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"Ring the Bell" to Motivate Your Sales Team

10/28/2020

 
Ring the Bell to Motivate Your Sales Team
Are you celebrating each sale your team brings in? If not, you're missing an opportunity to motivate your sales team to even greater achievements. In the past, sales managers installed an actual bell in their department. Each time a sale was made made, the manager rang the bell to celebrate and ensure that every team member knew.

Sales people are competitive by nature. Ringing a bell in their honor is a challenge worth striving for. Consider adding a little friendly competition (and motivation) to your team by ringing a bell. Okay, it doesn't need to be an actual bell, but it does need to celebrate the win.

You might consider ringing the bell through a team broadcast email, group text or slack. If you're in an office setting, an actual bell might be appropriate. Whether you opt for a literal or figurative bell, here are five reasons why ringing the bell is essential for your sales team's motivation. 


Create a Strong Sales Culture

The culture of an office or department defines the group's goals and priorities. You know your priority is sales, but it's always beneficial to reinforce that in your culture. By celebrating every sale with a ringing of the bell, you put a unique spin on your own sales culture. A stronger sales culture drives your team to make more sales and to become more proactive. 

A stronger sales culture can be achieved in a variety of ways, including bonuses, weekly and monthly goals, and supporting and strengthening the sales team. By adding a ringing of the bell, you strengthen the team without spending a lot of money or energy. Even without a monetary bonus attached, people like to be acknowledged for their accomplishments. It inspires both the recognized individual and those around them to work harder. A strong sales culture translates into increased profit and growth. 

Drive Individual and Team Performance

It doesn't cost anything to ring the bell for an employee, unless you pay to have a bell installed in your department. Even then, it isn't that much. However, you get so much goodwill in exchange for this small act of recognition.  While you might be considering a large and expensive reward system for your sales team, starting with t-shirts and ending with a trip, you can save money and create positive energy and momentum by simply ringing the bell.

You like to be recognized for a job well done and so does your sales team. As you ring the bell and recognize one salesperson, the others will see this recognition and strive harder to earn it for themselves. This small act can help drive the improved performance of your entire staff with very little effort or expense on your part. Isn't that the goal?

Show Your Sales Team that Their Efforts are Valued 

Even in small companies, it can be hard for an individual employee or team to know that they are valued and appreciated by those above them. Your sales team works hard, and many of them probably wonder if anyone ever notices. Ringing the bell shows immediately that you and the company value and appreciate their efforts. 

While blasting an email, ringing a bell or shouting out on a group text might seem like a small, easy-to-do thing, one of your salespeople might really need to feel appreciated and valued. You want all your sales staff to feel this way because this feeling fuels their abilities to go out and make more sales. People who feel valued are more productive and successful than those who feel marginalized within a company of any size. 

Create a Sense of Self-Worth

Yes, everyone would like to believe what others think of them isn't that important, but it's typically not the case. Sales teams flourish under compliments and other recognition of their hard work. This is because it helps create a sense of self-worth. You spend a lot of time at work. In many ways, your job helps define who you are as a person. 

When someone recognizes that you're doing a good job and celebrates your successes, it helps to raise your confidence and self-worth. As a team leader or department manager, your opinion matters to your sales team, and a little recognition and bell ringing can be a wonderful and positive thing.

It might seem a little awkward when you first start recognizing every sale. Over time, however, you'll really begin to enjoy celebrating with your sales team. Helping someone else feel better about themselves is a reward that you can enjoy too. You can also watch as that person becomes more confident and productive. 

Allow Momentum to Generate More Momentum

When someone makes a sale, it shows that the team has built up some momentum. By ringing the bell, you encourage your sales staff to use its current momentum to create more. You want your team to be similar to a ball rolling down a hill, picking up speed as it goes.

Momentum drives sales and makes your team successful. You don't want to do anything that might halt or slow the momentum. By recognizing and praising success, it encourages your staff to continue working hard for their next sales. 

As a manager, you're always looking for ways to motivate your sales force and increase profits. You may need to go old school and begin ringing the bell to motivate your team. Show them they're appreciated, and help build momentum. You can send an email blast or group text so each member of your team knows about a sale and understands that you and the company appreciate their hard work. A little "Woo-Hoo" can go a long way!

For more tips, tricks and insights on videoconferencing and the evolving sales environment, sign up for our newsletter or visit our website for webinars and other valuable business resources.


LET’S EINSTEIN THIS FRANKENSTEIN!!

10/12/2020

 

A cautionary tale for sales managers

In 1818, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, the tale of a young scientist who searches for the secret of life through the creation of a cobbled-together monster. Are you similarly building a monstrosity of a sales team through alchemic and irresponsible means?!?!
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Let’s hope not. But if you are, don’t fear. You can shift things around.

All too often our sales organizations take on lives of their own and can run amok if we don’t plan and  proceed with proper awareness. Frankenstein’s monster was created without a meaningful plan. He was born out of excitement and the pursuit of knowledge, but his vision wasn’t fully considered. 

If you feel like your sales team is a Frankenstein, bolted together and not acting the way you’d hoped, it’s ok. Unlike the mad scientist, you can fix it!

LEADERSHIP

Your sales team is not a monster. You might perceive it to be jury-rigged and inoperable, but most likely it just needs proper guidance and a slight adjustment.  Remember that you are a leader and not a mad scientist!  You and your team already have the skills needed to stop scaring the villagers.
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If you’re frustrated about the actions (or lack of actions) that your team is taking, and if the results you want aren’t getting procured, hit the reset button. You’re the leader. Act like one. Bring the team together and discuss what you’re unhappy about, what you’re observing. Do it in a positive and constructive way. Set a clear agenda and ask your team to come prepared to have a thoughtful conversation about improving the sales organization as a whole.     

There is great importance in moving towards solutions and not resting in negativity. It’s about walking the talk. If you believe in and are fostering constructive values, then your team needs to witness these values in your actions. If you ask your team not to dwell on their mistakes and to move forward with positivity, then show them how together you can all achieve solutions in an optimistic and forward thinking way.  

intent

The idea behind creating Frankenstein’s monster was awesome. The scientist wanted to discover the secret of life! Your motivation as the sales manager is happily not so grand, but perhaps your sales team sees you more as a mad scientist than an intentional designer.

Are you trying to create success, but horrified by the results your team is having? Ask yourself if you consistently introduce different strategies without a plan. Stop grasping for random parts to achieve your solution. Hiring a sales trainer, finding an SEO master, handing out the latest sales book - this grab bag incohesive approach lacks intention. The larger result you’re seeking will continue to elude you unless you and your team follow a blueprint.

But you can’t create a plan if you don't know the outcome that you want. Get the team to agree on the result, then ask the team to co-create the plan. By doing this you have a better chance of aligning everyone and having their actions and experiences contribute to the overall success.

It will be alright. We all get caught up in the moment, and we want our sales teams to be amazing. However they can’t succeed without clear direction and objectives. We must consider the outcome of any creation, whether new life built from stolen body parts or a well-assembled sales team. 

COLLABORATION

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A good sales team is devised of smart, reliable and creative individuals who must be given the chance to succeed. Invite them into the conversation,  respect them for their ideas and give them the opportunity to grow and contribute.

Here’s a fun fact that popular culture overlooks: in the actual book, Frankenstein’s monster was born intelligent and articulate, capable of great things; but without good leadership and collaboration he becomes self-taught, fearful and unpredictable. Be sure to not act too independently, or else your sales team may become a wild creature roaming around without purpose or understanding!

I encourage you to meet with each member of your sales team individually and simply ask them, “How would you improve the sales organization? How would you create revenue?” They will probably have brilliant ideas.

performance

If you feel that your sales department is Frankenstein’s monster, in actuality it’s probably not. You have a team with all the proper parts and the ability to evolve, because you are not the mad scientist and they are not monstrous! You can create a smart, functioning and creative team that feels built more upon the mind of Einstein than Frankenstein.  Let’s get them going…
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5 Sales Tech Challenges When Hosting Virtual  Meetings

9/28/2020

 
Reps Face New Sales Tech Challenges Associated with Virtual Meetings
New trends in virtual meetings have given rise to sales tech challenges for many teams. In March 2020, Zoom saw more than 20 million new users download their mobile app. While the Work From Home (WFH) business model has been gaining traction for years, the current socio-political climate radically sped up the advent of technology like video conferencing. At the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, more than 300 million people participate in Zoom meetings every day. Add that to the immense number of people who use rival services such as Google Hangouts/ Meet, and you have a major shift in global business practices. 

That level of explosive growth isn't without problems, though. With so many first-time users adopting this new technology, things are bound to go wrong. Tech issues and sales meeting challenges are likely to arise. Here are five sales tech challenges that I see my clients struggle with every week, along with instructions on how to solve them.  

1. Attendees Click the Wrong Meeting Link 

​Google's entire suite of products is built on user experience. They have led the renaissance of easy-to-use applications that integrate seamlessly with one another. For the most part, it makes life much easier for the end user. Sometimes, Google's quality-of-life updates can be intrusive, and create a sales tech challenges.  

Businesses hosted through Gmail who choose to integrate with an enterprise platform like Outlook are subject to Google Meet/Hangout links where they might not want them. Google automatically embeds a link to their Meet/Hangout application in email and Google's calendar. Meet was formerly known as Google Hangouts, but over the summer of 2020, Gmail was upgraded to include additional video conferencing functionality, and thus Meet was born. 

Because Google automatically injects the embedded link into emails for enterprise users, people who you've invited to your Zoom sales meeting might be confused. Instead of clicking the Zoom link in their email, they click the embedded Meet/Hangout link instead. This link correlates to your Google calendar and is dependent on it. No matter how clear you make it in the body of the email, there will still be clients that click the embedded link anyway. Fortunately there is a fix.

It requires your business's Gmail administrator to adjust a setting in your Google calendar to prevent Google from automatically embedding the link across your G Suite. If your business is smaller in scale and you aren't using an enterprise account, you can turn this feature off yourself by going into your calendar settings and turning off the "Automatically add Google Meet video conferences to events I create" option in your calendar. 

2. Zoom Only Allows the Host to Share Their Screen

Being able to share what's on your screen is an important part of a virtual sales meeting. To implement a truly functional WFH model, your video conferencing platform has to foster productivity. By default, Zoom only allows the sales meeting's host to share what's on his/her device screen, however. This information can include: 
  • The user's full mobile or desktop screen 
  • A customized, partial view of their screen
  • Audio files only 
  • Content routed from an external camera
  • Other user-defined applications 

Fortunately, there is an extremely easy fix to this sales tech challenge, allowing everyone in the meeting to share screen content. To allow multiple users to share the contents of their screen, the meeting host must click the up arrow icon on the right side of the screen. This will open a menu where the host can select the "Multiple participants can share simultaneously," option.  

It should be noted that this is a change to the default option, which is set up so that only the host can share. Clicking a simple radio button located below the previous option allows the meeting attendees to share their content as well. 

3. Time Zone Confusion Creates Sales Tech Challenges

Large, multinational companies may have sales meetings that involve participants from all over the globe. That means participants operating out of different time zones. 

For some users, time zone conversion can be a painful, time-consuming process that involves consulting an outside source and then doing the math manually. For default Google users, it involves setting up a secondary time zone for each invite that has international attendees. That's where plugins come into play. 

Plugin calendar apps like Calendly or Acuity integrate easily with your G Suite, and provide valuable time zone information for your sales meetings by default. These extensions allow for easier time zone access, such as rolling over an attendee's name to show information, including time zone. 

For example, with Acuity integration, you simply click on the appointment in your Google calendar to see each attendee's time zone. The initial time investment that it takes 
to set up plugins like these are more than worth it given their overall convenience and effectiveness at solving this sales tech challenge. 

4. Solve Tech Issues by Enabling Advanced Functionality Tools

Add-ons like Calendly greatly augment what you're able to do with your video conferencing platform, helping you overcome multiple sales tech challenges at once. The basic version of Calendly includes free meeting scheduling functions, while their premium service allows users to do much more. 

Using Calendly's advanced features allows hosts to embed a link right on their website that allows potential clients to set up a meeting without having to go through an additional platform to initiate contact. Calendly also allows you to set up PayPal or Stripe payment options within the video conference itself, allowing for functional, results-driven sales meetings. 

Each new meeting type that the host sets up will walk them through a checklist of options for their prospective meeting, allowing them to easily initiate advanced features like these.  

5. Make Video Conferencing More Secure

Users worldwide have made a big deal out of the potential security issues inherent to free-to-use platforms like Zoom, and with good reason. Those security threats have introduced a new term into our collective vernacular: Zoombombing.

Sales people deal with sensitive information on a regular basis. The integrity of our customers' information and our internal communications is essential. Video conferencing, however, has become a modern-day necessity. What can users do to overcome this specific sales tech challenge?

While both Google and Zoom have added additional layers of encryption over the last few months, as well as unique meeting invite codes, Zoom users have a frontline defense they can proactively employ. Before starting a meeting, users can log in and access their settings. Under advanced options there is a setting to enable a virtual waiting room. This allows the meeting's host to pre-screen people attempting to join the meeting. 

Iron Out the Kinks

As with any new technology, there are millions of unanticipated issues that will inevitably arise. With the WFH business model, sales people worldwide are experiencing a major operational shift that will affect the industry as a whole. Experience is the best teacher available, even as we all try to figure out sales tech challenges together. Fortunately, each of the video conferencing platforms currently on the market are customizable, designed with the end user in mind.

For more tips, tricks and insights on videoconferencing and the evolving sales environment, sign up for our newsletter, or visit our website for webinars and other valuable business resources. 

Why You Need to Focus on Sales Attribution Right Now

9/16/2020

 
The buyer's journey involves numerous channels and touchpoints.
Today's marketing teams require a multi-channel approach to carrying out both online and offline marketing campaigns. While utilizing multiple channels enables marketers to personalize a customer's sales journey throughout the sales funnel, there are some unique challenges when analyzing a particular marketing campaign and its ROI.

One key metric to determine your marketing ROI is through attribution. If your company is not focusing on sales and lead attribution, here is why it should be at the forefront of your marketing campaign.


What is Attribution?

Attribution indicates how prospective customers enter your sales funnel. Likewise, it serves as a touchpoint of customer experiences throughout the buyer's journey. It specifies what door they came through, what channels and messages resonated with them the most, and what was the deciding factor that led to a purchase.

A common flaw for many businesses is they fail to clearly understand attribution, leading to a lack of understanding of which sales tactics and initiatives are working best for their bottom line. Focusing on lead and sales attribution can help your business determine where it is getting the most ROI for your marketing dollars, and what acquisition channels are the most valuable.

Why is Attribution Important?

Attribution programs require marketers to aggregate consumer data across all levels of your marketing channels. The data is then normalized and properly weighed to give your business better insight into the customer's decision-making process.

​For instance, if a potential customer receives both an email ad and a display ad, but only clicks on the promotion from the email, it indicates to your marketing team the email was more effective at enticing interest for your good or service for that particular customer.


Understanding attribution can improve your business' decision-making process. Attribution helps you determine which channels are better at generating new leads, or which channels are more effective at converting leads into finalized sales. If you find your promotional emails are generating more leads, then you can allocate more resources to your email campaign.

To achieve efficacious attribution requires advanced marketing analytics that can take a large amount of data and convert it into personal-level insights, which you can then use to optimize your marketing campaigns.


Benefits of Effective Attribution
  • Optimized Marketing Spend: Attribution models give marketing teams insight on how to best spend their marketing dollars by indicating which touchpoints garner the most engagement from users. With this information, marketers can adjust their budget and media spend accordingly.
  • Increased ROI: When you have effective attribution insight, your marketing team knows how to reach the right customers, with the right message, at the right time, which ultimately leads to higher conversions and higher ROI.
  • Enhanced Personalization: Marketing teams can also use attribution data to better understand which marketing channels and company messages better resonate with individual customers, which leads to more effective targeting throughout the buyer's journey.
  • Better Product Development: Individual-level attribution enables marketing teams to better understand the personal needs of their customers. These personalized insights provide a valuable reference when updating a product that targets the functionality customers want.
  • Optimized Creativity: Attribution models can also optimize the creative elements in a marketing campaign, which enables marketers to hone in on their visuals and message. A solid understanding of your messaging helps your company better communicate with users.

Avoid the Pitfalls 

​Despite the many benefits attribution can bring to your business, some common pitfalls can obscure the success of marketing campaigns. To ensure you are getting the most valuable insight from your data, these are the common mistakes marketers should avoid when using attribution models:
  • Correlation-Based Bias: When analyzing the customer's journey, attribution models are sometimes subject to correlation-based bias, which can make one event look like it influenced another, when that may not be the case.
  • In-Market Bias: In-market bias refers to customers who were in the market to buy a particular product, regardless if they saw your ad or not. The ad may not have been a deciding factor in the final purchase. However, it gets attribution credit for converting the user anyway.
  • Cheap Inventory Bias: Cheap inventory bias gives an inaccurate view of how your media is performing, making it look like it influenced the conversion rate when it might not have played any role. For example, cheap inventory falls under most people's price range, while more expensive inventory has a much more limited market. Therefore, there could be a correlation between cheap inventory and someone buying your product, rather than an ad leading to conversion. 
  • Digital Signal Bias: Digital signal bias occurs when attribution models do not factor in the relationship between offline sales and online activity. Marketers must make optimized decisions on both offline and online data, not just the data they find online. If you do not take offline sales into account, you do not fully understand the impact of your online marketing campaign, thus creating bias.  

Attribution Models

Single-touch Models
First-touch attribution assumes a customer chose to convert after the first advertisement they came across. Therefore, it gives attribution to the first touchpoint, regardless of any additional messaging subsequently introduced.
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Last-touch attribution gives entire attribution credit to the last touchpoint the customer interacted with before finalizing the purchase. It does not take into account any prior engagements. Both single-touch models fail to account for the broader customer journey.

Multi-touch models
Multi-touch attribution models look at every touchpoint a customer engages with throughout the buyer's journey. Therefore, multi-touch models are more accurate at depicting the efficacy of your marketing efforts. These models are different by how they divide credit between touchpoints. These include:
  • Linear attribution models record each touchpoint the customer engaged with leading up to the purchase. It weights each interaction equally, giving each message equal credit for driving the conversion rate.
  • U-Shaped models score engagements separately, noting some have more of an impact than others along the buyer's journey. The lead conversion and first-touch are both accredited with 40% weight while dividing the remaining 20% among all the other touchpoints.
  • Time Decay models also weigh each touchpoint differently. In this case, touchpoints closer to final purchase weigh more than those early on in the buyer's journey.
  • W-Shaped models are similar to the U-shaped model. However, it incorporates one additional core touchpoint in the center. Therefore, the W-shaped model credits first touch, lead conversion and opportunity creation with 30% weight, while dividing the remaining 10% among other engagements.

How to Improve Your Sales Attribution

Sales and lead attribution are crucial aspects for your business, and knowing how to accurately gauge your customer's journey is paramount.  Want to learn more, but not sure where to start and need some expert advice, check out our website to view our informational webinars, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Develop a positive sales Culture: 10 Things Your Reps want you to know

9/7/2020

 
Did you know it takes an average of 18 calls before a salesperson connects with their lead? Multiply that by every lead in the salesperson's funnel, and that's a gigantic amount of time spent chasing down sales. Yet, there's often a perception among company leadership that salespeople have it easy. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If your company doesn't properly value or take the time to understand its sales team, it can affect every facet of your business. Fostering a sales-positive culture helps you obtain long-term success. 

The Benefit of a Sales-Positive Culture

Success begins with understanding, and understanding comes from the top down. Your company's leadership must set an example by demonstrating respect, appreciation and insight as to how their sales reps operate. 

It's easy to see how misconceptions are born. For those who've never been a salesperson, speaking to clients seems like a soft skill, chatting and schmoozing followed by a lot of downtime. In reality, the sales rep spends only about 30% of their time talking directly with clients. The rest of that time is spent on administrative tasks like scheduling, paperwork and training. 

Still, the misconception persists: that no one really understands what sales does, that sales seems easy, and that if the company needs more revenue, sales just needs to sell better or call more people to increase it. Unless your leadership takes measures to stop the anti-sales attitude from taking root, your company's morale and profitability could be in serious trouble.  


10 Things Leadership Needs to Know About Its Sales People

It's a more effective strategy to build a bridge than it is a fence. Keeping your company's individual departments synchronized boosts morale and overall prosperity. After years of interacting with professional salespeople, these are the most essential things every salesperson wishes their CEO knew about them.  
  1. Trust us. Sales people are professionals, and speaking to clients is more than just a soft skill. It requires investment and training, but it can be developed with the right support. Leadership needs to approach us with a certain level of faith, but if they see room for improvement, give us opportunities for professional development too. With the right tools and support, we'll deliver. 
  2. Clarity and clear boundaries are better than blue skies. Even the most driven of self-starters needs boundaries and guidance. One of the more common complaints that non-sales people have about the sales team is that they over-utilize resources. From treating potential clients to expensive dinners, giving away samples too freely, to authorizing discounts on products, there's a perception that salespeople waste company assets. We thrive when you trust us, but make sure to set appropriate boundaries for us to work within. Giving a rep total freedom may seem like a good idea, but sometimes a wide open sky can be debilitating. 
  3. We're all different, but kind of the same. There are traits common to every salesperson. According to the Harvard Business Review, successful reps are modest, curious and not easily embarrassed. According to Entrepreneur, all good sales professionals are passionate and knowledgeable about their products. But remember: every salesperson is an individual. Our style and level of skill may vary. Meet us halfway, and appreciate our unique abilities. 
  4. Learn who we are and what makes us tick. A sales team is like a sports team; we don't all play the same position. Everyone has individual strengths and weaknesses, and a one-size-fits-all approach to management won't work. If your company's leadership takes the time to understand what motivates each individual member of the team, it can pay dividends going forward. 
  5. We love when you implement systems of reward and recognition. Sales is naturally competitive. On a large scale, that means competition against other companies for market share. On a local level, it's good-natured competition against one another. Salespeople thrive on systems of reward that recognize both types of achievement. Recognizing your sales force as a whole, while rewarding top performers individually, makes everyone feel appreciated.  
  6. We are the eyes, the ears and sometimes the brain of the company. Salespeople are your customers' first point of contact. We have a lot of actionable information to share with leadership (and everyone else). But we have to have a safe and appropriate opportunity to share it with you. It helps to reserve a block of time weekly where you really listen to your salespeople and get a view of your business from the ground up. 
  7. We're human, and sometimes we need your help to get back in the game. Even the most outgoing salesperson has bad days and periods of low confidence. Days without a sale, or a bad customer experience, can put us off our game. Remind us not to dwell on the past, but to focus on the strength of the company's sales funnel. Every day is a brand-new opportunity. Help us look forward. 
  8. Take the time to be a friend and mentor. Being a good salesperson and having confidence go hand-in-hand. That doesn't mean that salespeople don't need support. We do our best work when there's consistent feedback from leadership. Take time to reward our successes but also to coach us on areas of opportunity. Salespeople need a healthy way to vent frustration. After all, sales can be a wild ride sometimes. 
  9. Ask us to help solve challenges and problems. Sales people provide solutions. Solving customer problems is a huge part of sales. We love to approach the sale process in the role of problem solver. Use that to incorporate us into the larger company culture. Our frontline experience may give the rest of the team unique insight regarding a difficult problem. 
  10. Momentum is essential to our success. Momentum is crucial to sales. When we're talking to customers, we "get in the zone," and it helps if we carry that energy between sales calls. The more administrative tasks and staff meetings you schedule, the more we lose our momentum. It's hard to overcome inertia and start back up again. Streamline your administrative processes as much as possible to avoid unnecessary interruptions. 

Building Bridges

Your sales department is the driving force behind your revenue and prosperity, but they're often misunderstood by fellow employees and company leadership. It's important to view your sales team as essential and look for ways to enfranchise them. It's always better to build a bridge than it is a fence. 

For more SMB advice and insights, sign up for our newsletter, or visit our website for webinars and other valuable business resources. 

Frustrated With Your Sales Performance? Look Inward.

8/31/2020

 
Look inward to identify management issues that may be leading to poor sales performance.

Before you continue to find fault with your sales organization, consider the possibility that you’re lacking alignment from the foundation up and that is the root cause of poor sales performance. You are not alone, however. This is a universal problem, and sales forces are picking up and moving on at staggering rates.


According to a 2018 survey by Marc Wayshak, only 17.6% of respondents rate their job satisfaction as "outstanding," and 47.1% rated their jobs as just "good."

If you’re feeling frustrated with sales performance and revenue, it’s possible that some core strategies and relationships need to be reconsidered. Take a deep look at your foundations, your team and your leadership. How can you give sales performance a boost? Consider these three steps. 

Increase Sales Performance by Revisiting Your Foundations

Are you clear on your company value foundations? You must know what problems you are here to solve and who you are solving them for. Take the time to really define your value proposition and how you’re different from other companies. Without a concise foundation, your sales team's performance will suffer. Make sure everyone is aligned with your purpose by training your team to understand the organization's well-defined foundations. 

Explore Your Sales Team Dynamics 

Chances are that among your group, there are individual strengths that merit individual approaches. Look at the sales team and understand who they are. The result will be higher sales performance because you have set them up for success by giving them opportunities that speak to their strengths.  

From here, work towards group solutions and create a collaborative environment. If you have provided safety and encouragement through listening and asking questions, your team will feel relevant and confident. Be bold and ask them what they would do if they ran the department. How would they solve their frustrations and yours? You might be delighted by the answers you receive.  

Reexamine Your Sales Leadership
​

It’s imperative that you create an environment for your team to be successful. Have you made them feel trusted, empowered and knowledgeable as individuals so that they can be aligned as a team? 

You don’t need new hires. I’m a firm believer that most salespeople are good at what they do if given the opportunity to sell the way that best supports their strengths. You are responsible for putting each team member in the right role and fostering skills that will bring their sales performance to peak levels. 

Remember that your team must be heard. Listen to them. Ask what they need and keep in mind that there are numerous ways to sell. Teach them trust and mutual respect through providing it yourself in your leadership.

Spotio’s Sales Career Statistics states that the typical account executive spends 2.7 years on the job and takes 4.7 months to ramp. You can do better. 

It’s hard to see oneself as the culprit of other’s dissatisfaction or for a company sales slump. However, looking inward and accepting that changes need to be made can lead a poor sales team to greater happiness, higher performance and increased loyalty. 

Create Success By Building Momentum

8/6/2020

 
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Want to read more? Check out Social Selling Ebook.

5 Things You Can Do To Improve Sales Team Performance

6/10/2020

 
An experienced, well-equipped and determined sales team can lead any business to success. The problem many companies face is that they have poor sales team performance.

In many cases, it doesn't have to do with experience or determination. The reason lies in the lack of understanding, empowerment and engagement.  

Today, 75% of companies say that closing more deals is their top priority. If you are among them, showing trust and giving the necessary tools to your team can give your business a giant push forward. Consider these five ways to improve sales team performance. 
1. Learn More About Your Sales Team

Being a sales rep isn't a profession. It's a calling. To be successful, these experts need to feel the buyers' pain points and offer suitable solutions, while guiding them down the sales funnel. All that requires determination, passion and hard work.

Unfortunately, many business owners don't understand the variety of challenges these sales professionals face. From that comes a lack of respect and encouragement, resulting in poor sales team performance. That's one of the reasons for a high sales rep turnover rate, compared to other industries (35% vs 13%).  

If you feel unhappy with your team's sales performance, start by learning more about your team. As you work on your involvement, you can uncover various factors to help improve the team's performance.
  • Ask them to take personality tests. You'll be surprised how much you can learn from them.
  • Ask for feedback about sales teamwork. Regular feedback can help you gain insight into the way your company functions.
  • Engage in team-building activities to spend more time with your employees and get to know them.
Sales is a tough profession, which doesn't always pay off as well as people prefer. There is a reason why your sales reps chose this vocation. Find out as much about it as you can. This information can help you empower your team.

2. Increase Sales Performance by Encourage Strengths

All sales reps have certain professional strengths and weaknesses.  When you want an employee to increase sales performance, focusing attention on their weaknesses is counterproductive. 

​According to Gallup, building on employee's strengths is much more effective than trying to improve on their weaknesses. It's up to the employer to create a work environment to cultivate the sales rep's strengths.

A supervisor's understanding of his/her reps' strengths has an impressive effect on the company's bottom line because managers play a crucial role in maximizing employee output. You can empower the sales rep to discover and develop their strengths. Once you do that, adjust their role to exploit these strengths fully.
  • Don't assume a sales rep knows his or her strengths. People usually take them for granted.
  • Find ways to apply each rep's strength to achieve a team's goal.
  • Help sales reps set goals according to their strengths.
Teams that focus on their strengths every day show 12.5% greater productivity than teams that don't.

3. Support Teamwork

To boost sales team performance, sales reps need to come together as a united group. This could be problematic for experts, who are used to working alone. As you get to know each team member's strengths and weaknesses, you can figure out the best way to bring these people together.
  • Start with yourself. Bringing sales reps together as a team starts with you. As a leader, you should explain your plans, desires, strengths and weaknesses related to the company's operation and success. You need to set clear goals, and acknowledge achieving them is only possible with teamwork.
  • Always listen. Problems with teamwork often arise because people don't think that they are heard. Make yourself available to your sales reps. Try to listen carefully before offering a solution. Sitting on a problem for 24 hours can help you resolve it quickly.
  • Have fun. One of the biggest advantages of working on a team is having fun. Bring your sales reps together with engaging team-building activities.
If you manage to promote teamwork within your company, it doesn't mean you should stop celebrating individual achievements. To encourage better output, you should treat each sales rep as an individual.  

4. Ask For Feedback...And Listen To It

The best way to discover a problem in the workplace is to ask. If your team isn't performing as well as you expect, ask your sales rep why they think it's happening.

The information you can acquire simply by asking could change your entire approach to team building, workplace environment and much more.

Don't hesitate to ask your sales team for ideas. They may already know how to solve the problem. Listening to your employees and trusting their professional opinion could help you achieve many business goals in addition to improving sales team performance.


5. Promote Engagement And Involvement

One of the top reasons why employees are unhappy with their work is the lack of meaning. When sales reps don't see a meaning in what they do, their performance suffers.

Employee disengagement costs the U.S. more than $550 billion a year in lost productivity. Even when scaled down to one company, the losses could be devastating. To increase engagement, employees should be invested in the company's mission, vision, value and goals.

It's up to the leader to show the sales team why its work is highly meaningful to the company. You should help sales reps understand that the work they do contributes to the company's success directly.  
  • Give your sales reps more flexibility.
  • Maintain a sincere relationship with your reps.
  • Ask for feedback.
  • Clarify goals.
  • Work at creating an enjoyable work environment.
  • Encourage collaboration.
  • Show gratitude.
When sales teams understand which goal they are working toward, they are more likely to demonstrate top-notch performance.

Start Improving Sales Team Performance Today
​

The success of your sales team doesn't just depend on its professionalism and experience. A big part stems from your attitude.

By getting to know your team better, encouraging its strengths, improving the workplace environment and promoting engagement, you can improve the sales team's performance tremendously. Work with your sales team as much as you can. Such an effort can bring an impressive ROI.

For more information about improving your sales team performance and other important tips, please sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Sales Tip: Improving Sales Performance by Challenging Assumptions

4/11/2020

 
Ask Yourself Daily: What Will Create the Most Value?
I can easily get caught in the trap of "busyness." I remind myself daily, my job is to create value for myself, my team and my prospects with the actions I take today. I have to start by being mindful of how I create value and what will create value. Then, I prioritize.

The discipline required to remain focused on long term goals amidst the actual execution of a strategy is a rare skill, but is highly valuable to clients. Following a disciplined process typically leads to higher quality and faster results.


TIP: On a weekly basis, I challenge assumptions made when originally setting goals, and seek input from the team on whether our goals need to be modified. 
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[Ebook] How To Improve Your Career

3/26/2020

 
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Sales Tip: IMprove Sales Performance by setting mutual commitments

3/16/2020

 
Set Mutual Commitments Together
Similar to defining next steps, setting mutual commitments while you still have everyone’s attention on a call or in a meeting is a vital way to ensure progress. It also creates mutual accountability and builds ongoing trust. Don’t forget, trust built over time equals longer client engagements, larger projects and great client retention.

TIP: Don’t shy away from directly asking each contributor on the call what they plan to bring to your next meeting and when. The simple act of asking typically forces everyone to shift their thinking to consider everything else that is demanding their time. That way any commitments they make are realistic, and positions everyone for long-term success.
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Sales Tip: Achieve Sale Goals by Defining Next Steps

2/12/2020

 
Always Define Next Steps
I have learned to have next steps already in mind before I ever start a call. I purposely leave some margin in what I expect to accomplish so I can dedicate time to define next steps when wrapping up. Defining next steps is a valuable way to build on your momentum toward your sales goals. 

TIP: Remember it’s also important to solicit key contributors for any next steps they consider most important. While you are the owner of the call, you don’t want to be the dictator of your agenda. That is a quick way to break trust.
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Sales Tip: 3 Ways to host a successful Sales call

10/16/2019

 
Know the Stakeholders and Show Up as the Owner of the Call
Prospects, stakeholders or clients (with whomever you are meeting) have a tendency to take over-scheduled calls and meetings. When this happens it’s typically because they are trying to get to what is important to them. Find out what matters most to them and come prepared to deliver it, so they can stay focused and engaged. It’s your job to ensure everyone’s time is consistently well spent and is key to having a successful sales call. This gets back to the importance of always building trust (and maintaining it).

Tip 1: I set my meeting agendas at least a day in advance and share them with my clients for input, so we have shared ownership of how we use the allotted time.

Tip 2: I put the meeting agenda directly in the calendar invite along with links to any docs, decks, etc. I might plan to reference on the call. This saves significant time for clients since they don’t need to fish around their inbox for the attachments they need.

Tip 3: I always give those on the call permission not to be fully prepared, but tell them to consider our calls working sessions. Developing a cadence of weekly time set aside to focus on marketing activities frees up mind space for busy clients. Do not spend time in a meeting for any tasks that could otherwise be handled in an email, short phone call or similar.
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Sales BQ - Quota Crusher™ Podcast Selling Tips & Strategies

9/19/2019

 

Are Great Sales Reps Born or Made?

We are so excited to welcome today's guest on the Quota Crusher™ Podcast is Karl Becker! We debate on whether great sales reps are born or made. Listen to today's episode to hear what qualities we think make a great sales rep and if its something your born with or not!

Sales tip: Generate Value through effective sales meetings

9/13/2019

 
Design Your Sales Meetings to Generate Value - Tons Of Value
Meetings are where you either prove your value or slowly undermine your own credibility and trust. An effective sales meeting builds trust.  Trust long-term = revenue. Don’t ever forget this simple truth. Ever.

Everyone has blind spots. Take for example, my use of too many words. Beware, your blind spots may be undermining your credibility and the value you bring. It’s pointless to pretend you don’t have any blind spots, and candidly, will only hold you back.

Instead, role play what you plan to say with at least one other person on the call. Think through places where you could possibly get derailed – it is a game changer. It’s not a comfortable process but more than once it has saved me from floundering in front of an important client.


Tip: Think through the following in advance.
What is the one thing you want participants to take away from the meeting? What information and feedback do you require to move forward on a project, proposal, etc.? Where should you have check-in points to gauge for reception? Who are the best people to address key points, and in what order? Use your sales meetings to generate value. 
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    I’m Karl Becker and I help individuals and organizations improve how they sell. My focus is on clear, concise, actionable solutions.

    In short, I'll show you how to increase performance and generate more revenue.

    This blog shares approaches, tools, and ideas that I have seen create success.

    If you’re interested in discussing anything, please reach out.
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