There are 3 “Cs” to define a sales team that is thriving – competitive, collaborative, and committed. Being competitive can fire up the sales team. Finding just the right level of competition can improve motivation and excitement, while ensuring that it does not create a hostile environment. Competition and collaboration may sound like opposite forces in a team, but encouraging collaboration within the sales team can lead to healthier competition and more wins for the organization. Sharing the “secret sauce,” successful scripts and narratives, best practices, and tactics often result in a win-win for all. Finally, staying committed to the company and individual goals is essential to get them going, especially in a high-pressure environment.
While we are constantly creating, studying, evaluating, and implementing some highly actionable strategies regarding sales in our business and our client’s businesses, we thought to jot down some of the best practices and let them out for all of you!
So if you’re looking to build that team of achievers for your sales, keep reading.
Let’s begin.
1. Hire people who believe more in perfecting relationships with their customers than their sales pitch!
The pursuit of perfecting the sales pitch is an endless journey. Not just the salespeople, but as a sales manager, you could also be insisting on having that perfect introduction, perfect sequence, and perfect ending. Allow us to burst this bubble for you. Know that the sales pitch may not ever get as perfect as you want. Therefore, focus on ‘building the relationship’ with your customers instead. What can your salespeople do to perfect the relationship with your clients?
- Make genuine efforts to connect with customers, and if they need space to answer, allow them.
- Listen, understand and figure out customers’ pain points and then pitch the product/services accordingly.
- Follow up with customers even after they’ve purchased the product/services to know how they like it.
- Ask customers what else can you do for them?
Doing these will not just build a long-lasting tested relationship with your customer but will make them a silent brand ambassador for your company!
2. Do you pick your salespeople for their innate characteristics?
We spend a lot of time scanning those tons of resumes, taking multiple interview rounds, obsessing over the degrees/skills of the candidate but, do we ever pause and do the ‘character analysis’ of the person we are planning to hire? If you have never done this, grab a notebook and write these points down to ask the next candidate you’d be interviewing:
- Would you be willing to learn/unlearn if the position requires the same? (to check if they are coachable?)
- How do you feel when a customer tells you a “No” directly? (preferably set up a live call and check how they react)
- How willing would you be to forward your close lead to your colleague for closing? (to check if they are jealous or inspired by their fellow salespeople?)
Read through the answers. These answers will determine how they are going to treat your customers too. So, make sure you don’t get wrong at this.
3. Train your team to listen more than they speak.
As per the Brevet Group, only 13% of customers believe a salesperson can understand their needs. Shocking, isn’t it? Now, listening is not just a sales skill but rather is one of the biggest life hacks.
- Do you want to show your customer that you care? Listen.
- Do you want to understand the pain points of your customer to pitch the product accordingly? Listen.
- Do you want to close the deal? Listen.
Yes, listen to your customer, and half of the war is won there (except there is no war, and the win is always yours if you follow!)
(Pro tip: Develop genuine empathy with your customer’s challenges, and you will not have to put in extra effort actually to develop the ‘listening skill.’)
4. Nurture Product Managers who lead, guide, and inspire the sales team.
Your sales team is just like your leads. You need to nurture them well to get the best results.
Product Managers are the people who do this job. They are constantly with your salespeople and probably know them more than you do. Therefore, invest a good amount of energy and time to coach product managers who not just run a sales team but build a team of highly inspired and well-trained rockstars! Bridge the gap between product management, product marketing, and sales by conducting training sessions, sharing what they hear directly from customers, and providing them with inputs on narratives, scripts, and key messaging points. Having a messaging framework as per different buyer personas helps align the teams and encourages more collaboration
5. Help sales learn your language.
Every company has its own language. It is crucial to ensure that sales talks in a language that is consistent with the brand. How can you get them there?
- First things first, sit down with them and tell them what the brand means to you.
- What is the vision and mission behind starting the business and building that particular product, solution, or service, and how it solves a problem explicitly?
- How do you see them taking the brand ahead with their contributions?
Set a clear and thorough brand communication process for your salespeople. You can do this by creating a sales kit that includes the critical messaging framework we talked about, plus several other sales-oriented materials such as sales playbooks, battle cards, and product briefs. These content pieces will give them clarity on many things:
- What is the product all about?
- Who is it for?
- How is it going to solve the pain point of the customer?
- Why is it the best that they can get in the market?
All prospects must get an answer that is clear and simple, even if they meet your salesperson in the metro. (Yes, we genuinely believe sales can happen anywhere!)
6. Providing one-on-one guidance & making things easy for them.
Remember, some may convert the first sale on their first day even before the lunch break, and some may take a week. Figure out the weak links and spare some more time with them.
As per a study by Aberdeen, less than half of companies provide post-training reinforcement, but organizations that use post-training support see 34% more first-year sales reps achieve quota. If going that extra mile can fetch you such results, we are sure you will not mind doing that. A simple way of providing this ongoing training is to use email automation to help send out crucial information on market trends, competitors, new content, or training content that might have been published, all through one email every week. Note email automation helps nurture not just prospects but also the sales team that converts those prospects into paying customers.
Closing today’s deal!
We hope this article has shed some light on the steps you need to take to build a highly successful sales team. At KAIROS Pulse, we accelerate B2B technology companies’ growth by aligning their strategies with target market needs, excelling sales effectiveness with engaging content and sales tools, and automating sales and marketing operations. We offer a unique combination of market knowledge, technology depth, creative storytelling, and entrepreneurial attitude. We have decades of experience working with technology vendors, telecom carriers, “as-a-service” providers, managed service providers, and enterprises.
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Until next time, keep building and nurturing your sales team!
