How to Help Your Lagging Sales Team

What’s the difference between a great idea for a business and an actual great business? Simple: Sales.

Your sales team is the backbone of your company; without them, you don’t have a business, but just the shell of a business, the outline of a business—the idea of a business. You need your sales team to bring in customers, to move products, and to keep money coming in. Period.

So when your sales team starts to struggle, that’s a major cause for worry. It doesn’t have to be a cause for outright panic, though. There are some basic steps you can take to get your sales reps back on the right path.

Leading Your Sales Team

1. Make sure you have a real sales manager, not just a cheerleader. The leader of your sales team needs to be just that—an actual leader. Simply cheering the sales team members isn’t enough. Your sales manager needs to be willing to work with individuals to overcome their hurdles, and to rally the team together behind unified goals. A great leader should also be right there in the trenches, doing some actual selling himself/herself.
2. Invest in training—and in follow-up. On-site sales training or sales webinars can motivate your sales team members, provide them with new techniques and tools, and provide a much-needed sense of collaboration and camaraderie. Don’t stop with training, though. Have some follow-up discussions to make sure the training was actionable and constructive.
3. Scale things back. Sales teams can sometimes become burnt out and demotivated. Deal with this by providing your sales team members with a smaller stack of calls to make. Allow them more time to focus on getting each call right, and then to analyze what they did right and wrong with each call. Don’t allow them to become daunted by a huge sales quota.
4. Set smart goals, and not just numeric ones. Your sales reps should all have goals, but sometimes the best goals aren’t just matters of volume. Also help your sales reps set goals for professional enrichment, attitude improvement, better communication skills, and so on. Working on these hard-to-quantify skills can be just as significant as trying to hit numbers.
5. Give praise where praise is due. Make sure you offer public affirmation when it’s warranted—but keep criticism and coaching private.

Your sales team is one of your greatest assets—worth investing in. Invest in them today with some of our sales and marketing training resources!