Better team performance and high productivity are the most essential contributors towards increasing sales and hence, revenues. The problem, however, that most businesses face is achieving required performance and productivity is easier said than done. One logical explanation to this is the majority of business owners or sales managers solely focus on the bottom line, ignoring to put a right framework for boosting the morale of their sales team.

Consider this: you have just introduced quotas of targets to your sales team and you are expecting to take your sales objective to the next level. But what if your team is not sufficiently ready? Your sales team needs to develop effective ways of overcoming challenges and meeting targets. This is where you must provide them with insights, resources, accountability, and training in order to succeed. If you want your sales team to dramatically improve their ability to meet sales targets, you must focus on their alignment, motivation and performance.

Here are some smart tricks to boost your team performance:

1. Evaluate sales skills

To achieve better results, you need to get most of your sales team and as a sales manager; this is your own prime target. That is, the better they perform the more sales the company makes.  But do you have the right people in your sales team? So the first thing you need to do is to assess the sales skills of the individuals of your team. The good salespeople are the ones who not only fit the profile for the role, but also possess the right combination of knowledge, skills and abilities. In other words, the baseline for identifying the right candidates for sales is to test whether they have good communication, sales aptitude, integrity, decision-making, listening, and self-confidence.

You can evaluate their skills by dividing them into two parts – individual benchmark and team benchmark. Under individual benchmark, you need to measure their current knowledge and ability that impact on sales success. Under team benchmark, you can measure how they can contribute toward team’s selling strengths and achieving targets fast. With this important information, performance plans can be made for your current sales personnel.

2. Clarify your sales objectives

Clarifying your sales objectives, roles and functions to your sales team is very critical for its performance. Working on clear goals and objectives is very crucial for increasing the chances of your business’ success. Clarifying is basically how you can effectively communicate your plans, policies and role expectations. The purpose of proper clarification is to guide and coordinate work activity and make sure that your team knows what to do and how to do it. Failing to clarify your sales objectives leads to confusion and ambiguity that result in misdirected efforts and neglect of important responsibility. Further, in order to achieve your stated objectives through your team, you need to create a sales plan – a strategy that sets out sales targets and objectives for your business. A typical sales plan helps you in:

• Defining a set of sales targets for your team
• Choosing sales strategies to meet target
• Identifying sales tactics for your team
• Taking proper steps in terms of budget
• Reviewing your goals periodically

3. Training/coaching

You need to make sure your team has access to training modules that will help them develop required skills. In this increasingly cut-throat competitive landscape, newer techniques, tools and attitudes are extremely necessary for teams to be successful. You should have a mechanism of developing a training plan for each team member that will not only address their needs, but also improves areas that are quickly needed to speed up. A good training program bridges the gap between pushing salespeople towards performance and acquiring the required skills to meet the goals. Coaching, on the other hand, is a highly effective strategy in building confidence and developing confidence in your team faster than any other single practice. Get in the habit of using situations – negative as well as positive – as learning opportunities to help develop your people. 

4. Be customer-centric

Your sales team is the engine of your growth, but what if the team is not focusing on customer centricity? Your profits will decline, plain and simple. You need to encourage your team to be more customer-centric if you lay your hands on long-term profits. Your sales team being the frontline representative of your company needs to put across your message convincingly to your customers. Once your customers feel like they have a personal relationship with you, they will become more loyal. Thus, your team’s performance depends a lot on how conveniently and effectively it can attract customers’ attention. A good customer-centric behavior helps generate a word-of-mouth publicity and feedback. So by reading positive feedback and reviews, more and more customers start trusting your brand. As a result, there will be a drastic surge in your company’s sales and revenues.

5. Empower your sales team

Your sales team practically knows the ground reality when it communicating with the customers or buyers. They are aware of why they are winning or losing deals. Not only that, they are in complete know how where your company stacks up against the competition. So what needs to be done here? You need to empower them more. Just give them the right set of tools and allow them to invest their time in more productive tasks. You can give them space and allow them to come up with new and innovative ideas. Empowering also includes allowing for collaboration and engagement, while abandoning the command-and-control method of old management style. Managers who empower their sales team by collaborating and engaging effectively achieve better results.

Final Words

Sales is always considered as the backbone of any industry, and sales teams are the foot soldiers that directly interact with clients, customers and buyers. They are the ones who bear the brunt, therefore, must be empowered with sufficient resources, opportunities and training. The above-mentioned tricks are an attempt toward boosting team performance and increasing sales.