Sales teams are vital to many businesses because they allow their company to find and retain clients. A sales team is a group of professionals who work for the same company, often trying to sell a particular product or service. If you’re a business professional or responsible for recruiting a team, learning more about sales and team dynamics can be beneficial.
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In this article, we explore how you can build a high-quality sales team in eight steps, mistakes to avoid when building your sales team, and why having a strong sales team is important.
How to build a sales team
Here are eight steps to building an effective sales team:
1. Consult with other professionals
It can be helpful to ask other sales professionals for advice before starting your sales team. This can allow you to learn about new sales procedures and management techniques that might help you determine the ideal size of your sales team, which roles to hire, and other planning considerations. To consult with other sales professionals, you might reach out through email or social media, connect through networking events or ask mutual acquaintances for references.
2. Research your market
Conduct independent research into your market. It can help you prepare to build your sales team by identifying what skills and duties your team needs to tap into your market and find success. You can also use market research to learn about your competitors and their sales strategies, including methods they use to organize and manage their sales teams.
When performing market research, analyze which products tend to sell the best, the size of sales teams at similar companies, and what sales strategies seem most effective. Many companies conduct market research by reviewing databases and web pages, speaking directly with consumers and competitors to gather feedback, and observing sales strategies at work.
3. Hire professionals in all roles
Take care when hiring qualified individuals for all the roles on your sales team. Because a sales team requires a combination of professionals with unique skills and expertise, it’s important to hire people who are a good fit for your work style. This can help make your sales team strong from the beginning and ensure your team members can work together effectively.
4. Focus on skills while hiring
To build a high-performing sales team, it’s important that each member has the necessary skills to complete their tasks successfully. While recruiting, consider developing a list of important skills for each role and highlighting them during the interviewing process. For example, these are some skills and traits you may identify in ideal sales candidates:
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Ambition
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Collaboration
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Communication
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Problem-solving
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Motivation
5. Use organizational tools
Use project management or other tools to organize your sales team’s efforts. Many are available online and feature a design perfect for organizing large quantities of data and facilitating communication between groups. They also display a sales team’s results in a centralized location.
6. Set transparent goals
Having goals in place can help strengthen a sales team by giving team members something to work toward together and providing an opportunity to celebrate once the team reaches a goal. Many sales teams set annual, quarterly, monthly, or even daily sales progress and achievement goals they constantly monitor. Ensuring goals are transparent and specific can also be helpful in communicating the same information to provide a better understanding of team needs.
7. Maintain communication
Encourage regular communication between members of your sales team to increase productivity and task completion, including check-ins on progress to determine any obstacles or other blockers. Maintaining communication can also increase familiarity and the potential to learn from each other’s sales techniques, strengthening relationships and allowing team members to support one another and grow together.
8. Focus on engagement
To create a sales team that communicates well and collaborates, it’s important to create a strong team culture. You can do this by focusing on engagement among sales team members. Promote empathy, growth, persistence, and curiosity within the team and gather team feedback on engagement. These are some questions you can ask to understand the level of engagement within the team:
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Do you feel there’s meaning behind the job you do?
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Are you motivated when working?
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Do you feel capable of completing your tasks?
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Does the culture in our team promote feelings of safety?
What is a high-performing sales team?
A high-performing sales team is a department that successfully manages the sales goals of an organization. This department is often under the leadership of the sales manager. A high-performing sales team focuses on boosting sales, acquiring customers, retaining consumers, and helping to grow the business.
Important sales team roles
These are some important sales team roles you can reference to build your team effectively:
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Sales manager: Sales managers oversee the sales team. They may manage hiring, goal-making and team evaluation.
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Account executives: An account representative, or sales associate, engages with the client directly. They may go door-to-door or contact clients over the phone or using online chat features.
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Specialist: Sales specialists understand each aspect of the product or service and can help clients when they have difficult questions or complex problems to solve. When customer service or a salesperson can’t solve a client’s problem, they may refer to the sales specialists.
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Customer service: Customer service representatives focus on retaining clients. They interact with clients by following up on sales or helping customers solve problems with their accounts, services, or products.
I hope you find this article helpful.
