“Want the best sales team? Hire the best sales coach”
-Nathan Jamail, Keynote Speaker, Bestselling Author
Running an efficient sales team is similar to managing a world class sports team. You need a great coach, a solid sales performance plan and training, training and more training. Let’s face it, as technology improves the world seemingly shrinks more and more each day while competition grows in an opposite tangent. How can you motivate your team to stand out and win over new clients? Effective Sales performance management skills.
Being a sales leader is a dynamic role that involves motivating your sales team, improving the bottom-line and meeting your clients’ needs. This is where sales performance management is important for small businesses or fortune 500 companies alike.
Let’s take a quick look what sales performance management is and how it can turn any team into the winning team.
What is sales performance management?
Sales performance management is the practice of hiring, monitoring and training sales workforces in ways that improve their sales technique and create a sales advantage for the company. It relies on data-driven sales performance metrics to analysis and forecast future sales, thereby empowering sales teams to meet their targets more effectively and efficiently.
How can I improve my team’s sales performance?
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Coaching the coach
All champion teams have one thing in common, a great coach. Consequently, as a sales leader it falls on your shoulder to invest in the right skillsets to engage with your employees in a meaningful way.
A wise leader knows that they must build on their strengths and develop additional talents to effectively lead their team. One way is by investing in professional coaching for you and other executive team members. Executive coaches offer valuable insight into the latest tips of the trade, fosters clarity and focus for executives. Additionally, they bring with them a wealth of experience that can maximise a leader’s potential.
Above all, this creates a top-down flow that indicates leadership is interested and invested in their employees’ success. Furthermore, it demonstrates that leaders are committed to be masters of their trade.
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Growing your employees’ sales skills
Training and development are important initiatives that can create a winning team culture. To accomplish this you need to keep employees highly motivated and engaged all while maintaining a line of sight to the organization’s goals.
The truth is happier employees are more likely to perform better in their tasks. According to findings from Gallup, teams that are highly engaged show a 21% increase in profitability. Consequently, employees who are not connected to their jobs are most likely to perform at bare minimum.
By encouraging professional growth in employees, a company places its greatest assets, human capital, at an advantage to be high performing individuals. Furthermore, it communicates a strong sense of commitment to staff. Besides, everyone wants to be on the winning team, so there is the added benefits of encouraging employee retention and attracting the best of the best in the recruitment process.
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Developing a strong sales performance plan
A strong sales performance plan is akin to a playbook for champion teams. Without a clear line-of-sight, targets and goals will be overlooked. To foster a winning belief system, sales leaders must invest in tools that improve sales productivity.
These days, robust sales performance metrics with quantifiable goals are necessary to set attainable targets and track employees’ progress. It creates a standardized system that holds employees responsible for their successes or failures. Data-driven decisions backed by thorough sales performance analysis is the winning combination for better strategic planning by the company. A strong sales performance plan is a necessary blueprint for building a thriving sales culture where everyone wins.
Being a sales professional is not an easy job, if it were, everyone would do it successfully. Coaching, training and innovative tools are hallmarks of a successful business. To learn more about building a winning sales plan, checkout the book, The Sales Leaders Playbook, available on Amazon Kindle and in print format.
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