#1 Sales Management Secret for Increasing Sales Revenue

Every business owner wants to expand their enterprise to boost profits, but it’s common for growth to plateau over time. Still, learning how to increase sales revenue involves more than pushing products and services to everyone.

When you’re ready to uncover effective strategies to increase sales revenue, even during your company’s downtime, you should consider everything from forming the ideal sales team to building sales funnels to boost revenue. We’ll show you how below.

How Do You Grow Sales?

There is not a business owner or manager who does not ask this question every single day. You can then Google hundreds of articles and dozens of books and get all sorts of complex answers.

But according to all the research we have conducted, one thing stands out above all others — talent management. Specifically, recruiting top sales professionals who will produce for you.

When you think about it, this is exactly the approach all great sports teams use, whether in college or the pros, to build sustained, championship teams. When you listen to coach after coach, they all say the same thing: it starts with scouting and recruiting great athletes. They say you simply cannot compete at high levels against other successful teams unless you have great talent. Period.

Of course, you probably already know this, but do you know how absolutely critical embracing this strategy is to the success of your sales team? 

When you recruit a salesperson, the die is cast on the very first day. If you recruited a top salesperson, everything that follows, including onboarding, training, management and motivation, will have a good chance of paying off in the form of a great return on investment. On the other hand, if you compromise and give in to the pressure to fill a slot, you will likely never be able to make up for that poor decision. And from day one, you will be wasting thousands of dollars on a lost cause.

A 2017 CareerBuilder poll of 2,257 hiring managers and human resource professionals indicated that 74% admitted hiring the wrong candidate for a position. Of that group, 30% said they felt pressured to fill a position quickly, and 29% said they focused on skills, rather than attitude.

Don’t make this mistake. In order to grow sales, it all starts with your sales team. Take the time necessary to ensure you are hiring real sales producers to set your company up for sales success.

Importance of Management Training

So, hiring the right salespeople is crucial to boosting sales, but before you set off to recruit the top talent, you must have a good management foundation.

Whether you promote from within or hire managers from outside recruitment, you must ensure they have the tools to lead your salespeople to victory with techniques for successful upselling and cross-selling. Promoting a great salesperson to a leadership role isn’t always the best step if they don’t know how to lead.

Your management needs to know how to increase sales revenue by putting in the same dedication as their subordinates to ensure everyone achieves their daily business goals. Investing in sales coaching is essential, but it works best when you first identify the qualities your business’ ideal salesperson possesses.

When you know what behaviors and traits signify excellence for your sales team, you can train your management to know what to look for in their team and how to coach those who need additional help.

Invest in Talent

Growing a business is about making smart investment decisions. Money is always dear, and owners and managers are constantly and carefully analyzing the smartest ways to deploy capital. When it comes to critical systems like software or machinery, you demand the best because anything less is too high of a risk.

But when it comes to salespeople, why do so many compromise?

Usually because stacking a sales team with only high-producers is hard. It takes time, patience and diagnostic tools that parse real producers from charming pretenders. But in reality, a company is almost always better off financially holding to a high standard and hiring right the first time rather than compromising, and then agonizing, over people who just cannot get it done in sales.

The Science of Recruiting Top Performers in Sales

When it’s time for management to hire sales representatives, don’t rely solely on resumes. Follow these steps to ensure your sales team is comprised of highly qualified and vetted people to help boost your revenue and reduce turnover.

Write an Attractive Job Ad

Before writing a job ad, study your ideal candidate. Consider what skills they should have, their ideal temperament, their personality and their sales experience. Then, create a job advertisement that speaks directly to that type of person, and optimize the ad to reach target audiences.

Start the ad by discussing your company in a short, concise summary, followed by the job’s requirements, while keeping your language clear and expectations realistic. Conclude with a description of the job’s benefits package.

Administer a Sales Assessment

After selecting candidates to interview, give them a sales assessment to test their ability to be a high performer who regularly produces excellent results. The DriveTest® makes testing easy; our assessment analyzes a person’s need for achievement, optimism and competitiveness using forced-choice questions, to give you an idea of their overall level of Drive.

The DriveTest® is scientifically backed and can accurately predict a person’s sales performance and ability to help your organization drive revenue. By administering a sales assessment test before interviewing candidates, you can dramatically reduce the risk of hiring poorly performing sales staff.

Conduct Behavioral Interviews

A behavioral interview uses a job candidate’s past employment experiences to analyze their ability to function in a new work environment. In other words, it shows employers how a new hire will likely respond to certain situations. By conducting behavioral interviews after administering The DriveTest® assessment, your hiring managers will be much more powerful as interviewers, equip with the tools needed to identify high potential candidates and build an exception sales team.

Make an Offer

After evaluating all job candidates, there should be a clear indication of which people are best for the sales position. Make that person or persons an offer. Be sure to show excitement when welcoming them to the company, provide reasons to backup your hiring decision and discuss the benefits package.

Improving Customer Retention for Higher Revenue

Even a skilled sales team will struggle to increase sales and boost revenue if they lack a customer base. Besides hiring the best of the best for your sales team, your business also needs to know how to identify, source, and retain customers.

Target Old and Repeat Customers

You should always look for ways to expand your client base. Methods like using paid advertising to target specific audiences, creating a solid referral network and driving online traffic to your website using search engine optimization best practices work exceptionally well.

Still, you shouldn’t overlook repeat customers when exploring different ways to expand your customer base. These patrons show brand loyalty by regularly seeking your products and services. Communicating with them through email and text messages to share details of upcoming promotions, inventory and new services proves you value their loyalty and are willing to build a lasting relationship with them.

Targeting former customers requires a different communication approach. For example, you can offer discount incentives to former customers to upgrade their purchased products or services to increase sales while boosting your brand reputation as a thoughtful business.

Sometimes it’s easier to retain customers than it is to find them. Building a customer base with the right sales team and going above and beyond will consistently drive sales.

Creating Data-Driven Content and Engagement

Analytics data should be a driving force for your sales goals. The information you collect for online traffic, past and current customers, advertisements and other platforms will give you valuable insight into ways to improve specific areas of your business. For instance, if you gather consumer information like purchase history, birthdays and anniversaries, you can use that data to generate personalized communications to retain customers.

You can also use analytics to determine which services and products perform well and which need an extra push.

Controlling Content

Another aspect of learning how to increase sales revenue is understanding how to control your company’s content. Content like blogs, social media posts and articles should increase your online presence and establish a clear company brand. Still, your online content should include conversion rate optimization to increase sales.

All sales materials should contribute to finalizing sales transactions along with your staff’s selling skills and guidance from management. Ask yourself, “How are customers viewing the information we display or promote?”

To ensure your company produces relevant content with easy-to-find information, be sure to:

• Make a content schedule
• Produce high-quality content for your website
• Organize content
• Publish content on various platforms
• Measure the content’s analytics and make necessary changes

Boost Revenue by Creating a Winning Sales Team With The DriveTest®

A company is only as good as its team. At SalesDrive, we make it easy for businesses of all sizes to hire top-tier salespeople with the most potential with The DriveTest®. Our detailed, scientifically-validated assessment focusing solely on sales to help you pinpoint the winning characteristics of top sales performers before hiring anyone.

With these tips on how to increase sales revenue, your next step is to analyze your job candidates to ensure your company has an excellent workforce using The DriveTest® assessment. Call us at (866) 972-5373 or visit https://salesdrive.info/free-trial-request/ to get started with your complimentary assessment.