We live in a fast changing world which puts lots of pressure on our shoulders in many respects. The Sales Profession is no exception. We have to meet our targets, KPI’s, keep your CRM tidy and updated, maintain good communication with other departments, report to our managers etc.
It seems to be very difficult to keep everything required from sales personnel in a good balance. This is when a good old sales coaching service kicks in and assists your team to be always on the right track. Let’s be honest, if your sales manager/sales director has good sales coaching skills they are too often super busy with their daily tasks and are rarely available to provide real regular coaching to their team. Therefore more and more companies are looking to outsource sales coaching services to get someone on board fresh, to stay out of office politics and to focus on getting the best results.
Traditionally, medium to large size companies have annual sales gatherings where they introduce new products, award best sales staff etc. Is this annual gathering going to assist your sales team perform better? I don’t think so. Statistically sales teams spend way too much time on administration and not enough time on prospecting and driving revenue.
What can be improved to get better results for your sales team? Below are 8 suggested actions:
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Do a regular overview of current sales processes. If some of the processes repeat themselves – reduce them! If you still asking your team to use multiple spreadsheets to record their activity – create a live report in CRM for everyone’s visibility and self-assessment.
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Make yourself available to coach your team members individually or in groups, or hire an outsourced sales coach to do it regularly
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Go out with your sales team members to know what your customers think about your solutions and to see how your sales team is presenting in the field. If you are too busy to do it, consider hiring a field sales coach who can fix your sales team’s performance in no time!
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Minimise noise coming from other departments distracting your sales team – no offence, but admin people will never understand sales people due to different mindsets
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Go out with your team regularly to do team activities (not just to pubs…) Everyone likes to be a part of the team
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Lead by example. Always come on time and leave on time! You don’t want to give your team the impression that managers always work long hours even if it may be true
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Come up with additional incentives to reward your team members regularly! Something small like movie tickets will get better results from your team!
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Sales people are usually motivated by money, ego, and job satisfaction or a combination thereof
If you are stuck with your office admin and have no time to coach your sales team regularly hire a sales coach, if you create a high performance environment whereby your team members will want to come to work with you, not for you, it will save lots of your personal time consistently hiring/firing staff and will keep everyone happy!
Life is too short to be stressed! The Sales profession is still one of the best in the world! Make the most out of it! Happy sales people ALWAYS perform better ☺