If you are a leader of a corporate sales team, you are constantly searching for ways to boost sales volume and flow. Effectively marketing products and services to potential clients is more difficult than it seems – a fact that you and your team know well. The key to effective sales goal attainment lies in strong leadership, close communication, and personal motivation.
How do you implement measures to encourage these factors among your sales team and achieve your target sales? There are certain behaviors and initiatives that you can begin practicing around the office. By encouraging team building, knowledge, and positivity, your team will have the tools and confidence they need to enter difficult sales situations.
1. Set Clear Goals
Your sales reps need to know the exact set of goals they need to attain in order to reach peak sales performance. They need to know the number of leads they must obtain, the prospects they need to contact, and the total revenue the company wants to bring in. Often, corporate operations unintentionally shroud these goals from salespeople on the ground.
Keeping the details of your sales goals a mystery isn’t useful for your sales team. Communicate your goals clearly and regularly to your team. Send out an email with the goal for that week to everyone on the team. Write each week’s goal on a whiteboard and display it in the office. Encourage your team to ask questions about the sales goals if they need clarification. This practice encourages open communication between higher ups and the people who drive sales volume.
2. Take Advantage of Technology
In today’s modern world, we’re constantly connected to vast amounts of data at our fingertips. Why don’t we take advantage of this technology to drive our sales volume? When your salespeople are out in the field, they may need to contact another sales rep or look up information on a product.
Developing an app that lists product specifications can help your salespeople have instant access to product knowledge, boosting your company’s credibility among your consumer base. Consider using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform to further connect your salespeople to their potential clients.
3. Encourage Mentorship
When new salespeople join your team, they are at a disadvantage when compared to your more senior sales reps. A seniority divide can alienate your younger sales reps and decrease their confidence in the field, which can hurt your sales goal attainment. Instead of encouraging competition between your older and younger salespeople, encourage mentorship between the two groups.
You can formally pair a new salesperson with a more senior level employee to help orient them to your company. The older employee can discuss their experience in the position and offer coaching for the new rep’s first sales call or field day. When every team member is on the same level of achievement, the whole company will succeed.
4. Fail as a Team
It’s easy to place blame on an individual salesperson for the loss of a contract or important lead. However, public shaming can alienate that rep, further weakening your company’s potential for sales goal attainment. Avoid singling out any weak links and encourage your team to examine the failure as a team effort.
If a salesperson believes that he or she is to blame for a sales goal failure, this could lead them to focus only on their individual performance. This leads to less focus on strengthening the team as a whole. You want to develop a team mindset. Always examine failures as a team effort – and make sure to celebrate your successes as a team as well.
5. Celebrate Accomplishments
While you should focus on team interactions to encourage sales team growth, you shouldn’t shy away from rewarding individuals who deserve it. Don’t be afraid to congratulate a colleague for landing a major deal or for increasing the team’s sales volume by 5%. Not only will this leave that salesperson with pride, they will be excited to continue contributing to the team effort. In addition, your other salespeople will want to work at peak performance so that they can receive recognition as well.
However, always treat the success of an individual as a success for the team as well. This helps you practice individual praise with team building.
6. Listen to Feedback
The best leaders understand that they can always improve. Feedback is a crucial part of figuring out if your leadership and team management style is effective for your salespeople. If you’re doing something that isn’t helpful, you’ll want to catch it before it affects your sales goals.
To combat this, consider administering a monthly or quarterly survey to collect employee feedback. Ask questions about the workplace environment, about specific practices and trainings, and what you could do to improve the quality of their job experience. You should keep this survey anonymous for optimal honesty. Review survey responses carefully and incorporate changes into your daily leadership practice.
7. Avoid Internal Competition
Similar to pitting older and younger salespeople against each other, you should always avoid internal competition among your team. It has been a common practice to split a sales team into factions and encourage each faction to beat the others in sales volume. This is not an effective way to encourage long-term sales goal attainment.
Always emphasize teamwork and collaboration within your sales team. Friendly internal competition can take place against other departments, but save any inter-team conflict for the company picnic.
8. Utilize Your Company’s Mission
Your sales team wants to feel like they’re part of attaining a larger goal or ultimate mission through their work. Working with a purpose will make reaching target sales feel like even more of an accomplishment. In addition, your sales team will become more motivated to reach sales goals.
To encourage this, share your company’s mission statement with your sales team. Have a discussion on what the mission means for your team. Identify what actions you can take to turn the mission into reality. Try to incorporate aspects of the mission statement into your sales goals, meetings, and training sessions. This will create the sense of working towards a larger goal and motivate your reps.
9. Track Sales Performance
You should implement a system that tracks your team’s sales performance throughout the overall sales cycle and allows you to target areas of improvement. While this may seem like an obvious action, you should always monitor your team’s actual sales performance. Many team leaders neglect regular performance analysis in the hustle and bustle of the corporate world. Set aside time every day to review your team’s performance and identify improvement actions for specific members. Remember not to single out or publicly share failures of individual sales representatives.
10. Provide Creative Incentives
Don’t be afraid to inject some fun into the workplace. Many effective team leaders encourage their sales reps to attain their sales goals by implementing an interesting team incentive. These incentives can be as simple as buying donuts and coffee for the office on Friday to hosting an outing to a sports game. These rewards will encourage your sales team to work even harder towards their sales goals.
If you want to get a bit more unusual, some team leaders even pledge to shave their heads, wear a fun costume, or allow their employees to throw pies in their face when they achieve a sales goal. Remember to keep these incentives appropriate for the workplace, but don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Stay professional and have fun!
Do you want to help your team meet their sales goals using an expertly designed training program? Contact Shapiro Negotiations to inquire about our corporate sales training sessions today.
We offer integrated and systematic approaches to sales that will help boost your team’s confidence, lead procurement, and sales volume. Shapiro Negotiations will provide your company with the habits, tools, and processes necessary for greater sales success.
