How To Increase Your Sales, Revenue & Profits Without Burning Out Your Sales and Marketing Team.
OPPRESSION ON YOUR SALES TEAM KILLS THE BUSINESS, HOW?
Without a doubt, sales and marketing organization these days are relentless because of the unbearable pressure of the current market.
Infirm economy and shrinking margins, make it even harder to drive revenue and gain profit.
The sales representatives are the first responders to the pressure as they are those carrying the future profits of the company on their backs. They are taking on bigger territories, facing higher quotas, and making more customer contacts than ever.
Unfortunately, in many organizations they are still losing ground because there is not proper guidance. For example, where does the sales rep turn to for direction, motivation, and performance support in the middle of such challenging times?
The answer, is their team leader (sales manager), who is in charge with providing the insights, resources, accountability, and coaching the sales representative to success.
However, most sales managers today have their own set of pressures to deal with. So, in the face of all this pressure, sales manager gets overwhelmed and distracted to such a degree that they have nothing left in the tank to feed the sales representatives.
Eventually, sales reps especially those who haven’t achieved the star status will stumble, feeling uncertain of their own goals, their value to the team, and clueless on how to fix the situation.
Ultimately, production that is already underperforming continues to gradually trend further down and the pressure on everyone keeps growing and getting worse.
12 TIPS FOR TEAM LEADER TO INCREASE SALES PERFORMANCE WITHOUT KILLING YOUR TEAM
1. Lead your team, not manage.
Sales managers rely too much on metrics and deadlines to drive performance neglecting the teams’ mental health.
It would be more effective to motivate and reward your team in a social format that brings out the best in them in a way that inspires everyone.
2. Set social goals along with business goals to drive sales team performance.
Every team should have a sales process then set a goal and measure pipeline. Somehow you have to align these organizational goals to a social goal.
Example of social goals are like protecting the environment, improving the standard of living of the sales professional and so on.
Leveraging social goals gives sales professionals targets that are practical, comfortable, and therefore more natural.
3. Committed to hiring the best fit for your business goal.
If you want the best, hire the best. This saves time and money on training while protecting yourself from failure six months down the road.
It does costs more now, but it definitely pays off over time.
Look for individuals with social goals that are already more aligned with your organizational goals.
4. Set and manage every component of the sales and management process.
A sales team thrives when everyone is in tune and follow regular standards and schedules.
If sales managers have the tools, real-time tracking and instantaneous feedback, sales reps won’t feel a need to stop and doubt themselves.
So, make sure you know what is going on the whole time so you can give instant feedback with deals in motion and bring more positive energy to team.
5. Keep the communication clear and expectations well-defined.
An integral part of a consistent winning is the tone and the topics of your communications with your sales team.
It important to remind your team know what is expected of them and when it is expected. So, the team members know what to aim for, and understand what will happen if they hit it or not.
6. Know the difference between pipeline and forecasting.
Pipeline consists of all prospects at all stages in the sales cycle. From the beginning phase of introducing your company to presenting a pricing proposal. Unqualified leads will not be in a sales pipeline but all unclosed sales belongs in it.
The sales forecast on the other hand, is the salesperson’s best estimation of which sales will close in a given time frame. Forecasting is focused on late stage deals.
A significant difference between the two is that the sales forecast is used to estimate a company’s short term revenue and cash flow. In other words, sales forecasts help a company determine whether or not they can pay their bills, pipelines do not.
Most managers don’t differentiate or understand the difference between the two. Keep this in mind when aligning new goals.
7. Use the tech and tools available to track performance in real-time.
Every sales team works within a standardized process that defines how to approach, qualify, work with, and close the customer.
Up to date tracking let the manager make immediate adjustments and giving the teams flexible guidelines that is optimal in modern dynamic sales environments.
8. Coach and provide feedback that will build confidence and drive production.
Coaching is the responsibility most neglected by sales managers mainly because it is time-consuming but placing a high priority on coaching will boost team morale and sale.
Therefore, take advantage of every opportunity, scheduled or unscheduled, to provide feedback that will make their sales reps perform better.
9. Motivate and reward your team to maximize performance and minimize conflict.
The highly competitive field is a challenge to work in and confrontation are unavoidable.
Effective sales managers know how to handle these situations, thus taking a good sales professional making them great.
You can also leverage social networking. For example, using the success of high performers to motivate others, turning great individual performers into great performing teams.
10. Think ahead and take note of every little thing.
Try to recognize what small trends indicate before they become big problems.
In doing so, you can prevent weaker performances from becoming anchored as bad habits that sap overall yearly productivity and sales.
11. Practice good time management habit.
Make sure your sales teams is making the most of their time by eliminating usage of time that don’t directly help drive revenue.
Aligned goals and activities that can be quickly evaluated. Activities that don’t support these goals can be eliminated or updated to bring them into alignment.
12. Dispel some of the pressure off by celebrating big or small victory.
This ought to be self-explanatory, but do not wait too long or not celebrate enough.
Reward the team even for small successes and celebrate as often as possible. It as an opportunity to give everyone a little boost.
A little celebration creates motivation and that goes a long way.
TOP 12 SALES MANAGEMENT TOOLS THAT EASE PRESSURE OFF THE TEAM AND BOOST SALES
These are some of the best tools designed to improve sales team performance. When sales reps are equip with the best tools, it enable them to work efficiently and sales managers can achieve lean management and increase profit.
1. Ambition Sales Performance Management Platform- The only platform that scores overall user performance in real-time.
Cost: Free trial available
2.Sales Cloud by Salesforce- Helps the team to sell smarter and fasters.
Cost: Free trial available
3. Yesware- Helps team keep track of emails and work more effectively and efficiently from their Gmail or Outlook inboxes.
Cost: Free 100 email tracking events per month, personal email templates, and reports
4. OnePageCRM- OnePageCRM keeps all contacts and sales information in one place and has a proven follow-up system.
Cost: Free 30-day trial available
5. Clari- A sales productivity platform, Clari combines mobile, design, and data science to help sales managers guide their teams through the selling process.
Cost: Free trial available
6. NetSuite- It is the only cloud solution that delivers a real-time 360-degree view of your customer. Helps sales teamwork their way throughout the customer life cycle and offers suitable quote.
Cost: Contact for a quote
7. DemoChimp- Help teams stay lean and efficient by automating sales and marketing conversations and then measuring them.
Cost: Contact for a quote
8. LevelEleven- Utilizes the competitive nature of salespeople, uses real-time leaderboard and performance recognition, and integrates with Salesforce data to make it simple for sales managers to increase sales with motivated sales professionals.
Cost: RM 2000/month
9. Infor- Provide a complete 360° customer view for their sales teams to turn their organizations into streamlined, efficient sales leaders.
Cost: Contact for a quote
10. Yooba- Turns sales and marketing materials into apps and adapts to your sales teams’ best practices.
Cost: Contact for a quote
11. Brainshark- Enables sales managers to produce content and training tailored to their own teams every time.
Cost: Contact for a quote
12. LivePlan- Simplifies business planning, budgeting, forecasting, and performance tracking for small businesses and startups.
Cost: Free 60-day trial available
12 SIMPLE LOW PRESSURE SALES AND MARKETING HACKS TO SELL SMARTER AND FASTER
- Practice active listening to identify customer pain points.
- Seek out feature requests and product criticisms.
- Use data to decide which problems are most profitable to prioritize and solve.
- Inform potential customers about your offerings, trends that apply to their business, and how your product is the perfect solution for their needs.
- Send your first email within 90 minutes of sign-up.
- Share an in-depth how-to guide to get started.
- Personalize each of your emails to users and sign off with brand contact information.
- Include a clear and obvious call to action.
- Send multiple emails throughout the trial period and lighten the pace of email delivery after the user’s trial ends.
- Host a weekly or monthly seminar so users have an opportunity to walk through different ways of using your product and so they may ask questions.
- Offer free trial extensions to customers who have not yet signed up as paying customers.
- Source feedback to understand buyers’ biggest reservations, which prevent them from purchasing.