How Can I Improve and Refresh the Ability of My Sales Team?

In sales, the importance of a quality sales team is unmatched. However, the difference between your sales team having a good month and a good year is monumental. Therefore, you must consistently develop and upskill your sales team to establish and build long-term customer and client relationships, stay ahead of the competition, and enable business development.

Within this article, you will discover how to create a high-performing sales team that delivers consistent year-round results and ultimately reaches its maximum potential.

Hire Top Sales Talent Effectively

If the team members within your sales team lack the drive to develop their sales skill set, you are limited in how you can improve their ability. As a manager, it's essential to spark this drive at the source. Then, hire effectively to create and sustain a high-performing sales team. 

To hire the best entry-level and senior sales professionals for your team, you need to understand the product or service you offer. Doing this allows you to choose candidates best suited to share that product or service with prospective clients. 

These candidates must have the relevant experience, soft skills, and attitude to sell to your target audience. Company culture is an essential aspect that is often overlooked. Equally crucial to selling your product or service is that the sales reps fit within your company's culture and sales team. 

Have Regular One-to-One Meetings

A fundamental way to ensure you get the most out of your sales team is to conduct regular meetings with each member. Holding regular one-to-one meetings will allow you to understand how each sales rep feels at that moment in time. In addition, regular feedback gives insight into your salespeople's performance at a granular level, allowing you to be proactive instead of reactive when it comes to improvement and problem-solving. 

In these meetings, boost the morale of your team. Remind them how integral they are to the team and the company's success. The one-to-one environment also provides your team with a safe space to work through any issues that might have arisen. Then, after determining the factors that might have played a role in hindering performance, you can provide guidance and support to help them overcome the obstacle and improve as a sales rep. 

Review Results as a Team

While one-to-one meetings are an opportunity to discuss individual performance, there is also the need to review results as a team. Results can be discussed in team meetings or circulated through leaderboards to represent the latest sales activity.  

For this to work, there needs to be the right culture in place. With an environment that encourages your sales team to be transparent and trusting of each other, there should be no issue in making the results public to see across the company. If you have hired salespeople with the right attitude, it should create a competitive atmosphere that motivates your sales team to improve.  

Be Actively Involved With Your Sales Reps 

To ensure that your sales strategy is a success, you need to be actively involved with your sales reps daily. By being approachable, your sales reps will feel comfortable coming to you with any issues they might be experiencing. This will allow you to track how your sales team is doing while also enabling you to work more closely with those who might be struggling. 

One way you can do this is to jump into their shoes and work alongside them. This will establish credibility and serve as a learning experience for the team.

Another thing to note: It's important to strike a balance between providing guidance and allowing your sales team to be independent. You will enable them to become competent problem solvers by giving them the necessary space to grow. In turn, this will expand their potential in a professional capacity.

Encourage Peer Coaching

As a sales manager, your job is to mentor and guide your team as part of your leadership development. As one person, you can only take on so much. Using your ability to manage people and excellent communication skills, you should look to foster an atmosphere that allows for peer coaching. Not only will this alleviate some of the pressure on you, but it can also prove beneficial for your sales team. 

If your team structure allows it, you can consider pairing sales reps with contrasting experiences. You can achieve this training through small coaching groups or one-to-one sessions. With less experienced sales reps receiving valuable coaching from their more knowledgeable peers, they will feel encouraged to continue developing their skill sets. 

Those who embrace an executive coaching role will nurture their management skills, helping them later in their careers. As a direct result of this adjustment, you can create a culture that increases accountability and productivity. 

Set Attainable Objectives

Solely focusing on the large-scale goals set by your sales organization can be challenging and even counterproductive. While these targets still need to be completed, treat them as a long-term process. Then, break those goals down into more manageable milestones.  

Dismantling your larger goals into smaller ones allows you to achieve them in a shorter amount of time. Small-dosed goals help keep your sales reps focused, building momentum within the sales process. From a management perspective, you can more easily monitor your team's progress and diagnose issues accordingly. In addition, morale within the sales team will likely grow stronger as each milestone is reached, further motivating your sales team to continue improving their sales performance. 

Provide Sales Training 

All the above points are ways to improve your team's sales ability. However, there is one method that stands above the rest. You can bring the best out of your sales team with tailored sales training. 

Thankfully, this is something we specialize in. For over 25 years, we have nurtured college graduates and motivated individuals into top sales professionals. So, when it comes to a career in sales, there's no better place to start than Pareto.

If you are interested in sales training to improve your sales team's ability, our bespoke courses can help. Explore our various sales training programs or contact us to help your sales reps develop their skill sets and reach their maximum potential today.