Expanding the capability of your sales team and increasing the amount of revenue that they take in need not be a case of hiring new staff or training up new people. There are plenty of ways to reinvigorate your team and generate more revenue that don’t involve hiring personnel changes, just by making a few tweaks to your strategy or helping your team in a few places they’re having trouble can lead to a better performance all round.

Plug The Leaks

You can imagine your sales process like a series of connected pipes, each representing a different stage in the sale. Water flows through each of these pipes and eventually comes out the end (resulting in a purchase). The problem is that your pipes leak. While you’ll never be completely watertight it is highly likely that if you get your sales team together and analyze where you lose sales you’ll discover a lot of them happen at the same points in the process. You can then work together as a team to ‘plug’ these leaks and increase the amount of prospects that come through the process to completion, thereby helping to generate more revenue.

Increase The Productivity Of Your Sales Team

To do their job well your sales team need appropriate tools for the job such as marketing materials, CRM programs, and good lists of leads. How well are your current tools serving your sales team? If the only reason you’re using them is because ‘you’ve always done it that way’ or because you haven’t had time to find a replacement then this might be an opportunity to increase your team’s productivity and generate more revenue. By providing some great tools for your team, you’ll save them time that they’re currently spending doing administrative tasks when they could be out selling your product. The investment in tools that help them do their job will also raise their morale because they’ll feel invested in. When you do make changes to the tools your sales team use make sure they’re the right changes – you want to make their lives easier not harder. Ask your team what they’d like or how they’d like to work and see if there is an appropriate resource that can help them work effectively in their preferred manner.

Encourage Your Team To Have A Great Attitude

Creating a great sales team is not just about what the individuals do, it’s also about how they do it. We often encourage sales people to be competitive – but how does that work out in your team? You can be competitive with a great attitude, using failure as a motivational tool to work harder, or you can be competitive with a bad attitude, getting annoyed and angry when things don’t go your way. Establish with your team what attitudes you expect from them and then help them to reach them. By sharing with people, the attitudes your company values those who want to be successful will work harder to embody those values and attitudes. If you do have someone on your sales team with a poor attitude don’t shy away from talking to them – their bad attitude could be harming the whole team’s performance, not just their own.

Whatever level your sales team is currently at, whether they are sales rookies or grizzled sales veterans, you can help them improve their performance. Good communication with your team is vitally important to find what areas they are having problems and where they think improvements can be made. If you do come across a problem, it can be a great team exercise to discuss it together – you’ll find your team may come up with some great ideas that you wouldn’t have thought of yourself, and by including them in the process you’ll improve morale and help build a stronger team.