By Ahmed al-Akber/Manama
Building an effective sales team is one of the most important things management can do. When a sale is made, the rest of the business starts moving: from finance and procurement, to manufacturing and distribution. When building a sales team with a growing company, its important to get a few things right. Here is a checklist of what the most important things are:
1) Define what you want to achieve. Before you go out and hire sales people, what is it that you want to achieve? Start with what your main organisational goals are, say for at least a year or more. What are your sales goals as far as revenue from current products and clients, and revenue from new products, and new markets? Do you have any productivity goals such as closing rates or the number of prospects you are talking to?
Once you have these goals, ask yourself what is missing in your current organisation that your sales team needs to fulfil. Do you need more sales people, or a more experienced team?
2) Define success for your team. What are the things you want your sales team to achieve? Start by outlining the most important tasks they must do every day to win. A good definition of this includes the responsibilities and goals they must achieve, the purpose of achieving those goals, and how they will develop themselves (through training or self-directed learning) to achieve those goals.
3) Make sure your sales team knows what they are selling. Too many sales managers send their sales reps out into the market without knowing enough about what they are selling. If they don’t understand the product fully, then it will be very difficult for them to explain the benefits. People don’t buy drills, they buy holes. If you can’t explain the benefits of what you sell, then you are not going to make a sale.
Have your sales team fully understand the product by asking them to use it or experience it. For example, ask a current client that you have a strong relationship with if they would spare the time to have a member of your sales team come see how they use the product or service they have bought from you.
4) Arm your sales team with the skills to sell. Its not enough that sales reps only understand what they sell. They have to understand how to sell it. That takes a whole different set of skills. From generating leads (which may or may not be their responsibility) through to managing a pipeline: they need to understand what activities lead to the greatest return. One way to achieve this is through training. Another is on the job coaching from an experienced manager.
5) Reward your team. When you see behaviour (and the desired results they provide) at play, what’s the best way to ensure those results are repeated? Reward the behaviour. Provide recognition for a job well done and provide financial and other incentives for reaching or exceeding targets.
Putting together a sales team is hard work. But once you have the fundamentals in place, you can build a high-performing team very quickly. Use this checklist to ensure you’re on the right track.
♦ Ahmed al-Akber is the managing director of ACK Solutions, a firm that helps companies to improve their marketing and sales results by offering more effective ways attracting customers and significantly better products and services. Ahmed has worked internationally in marketing, sales, and strategic planning at companies such as the Coca-Cola Company, Philip Morris International and Dell. Questions or comments can be sent to Ahmed on [email protected]
Ahmed al-Akber
