High Performing Sales Team
How would you describe the performance of your sales team? Not firing on all cylinders? Regularly having excuses for missing quotas? Missing the strategic window of opportunity?
Building a high performing sales team — one that consistently achieves and beats sales targets (on-field performance) while getting along with and contributing to the team and their target customers (off-field performance) — is a critical factor for organizations that seek to create and sustain high levels of profitable growth.
What Does It Take to be a High Performing Sales Team?
Of course, you first need a competitive solution to sell and a sales team with the baseline business sales skills to connect with your target buyers. These however are just the ticket to play the game. There is a huge difference between the success of a single salesperson or product and the success of an entire sales force over time.
4 Essentials for a High Performing Sales Team
Based upon decades of data from sales management training, we know that to create a truly high performing sales team, focus on bringing rigor and excellence to the following four essentials:
High performing sales teams ruthlessly define and prioritize their target markets, ideal customers, value proposition, and the critical big bets for profitable growth.
While many companies advocate a sales driven culture, we are continually surprised to uncover how difficult it is to get work done in a way that truly puts the customer first by making it easy to close deals, get customer support, and align with the way the customer wants to buy and use what you have to offer.
You will know you truly have a healthy sales driven culture when your sales team is engaged and when everyone in the company is aligned around making your customers and your customers’ customers successful. This takes metrics, rewards, processes, and systems that support high levels of customer intimacy with a strong externally oriented focus.
The Bottom Line
A high performing sales team depends the alignment of sales strategy, culture, and talent. Can you say that your sales strategy is clear, believable, and implementable? Is your culture helping or hindering sales growth? Have you provided the systems and processes to enable sales success?
To learn more about building a high performing sales team, download Sales Leadership Lessons – How Much Should You Push Your Sales Team?
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