Do you manage a sales team? Are they hitting their numbers?
1) Does your sales team know, understand and follow your sales process?
Actually, let’s take a step back… Do you have a sales process? You should. It’s important to have a clearly laid out process for salespeople to follow. If it’s not clear and they cannot understand it, they will not follow it. And, if you do not have a process then they are winging it. Always a bad idea.
2) Do you know your sales teams’ metrics?
When you have a process (see #1 above) and you have benchmarked it, then you know what works. You can set goals for your team and you have a clear path forward to help them achieve those goals. If you want to improve your process and you make changes, you will know if those changes help you or hurt you. And, if you hire someone new you will know what to do to make them successful too.
3) Does your team know what they should be doing every day, every week, every month, every quarter…? In other words, do they have sales goals?
Once you know the metrics, you can set specific, measurable sales goals for your sales team. Put the goals in writing. Have a conversation with each salesperson about their goals. Get their buy-in. Ask them what they think they can achieve and what might get in their way and keep them from doing so. Help them take ownership of the goals to turn your goals into their goals and make accomplishing those goals a reality.
4) Do you set goals for your sales team and then forget about them?
Once you set the goals, check in with your team regularly to see where they are in accomplishing those goals. If you let too much time pass before you check in and someone is behind it may be impossible for them to catch up. Check in at least once per month to make sure they are on target. Ideally, check-in more often than that.
5) Does your team have all of the tools and resources that they need to be successful?
Salespeople need a plan of action and the tools and resources to make that plan a reality. The “Myth of the Born Salesperson” is just that, a myth. You may have hired a very talented newbie; they will need training to become a top performer. And, they need the right tools. You cannot manage salespeople without the right software. Without the right software, you cannot benchmark, you won’t know how your sales people are doing and opportunities will fall through the cracks.