Managing a team requires leadership skills, a positive mindset, and a lot of patience. Sales team or not, these are the basic requirements to manage a team. Sales teams work the hardest in any organization, and they are also the backbone of the company.
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1 . The Importance of a Sales Team
2. Importance of a well-managed sales team.
4. Strategies to Manage a Sales Team
A sales team comprises sales reps from all walks of life. It is indeed a challenging job to manage a sales team and a satisfying one at that.
While it took a lot of time and effort to manage a sales team previously, the recent upgrades in technology (read: automation) have enabled managers to complete a humongous amount of work in just a few clicks effortlessly.
Activities ranging from reporting to analytics for customer behavior required sales managers to churn out tons of data and spend hours of their work schedule. An automation tool can now cut down a significant part of the time and cost involved and produce more accurate insights.
Whether it is motivating the team and analyzing the team performance or gaining insights about the customer behavior, the sales management software has it covered.
With sales management software, the right attitude, and a motivated team, it is a lot easier and rewarding to manage a sales team, improve KPIs, and close more deals.
Interesting Read: 5 Secrets to Successful Sales Team Management
Managing a team of professionals with varied characteristics and interest is hard enough, and doing it with a sales team means constantly motivating, coaching, and leading towards one goal. Let us look at the most trending strategies that are a part of successful sales teams.
The Importance of a Sales Team
The sales team and its capabilities are vital for the success of any organization. While they are the direct contributors to the company’s revenue, they are also among the first few touchpoints that the customers go through at the beginning of their journey with the brand.
As a result, the brand image, customer relationships, and overall business growth mainly depend upon the sales team.
1 . Lead Conversion
The sales development reps are the first team that the customers interact with at the beginning of their customer journey. While this gives the sales team an extra edge to build a strong relationship with the customers, it also enables them better to understand the customer requirements and expectations about the product.
That is why a sales team builds the gap between the target audience and the company’s products/ services. In addition, the sales team plays a crucial role in lead conversion.
2 . Business Growth
When a sales development rep interacts with a prospective customer, they act as the brand’s face. The first few interactions help them to showcase trust, confidence, and loyalty to the prospective leads.
The first few positive interactions enable customers to make the purchase decision and a positive customer experience which directly results in positive customer feedback. A happy customer brings more business!
3. Customer Retention
While converting a prospective lead into a happy customer is vital, it is equally important to retain them.
Forbes suggests that after a few weeks/ months of the completion of the sale, the customer support department takes over the responsibility of maintaining a good relationship with the customer.
Interesting Read: How to Succeed as a Sales Development Representative as a Fresher?
While that is for after the completion of sales, the sales team can do their bit of customer retention by a sales follow-up call. It helps them build trust with the customer, collect feedback about the product/ service, and deal with any issues/ complaints as quickly as possible.
As per a survey, 71% of consumers move to a different brand due to bad customer service.
Furthermore, it is a known fact that customer retention brings in more profits than new closure of sales deals.
As per a study, 82% of the companies have agreed that customer retention is cheaper than recent customer acquisition.
Importance of a well-managed sales team
The overall performance of the sales team directly impacts the success of the business. For the sales team to perform at full strength, the sales leader and their capabilities are vital.
A good sales manager will be able to do a good assessment of the positive and negative traits of the team members and hone their skills to succeed. Coaching, motivating, and leading by example are a few characteristics of a true leader and more with a sales manager.
The capabilities of the sales manager will reflect in the team’s performance. It is essential to manage the sales team with patience, strategy, and good leadership skills.
Challenges of a sales team
1 . Lead generation
The first and foremost challenge of any sales team is to keep a constant flow of new leads going. The sales team needs to find the most qualified leads that have a higher possibility of conversion. Research and outreach tools are essential for the sales team to generate more qualified leads.
2 . Communication
Clear and precise communication with the prospective leads with thorough knowledge on the key selling points of the product/ service is vital for the conversion and retention of customers. Effective and timely communication helps convert more leads and avoid losing out on sales.
3. Motivation
Monetary benefits are helpful to motivate the team, which thereby helps to improve their productivity and performance. Setting realistic goals, a performance-based bonus, and good working conditions are a few factors that help to keep the team motivated.
4. Automation
While selling is an essential part of the job description for a sales development rep, coupled with a humongous amount of repetitive tasks, including reporting and other administrative tasks.
Automating the sales process saves a lot of time and cost. It also enables the sales development team to build strong relations with potential leads and convert them into happy customers.
Strategies to Manage a Sales Team
1 . Hire them right!
Sales development reps are much like the strong pillars of the foundation for a physical structure. Before scaling and improving the productivity of a team, it is vital to hire the right. Investing in the team by hiring the smart ones with a zeal to commit and a passion for sales.
Good communication skills, the ability to negotiate, convince, be committed, responsible, and love their profession with a strong understanding of the concerned industry are the key traits that should be a part of the hiring decision.
2 . Automate where necessary
Hiring a set of stellar sales development reps and putting them to do repetitive job activities regularly can cause them to lose motivation in their job.
They will lack focus on the important key areas, like building solid relationships, Nurturing/ generating leads, and converting prospective leads, which should be a few areas of focus for the team.
Interesting Read: Top 5 Attributes of Good Sales Development Reps
Automating the sales process and streamlining the systems enables the team to spend quality time on the customers.
A study suggests that an average sales rep spends 64.8% of their time on repetitive activities that do not generate any revenue.
Automation also enables sales reps to focus on the qualified leads through analytics effortlessly. Insights on customer behavior help the team concentrate on the most likely leads to be converted.
3. Onboarding and training process
Hiring suitable candidates and giving them the right onboarding experience is vital for their retention.
The study suggests that 69% of the employees stay with the company for a minimum of three years when they have a good onboarding experience.
Training the team at the time of joining enables them to understand the company values and philosophy better and helps them get a thorough knowledge of the key selling points of the product/services.
A good onboarding experience and training at the onboarding time allow employees to understand the organization better and boost their morale.
4 . Rewarding system
For a target-oriented team like sales, a rewarding system is a great motivator. Celebrating small wins gives the team a sense of achievement and might even bring about a healthy competition to achieve their target.
Offering monetary and non-monetary reward systems with a live scoreboard of the target is another way of keeping the team boosted and focused.
5 . Sales development leader
Each leader has their Leadership style. Keeping the team motivated and sharing the team’s challenges, and seeking guidance when necessary is key for the team’s success.
A good sales leader looking to manage a sales team should be a good communicator, coach, and lead by example. Motivating the team through guidance, training, and better processes are excellent pointers to manage a sales team successfully.
6 . Real-time performance analysis
Automation helps draw a humongous amount of data effortlessly. Whether it is for team performance or research on customer behavior, data-driven decision-making has been made possible through a sound sales system.
Real-time data on various sales enables the sales manager to improve the design, coach the team appropriately, and achieve targets.
7 . Feedback
A regular cycle of feedback at all levels of the team helps improve the group’s performance, address any challenges before they become more significant problems, boost the team morale, and achieve the target.
Inter-team, customer to sales manager, manager to a sales rep, and sales rep to the customer are a few types of communication that enable a free flow of feedback amongst all the stakeholders involved.
Conclusion
Managing a team of sales reps coming from different experiences and various backgrounds is challenging but requires a lot of patience from the sales development manager.
The strategies, tips, and importance of managing a sales team mentioned above are sure to improve communication, keep the sales team motivated, increase productivity, and help them succeed as a team.
Leaders looking to manage a sales team should consider training, coaching, rewarding, keeping an open communication system with the team, and streamlining the processes with automated workflows to be the managers with a productive and motivated team!
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