Winning Sales Team: 5 Research-backed Steps to Build One

Is Building a Winning Sales Team Part of Your Sales Strategy?
For many sales leaders, it can actually feel easier to build a sales team from the ground up than to inherit one with entrenched habits, uneven skills, and long-standing cultural quirks. Starting fresh gives you the freedom to shape the team your way — to establish standards, set expectations, and build team norms that reflect your strategic vision. But in reality, few leaders get that luxury. Most must work with an existing team, balancing respect for what already works with the courage to change what doesn’t.

Research Underscores Just How Critical Team Balance

• A Harvard Business Review study found that nearly 60% of newly appointed sales leaders fail within the first 18 months, often because they underestimate the complexity of transforming inherited teams.
• A report from McKinsey & Company revealed that top-performing sales organizations are twice as likely to invest in building and developing their existing sales talent rather than replacing it wholesale.

Five Tips for Building a Winning Sales Team
Every organization wants a sales team that consistently hits targets, builds trust with customers, and drives profitable growth. But few leaders truly understand what it takes to build — and sustain — a high functioning and high performing sales team. It’s not just about hiring top talent or setting aggressive goals. A winning sales team is the product of strategy, structure, culture, and continuous development.

1. Start with a Clear Sales Strategy
   Our organizational alignment research found that strategic clarity accounts for 31% of the difference between high and low performing sales teams.  A great sales team begins with clarity of direction.  Without this foundation, even the most talented sales professionals will pull in different directions.
   • Which target markets will you prioritize?
   • What differentiates you from the competition?
   • How will success be measured?
   • What type of customer experience do you want to deliver?

2. Hire for Fit, Not Just Talent
   Once your sales strategy is clear enough, you can align your sales structure, talent, and metrics to reinforce it.  Building a winning team isn’t about filling seats — it’s about finding the right people for your sales culture and strategy. According to a Harvard Business Review study, 46% of new sales hires fail within 18 months, most often due to poor cultural or role fit rather than lack of skill.

   Define what success looks like in your sales environment. Do your best performers thrive on collaboration or independence? Are they hunters, farmers, or consultative solution sellers? Use data-driven sales rep assessments and structured interviews to evaluate both sales competence and compatibility.

   Hiring for fit reduces turnover, accelerates new hire ramp time, and strengthens team cohesion — all critical elements of sustained sales success.

3. Develop Business Sales Skills Through Targeted Training and Continuous Coaching
   Once the right people are on board, ongoing development becomes the differentiator. Winning sales teams are not just trained in solution selling skills — they’re frequently and consistently coached.

   According to the Sales Management Association, companies that invest in regular sales coaching achieve 28% higher win rates than those that don’t.

   Effective coaching goes beyond pipeline reviews. It involves helping salespeople think critically about customer needs, refine their selling approach, and build confidence through real-time feedback. Coaching also reinforces accountability and learning agility — traits that distinguish top sales performers from the rest.

4. Align Compensation and Metrics with Desired Behaviors
   Too often, sales incentives encourage short-term wins over sustainable relationships. A winning sales team is built on alignment — between what’s measured, what’s rewarded, and what truly matters to customers.

   Design compensation plans that reinforce strategic priorities. If your strategy emphasizes customer retention, weight incentives toward renewals, up- and cross-selling, and client satisfaction scores. If innovation or collaboration drives success, include team-based rewards. When sales metrics, goals, and rewards all point in the same direction, sales performance becomes more predictable and scalable.

5. Build a Culture of Trust and Purpose
   Even the best sales strategy will fail in a weak sales culture. A Gallup study found that sales teams with high engagement outperform those with low engagement by 21% in profitability. Trust, recognition, and purpose drive this engagement.

   Create a sales environment where people feel valued for their contributions, encouraged to share ideas, and connected to a larger mission. Celebrate not only results but also the desired sales behaviors (e.g., collaboration, resilience, customer focus) that enable short- and long-term sales success.  A strong sales culture turns individual effort into collective momentum.

The Bottom Line
Building a winning sales team is both art and discipline. It starts with strategic clarity, attracts people who fit, develops them through coaching, rewards the right behaviors, and sustains them with culture. When all of these elements align, high performance becomes part of who your sales team is.

To learn more about building a winning performing sales team from the beginning, download our Sales Leadership Toolkit Now