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Every successful leader knows that boosting team performance is their responsibility, regardless of whether it’s in their work description.
Your sales team’s performance will be greatly affected by the effort you put into helping the members achieve their goals.
In this post, we’ll be giving our take on what you can do to boost your team’s performance.
Provide Vision and Clarity
Nothing rallies your sales team like working towards a shared vision of future achievements—and conversely, without a clear vision, your reps will lack the direction needed to chase ambitious sales goals.
It’s easy for representatives to get lost in dozens of smaller tasks and feel disengaged.
When that happens, the big picture painted by the leadership will steer them back towards the company’s purpose.
An awareness of what they’re working towards will help them understand that even the tasks that might seem trivial at first glance serve a greater aim.
That vision is also a roadmap of how they can achieve goals.
Like any great roadmap, the company vision reveals what steps the team must take to get where they want to be. It helps them focus on what matters.
Even research confirms it.
A study on employee engagement and productivity has found that 60% of employees don’t even know their company’s vision.
How can companies expect their employees to give their best to achieve the company’s goals if they don’t know what they are or how their actions are helping the company reach it?
Raise Morale and Team Spirit
When your reps feel like they’re a part of a winning team, they’ll be motivated to be at the top of their game.
One of the best parts of being in a group is that every member wants to give their best performance.
Disappointing their team is not an option for them. You’d be surprised how productive you can get when others you care about depend on your effort.
In such an atmosphere, office relationships also improve, so your sales reps can focus on delivering their best efforts instead of being stressed out.
Would you be productive in a stressful work environment where you feel unwelcome?
We didn’t think so.
Creating a positive working environment is often hard, especially when the team is struggling.
However, these tips work like a charm for reforging team spirit:
- Do team building during company time
- Offer mentorship to employees whose skills are lacking
- Help employees understand their role in the team
- Show genuine support if members are struggling
As a leader, it’s your job to step up and make your sales team feel like a unit again.
Raising team spirit is what successful leaders do to boost performance. Another one is investing in human resources.
Invest in New Business Tools
Using business tools is one of the most important things that distinguishes a top-performing sales force from a sales team that achieves mediocre results.
Getting new tools for your sales representatives is key for boosting performance. For your representatives, sales automation software is as important as a hammer is to a carpenter.
To reach outstanding sales results, they need the proper tools to be productive at their position.
Tools make their lives easier so they can focus on closing sales, which is the purpose of their job.
This brings us to our second point.
Sales tools and other specialized SaaS solutions keep them from wasting precious mental energy and focus on relatively trivial administrative tasks.
If your sales team is spending most of its time doing supporting tasks instead of actually selling, you’re wasting your most valuable human resource doing the wrong activity.
You can imagine how harmful that can be for their performance. The only way to break from this cycle is to empower them with new sales tools.
If you think your team is a standing exception, review the data.
A report by Docurated has found that sales representatives only spend 31% of their time selling. The rest goes on administrative tasks and looking for content for their sales pitch.
To help them improve their results, make sure they can automate supporting tasks by accessing the right tools.
Search for Development and Improvement Opportunities
In the buzzing world of online business, improvement opportunities are everywhere. Prominent leaders actively search for fresh ways their workers can upgrade their skills.
If you’re an outstanding business leader, you’ll realize that you have to invest in your workforce and their knowledge.
It’s perfectly understandable that sales methods need to be updated every once in a while, so investing in workshops for employees is necessary to keep your sales force on top of their game.
Employee training is the missing link between them and more profits.
Now that we’ve discussed the benefits of training, it’s time we talk about what you need to get it done right.
Like all successful business moves, teaching employees requires a top learning strategy. Without one, you have to re-create a learning plan every time an employee requires training.
Most importantly, you’d be left with no metrics to re-evaluate the success of your learning plan and make improvements for the next time.
Every company process needs a strategy, and employee training is no different.
Once again, the statistics are crystal clear on this one.
According to stats provided by Leftronic, companies that invest in employee training achieve 21% more in profit.
When companies invest in training their employees, they improve productivity and motivation, which results in more profit for their business.
Then why are some companies still waiting for their employees to pick up on new skills by themselves?
To transform your sales reps into a winning team, invest in their knowledge.
Engage Your Team
Many business leaders cite low employee engagement as the number one challenge to achieving their goals.
While this is a common struggle across all departments, low engagement in the sales team directly affects the profitability of the company. Engaged employees are 21% more profitable, and disengaged employees cost US businesses anywhere between $450-550 billion a year.
This is the first indicator that spotting problems before they start generating losses is your number one priority as a sales team leader.
Maintain open, honest, and regular communication so you can identify potential red flags before they escalate.
Ask your team members for ideas and input. They understand the process inside out, but might feel reluctant to propose their own solutions.
Create a safe and transparent environment where your team members will feel like their voices are heard. Then, once you get a picture of what causes your team to lose motivation, act on it.
As a team leader, you’re not an island. Your success directly hinges on the success of your team and vice versa.
Ask for feedback as often as you give it. This is the first step towards reigniting the spark in your sales reps.
Conclusion
We’ve discussed the productivity boosters that great leaders never overlook.
If you want to lead a successful sales team, don’t neglect your role in their productivity and provide leadership and guidance.
With these tips, we hope to see you on the winning side.
