Your Sales Team is underperforming. You are not alone, Studies show that nearly 50% of salespeople miss their goals. What steps can you take? So often is is not one thing alone, rather it is a combination of factors that contribute to underperforming teams. If you are a SMB owner/CEO that is managing sales in addition to everything else, such underperformance can really drain precious time and distract you from other areas of the business such as finance, operations and customer service. While there are no magic answers it all starts with looking at the current state, evaluating best practices and prioritizing areas of focus, then start the hard work of facilitating change. Here are 10 things you should look at when trying to change your team’s performance.
- Analyze your current processes, how well are they mapped out and are the sales reps following the processes?
- How are leads gathered and nurtured?
- What are conversion rates for leads to sales? Rank your reps on their skills of Lead Acquisition, Lead Nurturing and Lead Closing, No one is good at all 3.
- Analyze your Sales reps. How is your turnover? How are the reps skills and performance? Categorize them as A, B, or C Reps, Why do you place them in each category? Can C’s be coached to B’s? Can B’s develop to A’s? Are you at risk of losing your A’s
- If you have a sales manager review how they drive your team. You have heard the axiom “People do not quit jobs; they quit managers.” Are they Sales Babysitters or Sales Coaches? Are they your best salesperson? Do they develop the reps? Are they driving “Growth Hacking” in the sales organization?
- Compensation? Is your sales compensation system driving the results that you want? Compensation drives behaviors. Do you want new business or Grow existing? How about different products/services? Does the compensation plan motivate or demotivate?
- What about your hiring process? Are you using any kind of assessments to assist in your hiring? Once on -board then use these assessments to understand motivations and behaviors and create coaching plans based on the results?
- Technology. How are you using technology to assist in the sales process? Where can you virtualize the process to drive more productivity with the sales reps.
- KPI’s. How are you managing sales? Do you have measurements and KPI’s other than results that help you manage the process and insure that you are coaching the team all along the sales cycle?
- Do you have major accounts? How do you treat them differently? What risk do you have with them? Which potential ones do you target? Do you have account plans? Do you have designated reps?
This is a start of ways you can direct change. Focus6 Sales Management Solutions can help. We can start by doing a Sales Best Practices Audit that provides a customer report comparing 30+ best practices and highlighting areas to prioritize and focus on. Contact us to learn more.
