It goes without saying that revenue is what keeps a business driving forward, and the people that bring in that revenue are essential for success. But in some companies, the sales people that do the feared task of prospecting and face rejection on a daily basis aren’t getting the results that your leadership hoped for. Or maybe they’re meeting goal and nothing more. Either case contributes to slowing momentum alarmingly quickly.
The solution here is to build a strong sales culture that thoroughly supports the work your reps are doing. Get the results your company needs by setting your staff up for success in the following 6 ways.
1. Reward Activity
Much sales success is correlated with the highest levels of activity, and it makes sense: those reps that are calling on the most prospects and meeting with the highest number of qualified leads stand the best chance of closing the deal. By rewarding reps who stay busy, you’ll increase the amount of work being done and in turn increase results.
2. Emphasize The Sales Department’s Importance
Building a sales culture that gets results goes beyond the sales department. The whole company should know how awesome it is to be a sales rep and how important their achievements are in order to keep the business strong and successful.
That’s not to say that other departments are unimportant (not at all!) But show each department how their work ultimately helps the company grow revenue and you’ll change the entire company culture to celebrate sales.
3. Spend Time One-on-One
One of the most powerful activities you can do in your efforts to build a cohesive sales culture is to set aside time every week to meet with each of your reps. Yes, it’s a large time commitment. But this is what it means to truly invest in your staff, and it pays big dividends.
Spend your time talking about the accounts they’re working on and strategize about how they can make progress on those leads. This is also the perfect time to give individual sales coaching to fine tune your reps’ skills, which leads us to our next point.
4. Deliver Training
No, we’re not talking about improving product knowledge. (Although that’s absolutely important, too.) Answer this simple question: do your sales reps actually know how to sell? Do they know how to pick up the phone and cold call successfully? These might sound like overly simple questions, but making sure that your salespeople are at least trained on the same sales approach will do wonders for the success of your team.
5. Offer Career Development
While you’re focusing on improving the present situation, don’t forget to make the future prospects appealing. This means offering clear paths of career progression that motivate your people to perform and stick around at your company. It also includes regular training to keep their skills sharp and up-to-date so that they know they’re improving themselves as long as they’re selling for your business.
6. Friendly Competition
Another angle you can take toward shaping your sales culture is to encourage some friendly competition through sales contests. As long as you don’t make them so high-stakes that they cause stress and resentment among your team members, you’ll be sure to wake up your sales department with this tactic.
These ideas should help you create a winning sales culture by focusing more on the sales process and people involved than only on the number of closed deals. Approaching your sales culture like this will also foster positive team bonds that keep your reps intrinsically motivated to make a difference in the success of your organization, and that ultimately leads to better sales results.