When your sales team is unmotivated, disengaged, and underperforming, morale will dip and your sales will suffer. It’s time to rally the troops and push them to do better. An ambitious sales team is a successful sales team. And an effective way to improve sales performance is to challenge sales people.
Use these strategies to challenge sales people in your department.
Though sales people are used to autonomy, and require it in order to their jobs effectively, they shouldn’t be left completely to their own devices. This can often lead to drops in motivation, to procrastination, and to underperformance. You need to set expectations with your sales team and communicate them effectively. Although you shouldn’t tell them how to do their jobs, you should give your reps high-level objectives to meet.
Though a lot goes into being a successful sales person, a lot of it comes down to the sales strategies used. If you believe your reps’ strategies are limiting their results, push them to move out of their comfort zone. Give them new sales strategies to use that are known to improve sales performance, such as adding value, establishing thought leadership, and embracing social selling.
By getting them to try out new strategies instead of using the same old tired methods that they’ve been using for years, you can challenge sales people to think outside of the box, learn something new, and improve their skills in today’s modern world.
Training is a vital part of success in a sales department. New hires must be effectively trained on sales processes, products, and services; procedures; tools and tech; and strategies. You must set them up for success. But that doesn’t mean you need to do the training on your own. In fact, it might actually be a better idea for new hires to get hands-on training from your current reps.
Plus, offering top-performing sales reps new responsibilities can be a riveting challenge that they’ll sink their teeth into. Having them train new hires will boost their engagement. It will also help them build confidence and learn management skills along the way. It’s a win-win.
If you don’t challenge sales people effectively, they might get bored and leave, seeking new work with better opportunities. A closer won’t feel motivated to create presentations and fill out reports all day. To avoid this turnover and retain top talent, let your best sales people do what they love. Ask them what their favourite tasks are and what they want to be doing with their days. If they’d rather be chasing down big clients than inputting data, let them! They’ll love the challenge.
It happens all the time—you lose clients to the competition. Challenge sales people to win them back. It’ll give them a goal to work towards while helping them to use different skills and strategies than they use to sell to new clients. Not only will you get clients back, but you’ll also help boost morale when your reps succeed in this task.
Though sales people are often lone wolves that work on their own, sometimes, great things can happen when they work together as a team. For many sales people, collaborating with others will be a challenge, one that will help them refine their communication and relationship building skills. It can also create some healthy competition among your team.
Contests can be a fun way to challenge sales people. Sales contests will motivate your team, get them to work harder, and boost productivity and morale all at once. Your reps will have a new goal to work on achieving and a shiny prize to win. Make the goal realistic but tough to reach and ensure the reward is motivating enough.
Claire has 4+ years of experience in sales and recruitment. As a Director of Client Services, her main objective is to connect great people to great companies by building strong relationships with both top clients and candidates in the sales industry. She specializes in sales roles of all seniority levels for both enterprise and start-up clients North American wide. When Claire isn't networking with top talent, she enjoys being outdoors, traveling and spending time with friends & family.