How To Improve The Performance Of A Sales Team

If you have an underperforming sales team, it can be a real hindrance to your team and the company as a whole. You might find that you need more customers and revenue than you used to. If your company is new, you might be unable to make it a successful company because of the need for sales skills. 

Luckily, you can take some simple steps to improve your sales team’s performance. One of the main things you need to do is offer incentives and give training. These are the two main things, but there are many others. 

If you need help increasing the performance of your sales teams, this guide has all the details you need. 

How To Increase Sales Performance

Increasing sales performance is one of the most important things you can ever do for your business. You always need to have a plan of action so that everyone in the company knows the steps and procedures to increase sales performance. 

Some of the best ways to increase sales performance include:

• Set clear objectives for the company that everyone knows 
• Make sure everyone knows the current targets for sales 
• Make an efficient and effective sales process 
• Have a customer relationship system
• Have a way for your company salespeople to track customer data and conversion rates 

Depending on your company and the sales rep you are working with, you might need more ways to increase sales performance. Setting a vibrant and trusting company culture is one of the best things you can do, especially for new hires.

Going out on sales activities and field sales together can also be effective so the group can learn from one another. Lastly, remember that not all sales professionals have the same skill level, especially if they are new to this career. 

Try to have a sound system of ongoing training so that everyone knows the best sales strategies and ways to set their sales goals. 

What Factors Affect Sales Performance?

Many things affect sales performance, and you need to know what specifically affects your company’s sales performance. Each company is different, so you need to know what works for your employees and what you can do to provide incentives to increase sales performance and meet sales quotas and sales targets. 

The quality of your product is one of the top factors that affect sales performance. People are less likely to advocate for a product that does not work well or that they do not feel passionate about. If your product also has negative reviews, clients are less likely to buy it after researching it online and seeing the bad reviews. 

Pricing affects sales performance. If your product is too expensive, it will affect the sales reps. Almost all customers will ask about the product’s price on the first call. Your salespeople need to discuss the pricing and explain why it’s worth that price. 

The quality of your salespeople is one of the primary factors when it comes to sales performance. You must ensure all your employees are empathetic, problem solvers, and have the skills they need to make sales. Training can help if a few members need more proper skills. 

The number of salespeople also affects sales performance. If you are understaffed, you will have a few people trying to make all the calls and meetings, which can hinder their ability to spend time with clients and drive sales. Understaffing cannot always be solved overnight, but try to do the best you can to get new hires that will stay with the company for a long time. 

Lack of integration within the company also affects sales performance. Your salespeople need to work with marketing departments to make better sales opportunities. It’s good to schedule time for marketing and sales to be together to bounce ideas off one another. 

Incorporate One-On-One Coaching

You need to constantly be coaching your reps if you want them to succeed. You will see their average sales number going up when you do one-on-one coaching and try to spend more time training them. 

This goes for new hires and older people that are in the company. Both need your attention when it comes to growing as a salesperson. Some hires might need more continuous training than others, depending on how well they handle daily tasks and their time management skills. 

Another thing you need to do with one-on-ones is to make sure everyone knows current market trends and they know how sales are constantly evolving. 

Make sure to do training sessions regarding the newest achievements in your niche to have meetings and coaching sessions that will benefit everyone. 

How Do You Improve Sales Performance?

When your sales team is motivated, they will naturally perform better. First, however, you must set incentives and goals to encourage them. Getting the sales team inspired initially is one of the more challenging things you will do in your business, but it will be worth the effort because it creates a cycle of continued success.

When your sales team is performing poorly, you have to deal with increased costs for the company and lost time when your people could be making sales but are not set up for success, so they miss out on opportunities.

Here are some simple ways you can increase sales performance and make sure your people are motivated:

• Hire people that have the right skills or that can be set up for success by training them with the right skills 
• Get a sales enablement manager to increase productivity 
• Use sales strategies and sales training so that all employees are on the same page and can make sales appropriately
• If the sales strategy is not working, take the proper steps to get a new one so that employees can feel more confident 
• Make decisions about sales and products that make sense with current sales metrics
• Train all the sales reps as soon as possible about new procedures, products, and anything else they need to know 
• Make sure to have the necessary leaders in place that know how to lead a team effectively
• Make a better sales structure that is easily followed 
• Personalize your products to every customer, so they have increased confidence in what they are buying 
• Make a referral network to get new customers easily
• Make sure your salespeople come first with the right incentives and high commission rates
• Never allow your people to stop working just because sales are high now, as you never know what the future will hold 
• Use sale performance metrics

Key Pillars Of Sale Productivity

Efficient sales teams have a large number of hurdles to overcome. There are pillars you need to have in place to ensure that the sales team’s performance is the best it can be. Once you have these pillars in place, you will find that your team has all the foundation they need to increase their sales productivity. These pillars are also great because you can use the pillars rather than just hovering over the team all the time to ensure they are doing the right job. 

Some of these pillars are easier to implement than others. The main ones are:

• Strategy
• Operations
• Technology
• Performance 

With these pillars in place, you are moving in the right direction to have the best sales team. 

FAQ

Sales Improvement Ideas

Not selling enough, or is your team not able to efficiently sell the things you have? You need to improve on several things if this is the case. Here are some of the best sales improvement ideas that you can implement starting today, so your team has the best shot at winning:

• Make more products. This entails creating a new line of products or taking the ones you already have and improving on them. 
• Expand markets. Try to see if you can make new products that can aim themselves towards other markets, so you’re not always selling to the same people. 
• Marketing activities. Try to get your marketing team more involved and get them to work with the sales team. 
• Improve customer service. When your customer service is lacking, your company will not make sales, and the ones they do make might have low customer satisfaction. 

Training To Improve Sales Performance

Many of your new hires might be unable to successfully make sales calls and other sales-related things if they do not receive the proper training. If you notice your new hires not performing well, you must increase your sales revenue by giving them better training. 

Some of the best ways to improve sales training are to do ongoing training regularly. You can also do one on one meetings. For underperforming sales teams, you should do more training. 

You must also take the team through actual sales and give them extra time to practice. Change your training accordingly when the market changes or a new product emerges. 

Ways To Improve Sales Performance

Make sure you have the right technology. Your salespeople might have all the right skills but need better technology to implement them. You need to ensure you’re giving your team all the tools they need to succeed, especially tracking customer satisfaction and sales numbers. 

Make sure you also offer incentives based on the company and the people you have. Think about your employees and what they would prefer to have as incentives. Would they prefer money or a ticket to a show? Would they prefer more paid time off or a bonus? 

Make it a priority to also make customer service a top priority. Your team needs to know how to keep the clients satisfied and keep them coming back for more products and services because returning customers are much cheaper than acquiring new customers. In addition, when your customers are happy, your workers are more likely to be satisfied because they are getting less gruntled phone calls with displeased people on the other end. 

The other thing you can do is teach your salespeople how to sell more products effectively. This also means upselling. Do they have a customer that can also benefit from another product you have? Teach them how to sell both products simultaneously so they can make more money and give your company more money overall. 

Activities To Improve Sales Performance

All your team members need to have activities to teach them how to improve their sales. Improving sales is good for everyone because it means higher commissions for your employees and increased revenue for the company. 

A great activity you can do is get out into the community and show your town who your salespeople are and what business you do. Many startup companies have community outreach programs where they can go out and meet local people and share their community goals. 

You must also do activities where your salespeople can learn about the competition. Try to show them who they are competing against so they can more accurately know what they need to do to be better than the competition. 

You also need to work on increasing your sales channels. This entails enhanced training, adding more retail outlets, using resellers, making more of your business online, and hiring independent sales representatives. You can also hire sales representatives to only work with your company as long as you ensure they have the proper training. 

These activities can improve sales performance, but some are more costly than others. Try to see which one your company will benefit from the most and then start there. From there, you can add on more activities or do more of what seems to be working well. 

Conclusion

By now, you should have a good idea of how you need to improve the sales performance of your people. You may need to change a few things, or you may have to do a complete overhaul of the sales and marketing departments. Whichever you choose, make a plan and stick to it. 

If you need help with a good sales training program for your department, contact The Brooks Group today. We have all the materials you need to make an efficient sales training process that can improve the skills of your people and increase revenue.