Every Sales Manager wants their sales team to be as successful as possible.

But in reality, many feel their team isn’t fully aligned with their goals. It can feel overwhelming to know where to start.

Luckily, we have created this guide for you. These seven steps will give you an overview of how to transform your sales team.

Step 1: Assess the Status Quo

The first step in building a successful sales team is to assess the current situation.

To assess the status quo, start with two categories:

Category 1: How is your team currently performing?

Look at the current reality and how your team is doing.

• Is your team hitting their monthly, quarterly, or yearly targets?
• Are they building enough pipeline?
• How strong are different territories?
• What deals are your team losing and why?

Analyse KPIs such as win rates, conversion rates, and number of meetings booked.

All of this will help you understand the reality of your current team.

Category 2: What are the goals for your team?

Now, take a look at the goals you have for your team. What are their revenue targets? How far off are they from hitting their targets?

Once you know where you are and need to be, you can move on to step 2.

Step 2: Make a Plan

After identifying the gap between reality and goals, it’s time to make a plan. What needs to be changed for your team to get from where they are to where they need to be?

There are many factors to consider here:

• Does your team need new tech to help them be more successful?
• Is there tech you currently have that you aren’t using effectively?
• Does your team have the right resources and marketing materials to go out and be successful?
• Do you need to add more reps to the team?
• Does your team need additional support and coaching?
• Is there an issue with the territory assignment?

Now that you know the gaps, it’s time to plan where you need to make changes.

In an ideal world, you could address all changes immediately. But we are often bound by budget restraints and limited time.

Decide which changes are most important for your team’s success and prioritise those.

Step 3: Make Adjustments

You’ve evaluated the situation. You’ve identified what needs to be done. Now, you have to put what you’ve learned into practice.

Applying these changes could involve:

• Adding new tech
• Train your team on how to use existing tech
• Remove tools you don’t need
• Provide your team with coaching
• Add new reps
• Change up territories
• Have conversations between the sales and marketing teams, ensuring both are aligned (sales and marketing should work as one team!)
• Create new cadences or call scripts
• Give your reps product training

These changes might be more or less easy to implement. You might not see results immediately. Staying patient and giving these new adjustments time to work is essential.

Step 4: Track Your Progress

Tracking your team’s progress is essential to see if you made suitable adjustments.

You can conduct regular pipeline reviews using your CRM or tools like Superlayer or Clari.

Keep track of KPIs like:

• Conversion rates
• Forecasted vs actual sales
• Average deal length
• Quota attainment
• Open rates
• Reply rates
• Meetings booked
• Pipeline created
• Pipeline source

Collecting this over time will show you how effective your changes have been.

Step 5: Readjust and Offer Targeted Coaching

As you track your team’s progress, you might start to identify trends on an individual or team level.

As a result, you may have to make more granular adjustments to keep your team on the right track. Identify specific areas where reps need help and provide them with targeted coaching to help them tweak their sales performance.

Conversation Intelligence tools like Superlayer or Gong can be helpful for you to identify where exactly your rep needs some extra support.

Have reps that are struggling to shadow top performers. Identify what that rep is doing to be successful and use it in your training for new or less successful reps.

Step 6: Have a Solid Onboarding and Hiring Process

Now that you know exactly what kind of reps you need to succeed, develop a hiring process that allows you to hire more reps like that.

Be very clear on what you are looking for in a candidate, and develop a hiring process that tests the characteristics you are looking for.

There are different methods of identifying new talent:

• Referrals from current reps
• Job postings
• External recruiters
• Recruiting events
• Outbound recruiting

When onboarding new hires, set them up for success by providing them with relevant resources, training, and product knowledge. The better you know what kind of sales rep you want, the more targeted this training can be.

Step 7: Keep Your Team Happy and Motivated

This one might seem obvious, but motivation is a massive factor for successful sales teams. A highly motivated team equals a highly successful team.

There are many ways to keep your sales team happy:

• Good comp plans: Salespeople are often motivated, at least partially, by money. A good compensation plan that rewards them for good performance is a great way to boost your team to work as hard as possible.
• Run competitions: Appeal to the sales rep’s competitive side by running contests. These can be short- or long-term. Do cold calling sessions and award the most successful rep with a gift card. Have your team compose a cold email. The rep with the highest score on Lavender wins. You can be as creative as you want with this. Competitions like this can be very motivating, especially if your reps are in a rut.
• Acknowledge good performance: If a rep goes the extra mile or creates a particularly successful cadence for the team, recognise it. Even if it’s just a short message, it will go a long way to ensure your rep feels appreciated.

Another way to indirectly keep your sales team happy is to help ensure the product is as good as possible.

You will not have direct control over this, but gathering customer feedback and passing it on to the product team can help them develop your company’s product in a way that customers want.

The better the product, the more successful your sales team can be.

Conclusion

A sales team is an ever-changing part of your organisation. It needs to be managed and stimulated to grow into the best sales team it can be to drive revenue and growth to the business.

A stagnating sales team is a bad sales team; use these tips to set up your sales team for success. But don’t take this journey alone.

Need some help? Enquire today about how Superlayer can help you set-up for a successful future.

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