An efficient sales team is one of the best tools for growing your business. Whether your sales team works remotely, travels or makes sales in person, the team should be able to both retain current customers and entice potential customers. Here are some ways to build an efficient sales department.
1. Leverage Technology
Like many areas of business, sales departments are experiencing the rapid pace of technological advancement. You can utilize certain technological tools to help improve your sales team’s performance. For example, a sales rep tracker can help you ensure your sales representatives are spending their work hours wisely and strategically. You can implement these apps to have representatives log their time and performance rates, review time and geo stamps and use this data to help them improve. You can also leverage technology to increase sales rates, automate repetitive tasks in the sales department and to better understand and connect with your customers. Data analytics can help you understand market trends while machine learning can greatly streamline workflows.
2. Invest in Training
A sound training and onboarding process forms the basis for an efficient sales department. Training helps employees feel more confident in their skills and prepared to do their jobs, so you should find ways to provide more training opportunities and make the training more rewarding and satisfying. You can implement a mentorship program for new employees, gamify training sessions to motivate people to learn or bring in outside experts for special lectures.
3. Utilize Repeatable Sales Processes
A repeatable sales process provides your sales department with a template for success. While sales pitches, presentations and meetings all require creativity, your sales representatives need a scaffold to structure their work around. Repeatable sales processes are step-by-step procedures that ensure your sales representatives comply with department and company expectations and provide consistent customer service. You can build scalability into these processes by creating documentation. If you document the process, you’ll be able to see what works and what doesn’t and make appropriate changes to procedures over time.
4. Determine Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
KPIs help you measure the success of the department and individual employees, delineate sales goals and align with the wider company culture and goals. You can leverage data analytics to measure performance and analyze the data to determine these KPIs. With these metrics, you can make informed decisions to develop action items, determine which of those items require the most focus and keep your department on the right path. Some common KPIs are profit margins, sales growth, customer lifetime values and sales targets.
5. Develop Efficient Communications
An efficient communication strategy and system are the backbone of a good sales department. Your sales representatives need a way to be able to communicate and coordinate with each other easily even when members of the team are working remotely or traveling. The best way to facilitate this is to implement one communication tool with multiple functions so the team can communicate efficiently and quickly. You also need to develop ways to communicate effectively with your customers. The majority of sales are made via phone call, so utilizing tools to streamline sales calls such as Cloud technology and VoIP phone services can vastly improve your sales team’s efficiency.
6. Focus on Talent Retention
One area that is essential to crafting an efficient sales team but is often overlooked is talent retention. High turnover rates mean you’ll spend more on onboarding employees and you may get a reputation for not being able to retain staff, neither of which is good for your bottom line. It can also lower morale and productivity in the department and the wider company. Instead, finding ways to maintain or increase retention, such as advancement incentives, good management style and ample training opportunities. Good talent retention can help employee morale and engagement stay high.
Developing an efficient sales department is key to ensuring the financial health and growth of your business.
