(By Loyd Ford) Fewer people, more work. Now that’s a formula that makes you tired, right? Revenue goals don’t shrink.
How do you grow performance from a small sales team?
- Place a high value and reward empathy, curiosity and persistence. You get what you reward. Often overlooked, empathy, curiosity and persistence are sharp qualities for individual sellers and even more significant if you are able to build a sales culture around these important traits.
- Encourage a culture where the focus is on solving client problems even more than selling. When you do this effectively, your individual team members will become a magnet for great clients. There is too much celebration for closing hard. Strong sellers are great listeners. The better sellers ask a lot of questions. The best sellers use creativity to help solve problems for clients regularly.
- Encourage every rep to set personal goals (beyond your expectations). Goal setting and having a strategy to leverage performance to reach those goals works miracles with most reps and will potentially explode your sales. Make sure your sellers are encouraged daily to have both. Check in with them on their goals and their plans to move toward reaching those goals regularly.
- What are the traits of your high performers? Think about the character of your existing high performers. Make sure your hiring process involves asking questions that uncover the right candidates that have the skills and characteristics you most want on your team.
- The best sales teams have managers who communicate well and environments that encourage sellers to have strong communication with one another, management and clients. Teams that have rapid communications often outsell all others.
- Support your teams by making the path to success as easy as possible. Give them the right tools, remove all of the challenges you can for them (especially company challenges to a smooth work process).
- Train, train, train, ride along, ride along, ride along, reward, reward, reward. Take the time necessary to give your team confidence, sharpen their skills and their ability to read clients. This is done through consistent training. However, when a sales manager rides along with sales talent and builds a deeper relationship through on-the-ground training, the value of the team grows. I repeat this often, but reward the behaviors you want to see more often. This pays off with individual performers and will raise the entire team.
- Give feedback all the time. Sellers – like other humans – like, respect and appreciate feedback. When reps know what they are doing wrong, they have opportunities to correct that behavior. When they know what you want and get praise for positive behaviors, it changes the way that rep reacts to you and tries to please you. It can also multiply your sales.
- You manage the sales-team, or they will manage you. Some managers want to be popular. It’s certainly okay to want to be liked, but you have to make it clear that the work you are doing is meaningful and you are leading the sales efforts. Shift accounts if they are not being worked regularly. Only actively worked accounts turn into regular customers. Sure, you might get lucky, but you want to consistently grow revenue and that takes actively seeing as many potential clients as possible as regularly as possible. No relationship = no sales.
- Train everyone in your building to look for new clients. Reward good behavior by creating bonuses for people when they lead the sales team to new business. *Reward the behavior you want to see more of. We are a very active local business. Just like great ideas can come from anywhere, great new clients can be discovered by anyone.
I’m sure you can think of more yourself. How much of your individual sellers time is spent focused on new business? How do you brand your sellers and your organization as the #1 place for gaining access to the help local clients need? Maybe your existing sellers can lead you to more sellers like them?
Leadership today is about being in the service of your people. Really working for them. Grow your culture to rise above the competition. Raise your standards by setting expectations regularly, getting in it with your team and making certain they know you care about them, their success and their lives.
Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). Reach Loyd at 864.448.4169 or [email protected].
