6 Strategies to Enhance your Team’s Sales Performance

Turning your sales team into an all-star team doesn’t have to be complicated or far-fetched. Having a motivated and productive team at all times is indeed challenging, but with the right set of tools and tips, your team will be on its way to its best self in no time.  

Maximizing sales performance is top of mind for many sales managers and leaders that strive to improve processes and drive revenue. The better a sales team performs, the more revenue the business will drive, enhancing the company’s overall performance.  

Consequently, finding the right strategies to engage and inspire sales reps remains a sales leader's primary objective.  

5 Major Reasons Why Your Team is Unproductive

Before you can make strides to team optimization, first, you must understand the why’s: the reasons behind unproductivity and lack of motivation. Here are a few:

1. The pressure to obtain results. 

2. Lack of consistency and alignment in sales strategies. 

3. Poor or non-existent sales coaching and training. 

4. No prioritization of tasks and distractions. 

5. Constant change and increased turnover rates. 

Understanding these key reasons your team is unproductive will allow you to start implementing new strategies to eliminate obstacles and work towards success. 

6 Strategies to Enhance your Team’s Sales Performance

As consumers become more educated and have higher expectations, having a well-thought-out sales strategy along with skilled sales reps is pivotal. 

With that in mind, here are six strategies that will enhance your sales team’s performance and keep you ahead of the game:

1. Become an expert in your client’s business. 

2. Embrace and implement sales tools.

3. Constantly track and measure sales efforts. 

4. Create and enhance your onboarding and training programs.

5. Overcommunicate with your team. 

6. Create lead qualification and scoring process. 

Let’s expand upon each strategy:

1. Know everything about your client’s business.

When working with clients, it’s essential to understand what they do, how they do it and how they make money doing it. Having that understanding will allow you to speak knowledgeably about their business and their needs, which will earn you more credibility and trust.  

Before creating the first email or making the first call, sales reps should completely understand the customer’s business, including any pain points.

Knowing their strengths and weaknesses will allow you to know where your product or service will fit in. Having this knowledge beforehand will make your value proposition stronger.  

Naturally, researching your client’s business is necessary. Reading white papers and searching for relevant topics will allow you to obtain a clearer scope of your client's market.  

2. Embrace and implement sales tools.

Being more productive is an essential aspect of improving your sales team’s performance. One of the most efficient ways of being productive is utilizing the available sales tools to automate tasks.  

CRM platforms are one of the most valuable tools to increase productivity within sales teams. A well-designed workflow within a CRM allows sales reps to optimize their time and daily schedule, prioritize tasks, and contact prospects on time to avoid opportunities falling through the cracks.  

Having excellent CRM tools will allow your team to always be on top of their tasks, ultimately leading them to close more deals. Instead of spending time in data entry or other menial tasks, your team will be able to focus on more strategic tasks that will generate value for the customer and revenue for the business.  

Some of the most popular CRMs are Freshworks, Salesforce.com, Pipedrive and HubSpot. It's critical to choose a CRM that is easy to use and that adapts seamlessly to your team.  

In the same vein, it’s important for sales leaders to always be on the lookout for new technologies that allow more efficient work. Being at the forefront of innovation means implementing technology into your business’s workflow.

3. Constantly track and measure sales activities.

Having specific data for each of your sales efforts will help you understand where your weak points are and what you should be doing to improve them. This information is obtained by measuring and keeping track of your team’s activities.  

It’s essential to measure relevant information depending on what you need to know about your team’s performance.  

Some of the most common and vital Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and sales metrics are:

• Connection rate.
• Lead conversion.
• Close rate.
• Average revenue per sale.
• Sales cycle measure in days.
• Conversion rate.
• Average sales (per hour, per day, per week).
• Actual vs. Forecasted revenue.
• Deals closed.
• Productivity (number of calls, emails, and touches).

4. Create and update your onboarding and training programs.

The onboarding process of your new employees should be used as an opportunity to begin your new sales reps’ journey with the right foot forward. Understanding your core business, your company's values, and the main tasks they are expected to perform is a great place to start.

When new sales reps have a complete understanding of the role they play and how it impacts the organization, they will be able to concentrate on what needs to get done and focus on what’s expected of them.  

It's important to consider that in many cases, it can take up to 7 months for a new hire to be completely onboarded, which means you will have to extend the onboarding process and have continuous follow-ups with your team to make sure they on the right path.  

Additionally, training programs should not be limited to two weeks during new employees' onboarding processes. Training should be continuous. Recent trends are constantly emerging, and successful teams are at the forefront of those innovations. Keeping your team up to date and boosting their skill levels will allow you to provide high-quality services and added value for your clients.

5. Overcommunicate with you team.

Since the beginning of your employee’s professional journey with your company, you must continuously communicate, providing them a space where they can talk freely. Regular one-on-one meetings with each team member and in groups will allow your employees to feel confident to speak out if there are any issues and give ideas to improve them.  

Checking in with your employees and new hires will help you understand where they are and if they need to overcome any obstacles that are not allowing them to perform to their fullest.  

Listening is essential, but also providing solutions to your employee’s issues is necessary. They will feel that they are being listened to and taken care of, which will directly impact their performance.  

6. Establish a Lead Qualifications Framework

A significant aspect of a productive sales team is having them work on quality leads. You don't want your team to be working on dead-end leads that consume their time with old phone numbers and bad email addresses.  Once you establish a solid leads list with quality data, you’re in a position to have a solid pre-sales process.  

Implementing a scoring framework will allow your team to determine how "worthy" a lead is. Your team assigns values based on the lead's behavior and their interest in your product or service.  

Implementing this framework will optimize your team's time and help them focus on qualified leads that will drive revenue to your organization.  

These six simple strategies will give your team the boost they need to start focusing on improving their performance, increasing their skill set, providing high-quality services to your clients, and ultimately closing more deals!

With consistency, concentration, and constant innovation, your team will flourish, stay ahead of the game, provide outstanding services, and accomplish your company's goals.