How can your sales team increase their performance?

1. The sales team are not spending their time on the right opportunities.

High performance sales teams know exactly how much time they should be spending with their new prospects versus developing their existing clients for additional opportunities. The rule of thumb is that it costs 5 times as much to acquire a new customer vs retaining an existing one so for some businesses a focus on customer retention and upselling is a key priority. High performing sales teams also have a very clear idea of who their ideal prospects are, and they definitely know their high growth sectors. From these key factors your team can build some specific KPIs around target audience for your prospects and desired revenue. This is where analysis of your finance or CRM system is key to identify your most profitable and lucrative areas. This also acts as a target to put in place sales incentives as part of your employee reward strategy to meet these goals, leading to sustained growth.

2. The sales team are lacking key skills or missing out on effective sales techniques

This can range from relying too much on rapport building and talking about ‘product’ through to not being able to create an elevator pitch for the prospect in front of them. Even skilful teams aren’t always making the most of simple psychology techniques that help influence sales. When these skill gaps are identified you can look to address the issues in your recruitment and training strategies to enhance your sales function to facilitate growth.

3. They don't have the right tools and content to work with

Sales teams need to believe in your brand and be motivated by your proposition just as much, if not more, than your prospects. But when did you last revisit your brand and proposition? You may have you fallen behind a competitor or perhaps the market has moved on since you last reviewed the brand.

It is also worth looking into technology that can make your sales teams job easier such as a effective CRM tool to help your team manage their customer relationship and ensure that the marketing function is supporting the sales team to get in front of the right clients and prospects.

A systematic review of your sales performance, one that removes the noise and emotion usually associated with sales performance, can help any business to move their team towards high performance, and high growth.

What’s next?

If you want to stress test your brand identity, or develop a new one, we've designed a workshop that will create your own High Growth, high performance plan.