3 Big Factors to Optimize Sales Success Now

Optimize Sales Success at Work
Chasing every sales opportunity is no way to run a sales team or to optimize sales success.  It may be the way to run a kid’s lemonade stand, but not the way to lead a high performing sales team.  To succeed, sales leaders need to be focused and proactive.

Beyond just improving their sales team’s efficiency through being smart about doing things right, sales team leaders need to optimize sales success by doing the right things.

Selecting the Right Things to Do
Smart sales leaders understand what matters most in setting their sales reps on the right course.  First, the sales strategy must be clear and believable enough for the sales team to commit to it.  Then all sales practices, processes, and systems must 100% align with the overall business and sales strategies.  This allows sales teams to prioritize customers and deploy the sales force across the opportunities with the greatest potential yield.

Three Factors to Optimize Sales Success
We know from sales leadership simulation assessment data that to truly optimize sales success, you need to be smart about:

1. Selecting the Right Customers with the Right Value Proposition
   Leads, opportunities, and customers should not be treated equally. Some have greater potential, others less; some cost relatively little to serve, others more.  Prioritize your customer list so you know where the best opportunities lie for your unique value proposition and where customer acquisition costs are least.
2.  Allocating the Right Sales Resources
   Revenue growth is limited to a great extent by the capacity of your sales team to make calls, establish customer relationships, and serve clients. You need to deploy your team judiciously so that they have the capacity to effectively serve and nurture your ideal target clients.  It is not a “sales at all costs” effort but, instead, a sales “where it makes the most sense” effort.
3. Managing the Right Sales Performance
   And then there is the responsibility of the sales manager to set clear expectations, establish agreed-upon sales goals, manage sales team performance, assess and develop sales rep capabilities, and hold sales reps accountable.  Though many sales managers find this part of their job difficult, doing it effectively is one of the most important factor in realizing sales team results.  Holding frequent one-on-one performance conversations gives sales managers insight into what’s going right, what’s going wrong and how they can support their team.

   Sometimes it’s a matter of development and coaching new skills; sometimes there’s a need to change customer assignments or adjust territories.  Whatever the tweak, it is the sales manager’s job to see that everyone plays their part to reach the team goal — or be compassionately moved elsewhere.

The Bottom Line
As a sales leader, you are expected to optimize sales success.  It is your job to focus solution selling efforts how and where they will really make a difference to your customers and to your business.

To learn more about how to optimize sales success through sales coaching, download The Hard Truth About Sales Coaching and The Biggest Mistakes to Avoid