You Want to Be a Leading Sales Organization? It All Starts With These 6 Steps

Developing industry-leading sales organizations isn’t just about the carrot-and-stick, often outsize rewards for meeting sales goals. That may work well for a handful of natural-born sales champions. But if you want a team of superstars, you need to do something more.

A back-to-basics approach is what smart company leaders know is required to make sure they build the strongest foundation upon which to build an equally strong sales force. They take a thoughtful, systematic approach in each step of the process, from recruiting, onboarding, training, setting goals, development and providing feedback.

Since the age 29, I have run successful sales teams as a sales manager, director and vice president of sales, then as president and CEO of my most recent companies.

A former military officer, I had not sold anything until I made the transition out of the Navy to my first employer, who hired junior military officers, brought me on as sales representative. Here, I learned and appreciated the tremendous training my first employer invested in me to ensure I had the tools to be successful. They understood that my success would result in theirs.

This company recruited junior military officers because we were well-disciplined, hardworking, bright and well-rounded, typically active throughout high school in sports, music and other endeavors.

In fact, many companies hire junior military officers or B2B professionals for medical positions, but it is imperative that you make the investment to train these non-medical sales resources to give them the foundation they need to be successful.

If your sales organization is in its infancy, this is especially critical because these first team members will become the leaders who hire and manage the salespeople who follow—their habits, skills and experience will influence them and the overall success of your organization’s sales.

Sales professionals at all levels need to feel inspired and involved—that’s how their passion for your product or service comes through not only when they connect with prospective clients (vital) but also in how they interact with coworkers (toxic environments lead to employee churn and setbacks in reaching goals).

Here are the top 6 things you can do to create and drive sales leaders for your organization.

1. Always hire multiple salespeople at one time. Any time you’re hiring salespeople, hire more than one at the same time. In your company’s early days, you will need to conduct training programs, have trainee’s role play with each other, forge relationships, and share success stories to both encourage and inform once they are in the field. You can also create some competition between your new hires, which, if done properly, can be rewarding for all.

2. Schedule their first day on a Sunday. By starting the new group of sales hires on a Sunday they can use that as a travel day to get together and conduct a welcome reception so everyone gets to know each other and share backgrounds and business experiences.

I also like to invite members of the senior management team so they can begin to forge relationships with the new hires from day one. They enables them to quickly understand why they joined the organization and what their individual goals might be.

3. Set expectations high for training. Put in the time to establish a thoughtful curriculum that provides an overview of the company, strategic direction, housekeeping while in training, sales skills training, product knowledge, competition and role play with senior management.

By setting high expectations for their performance on quizzes, tests and role playing the new employees will see that you take their professional success very seriously.

I view training as one of the most important elements of the success of new hires. Why hire great talent if you’re not going to train them and provide them with the tools to succeed?

4. Design an impactful agenda, including guest speakers. I always like to invite speakers to training programs to cover various elements within the organization. I have the CEO in to speak with the new hires and discuss the culture and vision he/she might have for the company and to stress the importance of each new team member is to the organization’s overall success. By getting face time with the CEO, new hires are afforded access to the senior leader of their new company.

I also invite each department head to discuss what their expectations are from sales professionals and how they can best support them in growing the company.

Human resources come in to discuss HR-related items, of course, like rules and regulations as well as benefits.

Finance comes in to speak about top- and bottom-line goals and expense reports. Information technology comes in to discuss laptop policy and other tech support items.

The more people you can get involved the better. New hires love to get access and introductions to senior leadership. Salespeople, by their very nature, aren’t shrinking violets, so having an opportunity to be so visible to the powers that be so quickly contributes to their enthusiasm.

5. The training itself should drill into sales skills—regardless of level of seniority. Those who are new to sales will definitely need skills training to give them the basics of opening, open-and-closed probes, overcoming objections, positions of features and benefits, as well as closing.

And don’t take for granted that seasoned sales reps you bring in have stellar sales skills. As a former trainer it always amazed me to see “experienced sales representatives” go through my training course, where it quickly became clear that their capabilities were less than optimal. Maybe they were never given a solid foundation, maybe they got sloppy over time, maybe they are just really good at selling themselves to get a job and less so to snag a new client. Regardless, a refresher can’t hurt a mature rep and, in fact, may help them immensely.

6. Document everything you do in training and provide constructive criticism. Starting as a salesperson at a new company is like drinking through a fire hose. Retaining so much information all at once can be difficult, so whatever you can do to ease this process would be beneficial.

Provide documentation for their post-training reference, including your sales process, probing strategies, features and benefits, competitive information, strategies to compete definitions, and even trivial things like proper email signature structure.

I host all training materials in our own online library, as well as all marketing material and expenses reports, to make everything quickly and easily accessible anytime, anywhere.

Bottom line: Providing rigorous sales training sets the tone for everything you do as an organization. If you start it on Day 1 you create a powerful first impression among your new sales reps by demonstrating your commitment to their success. Invest in making it well organized, professional and filled with the equipment they will need to knock the cover off the ball!