Learning how to improve sales performance is one of the most important things any business leader can do. Sales performance dictates the long-term outcomes of your company, and essentially determines whether your venture will be profitable or not. However, without a consistent action plan, you can see your sales begin to stagnate.
So, how do you actively enhance sales performance on a consistent basis?
What is Sales Performance?
The term “Sales Performance”, not to be confused with “performance sales”, refers to the measure of how effectively your sales team is operating in a specific period of time. Your sales performance is influenced by a number of factors, from the strategies your employees use to close deals, to the surrounding marketplace stimuli.
Regularly measuring sales performance and exploring opportunities to boost sales is how you ensure your company grows increasingly more effective over time.
So, how do you improve sales performance?
1. Hire the Right People
The first step in any action plan to improve sales performance is having the right professionals in your team. Building a community of confident, well-informed, and insightful team members will boost your chances of getting positive results.
Crucially, the members of your sales team shouldn’t just be able to follow your sales scripts perfectly. They should also be able to use their intuition, emotional intelligence, and knowledge to know when to adjust their strategy.
2. Train Teams to Boost Sales
Sales strategies are constantly evolving as customer preferences and companies change. As such, sales leaders need to constantly be investing in new ways to enhance their teams’ skills. You’ll need a comprehensive training program which consistently puts your employees to the test, and allows them to develop new methods of dealing with challenges.
Immersive training opportunities, like HYPCCYCL’s live calling competitions encourage your staff members to put their skills to the test in genuine sales scenarios. The same ecosystem can also allow team members to learn from revenue leaders about how to use the same skills they’ve leveraged to get to the top of the sales leader boards.
3. Invest in Sales Enablement
Sales enablement is crucial to ensuring salespeople are equipped to connect with prospects and customers as effectively as possible. You may have to provide your team members with a comprehensive knowledgebase where they can access information about your products or services instantly when presented with questions from prospects.
It can also be helpful to create scripts to help guide your employees, while still providing them with the freedom to go “off-script” and implement their own strategies when necessary. Make sure you connect with your sales teams regularly to learn more about the tools they need.
4. Upgrade Sales Plans with Data
To improve your sales performance, you’ll often need to take advantage of the data available on your previous campaigns and efforts. Using digital technology is an excellent way to collect insights into which of your efforts have been most successful in the past. This can help you to double-down on training your team on how to use the most effective scripts and pitches.
The right technology will provide insights into how your training methods and scripts are landing with team members and prospects alike. It should also help you to determine when it might be the right time to refresh your sales strategies for a changing audience.
5. Activate More Channels
Part of any good action plan to improve sales performance is a commitment to flexibility and transformation. You never know where or when you’ll interact with your next buyer, so don’t be afraid to take advantage of different channels. Using your customer data, you should be able to get a deeper insight into which channels are most likely to appeal to your audience.
However, it’s also worth looking into opportunities you may not have considered before. For instance, you could find new prospects in the offline world at specific industry events. Alternatively, you might be able to leverage new sales by investing in a new social platform.
6. Use the Correct Sales Structure
How you choose to structure your sales will have a significant impact on your salespeople to do their jobs effectively. Some models are generally more suited to certain kinds of businesses, solutions, or selling motions. There are a number of options to choose from, including the assembly line model (hunter/farmer), the island model, or the pod model.
Choosing the right sales structure means thinking carefully about your current workforce, your target audience, and what kind of sales you’re doing. For instance, the assembly line is great for moving customers through a sales process quickly, but it runs the risk of poor customer experience.
7. Make Personalization Simple
Learning how to improve sales performance also means learning how to enhance customer experience. Personalizing the interaction with your audience is a great way to boost buyer engagement and generate more emotional connections between sales and reps. To make personalization easier for team members, you’ll need to ensure they have plenty of the right content to guide them.
Provide easy access to customer decks and CRM technology, so your staff members can collect more valuable data about each prospect. Providing templates your team members can update with personal information can be helpful too.
Improve Sales Performance
Learning how to improve sales performance doesn’t have to be as complicated as it seems. The path to success often starts with simply understanding your business, your reps, and your customers. From here, you can empower your staff with the support and training they need to close more deals.
