Top Tips on How to Improve the Sales Performance of Your Team

According to a Hubspot study, 66% of salespeople miss their quotas. This statistic really shines a light on the fact that a lot of sales teams are struggling.

Even if you feel your sales team is doing a good job, ask yourself this: “Could they be doing better?”

No salesperson in the industry has reached their absolute peak — the point at which they could not possibly improve anymore.

There will be waves with your sales team in just how well your they are performing — sometimes things will seem like they are going swimmingly, other times you will feel as if your sales team has lost all hope.

Regardless of what part of the wave you and your sales team are riding, one thing remains constant: there is always room for improvement.

So, whether you are looking at improving your team’s sales performance from a low point or from a good place, the below tips will be helpful.

Tips to Improve Your Team’s Sales Performance

Here are our favorite strategies for improving your sales team’s performance.

Ensure You Are Doing Your Best

Before focusing on your salespeople, you first need to make sure you are being the best sales manager you can be.

In your position, you are responsible for far more than simply meeting your sales quotas and keeping things in line. Your job also includes motivating your team and guiding them to success.

So how can you work on becoming the best sales manager for your team?

Here are some qualities sales managers must possess in order to truly lead your team to success:

1. Ability to manage expectations. Be honest and realistic about what you can expect your sales team to do. Also, be honest with your team about the expectations the company has for them.
2. Ability to observe. Taking the time to observe and get to know each member of your sales team will be a significant factor in improving sales.
3. Ability to communicate regularly. Checking in with your sales team on a regular basis is a crucial step for sales managers.
4. Ability to advocate for your sales team. Represent your team with pride and dignity. It is important that your team feels supported when issues with customers or superiors arise.
5. Ability to motivate. Help your sales team stay motivated by creating structured goals and tracking progress.
6. Ability to act like a coach. Provide guidance for your team — show them the way, rather than throwing them out onto the “court” without any knowledge or confidence.
7. Ability to encourage professional development. If you want your sales team’s performance to continue to grow, you need to make time to provide your salespeople with skill building courses and training opportunities to help them grow in their professional lives.
8. Ability to be consistent. Never play favorites – treat all of your salespeople with the same level of respect and attention.
9. Ability to delegate. Know what you are good at and what others may be better at. Focus your attention on your strengths and delegate the things you may not excel in to someone else.
10. Ability to hire the right people. Make sure you are always looking out for sales and who have a natural ability to sell.

Incorporate One-on-One Coaching

Giving your salespeople the opportunity to share their input, their struggles and their strengths via a one-on-one coaching session with you, the sales manager, is absolutely essential to the improvement of your team.

Otherwise, how are you to truly understand and fix the issues that your team is having?

When sitting with each salesperson during your one-on-one sessions, be sure that you do not focus merely on the sales quota. Instead, you want to be focusing on the problem(s) your sales rep is having.

Does he struggle with his follow through? Is he unable to create engaging conversations with potential customers?

Take the time to listen to what your sales reps’ weaknesses are, and work with them to put together an action plan to overcome those weaknesses.

Involve Your Sales Team in the Company’s Vision

It is quite easy for sales reps to lose sight of the bigger picture, and to feel as if they are just going through the motions with their sales.

Being in this position will likely keep them from excelling and will certainly keep them from growing and improving.

To avoid this feeling of insignificance, and to boost your sales team’s performance, you want to involve your team in the company’s vision and make them see how they play a role in the big picture of success.

Meet regularly with company leaders to learn what they are looking for and what their goals are so you can share this information with your sales team.

By feeling as if they are directly responsible for the company’s success, your sales team will put forth a lot more effort to ensure they are doing their best and that they are helping the company reach its clearly-stated goals.

Hire Better and Smarter

One of the best ways to improve your sales team is to hire great salespeople to begin with.

Know the qualities of the all-star salesperson you want to add to your team prior to beginning the interview process, and you will be thanking yourself down the line.

However, as you have likely experienced, knowing the qualities you desire in a salesperson is only half of it.

The other half comes in assessing them to make sure that they actually possess those qualities.

So what qualities should you look for during your hiring process?

Here are the top ones:

1. Drive.This is a non-negotiable. Your potential hire must have Drive, the personality trait that cannot be taught. A person with Drive:

• Has a strong Need for Achievement
• Is Competitive
• Is Optimistic

2. Ability to listen. Your potential hire must be able to truly listen to the customer in order to reach any success in sales.

3. Creativity. Candidates who are able to think creatively will be able to quickly come up with solutions to problems.

4. Empathy. Your sales team’s ability to put themselves in the customer’s shoes and see things from their point of view is absolutely necessary.

In Summary

Now that you know exactly what it is you are looking for in the newest member of your sales team, how do you determine whether he actually fits the bill?

This is where The DriveTest® comes in.

With this sales assessment test, you will be able to easily identify whether your potential candidates have Drive, thus ensuring that you are only spending your time on candidates that have a promising future for you and the company as a whole.

The DriveTest® also measures other teachable skills that you can work with your current sales team to improve upon, including:

• Confidence
• Persuasiveness
• Relationship skills
• Organization

When using The DriveTest®, you are setting yourself, your existing sales team and your potential candidates up for success.

To start improving your sales team’s performance today, sign up for a FREE trial of The DriveTest®.