second option is still preferable, because the potential of several people and even groups of professionals increases several times when combined, and timely mutual assistance helps to balance the strengths and weaknesses of different reps, ensuring a stable result.
In this case, it is important to create a strong culture of sharing best (and worst) sales practices to let people learn from other’s experiences.
Keep an eye on performance
Anything that happens in the sales team, in one way or another, revolves around performance. It’s all about numbers, right? Measuring the sales performance on an ongoing basis, you can track what is happening, encourage and guide your salespeople. And, because sales reps will know that their failures are being watched, they will learn to take responsibility for their work.
Establish clear communication and metrics
Creating a clear work environment and clear metrics are two important aspects of a happy, motivated and cohesive sales team. If your employees are unsure about systems or sales expectations, this creates a culture of insecurity and sets people up for failure, strife, and fear.
Set clear goals, metrics, and fair expectations and your sales team will thrive.
Motivate your sales reps to spot their weaknesses and complement them
Each member of your sales team brings something unique to the business, but not all new employees have enough skills that, nevertheless, are needed every day. As a leader, you must explain to them the need to identify their weaknesses and compensate for them, constantly learning to succeed as soon as possible.
When reps improve their abilities through the experience of other, more savvy team members, it helps to build cohesion and reduce tensions in the team.
Lead by example
The drive for success and motivation is contagious, and they always start with leaders. Also, communication, cooperation, and reliability are important for success. By creating a positive and educational environment in which your sales team members work, you will help them respect each other and adhere to the same drive for success that you do.
