4 Strategies to Supercharge Your Sales Team

Finnegan Pierson

Many companies, both large and small, rely on the efficacy of their sales team to thrive. Your sales team will have a huge impact on not only your profit margin but on your brand. It is this team that will have the biggest influence on customer relationships, loyalty and retention. Business owners and sales managers should prioritize training, techniques and tools that will make their sales team as strong as possible. Here are a few ways that you can give your team what they need to excel.

Maximize Your CRM

When it comes to improving sales enablement, everyone recognizes the importance of a great CRM such as Salesforce but it's important to make sure that you are using all the tools it provides. CRM platforms are massive and it can be a challenge to learn everything you need to know to use them effectively.

Does your CRM allow developer edition organizations that will help integrate it into your processes? It very well may and if you're not using it, you're missing out. Did you know that you can integrate Excel spreadsheets into many CRMs? Doing this can save your team huge amounts of time on data input. Doing a little research to discover your CRM's hidden talents could pay off big time for a sales team.

Recognize the Individual

Professional salespeople know that the trick to building customer relationships and increasing customer retention is to find ways to recognize and interact with customers as individuals. In the good old days of face-to-face sales, every good salesperson knew the value of getting to know your customer and being able to have a conversation with them on a personal basis about their kids, their spouses or their interests.

Knowing the individuals that make up your sales team can be just as effective. When you know your team members you will be able to target training to their needs and personalities as well as gain a deeper understanding of how to best motivate them.

Get Them In the Room

Prospecting for leads and making a sale require two different skill sets. Consider segregating these activities and let your sales team focus on what they do best.

You can use tools such as software on your website that allows customers to book appointments with your people while your products are fresh in their minds. Additionally, you can integrate software and AI components with your CRM that will trigger individualized, automated calls and emails to customers when they display a given set of behaviors on your site. One of the simplest strategies you can use is to assign certain members of your team who excel at prospecting to book appointments for the rest of the team, allowing your best salespeople to maximize their skills. 

Activate Their Competitive Spirit

Great salespeople often share a finely honed competitive edge. They like to win. You can use that to spur your team on to greater activity. Of course, you need to begin by clearly defining a sales goal so that everyone understands the target they are shooting for. Then, find ways to bring a fun competitive spirit into the office.

Setting up competitions in the office is a great way to get your team going. It is very important to devise a reward or prize that will be of real value to your team. This can be challenging if you have a lot of individuals on your team, but it is essential to encourage participation. It can be effective to offer something generic that can be individualized such as a gift card of the employee's choice or a dinner for two at any restaurant they pick.

Few things will affect your bottom line more directly than having a great sales team. It would behoove any business or office manager to spend some time devising ways to help them achieve their goals. Giving your team a great CRM is a given for any business serious about their sales. Beyond that, get to know your team, devise incentives that energize them and use all the tools in your arsenal to get them in front of clients so they can do what they do best.