Maximising Revenue with High Performance Sales Teams

What makes the high-performing sales team thrive and be successful?

The role of sales is continuously evolving, and organisations need to adopt effective sales strategies and tactics to remain competitive in the market. Sales training is one of the most critical components of sales strategy, and in 2023, its impact on sales teams will be more significant than ever.

Today, we are highlighting what it takes for a high-performing sales team to thrive and succeed and why sales training is vital in today's competitive and ever-changing business landscape. It will feature the reasons why sales training provides a demonstrable ROI to companies and how effective training programs meet the needs of their sales teams and align with their business goals and objectives.

Successful salespeople and teams continuously strive for improvement and growth, enabling them to stay ahead of the competition in today's dynamic sales environment.

A high-performing sales team is critical to achieving the type of success which hinges on both effective sales management and the performance of individual salespeople. They are goal-oriented and focus on clearly communicated quotas and targets.

While revenue and profitability are essential metrics, fundamental characteristics beyond these metrics define high-performing sales teams. Both individual traits and team characteristics play a critical role, with adaptability, diversity, collaboration, and a focus on solutions and customer needs being the key drivers. A positive, customer-first corporate culture can be supported by company-wide sales training initiatives, so that everyone is speaking the same ‘language’ when engaging with customers.

Sales professionals can learn how their integrated performance contributes to the big picture of company success, and find ways to help one another succeed by a shared understanding of the short and long-term objectives, and best practices that lead to improved performance across the team.

Learning opportunities in the sales process facilitate the identification of the features, benefits, and unique selling points of products and services. When these elements are realised, sales teams can cultivate a passion for what they sell. They become confident in their abilities and learn techniques to cross-sell, upsell, and close a sale by overcoming doubts.

Sales training helps teams utilise data to drive their decisions and to track and analyse their sales performance metrics for both sales individuals and leaders.

They can learn to adopt a superior, collective, infinite mind-set and a service-solution focus while being agile and pivoting flexibly in times characterised by rapid and unexpected market or company strategy changes. For example, by implementing a multi-layered strategic approach, they can engage with customers in new ways to deliver added customer value.

?In a volatile and unpredictable landscape, however, companies must focus on retaining their top sales performers and utilising and supporting the entire organisation to be fully equipped with the skills and knowledge to deliver a personalised and innovative approach to their buyers' needs.

If the need for these skills and knowledge remains unidentified and addressed, the negative effect on any business could be detrimental to the entire organisation. In this case, sales professionals would be at a significant disadvantage, leading to frustration, demotivation, and loss of revenue.

Talk the Talk: Prospecting

“40% of salespeople say prospecting is the most challenging part of sales”

Source : https://blog.hubspot.com

New communications skills are constantly emerging. They can be practiced and developed to engage with potential new customers and building stronger relationships with existing customers.

Let's look at prospecting. Sales prospecting kick-starts the sales process: the more prospects, the more opportunities are realised to increase your ratios for closing a sale. It can be challenging, but commitment to effective prospecting requires resilience and tenacity.

Successful sales teams, however, need to learn that the complex game of prospecting has changed, and old prospecting strategies are no longer resonating as customer needs change.

Prospect targeting has become more complex because customers independently research solutions across a more comprehensive array of social platforms. As a result, they are more discerning and searching for value and trust. Buyers can control their buying process by accessing more information about products or services than ever before. They have done their homework before their very first sales interaction.

“80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after a meeting, and 44% of salespeople give up after the first follow-up call”

Source : According to a study by Brevet

Thorough research is needed to understand the buyer's needs. Many sales professionals need more of not only the right skills but also the right mind-set for effective prospecting. Prospectors must be highly skilled, resilient, and 'rejection proof.' They must overcome complex challenges and be willing to perform uncomfortable challenges putting newly learned skills into practice. They must understand what it takes to self-lead and be competent, capable, and compliant while learning time management and critical thinking skills.

Therefore, it is imperative that sales teams communicate effectively to present the right solutions at the right time. With each interaction, they continue learning to listen, understand and assess a customers’ requirements to uncover benefits and link them to clients' needs. They must know how to present comparable case studies, with related features and benefits, to build and expand on their value proposition.

A well-trained sales professional recognises transactional selling and the value of consultative selling while being customer-centric and knowing their audience while demonstrating curiosity and empathy. Adopting a customer-centric approach develops a deeper understanding of what it takes to identify and understand customer pain points, behaviours, and preferences rather than solely on their goals.

The Value of Sales Communication

“Only 13% of customers believe that salespeople understand their needs”

Source : https://www.dhirubhai.net

Value-based selling is the value perceived by the buyer, and it is advantageous when sales teams can compete on value rather than price. It sounds straightforward, but it can take a bit of practice and application.

Sales teams need to know where and why they should engage the customer and target potential prospects at the right time and place. High-performing sales teams elevate conversations to business-level discussions.

For example: Selling technology that delivers a manufacturing solution?

In this case, the sales team should not only converse with a prospect about manufacturing or supply chain problems; they will dig deeper to discover how that manufacturing issue impacts the business. Marrying the solution to the results requires great skill rather than just a simple problem-solution approach.

Effective questioning is another critical skill to master. It can be used to position sales professionals to direct a value-based conversation that uncovers the prospect's point of view regarding the issue and how it impacts their position and their company's results, not about the product or service. It not only establishes credibility but also enhances vital listening skills.

Salespeople can evaluate a response to building a better solution to overcome and address an objection, allowing the exploration of the crucial pain points. Giving prospective customers the space to speak their mind might identify even more opportunities to help them succeed. The prospect feels heard and appreciated, and salespeople can establish honest and trustworthy relationships. This skill facilitates the collection of the correct answers. The more informative their answers, the more likely their needs emerge, and these qualification factors assist salespeople in identifying and investigating potential deal-stoppers.

?The Importance of Continuous Development ?

“Organizations that provide continuous development and training to their sales staff, result in 50% higher net sales per sales person”

Source: https://www.dooly.ai

No matter how experienced and effective a sales team is, there are increasing reasons for development.

Old habits die hard, and long-established sales practices must be re-evaluated, and sales teams rewired to continue driving new initiatives, services and products that will ultimately lead to increased sales.

?There is a well-known saying:

“If we do what we always did, we will get what we always got”

It's about stepping out of comfort zones, foreseeing the inevitable, and embracing new expectations. Individuals CAN learn new skills to navigate, drive and accelerate new strategies and methodologies and be agile in the face of change.

In a robust marketplace, employing top sales performers can be challenging, and finding the right cultural 'fit' for an organisation can take time and money.

What if your company can't keep hiring their way to continued growth?

According to Forbes:

“In an era where revenue organizations can't grow their numerator (capacity) with more sales reps, they must improve their denominator (conversion) by focusing on the ones they have”

Employees must be valued and motivated to succeed and embrace the opportunity to learn and evolve. Investing in the well-being and development of employees leads to boosted morale, motivation, satisfaction, and the will to succeed.

Such an investment in people retains top talent and increases retention, not just revenue.

“Companies that provide extensive sales training experience a 19% increase in sales revenue compared to those that don't”

Source : https://blog.gitnux.com/

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