An essential part of every business should be a bustling and engaged sales operation. Here are tips to help you build the perfect sales team.

If you’re planning to set your company up for high growth potential, you’re going to need to hire a strong sales team to help you meet your goals. The success of your sales team can in many ways determine whether or not your business as a whole can be successful, so it’s important to spend time designing and developing your sales organization.

Here are tips that can help you set up your sales team and keep them performing at a high level.

Determine your needs and ideal structure

Before you begin hiring for your sales team, you should sort out your specific needs and how you want to structure your team. What are the biggest things you are trying to accomplish right now and what types of people will help you get there? Once you have that in mind, what type of sales structure do you want to build?

“Factors like the types of products or services offered by your organization and the growth curve of your company affect the roles, skill sets, and number of people you must hire,” Robert Izquierdo writes in The Blueprint. “For instance, inside sales teams are popular among small businesses because they are a lower cost than field sales. But if your clients require on-site handholding and guidance, or your product is best showcased with a demo that’s hard to deliver over the phone, perhaps a field sales team makes more sense.”

Hire salespeople with tasks in mind

With your sales team structure defined, now begins the hiring process. Positions you may need to fill include inside and outside sales representatives, sales managers, sales engineers and account managers. As you go about hiring for these roles, think hard about the tasks you need completed versus what you imagine defines an ideal person for a certain role.

“The first step in smart hiring and productivity is understanding the relevant sales tasks in your market and strategy and then reflecting those tasks in hiring criteria and a disciplined hiring process,” Frank V. Cespedes and Daniel Weinfurter wrote in the Harvard Business Review.

Equip your team with the right tools

With many sales teams moving from in-person to remote roles, the ideal tools and software for teams are changing as well. These sales tools will likely include:

• Customer management software
• Marketing automation software
• Video conferencing apps
• Scheduling applications
• E-commerce software

Set goals and meet them

When your sales team and tools are set, work with your employees to establish goals that the company should be meeting on a quarterly and annual basis. Goal setting ensures there is always something to be striving for. On top of company goals, you should encourage sales members to develop their own personal goals too.

“In the second week of January, my team always does a two-hour personal and professional goal-setting workshop,” Adam Weber, co-founder and CPO of Emplify, writes. “The bonding that takes place in this vulnerable session creates a closer team and they all hold each other accountable throughout the year. … Don’t let your reps stop at generic goals like revenue and salaries. Go a layer deeper to get at things like ‘save a down payment for a house’ or ‘take the kids to Disney.’”

Promote collaboration, not competition

While older notions of the sales process may have encouraged salespeople to compete with each other, newer models encourage salespeople to effectively compete together. Fiercely competitive team members may create toxic work relationships while collaborative relationships can push forward company goals while maintaining strong teams.

“Some sales teams compete against each other and others alongside one another,” Tracy Avin, vice president of business development at MBL Benefits Consulting, told Forbes. “I believe in bringing a team together who can support each other's efforts and share leads, building a stronger, further-reaching force. Share best and worst practices to learn from each other's experience in the trenches. Remember an opportunity is not lost unless the prospect goes out of business or is acquired.”

Align your sales and marketing operations

While sales teams don’t always work side-by-side with marketing employees, it’s smart to get them collaborating. Sales teams can request assets from marketing that can help them be successful and marketing may in turn want to make changes to strategy based on real-world insights from sales.

“When they’re aligned, sales teams see 38% higher win rates, and marketing teams see a 200% increase in marketing-generated revenue,” John Hall, co-founder of Calendar, writes. “These are huge wins in themselves — but what’s especially valuable is the fact that both teams can do less work to earn those wins. Sales reps benefit from the right content because it does much of their jobs for them. If a prospect has a question about your company’s solution, sales can send a blog post or case study that goes into detail.”

Read the full article at: www.uschamber.com

Read the full article at: www.growth-hackers.net

When I was in school, I played club volleyball. It was an intense environment — we traveled all around the country playing other teams in decked out conference centers and stadiums.

Our coaches took our seasons very seriously. Practices were strict, physical training was mandatory, and we were encouraged to ask for anything we needed to prepare for tournaments — extra reps, a specific food or drink, even a certain playlist on our iPods. (Yep, this was the pre-iPhone era.)

Regardless of where my team traveled or who we were playing, our coaches and trainers worked hard to cultivate a positive, successful environment for us. Looking back, I can see how the choices they made and culture they created ultimately helped us become the winningest team in our volleyball club. Moreover, our team stayed together for years.

The environments we play in and work in aren’t too different — they’re huge contributors to our success (or lack thereof) in each arena. Studies have shown that happy, motivated people work harder, stay in their jobs longer, and make their companies more successful.

In your sales organization, this starts with your sales environment.

A sales environment is a vague, intangible concept. How do you measure it? Think of it this way: How do you want your sales reps to feel when they step on your sales floor (or log into work from their home office)? Moreover, how do you want them to describe what it’s like to work in your sales organization?

I’m betting you’d like your sales team to answer these questions with overwhelmingly positive language. You want your sales team to feel encouraged, driven, and supported. You’d like them to describe your sales organization as positive, inclusive, and successful.

This feedback is important as a negative, toxic sales environment can lead to low morale, high turnover, and negative results. It’s worth the time, effort, and investment to cultivate a positive sales environment.

Let’s unpack the different types of sales environments and how to ensure each is successful.

Types of Sales Environments

You can define your sales environment according to a number of factors: where you’re selling from, who you’re selling to, how you incentivize the selling process, and more. For that reason, more than one of the following types of sales environments may apply to your sales organization.

In-Office Sales Environment

When you first thought of a “sales environment,” you probably pictured the physical layout of an office floor, right? I sure did. While this doesn’t encompass every aspect of a sales environment and culture, it’s definitely a critical part.

If you manage an in-person sales team, consider organizing an open office environment. An open space encourages collaboration and transparency, and it allows reps to shadow and learn from each other’s sales calls. Moreover, it encourages openness and cooperation between sales reps and their managers and leaders.

However, don’t limit your sales team to only a no-walls environment. Provide private spaces like conference rooms and cubicles for private meetings and quiet, focused time. Your team needs both.

Most importantly, ask your team what kind of office environment they prefer. They’re the only ones who can tell you. If you give them what they need to succeed, they’ll feel comfortable and compelled to work harder.

Remote Sales Environment

Cultivating a remote sales environment is a bit different. As more sales organizations move to a work-from-home model, it’s important to understand how to create a positive and collaborative remote culture.

While you can’t physically organize your remote sales team, you can encourage communication and transparency through weekly stand-up meetings, routine one-on-ones, and an open door policy over tools like Slack or email. Additionally, be sure to equip your team with the necessary software to collaborate with each other from home, including a CRM and other sales enablement tools.

Another important aspect of a remote sales environment is the feedback process. Do your reps feel comfortable approaching you with constructive feedback? Do you regularly ask them their thoughts on how you structure your meetings and sales training? This line of communication is even more important to establish when you’re not working from an office.

Read the full article at: blog.hubspot.com

Expecting your sales team to be productive without an employee engagement strategy is like trying to order a beef burger at a vegan drive-through. It’s just not a realistic expectation.

Your sales team want more than incentives and a pay cheque, they want to be engaged.

By implementing an employee engagement strategy, your people will feel recognised and encouraged to deliver a superior customer experience.

An engagement strategy has the ability to drive performance and business growth. It’s that simple, and, it’s a whole lot easier than insisting on 21-day-matured, grass-fed beef at a veg-only establishment. 

If you want your people to perform, you need to create a sense of purpose. Earning a pay cheque is great and all, but going home knowing that you contributed to something bigger than yourself can be the difference between an engaged and disengaged employee.

That’s why it’s imperative that you create a sense of purpose even in your sales team.

When setting your organisation’s objectives and vision don’t just create goals and tasks around your bottom line.

Employees, especially those Millennials, are desirous of working at organisations that care about more than just profit. They’re interested in collaborating with organisations that are socially responsible and that care about its people and the environment. And, with Millennials soon to make up more than 75% of the workforce by 2025, it’s definitely an approach worth consideration.

This statement really rings true if you want to attract and retain top talent of this generation cohort.

You can gain a competitive advantage by creating a working environment, for permanent, contract or remote employees, by instilling a company culture that resonate with Millennials’ desires. This doesn’t mean an endless supply of non-foam drip lattes with one shot of caramel syrup or gluten-free bread. It means that you need to work at establishing a company culture that fosters productivity, connectivity, efficiency and a sense of community.  

Sales can be unforgiving, and, motivation can be challenging at times. Try to create more value for your employees within their roles. Help them to understand your organisation’s vision and mission. This will give them a sense of purpose and a sense of belonging. When someone feels part of something, they are more likely to positively contribute. 

Align your sales team’s goals and targets with their aspirations.

Let’s explain: Setting the goals and targets with a higher purpose makes it more meaningful. For example, if your team’s sales target is target x and they achieve it, the organisation will contribute in time or money to a charitable cause they support. Even better, give them time off in a ‘Do Good Day’ to support their charitable cause without it being deducted from their leave, when they reach their sales target.

In fact, employee engagement affects key business performance outcomes...

Companies with a mean of 9.3 engaged employees for every actively disengaged employee experienced 147% higher earnings per share compared with their competitors. That’s four times higher than their competitors! There is empirical evidence that employee engagement leads to an increased bottom line.

Engaged employees are effective employees, and wouldn’t you want this type of employee in your sales team? 

Start seeing your employees as people. Empower your people to do a good job. Autonomy is a powerful method to get the best out of your sales team.

Consider this: When you’re busy with a task, would you like to be told how to do it and micro managed? Or, would you like the opportunity to do it in a way that you consider best?

For experienced employees, their answer would most likely be the latter. Simply share what outcomes you expect and, importantly, ensure that they have the tools and resources to perform the task. Your sales team will feel emboldened by the confidence you’ve shown them and they will take full accountability and ownership of their tasks. Bonus: You won’t have to send a trail of passive-aggressive ‘checking in’/ ‘following up’ emails. It’s a win-win for everyone!

Sales leaders, you can drive employee engagement

Yes, you can! Sales is a driven world of tasks, administration, follow ups, meetings, appointments and targets. Don’t let your sales people get lost in their busyness. Check in with your team often to ensure that they are doing okay. With the advent of social media and digitisation, there can sometimes be a disconnect between you and your people, so it’s important to maintain the human connection. 

Strategic social recognition

One of the most powerful ways to drive employee engagement is through social recognition. This type of behaviour creates daily opportunities for employees and their managers to give each other meaningful high fives whenever they do good work.

Rewards and recognition create a positive workplace culture that could lead to a higher level of engagement. SHRM cited in a study that “employees see company culture and a sense of connection” as a big contributing factor to employee job satisfaction.

A research review published by Cornell University noted that: “41% of the variation in employee engagement can be attributed to the level of recognition that an employee receives…”

The importance of building strong relationships between sales reps and managers cannot be overstated. Help your sales team evolve new sales strategies and tactics. This will show them that you’re sincere in helping them work through their challenges. Design your meetings with empathy in mind and you could see a reduction in turnover and a far more engaged, productive sales team.

Employee engagement is a critical factor to your sales team’s success. Make it a priority and foster a culture of feedback and recognition in doing so. Through this, your team will be cohesive and engaged and you’ll more than likely experience an uptick in customer experience and hopefully sales.

Read the full article at: www.insights.bountixp.com

Sales management can be a difficult business discipline to master. It involves not only understanding and applying the latest sales techniques, but also helping sales teams work at optimum capacity.

Managing a sales team is demanding enough under usual circumstances, however the recent trend towards remote work has added additional layers of complexity. Sales managers now not only have to oversee a shift in working practices – but deal with the fact that many potential clients and customers are working from home.

This has resulted in a necessity to adopt the best sales apps and maintain extra flexibility to keep teams productive and motivated.

What is Sales Management?

According to Pipedrive, sales management is the process of

“ Developing a sales force, coordinating sales operations and implementing sales techniques”.

Using these strategies, the sales manager aims to help a business hit or surpass their sales targets. Which makes sales management a crucial element of any operation, large or small. And, as well as helping companies reach their sales objectives, the sales management process enables organizations to stay competitive throughout testing times.

With a clear view of which processes to monitor and how to keep track of them, sales managers should be able to pinpoint issues before they become problems. They’re also responsible for training staff so they know what they need to be doing to increase sales quotas.

Sales Management Strategies

Sales managers will have differing roles and responsibilities depending on their business. However, there are certain key strategies that tend to underpin the sales management process.

In this post we’ll outline some of these key approaches and offer some tips on how to maximize their potential:

1. Building the Sales Team

Sales teams often contain numerous types of employees from varying backgrounds. These include account executives, sales and business development reps, sales specialists, customer success reps, and more. It’s the job of a sales manager to hire, onboard, and train all team members.

Without a robust sales hiring strategy a company is at risk of ending up in a costly cycle of consistent turnover. Recruiting wrongly and losing an employee means having to hire someone else to fill that position – and that’s expensive.

But great sales teams don’t come about by accident. Finding the right people with the right qualities – those that display the highest levels of sales engagement – isn’t easy. That’s why the expertise and experience of a sales manager is crucial in order to identify and recruit the most talented individuals.

Tips on optimizing your sales management hiring strategy

To help you in advance of the selection process, create a hiring profile for your sales team so you can identify the types of reps you want.

Create a list of attributes you would ideally like in an employee to help you develop your profile. Then, during the selection process, look out for candidates who exhibit these types of behaviors and traits.

The following characteristics indicate that a candidate could potentially be an asset for your team:

• Curiosity: Are candidates able to identify, question, and pursue answers?
• Feedback: Are they able to receive and process feedback effectively?
• Motivation: Do they understand what motivates them?
• Listening: Are they capable of listening in order to absorb information?
• Empathy: Do they have the ability to truly identify with prospective customers and give them the best customer experience possible?
• Closure: Are they aware of when to hang on and when to let go?
• Timing: Do they understand when to be patient?

In order to identify the above characteristics, use well-constructed screening questions. For example, if they have worked in a customer services environment ask them to talk about a time they had to exhibit patience with a customer. Alternatively, create situations where candidates have the chance to demonstrate these attributes.

Make sure your job descriptions are clear and concise and place your ads in the right places, such as on LinkedIn.

Using a CRM can help you organize your list of candidates and track their progress throughout the recruitment process.

Once you’ve decided on the right person, make your offer appealing. Highlight why this is the right position for them. Good sales managers understand that talented reps often demand higher compensation and the promise of career progression ,so factor this into your hiring process. It’s also generally the case that employees who are paid commensurably are more likely to stay longer.

Once you’ve recruited a new member of the sales team, offer them a strong onboarding process that doesn’t throw them in at the deep end. Have systems in place so that employees can work from home. Then help them get started with their new technology by offering them one-to-one training or a demo on how to use their new equipment.

Once you have a good team in place, it’s time to make sure they have the right ongoing training.

2. Training the Sales Team

Sales is a highly demanding area, so in order to succeed the team needs to be highly motivated. Coaching and mentoring play an important role in this. In fact, coaching a sales team is listed as a top practice when it comes to higher quota attainment. This makes it an important aspect of sales management strategy.

Sales leaders need to have strong personalities in order to inspire their team to achieve. They also need to have a wide range of sales skills and working knowledge of the latest sales performance boosting tools, like a predictive dialer system.

Unfortunately, however, this scenario often falls short. Fewer than a quarter of organizations cited sales coaching as a strength. Many overloaded sales managers say they struggle to find the time.

Read the full article at: www.rightinbox.com

Let’s not sugarcoat the situation. Even at the beginning of the year, signs were pointing towards a time of economic recession, and that was before COVID-19 came along and dealt the global economy the most superlative kick-em-while-they’re-down blow we might ever have witnessed. 

A period of recession looks inevitable and, along with countless other repercussions, it means that life is going to get a lot harder for sales executives out there. These forlorn figures will be tasked with selling their companies’ products and services to organizations that are likely to be in a budget-cutting kind of mood.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s evidence that, if approached correctly, smart and well-organized salespeople and sales teams can succeed not despite a period of belt-tightening but because of it.

In his 1980 book, Free To Choose, Nobel prize-winning economist and author Milton Friedman asserted that periods of bust are exactly what sow the seeds for the subsequent booms, as recessions squeeze the excess out of the market and create opportunities for the companies who survive. 

We take a look at four strategies for getting the most out of your sales team and setting them up for success, even when the chips are down.

1: Find and hire great people, then train them

Unless you’re recruiting for the SpaceX sales team, this isn’t rocket science. When there are vacancies to fill, many companies rush through the hiring process in the mistaken belief that having someone in the role is better than having nobody. However, finding and hiring the right people is the first and arguably most crucial step to creating a great team of any kind – but especially a sales team.

Now could be a great time to invest in growing your sales team. While it’s sad to see so many companies going under, many talented and hardworking salespeople are suddenly on the job market. Look past their previous company’s lack of success and you could pick up some real diamonds.

However, the job doesn’t stop with recruitment, and even underperforming sales teams can become all-star squads if they’re managed well and given the right training. Incredibly, more than half of all salespeople lack necessary sales skills and 58 percent are unable to answer buyers’ questions effectively. Companies that do train their sales teams tend to focus only on the onboarding process with the result that, after 90 days in the role, sales executives have forgotten almost all the content.

The upside of consistent learning and development is undeniable. One report suggests that sales training increases individuals’ performance by 20 percent. According to the same report, high-performing sales teams are twice as likely to have received ongoing training as their low-performing counterparts.

Learning new skills and approaches becomes even more decisive at times of upheaval or accelerated change.

2: Prepare your sales team for the next normal

It’s a cliché, but those who embrace the uncertainty of change tend to be the ones who emerge stronger. Few periods have been as uncertain as the age of Corona.

Time spent face-to-face is the lifeblood of most sales organizations, be that through client meetings, presentations or events. The recent pandemic didn’t so much rip up that playbook as burn it completely and scatter the ashes into a hurricane.

According to Doodle’s research study, Growing Client Loyalty Remotely, 59 percent of US employees believe that shifting to online-only meetings has made it more challenging to engage with clients. Meanwhile, 23 percent are fearful that online meetings will lead to fewer interactions with clients.

Quality training and effective management can help to shift perspectives. For example, with competitors struggling and potential clients spending less time in meetings, this could be the ideal time to start building new relationships. 

Our research revealed that only 34 percent of professionals make more of an effort to prepare for virtual meetings than in-person meetings. At the same time, 46 percent of the surveyed employees provide clients with the opportunity to schedule meetings outside of regular working hours to accommodate their schedules better. Opportunities abound for the sales teams who are willing to go the extra mile to create extraordinary online experiences at clients’ convenience. 

Given the importance of the online sales pitch – a state-of-play that’s likely to extend beyond the Coronavirus pandemic – sales teams would do well to take an athlete’s approach to their presentations, recording, rewatching and analyzing their performance for areas of improvement. 

There’s also the potential for improving and streamlining your entire sales process. It can sometimes take weeks to schedule a date and time when all the client’s key stakeholders are available for a sales call. Intelligently integrating technology, such as a secure scheduling platform, can make that process painless for the client and save tens of hours for the sales executive.

3: Build trust with and within the sales team

If a high-quality sales executive is hard to find, an exceptional sales team manager is like gold dust. Typically, it’s a role filled by the most experienced or most alpha salesperson on the team, but that person is rarely, if ever, the best manager. Great managers build trust with their team and create a shared group dynamic in which members feel like part of a bigger whole. 

What can a good sales manager do to build that trust?

• Regular one-on-ones: The days of the lone wolf sales rep are long behind us, mercifully. Scheduling frequent time with all sales professionals indicates that their role and their progression is vital to the company and provides a sense of support that is vital for achieving success.
• High emotional intelligence: No two salespeople are the same. A good manager will spend time understanding team members, how they like to be managed, and their professional goals. Some sales organizations go as far as allowing sales teams to pick their own rewards, from extra days off to a meal at a restaurant with their spouse.  
• Build a team: A successful sales team is more than a group of individuals. While each employee may have their own professional goals and preferred approach, there must also be shared team objectives and a common culture. Managers who communicate and role model the company’s broader purpose help create winning cultures.
• Remove barriers to success: Beyond organizing regular training and upskilling, one crucial facet of a manager’s role is discovering anything that’s hindering their team’s performance, from internal processes that are no longer fit for purpose, to implementing tools and technologies that can maximize efficiency. 
• Provide clear goals: Those goals should go beyond monthly or annual sales figures; salespeople should be provided with daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly goals that are discussed openly and honestly. Just as important is that those goals are not used as a stick to beat sales teams with, but as the foundation for detailed feedback and recognition, and the basis for effective improvement plans.

4: Get sales closer to the rest of the company

It’s an irony of business that when the economy is booming and a company is performing, they’re least likely to look for a new solution or service. Why fix something that isn’t broken? If your product or service can save clients money or increase efficiencies, economic downturns could be the ideal time to get out there and sell your solution.

Read the full article at: en.blog.doodle.com

Ungrateful people are:
Easily discouraged. Ingratitude creates constant disappointment. “What’s the use.”
Resentful of the benefits or advantages others enjoy. Unthankfulness doesn’t enjoy the success of others.
Entitled. Ungratefulness hates seeing others advantaged but expects advantage for itself.
Self-obsessed. Ingratitude has little room for others because the world revolves around its own troubles, disappointments, and resentments.
Thin skinned.
Clinging to past offenses. Ungratefulness is still talking about the offenses of 1999.
Fault finding and demanding. Nothing’s ever good enough for an ingrate.
Why choose ungratefulness:
You might say you’re unthankful because life is miserable.

Doesn’t it seem stupid to multiply misery by topping it off with a bitter dollop of ingratitude.

Gratitude for leaders:
Grateful leaders notice and acknowledge benefit or advantage.

Leadership is about noticing. Ungrateful leaders have discouraged teams.
Gratitude requires expression. Unexpressed gratitude is ungratefulness.
Thankfulness appreciates benefit or advantage. Imagine walking around noticing the good stuff.
The above definition is harvested from the following sources.

Appreciative of benefits received.
Warmly or deeply appreciative of benefits received.
Feeling or showing an appreciation of kindness.
Showing or expressing thanks, especially to another person.
12 benefits of gratitude:
If you can’t choose gratitude because it benefits others, choose it for yourself.

Less stress.
Resilience.
Less envy.
Contentment.
Optimism.
Deeper relationships. Who enjoys friendship with an ingrate?
Improved sleep.
Better physical health.
Longevity.
Increased productivity.
Improved decision making.
Higher energy.
Two gratitude practices anyone can achieve:
#1. Record one thing you’re grateful for every morning during the month of November. Aim low so you can be thankful for success.

Tip: Place a small notepad on the corner of your desk as a gratitude trigger.

#2. Everyday ask people what they are grateful for. (Begin meetings by asking the gratitude question.)

What are some dangers of ingratitude?

What are some benefits of gratitude?


Thanks for sharing.
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Read the full article at: leadershipfreak.blog

When was the last time you reviewed the position description you use to hire sales reps for your organization? If it’s been awhile, you might want to consider rewriting the description to shift hiring focus to skills, instead of college degrees. That advice comes from Virginia Rometty, who stepped away from her position as IBM’s CEO earlier this year.

The Problem With Today's College Graduates

In speaking about basic inequalities in the marketplace and employers’ myopic fixation on hiring people with four-year degrees, Rometty pointed out that candidates with the ability to do very well as employees are often overlooked. Our economic system is rigged against people who don’t have the financial resources to obtain a four-year degree in the traditional way. Often, these people belong to marginalized demographic groups.

In the past, employers have been hesitant to hire candidates who lacked what they assumed to be impeccable credentials. Those credentials included a college degree. What has been the experience of employers who don't shift hiring focus to skills instead of college degrees? A couple of things seem to be happening. More students are graduating without knowing basic soft or hard skills. In some cases, they aren’t able to write effectively. In other cases, the college curriculums and instructor knowledge aren't keeping pace with technology changes. Some new hires with four-year degrees from a highly rated university also don’t succeed in the organization. Why? Because they’re unable to fit with the team or the kind of work they’re expected to do.

Companies Invest in Training

The end result of these hiring outcomes is that about 50% of employers now offer a moderate amount of on-the-job training to help their college-educated hires come up to speed. You know you’re going to have to invest significant resources to train new employees. Doesn’t it make sense to hire people who are willing and want to learn?

Rometty made this point in a presentation she made last year. She explained that “43% of IBM’s open job requisitions today don’t call for a traditional college diploma.” Instead of a degree, IBM is looking for candidates who possess characteristics such as curiosity. At SalesFuel, we believe that curiosity is one of the top soft skills a sales rep should possess. An individual who is naturally curious will spend extra time asking discovery questions that will get to the heart of a prospect’s problem. The curious sales rep will also think about ways to apply the solution they’re selling to the prospect’s situation.

Assessing Soft Skills

How do you know which candidates possess curiosity? If you write a job description listing that characteristic as desirable, applicants will claim to possess it. In our era of high unemployment, applicants will say anything they think the hiring organization wants to hear. And if they are called to interview for the position, they’ll tell the human resources folks and the hiring manager all about their curiosity.

During your interview process, you may have many people asking candidates about factors like curiosity. The problem is they may not be envisioning these skills the same way. In addition, an experienced sales rep will know how to impress different interviewers with soft skills such as confidence. We’ve found that sales managers tend to overvalue characteristics like confidence when hiring reps. Our research shows that what prospects value is a rep who provides relevant ideas to help their business. That statistic underscores the importance of characteristics like curiosity and creativity.

Shift Hiring Focus to Skills

One way to ensure consistency and to shift hiring focus to skills is to have your candidates take a comprehensive sales skills assessment. These kinds of assessments reveal where a candidate will need training and coaching to improve sales skills. In addition, you’ll learn about a candidate’s soft skills such as curiosity, initiative, and coachability.

If you’re committed to making your hiring process fairer and more equitable, and if you want to bring in candidates who have the potential to become rainmakers, start rewriting your job descriptions. And start using a sale skills assessment to remove bias and measure the soft skills the candidates truly possess.

Read the full article at: salesfuel.com

When considering how to boost your revenue and grow your business, what comes to mind? Evolving your product line? Reaching your audience in new ways? Launching a brand awareness campaign?

Have you ever considered the team working to sell your products? Specifically, the managers who lead your sales teams? These are the folks who oversee the team that communicates directly with your prospects and customers on a daily basis.

Although your product line, buyer personas, and brand awareness are important, sales managers are uniquely critical to the success of any business. They have the potential to unlock huge returns that impact the business's revenue and growth.

Think about it this way: If you're a sales manager and you help each of your 10 reps sell 20% more, you've essentially just "created” two new salespeople. Sales managers are uniquely powerful when it comes to boosting your bottom line.

In this guide, we'll cover the reasons why getting sales management right is so important. We'll also discuss some sales management processes, strategies, and resources to help your team become high impact players for your business.

Sales managers do this by implementing sales management processes, strategies, and objectives to help their team hit or exceed their targets and goals.

Sales Management Process

Sales management isn't a linear process — everyone's strategies and responsibilities look slightly different depending on their team, products, and resources. (We'll talk more about these throughout this piece.)

Generally, sales managers manage at least four main components: people, strategy, activity, and reporting. These are the four "steps" of the sales management process we'll cover below.

Sales Hiring and People Management

A sales team is only as good as their manager, and in order for he or she to lead an outstanding team, they need to first hire outstanding people. The first part of the sales management process is hiring a solid sales team. This involves writing strong job descriptions, interviewing eligible candidates, and working with HR to create fair sales compensation plans.

This stage also applies to people management. This involves sales training and coaching, as well as team-building and morale-boosting activities.

Sales Strategy Development and Management

Sales managers are responsible for setting the vision and strategy for their sale steam. One critical part of this is building the sales process that their team will follow. This process keeps the team aligned and working toward the same goals by following the same steps, ultimately creating an autonomous, well-oiled machine.

Developing a sales process will also allow management and to identify inefficiencies and notice where their team can improve.

Sales Activity Management

Next, sales managers are responsible overseeing the day-to-day activity of their sales team — from prospecting to close. This involves celebrating wins, understanding losses, and advocating for the team as a whole.

Sales management is just as much as the people as it is about the sales. This means that managers should keep a close eye on daily sales activity and address issues and wins when necessary.

Sales Reporting Management

The last step in the sales management process is analyzing and reporting on sales activity. Like with a sales process, sales managers should also create a systematized reporting process so their sales team knows where and when they're being measured as well as how they can improve. This process could include reporting on win rate, average sales cycle, and lead-to-opportunity conversion rate.

Sales managers are also responsible for using this data to forecast future sales revenue and update team standards and goals.

Good communication is crucial to sales success.

Sounds obvious, right? You can’t make a sale unless you’ve demonstrated value to a prospect. You can’t do that unless you’ve understood their problems and devised a strategy to solve them.

In turn, you can’t do that until you get your prospect to tell you what’s wrong. And so on, and so forth …

So, communication is key. We wrote this guide to unpack why communication in sales is so important and explain 15 helpful skills to cultivate across your sales team.

What's the importance of communication in sales?

The root of sales success is the ability to gather and provide information in a way that makes your prospect want to do business with you. Your value proposition, your pricing, even your product’s features — none of that matters unless you’re able to get your prospects to talk to you and also listen to what you have to say.

That means you have to be incredibly attuned to your buyer and understand what they mean when they tell you — or don't tell you — something. It also means that you can't just reel off a list of benefits or reasons to work together.

You've got to understand how your prospects learn, what they care about, what communication style they prefer, and adapt your strategy accordingly.

So, before you immerse yourself in buyer personas, case studies, and marketing collateral, work on these skills to ensure that when you’re talking to a prospect, you’re sending the right message.

1. Pay full attention.

We’re all busier than ever before, and selling can be an especially pressure-filled career. So it’s understandable that during a client meeting, your mind could wander over to the demo you have to prepare for this afternoon, the prospecting you forgot to do, or the contract you’re waiting on to come in.

Just because it’s understandable doesn’t make it acceptable. Showing up to a call isn’t just about physically being on the other end of the line. You have to dedicate 100% of your attention to each call, otherwise you’ll miss details and make your prospect repeat things they’ve already told you. It’ll be obvious when you’re not paying attention, and that’s no way to treat buyers.

2. Practice active listening.

Not only do you have to listen, you have to listen actively, otherwise your conversation won’t really go anywhere.

“Too often, salespeople are waiting for their turn to talk or thinking about what to say next, instead of truly listening to the prospect,” Databox CEO Peter Caputa says.

Caputa uses the following four-step process:

• Truly listen to the prospect.
• Feed back the content and feeling of the prospect’s words.
• Confirm you heard the prospect correctly.
• Ask a relevant follow up question to further clarify your understanding of their situation.

3. Read body language and control your own.

The same sentence said by someone who’s smiling, looking directly into your eyes, and sitting up straight is received very differently when the speaker is looking away and slouching — even if they meant the same thing both times.

That’s because while we can say pretty much anything we want, our body language often reveals our true intentions or meaning. Great communicators know how to read others’ body language so they can anticipate the direction a conversation’s heading, and also make sure their own body language isn’t sending out signals they don’t mean to broadcast.

4. Master the nuances of voice tone.

Like body language, voice tone — your voice pitch, volume, speed, and even your word choice — affects how the words you’re actually saying are interpreted. And if you’re in inside sales, the only thing you have to make an impression is your voice.

Listen to how your prospect speaks, then mirror their speaking patterns when it makes sense. While you probably shouldn’t imitate every slang word or lingo they use, slow down if they speak slowly — or speed things up if they talk rapidly. Match your level of formality and familiarity to your prospect as well. The key is to meet buyers on their turf — and that means speaking in a way they’re comfortable with.

5. Be empathetic.

You don’t necessarily have to agree with everything your prospect is saying, but you should always at least try to see things from their point of view. And that means more than just saying, “Hmm, I see where you’re coming from.”

The best sales reps are able to connect with their prospects because they actually understand the things their buyers do at work every day and the challenges they face. Not only does being empathetic make you more likable, it also increases your chances of closing a deal. When you can draw on your knowledge of your prospects’ actual day-to-day, you’re better equipped to understand what they care about, which makes it more likely you’ll be able to help them.

6. Understand what’s not being said.

Prospects sometimes don’t tell the whole truth. And that’s okay, as long as you know how to spot when it’s happening. Is your prospect just evaluating your company because his boss told him to present three options? Is your prospect sold, but her manager, the economic buyer, isn’t? These are crucial things to know, and you can’t suss them out until you learn to read between the lines.

7. Speak in specifics.

Great communicators are not persuasive because they speak in dramatic, sweeping rhetoric. They’re able to convince people because they can point to specific examples or anecdotes that support the point they’re trying to make — and in the case of salespeople, because they can demonstrate exactly how a product or feature will help their buyer.

Be as specific as you can. And if you can throw in a catchy sound bite or two, by all means do it. Just don’t rely on quippy phrases to get a deal to the finish line.

8. Be a subject matter expert.

Of course, you can’t be specific if you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. If you sell to a specific industry, you should know that industries’ concerns, behaviors, and buying patterns down pat. If you sell to multiple industries, know your value prop as it relates to each cold and use customer references as backup.

Prospects will never trust you if it doesn’t seem like you really understand your (or their) business, so become an expert in your relevant field.

9. Know what you don’t know.

But being an expert doesn’t mean you know everything. Unless you’ve shadowed your buyer, you don’t know exactly what they do or every nuance of their business. So don’t act like you do. You should know enough to sketch out the outlines of their situation on your own, but you’ll always have to rely on your prospects to fill in the little details.

Be aware of the gaps in your knowledge, then ask your prospect to help fill them in. They’ll appreciate your honesty about what you don’t know, and you’ll avoid losing deals because of false assumptions.

10. Be genuinely curious.

The key to sales is asking good questions. And if you’re not actually curious about your prospect’s situation, it’ll be all too easy to slip into your elevator pitch before you’ve established whether any part of it is relevant to your buyer. Great communicators are naturally curious about their conversational counterparts, and that’s especially crucial in sales — ask questions first, then answer them later.

11. Assume good intent.

Sometimes, prospects leave out important deals that can change the trajectory of a deal. Sometimes, they make a commitment before they've gotten approval from the necessary stakeholders. Sometimes, they lie on purpose.

All of the above situations are frustrating — and some are certainly cause for annoyance. But it's often difficult to distinguish between situations where a buyer misled you on purpose and one where they made a genuine error. Jumping to conclusions about your prospect's intent will color the rest of your interactions in a negative light. Always assume good intent so you're not subconsciously treating your prospects with hostility.

12. Always be honest.

Just because you're assuming good intent doesn't mean your prospect will, so always be upfront about the questions you can answer, the questions you can't, and the questions with answers your prospect might not necessarily like.

Your prospects won't be forthright about their goals and areas for improvement unless they trust you. That means always being upfront when you don't know something so they believe what you're saying when youdo know the answer.

Blockchain has come to us from all aspects and become an indispensable part of our life. How much do you know about the application of blockchain? Do you know all these familiar applications about blockchain? Maybe you have heard about the application of blockchain. Today Jarvis+ will take you to review the details of blockchain in our life.

Ant blockchain, together with Alibaba public welfare, launched the public welfare plan on the chain, applied the blockchain technology to the public welfare, realized that the donation can be linked, the process can be stored, the information can be traced, and the feedback can be reached, so as to create a credible and transparent public welfare.

Recently, have you found that in Alipay’s “public welfare” mini program, you can check every donation on the platform, and even look at the letter of gratitude written by the children in the mountain area. Based on ant blockchain’s public welfare plan on the chain, it has gradually realized the whole process of tracking each donation from donation to recipient’s collection. After that, it’s as simple as checking express to check the whereabouts of each donation, which is an important step for ant blockchain to promote the transparency of public welfare.

Today, with the development of 3D printing technology, it is not difficult to copy a certificate with fine workmanship, which makes it difficult to prove your identity.

Microsoft, Tencent and Ethereum have all developed corresponding applications to store the data of entity ID on the blockchain. Users scan their own identity documents with their mobile phones. The application will encrypt the document information and save it in the user’s local area, and save the data fingerprint to the blockchain. The data fingerprint on the blockchain is controlled by a private key. Only the user who holds the private key has the right to modify it, otherwise no one has the right to modify it. At the same time, in order to prevent users from stealing other people’s identity documents to scan and upload, the application also allows banks and other institutions to endorse the user’s identity to ensure the authenticity.

Financial services is one of the earliest application areas of blockchain, and also one of the areas with the largest number of blockchain applications and the highest popularity. Blockchain has become one of the important technologies for many financial institutions to compete for new financial technology.
Now, almost all banks are exploring blockchain technology and application, and have made substantial application achievements in financial fraud prevention, asset custody transactions, financial audit, cross-border payment, reconciliation and settlement, supply chain finance and insurance claims settlement, to a certain extent, promoting the resolution of the complex credit verification, high cost, long process in previous financial services Data transmission error and other problems. At present, there are some typical cases in the field of financial services, such as the inter agency reconciliation platform based on the blockchain, the difference account checking system, and the cross-border direct link clearing business system transformed by the blockchain technology.

With the development of economy and society, the scale and scope of public service are expanding, and its influence is growing day by day. High quality government service oriented by public demand will be an important direction for the development of public service in the future. At present, the government has begun to promote the “blockchain + government” service and achieved positive results.
Through blockchain, government departments have effectively solved the problem of “information island”. By using blockchain technology, data sharing among governments at all levels and departments can be realized, which is conducive to improving work efficiency, reducing administrative costs and bringing better government service experience to the public.In addition, for the immature protection of intellectual property rights in China, blockchain technology is gradually embedded in the creation platform and tools, using its anti forgery and anti tamper features, objectively recording the creation information of works, providing copyright certificates for massive works at low cost and high efficiency. On this basis, it can also support copyright capitalization and rapid transaction to help solve the huge number of works The problems of confirming, authorizing and safeguarding the rights of digital works with large and high circulation frequency.

What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning and get to work? Is it the fact that you work with a fantastic sales team? Are you excited about a new opportunity in the pipeline? Do you just really love your job? All of this could be true, but sales incentives still play an important role in keeping sales teams performing.

You could have the best job in the world and work with the most wonderful people, but there will still be times when motivation doesn’t come naturally.

This is true for both sales managers and their reps.

How can you keep your team motivated?

Sales incentives have been proven to boost employee engagement: One study by the Incentive Research Foundation found that when an incentive program is built correctly, it can increase performance by up to 44%.

Especially during these times, motivation can be hard to find. If you’re thinking of starting a sales incentive program to boost morale on your team, you need to make sure it’s set up in a way that truly appeals to them.

So, what kind of sales incentives will keep your team motivated to keep selling, even when it's an uphill battle? How can you develop a program that motivates your whole team?

11 sales incentive ideas to motivate your whole team

Is it enough to offer pure cash rewards, or are there other sales incentives that will really light a fire under your reps? Let’s discuss 11 different sales incentive ideas that sales managers are using to motivate their reps.

1. Cold hard cash

Yes, it’s true, money talks. This is why many reward programs for sales teams revolve around a set amount of money as a bonus for hard work.

Cash works because, let’s face it, your team is at work to earn money.

To make this incentive work, you can set up a clear commission structure, or use cash bonuses to help your reps focus on a specific goal. Usually, this involves giving a set amount of money for a specific achievement: For example, reaching the quota, exceeding quota, closing a certain amount of deals, or hitting a sales activity goal. (That's one of the reasons why sales teams should embrace leaderboards.)

That said, don’t take for granted that your team prefers cash to any other kind of prize. In fact, another study by the Incentive Research Foundation found that up to 85% of people would choose a non-cash reward if they really liked the other option.

So, what other options are there for sales incentives?

2. Product prizes

Giving away physical products as a sales incentive is a fun way to motivate your sales team.

You might offer:

• Tech gadgets, such as the latest iPhone or a smartwatch
• Fun products for the home, like a high-end coffee maker, 4K TV, or advanced sound system
• Hobby products, such as a high-end bicycle, rock-climbing equipment, or a musical instrument

Product prizes are a great incentive for your team (as long as it’s a product they actually want) because they’re a physical reminder of their achievements. It’s something that people might ask them about down the road, allowing them to relive the glory of winning over and over again.

To make sure this incentive is appealing to all the different members of your team, you might offer a choice between two or three different products.

3. Courses and training

Personal and professional development can be a powerful motivator for reps who are eager to improve themselves.

And this type of incentive is severely lacking: According to the American Psychological Association, only 44% of US employees are satisfied with the development opportunities they’re offered at work.

So, why not offer professional development opportunities as an incentive, such as:

• Special sales training from a professional coach
• Tickets to an upcoming conference or sales event
• Sales courses to develop advanced techniques
• Workshops, training, and guides to make better use of sales tech, such as CRM training

The opportunity for personal development may also appeal to your team. You can offer incentives like:

• Cooking classes
• Art classes
• One month of a fitness class membership
• Access to an online course website, such as MasterClass

4. Entertainment

Tickets to the big game. Front-row seats to their favorite band. A romantic dinner for two.

Entertainment incentives are good motivators because these are the things your reps would love to do but may not be willing to splurge for themselves.

Of course, during these times you may need to be a bit more creative with your entertainment options. For example, that nice dinner out could be replaced with a fancy dinner at home with food delivery services.

Read the full article at: blog.close.com

How long has it been since you stepped foot in your office?

Normally, the move to remote happens gradually, with time to make clear plans, educate your team, and train them effectively. But with so many teams being moved to remote work on a moment’s notice due to the crisis, there was little time for sales leaders to plan and prepare for this major change.

If your team is newly remote, do you have a clear plan on how you’ll continue to coach them?

Leading a remote sales team is a whole different ballgame, and you’re up to bat in the 9th inning with the bases loaded.

How can you make sure to hit a home run for your sales team?

First, you need to recognize why coaching is so important for a remote sales team. Then, you can follow the methods that sales leaders are using right now to coach their remote teams.

Why is sales coaching so important for remote teams?

As a sales leader, you know that coaching your team as individuals is essential to their growth and success.

But for a remote sales team, coaching takes on another level of importance.

When you’re used to the day-to-day interaction that comes with working in an office, moving to remote work can take a significant emotional toll.

This is especially true for teams who moved remote due to COVID, since the move was so unexpected. 

Reps who relied on the energy and atmosphere of the office may start to feel lonely and unmotivated. Remote team leaders recognize that isolation, anxiety, and depression are significant problems when working remotely.

As a sales leader, you need to take responsibility for the health of your team. That’s why coaching your remote team individually is so vital. Not only will it help them improve as salespeople: it will also give you the opportunity to help them be successful, happy remote workers.

So, how can you continue to coach your remote sales team?

7 methods you can start using today to coach your remote sales team

Coaching in a remote setting presents unique challenges that you may not have faced when coaching an in-office team. How can you be fully aware of what’s happening with your reps? What can you do to motivate them when they’re alone at home? 

Here are 7 methods that remote sales leaders are using right now to coach their teams:

1. Make sure your 1:1s have a clear agenda

Sales managers are busy people, and working remotely has probably increased the number of meetings and 1:1s that you have in your schedule.

If you want those meetings to be productive and efficient, you need to make sure they have an agenda.

The day before your scheduled 1:1 with a rep, send them a general outline of what you’d like to discuss in the meeting. This might include some of the numbers on their outreach or deals closed, or a specific sales tactic you want to work on with them.

Of course, you’re not the only one who should have a say in the agenda.

In the outline you send to your rep, include specific questions for them to answer, such as:

• What was the best call you had this week?
• Which deals do you need help with right now?
• What’s one thing that’s slowing you down?
• What’s one thing you want to focus on right now?

With both parties taking responsibility for the meeting, you’ll be more involved in the rep’s progress, and they’ll have a structured environment to ask for help when they need it.

2. Schedule time to listen to sales calls

You can’t be 100% sure of your reps unless you’re in the field with them, listening to them. If you want to coach your team successfully, you need to know what they’re saying to prospects, what’s working for them, and what’s not.

Since you can no longer listen in on calls that are happening on the sales floor, how can you do this?

First, make sure that all calls and virtual meetings are being recorded. Then, schedule a specific block of time each week to listen to those recorded calls. Using the right software, can even jump in as a call is happening and listen to how your reps handle conversations. 

Of course, you can’t spend your whole week listening to calls. If you’re managing a larger team and need help figuring out which calls to listen to, give that responsibility to the reps. Have each rep select two calls from the week for you to listen to: their best and their worst. Then you’ll have a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, meaning you can coach them more specifically on the skills they need to improve.

3. Develop a virtual peer-learning system

Coaching a remote sales team is more than just telling people what to do. Many times, reps can learn a lot from each other. It’s your job as a sales leader to create these learning opportunities.

Peer learning comes in many forms. For example, if you’re using your CRM to pull sales activity data for your different reps, you can see which reps excel at certain tasks and which ones need a little help.

For sales teams who have suddenly gone remote due to the current situation, tasks such as running a video sales call or doing a product demo over Zoom may be something completely new. If you have experienced remote sales reps on your team, take advantage of their knowledge and use them to coach the other reps on selling remotely.

For example, you could have a rep who is more experienced at remote sales run a full product demo for the team via Zoom to show them what a good virtual demo should look like.

Many remote sales teams also set up regular peer learning sessions between their reps. For example, software company FareHarbor took their sales teams remote during the COVID crisis. To keep their teams motivated, they set up virtual learning sessions where a few reps would listen to each other’s calls and learn from how they pitch, share information, or handle objections.

By teaching your sales team to rely on and learn from each other, you’ll help them continue to grow and improve.

4. Set up a regular coaching program for all your reps, including top performers

As a busy sales leader, it may be tempting to reduce your coaching efforts to just those reps who are struggling most. 

Don’t make this mistake.

When your sales reps are working remotely, independently from each other, it can be very easy for them to feel isolated and lonely. Your top performers now may be struggling with issues you’re unaware of, and they may be unsure of how to ask for help.

Regular coaching for every rep, not just the low performers, is the best way for you to keep tabs with your team. Practice overcommunication with your reps. 

Don’t let weeks go by in between your 1:1s. If possible, talk with every rep at least once a week. As a leader, you need to set the example of open communication. That will make it easier for reps to approach you when they need help or guidance.

Read the full article at: www.forbes.com

Read the full article at: www.sellingpower.com

Making poor hiring decisions is expensive. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) suggests that replacing a bad hire costs 30 percent of their total compensation. Considering opportunity loss, I’ve seen replacement costs as high as a million per person in an enterprise B2B complex sales environment. That’s a painful reality. So how can you minimize it?

The solution is a sales hiring system. In this article, I’ll highlight just a few of the eight key components in my sales hiring system. If you’re interested in exploring them in detail, you’ll find a link at the end of this article.

Assessing Competencies & Traits
Determining the competencies (skills and behaviors) needed for sales success in each of your roles is foundational. So list them all and create a library. It’s OK that some roles may overlap and other competencies may be unique.

It’s also important to determine the traits (e.g., attributes, characteristics, and mindsets) required to support the above competencies and thrive in your various sales roles. Selling requires certain mindsets and traits – more like being an Olympic athlete than an accountant. These desired traits may also vary by role.

These competencies and traits inform virtually every other component of the sales hiring system. Use them as you build job descriptions, design interviews, and configure a statistically-validated hiring assessment you select to evaluate candidates.

Interviewing: Behavioral & Hypothetical
As you move into the interviewing and selection phase of hiring, the tendency is to look at things more subjectively. However, this is where staying rooted to our foundational competencies and traits can make a huge impact.

Behavioral interviewing is a well-established, effective, yet underutilized method for hiring. Behavioral questions ask the candidate to share experiences that can reveal strengths or weaknesses within your competencies. A simple example:

“Tell me about a time you couldn’t get a response from a key prospect, and what you finally did to break through and land a meeting with them.”

In addition, hypothetical questions can also help establish what candidates would do in certain difficult situations they are likely to face when selling for your company. This can be especially helpful when they haven’t faced the exact behavioral situation, or if you’d just like to see if they think like your top producers. Establish some challenging hypothetical scenarios (preferably built from real examples your sellers encounter) and prepare questions and best-case responses to assess candidates’ answers.

Keep in mind that hypothetical questions help you determine the candidate’s judgment about what to do in challenging situations and whether they think like your current top producers. Still, they do not assess behavior, skill, or the ability for the candidate to do what they say.

Validating Skills
Would you hire a musician without hearing them perform? A dancer without an audition? How about a baseball player without seeing them play?

Although we can’t observe sales reps from other companies the same as we can with the above performers, you can orchestrate ways to validate their skills and “see them in action.” You can create role plays or simulations to verify that candidates can demonstrate the skills they claim to have.

• For candidates who would be doing a lot of prospecting, have them email you, call you, and leave a voicemail. Provide a case study and see what they can do.
• For account managers, provide a situation and have them run a meeting or give them some simulated account information and ask them to present an account plan.

Use your imagination but keep the tasks and sims as real-life as possible – and see how candidates handle themselves.

Putting It All Together
When implementing a sales hiring system, it’s critical to have a structured, logical process for executing and to link each component of the system. Different companies require different levels of sophistication, but the core components apply to any sales organization. I hope this gets you started on the path to hiring more effectively for your critical sales roles.

Read the full article at: www.sellingpower.com

Sales team incentive ideas seem to be a dime a dozen these days, but most of it follows the same-old, same-old ‘here’s a pretty carrot, do some selling’ template. It’s kind of sad, considering the research we have at our disposal that has shown that this type of approach won’t cut the mustard when it comes to jobs that require more than rudimentary cognitive skill. 

It’s time to look deeper to find, coax out and nurture motivation among clever sales teams. 

Here are a few sales team incentive ideas that will put your employee reward and recognition incentives on par with those of the heavy hitters on the sales front. Let’s get started: 

1. Facetime with an awesome designer

It's hard to sell properly when you don't have the right tools at your disposal. Salespeople have a lot on their plate, and having access to innovative marketing content and collateral can make a big difference. 

Incentivise your team by giving top performance the opportunity to work with a truly awesome designer to dream up high-quality content that gets them excited to share and sell. Perhaps you can even give them the option of roping in a freelancer who's work they've always admired - within budget of course. 

Best of all - this type of incentive stands to benefit the whole company since the resulting collateral will remain the intellectual property of the business at large.  

2. Keep things fresh with enticing contests

Okay, this one seems kind of old-school, we know, but research by global research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan has shown that goal-oriented competitions are used by up to 80% of sales executives and more than half of them find these initiatives to be very effective.

Those odds are good enough to give it a shot, we believe. 

The trick is to keep things fresh by using setting different goals, varying the length of the competition timeline, offering a variety of prizes and making room for different kinds of employees to shine every time.

Gather data from this process, and you'll be able to see what type of competition gets the best results from your team in the long run. 

3. Lifestyle treats that free up their time

Sales is a 24/7 business, and burnout is a very real threat to employees in this industry. In fact, a recent study found that 67% of respondents stated that they were close to burnout. 

As such, it makes sense to offer employee recognition and rewards that aim to free up their time. Think along the lines of signing them up for meal kits and meal delivery services, home decluttering and organisation services, gardening/landscaping support, domestic support, etc. 

4. Regular public acknowledgement

Not every incentive has to be tangible. Plenty of researchers have proven our innate understanding that a public display of appreciation can be more motivating than even monetary incentives.

By making regular, timeous, ongoing public recognition a part of your company culture, you’re tapping into that all-important intrinsic motivation that fuels high-powered sales teams. 

Employees who find meaning in their work feel ownership over it, leading to higher motivation, commitment, and overall performance.

This much has been proven by research conducted at the Harvard Business School. This theory has been put into practice to great effect by companies like cloud call centre software developer Aircall. 

VP of Sales Collin Cadmus says that their management team is firmly focused on tailoring a positive environment in which employees are motivated to be their best. As such, they are very vocal about celebrating team and individual successes. E.g. every time a new sales team member qualifies their first opportunity they stop everything and take a moment to shower the new recruit in deafening applause. 

5. Provide fun and inspiring opportunities for personal growth

People love to learn, and it’s in your best interest that your team keeps upping their game in the skills department. 

As such, it’s a great idea to provide sales team incentives in the form of conference tickets, access to industry talks, one-on-one mentoring sessions with industry heavyweights, online courses, and more. 

Social media analytics and media monitoring company Talkwalker walks the walk and talks the talk when it comes to this approach. Head of Sales Ben Riggle says that their team’s in-depth knowledge of their industry is what drives them forward. 

This is why the Talkwalker management team goes out of their way to fan the flame of their team's willingness to learn by providing them with plenty of opportunities to stretch themselves and expand their capabilities. This includes peer-to-peer mentoring, cross-departmental collaboration and exciting out-of-house upskilling events. 

Read the full article at: www.insights.bountixp.co

This puts sales leaders in a precarious position. With limited resources and mounting pressure, how can you build a strategy that’s sure to succeed? Luckily, the trends that will come to define the future of business-to-business sales are already taking shape.

From the death of traditional sales team structures to the accelerating adoption of revenue team enablement strategies, here are five trends that are defining the future of B2B sales, with insight from new Forrester research.

GOING ALL-IN ON DIGITAL ENGAGEMENTS

Don’t spend too long mourning the loss of on-site meetings and events — they’ve been on the downward trend for some time now.

In fact, Forrester reported that buyers have long turned a skeptical eye towards in-person engagements: “As early as 2017, business buyers were disillusioned with the onsite sales meeting, as one in five buyers stated they preferred not to meet with a sales rep in person. In a May 2020 Forrester Analytics Business Technographics® study evaluating the efficacy of various B2B sales and marketing methods and routes post-COVID-19, 38% of respondents said the in-person sales meeting had decreased in value.” (The Democratization of B2B Sales, Forrester Research, Inc., August 3, 2020).

This means that while the occasional deal may have been cinched by a face-to-face meeting, sellers can — and should — effectively engage buyers virtually. Boost your digital interactions with simple behavioral changes: instead of sharing slide decks via web conferences, encourage sellers to keep their video front-and-center to maintain eye contact and keep buyers focused. Additionally, push sellers to observe buyer reactions during calls and use them to draw them deeper into the conversation — validate ideas, offer tailored insights, and ask tactical questions.

With a strategic re-thinking of your sales tactics, you can ensure that regardless of the medium your sellers are making customer conversations count.

SHIFTING SALES STRUCTURES

Businesses leveraging entirely remote or hybrid teams are also seeing the opportunity to shake up traditional, hierarchical sales organization structures. This shift reflects a convergence of digital-native sellers and buyers in one place: as buyers increasingly engage online, the typical digital prospecting activities of ADRs and SDRs suddenly seem perfectly suited to closing deals, rather than just qualifying accounts.

As a result, leaders are rethinking the siloed sales approach. Forrester found that “sales leaders can use relationship analytics to identify the account manager who has the best and deepest relationships with an account or key contacts within the account, buyer behavioral data to match account- and contact-level preferred buying motions with sellers who can deliver those experiences, and pod structures to deepen an account team’s expertise and increase overall buyer responsiveness” (The Democratization of B2B Sales, Forrester Research, Inc., August 3, 2020).

In short, don’t hold back a deal because the person most likely to close it isn’t an account executive. Breaking free of the traditional hierarchies that have long defined sales organization structure can be an effective method of maximizing your sales output per head.

RESKILLING AND UPSKILLING EXISTING SALESPEOPLE

Closely related to the above is a trend toward a renewed focus on sales training and coaching efforts. This is an area that can be quite expensive for businesses to maintain; as such, it is typically first to the chopping block whenever uncertainty looms.

But Forrester recommends doubling down instead: “Training is typically one of the first budget items to be cut in tough times, but that’s a mistake in this setting. If you don’t have the funds, reallocate them from elsewhere” (The Democratization of B2B Sales, Forrester Research, Inc., August 3, 2020). Considering the conversational techniques sellers will need to master to thrive in all-digital sales scenarios, combined with new responsibilities due to shifting organizational structures, this recommendation comes as no surprise.

Make your renewed investment count by focusing on reskilling and upskilling sellers to deliver flawless omnichannel interactions. Think about the tactical behavior shifts that sellers will need to close deals and build training around those changes. Some solutions may be as simple as refreshing your sales guidance; others may require a larger initiative to implement. In both cases, investing in your sellers’ skills now will ensure they are prepared to meet every challenge in a shifting sales landscape.

Read the full article at: www.highspot.com

Managing a sales team is just as important as dealing with clients and making sales. It is important to empower a sales team so that they are motivated to do their best. The better they do, the more your company thrives. Here are some ways that you can empower your sales company.

Compelling Communication

Compelling communication helps on so many levels when it comes to empowering a sales team. When there is clear communication on a sales team, tasks are done more efficiently. When tasks are done more efficiently, employees tend to be less stressed, more relieved and more motivated. The momentum of having work done is empowering to everyone on a sales team.

Communication is also important because misunderstandings can result in hard feelings and tensions between workers. If people misunderstand each other and are on poor terms with each other, there is a higher chance that they will feel less empowered. Also, tensions between workers may result in the work not being done as efficiently which, in turn, is not empowering.

Motivating Employees

It is important to motivate employees in order to empower your sales team. You can motivate your employees in a number of ways. One way to motivate your employees is to provide incentives such as raises and commissions.

Another way to motivate employees is to ensure that they have a good work environment. A negative work environment can be soul crushing to the point where the quality of work is being affected in a bad way. You can ensure that employees have a good work environment by observing various social and physical aspects and seeing if anything needs to be improved. For example, are the social conditions bad to the extent where needless drama is getting in the way of people doing their work? If so, things need to be fixed. If there are any employees who are causing problems, you should try to rectify the problem by confronting them and telling them how they can stop causing issues.

Volunteer Activities

Another great way to empower a sales team is to involve them in community activities. When employees are involved in community activities, they are brought into situations where they are interacting with each other in different ways. This changes the nature of the relationships that coworkers have with each other. For example, the dynamics of a volunteer situation may bring coworkers closer together who would have otherwise been colder toward one another in the workplace.

Extracurricular Activities

Providing extracurricular activities is a great way to empower a sales team. You can create classes for physical activities such as aerobics, team sports and yoga. These classes will give employees a way to keep their bodies and minds healthy, which will boost the productivity of the team and empower everyone. The activities don’t have to be sports; they can be related to art or some other subject of interest.

Effective training

Effective training is important for empowering a sales team because it teaches employees how to do their jobs in the best way. If training is high quality, employees will learn how to do their tasks with as few mistakes as possible. Proper sales training will step everyone’s game up to the next level. It will also allow them to deal with clients in the most appropriate ways.

Persuasion

Persuasion is important because you must persuade members of the team that they are apart of something bigger and important. They must have a sense of purpose. If you can instill this sense of purpose in them, they will be empowered.

Pride And Responsibility

To an extent, let the members of your sales team be creative about their roles. If you micromanage every single task that every single person does, you will most likely do the opposite of empowering your team. To an extent, leave the members of your sales team alone so that they can do their jobs efficiently on their own terms.

In conclusion, if you want to empower your sales team you must allow your employees to take pride and responsibility for their work, persuade them to be enthusiastic in the team’s cause, provide them with effective training, give them extracurricular activities, include them in volunteer activities, motivate them and engage in compelling communication with them.

Read the full article at: www.businessblogshub.com

In a previous post I talked about how creating an awesome company culture has tremendous ROI in terms of increased profits, decreased turnover, higher goal attainment, and becoming a lightning rod for top talent…not to mention the amazing customer experience the results! So how can you go about creating an awesome culture in your team or organization? The first step is to consider how your culture satisfies the operational and personal needs of your employees.

People (especially millennials) want to grow, learn, take on new challenges, and feel like they’re part of something special. They want to know what success looks like, get insights into how the business runs, and be given opportunities to step up. Whether you’re a manager trying to supercharge the performance of your team or an executive leader looking to take your organization to the next level, here are 4 great tips for building and reinforcing an awesome culture that gets results.

1. Make winning behaviors visible

As a leader you know what it takes to gets results, connect with your customers, and drive growth in your business. You might even provide positive feedback to people in 1:1 conversations, email, or company meetings. But if you really want to build a culture where winning behaviors are recognized and most importantly, replicated, you need to memorialize them and make them visible…consistently.

First, start by deciding what these winning behaviors should be. e.g. Do you value innovation? Learning? Teamwork? Customer service? Crushing competitors? Next, empower yourself and your people to call these behaviors out whenever you see them. A high visibility location like an internal social network (e.g. Chatter) is a great forum to do this. But remember, be specific! The more specific you can be about the behavior and the value it drives in your business, the easier it will be to others to replicate it.

2. Share leadership responsibilities with your team

Giving people opportunities to flex their leadership muscles is a great way to build the kind of team culture where members take ownership of each others’ success. For example, create roles for the team’s social convener, the pipeline/forecast czar, the customer-events specialist, the forecast guru etc. and empower those people to take ownership and make decisions around their segment of the operation.

When team members are given authority and autonomy to get work done on behalf of themselves and their colleagues, they accept greater responsibility for the results. What’s even better, research shows, is that when employees observe their leaders engaging in this type of selfless behavior, employees tend to be more innovative and go beyond the call of duty.

3. Set clear goals and objectives

One of the primary roles of leadership and culture is getting people to behave in a consistent (and productive) fashion, even when the leaders aren’t watching. Setting clear expectations and deliverables reinforces culture by providing a recipe for consistent execution and ensures everyone is focused and aligned on the things they need to drive the business forward. Goal setting also drives massive accountability between team members, leadership, and to ourselves. When goals are clear and *written down*, an almost magical social contract is established that keeps everyone focused and on track!

4. Foster transparency, visibility, knowledge transfer

When people are reduced to cogs in a machine, they become disengaged and ultimately care less about their results. If you want to engage your team members and help them act with purpose, they need to understand the “why?” behind what they’re being asked to do! An easy way to do this is simply combining your requests for action with a brief narrative explaining the impact that action will have on the business.

For example, do you find you’re a broken record, asking your sales team to update their revenue forecasts on a regular basis? Sharing insights into what that forecast data is used for, and how those higher level decisions impact them, will not only help them understand how the business runs, but the healthy dose of transparency and visibility will boost their engagement with the task and your team culture.

The key to nailing these behaviors is easy…practice! The more you find opportunities to inject these tactics into your daily routine, the quicker you’ll be on your way to building and reinforcing an amazing culture that gets results!

Read the full article at: cerebralselling.com

How do you rank above your competition if you have the same education, willingness, and resources provided to you as every other sales representative applicant?

A high performing sales team is invaluable to a growing startup. Winning the most promising candidates is a cutthroat battle.

It takes a lot more than a generous compensation package to get top candidates to accept your offer. You need to show them early on that they’re joining a company that values every member of their team.

Here’s how a startup can successfully compete in the war for sales talent.

1. Proactively work on employer branding

To position your company for success, you need to have a plan for employer branding. It begins by determining your core message. What do you most want prospective employees to know about your company? What adjectives do you want them to associate with you?

Here are some ideas for executing employer branding:

• Design a career page that will showcase your company’s core values and culture. It’s one of the first places a candidate will go to check you out. Make sure to sell your company by showing candidates why they should work for you.
• Encourage your employees to post about their jobs on social media. Don’t tell them what to post. This almost always feels inauthentic. Give them open-ended prompts such as “What do you like best about working here?” It’s also helpful if your official social media team engages with employee accounts.
• Create content for job seekers, such as blog entries and videos. Post this content prominently on your careers page.

2. Provide a competitive compensation plan

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how great your culture is if you can’t offer sales professionals a competitive compensation plan. Make sure that your compensation package is among the most competitive in your region. Just being average isn’t good enough for attracting top talent.

Your compensation plan should be simple to understand. Don’t make recruits do complicated math to project their earnings. Give them examples of how much money they might expect to make with the plan. If possible, back it up with real data on the current benchmarks for sales rep compensation in your city.

Here you can find example compensation plans for XDRs and AEs.

3. Make your interview process speedy and convenient for candidates

Do your best to make sure that candidates have a great experience by making the whole process quick and convenient. Here are some best practices for doing that:

• Create a short but efficient interview process. Try to limit your interview process to a total of 3 meetings: an in-depth phone screen, a first meeting, and a final pitch. Having extra rounds of interviews isn’t necessary. When you know what you’re looking for, it’s easier to pinpoint which candidates will be moving forward.
• Use a grading rubric to identify the perfect sales candidate. Make sharper hiring decisions by understanding the risks for each candidate instead of trying to predict who will be successful. Design a meeting where you can extract all the necessary information you need to decide whether you want to move forward with the candidate or not. A good rubric will allow you to focus on specific areas of exploration, giving you a better overall read on the candidate.

Candidates can get frustrated when they have to keep returning for more interview rounds and when they meet one person at a time. Rescheduling interviews and adding more meetings to the schedule can elongate the hiring process and increase the odds of losing out on a great candidate.

4. Offer a clearly defined career path

The best sales professionals aren’t content to tread water in their careers. They want to know that there’s a path for progression at your company.

Walk potential candidates through the possibilities for advancement. Ideally, you should show them that it’s possible to advance in a managerial role or as an individual contributor. If you haven’t yet, design a concrete career ladder that’s easy for them to follow.

Point to examples of people who have advanced within your company and briefly explain how promotion decisions are made. Recruits want to know that they stand a reasonable chance of advancement if they deliver results.

5. Highlight opportunities for continued learning

Top sales professionals want to improve their skills. In your recruiting pitch, make sure to include information about opportunities for continued learning. Let them know a little about how the process works and talk about your own experiences with continued learning. Say, “since being here, I’ve gone to this conference and am working on developing my skills in…” Ask questions about their own goals in continued learning. Present your sales team’s mentorship program and any special leadership training program that you offer.

Show candidates that they can look forward to a bright future at your company. If you can do that, they will want to work for you.

6. Show candidates your sales team culture

Clearly communicate your organization’s goals and values to all prospective candidates. Show them that your sales culture is focused on self-improvement. And while your high-performing sales representatives are invested in helping others improve, they’re also set on addressing their own areas of weakness. Additionally, describe how transparency is part of your culture and how your team members feel empowered to discuss important issues with their managers.

Also highlight your culture-building activities. Candidates need to know your company is not all about business. Discuss how you normally have team nights, company offsites, and president’s club.

Managing people can be tough. Managing a sales team can be even more challenging with all the priorities, tasks, pressure from the C-Suite and the stress of hitting monthly or quarterly quotas.

The most challenging part of the sales job is having the right balance between not enough or too much freedom for your sales team.

As a sales leader, a lot of the success that you’re after is going to come from your sales reps’ performance, which means determining how to motivate and inspire your team (without micromanaging them) is key.

Many can fall into the trap of micromanaging, as it’s easy to think that keeping a close eye on your team will result in strong results and higher-quality work.

"Great managers orchestrate rather than do. Like the conductor of an orchestra, they do not play an instrument, but direct their people so that they play beautifully together. Micromanaging, in contrast, is telling the people who work for you exactly what tasks to do or doing their tasks for them." —Ray Dalio

It can be easy for sales leaders to micromanage, even if they don’t realize they are doing it. This might explain why 80% of people believe themselves to be better leaders than they are.

Micromanagers feel that they must consistently control their employees. They are always monitoring everything at work and continuously operate at high levels of stress, which stresses out their employees and can hinder work relationships.

"Too close and you don’t know what you’re looking at. Too far and you can’t see. Perspective is everything." — Steli Efti (@Steli) January 24, 2020

However, acknowledging you have an issue is the first step. If you don’t admit that you like to micromanage, you won’t improve your management style or be considered a good leader.

While it can be hard, there are ways you can still lead a sales team without micromanaging them.

Communicate with your team

Once you have determined what you want your team to accomplish, you want to begin communicating that to your sales team.

You want to have a conversation about the tasks that you care about (i.e., the work that will need your approval and advice on) so your team can avoid giving you any stress or anxiety, and you want to communicate the overall strategy effectively.

Having excellent communication in the workplace is key to a leadership position. Good communication is what separates a weak leader from a great one. And strong communication skills are crucial to being a good leader.

Tell your team how you want to be updated and how often they should provide those updates. Also, enlist their help in ensuring you don’t end up into your old habit of micromanaging.

Communicating properly is what makes a strong leader.

When you communicate effectively, it can eliminate any confusion and foster a happy work environment.

Communicating with your team is essential to success and efficiency. When you accept new thoughts and ideas, you get respect and appreciation from your team.

Ask for feedback

You’re the boss. It’s your role to support and challenge your employees, so you can accomplish the results you want. To do this, you want to know if you are supporting and challenging your team properly or if you are holding them back.

You need to understand what you do well, so that you can improve on it, and you need to know what your weaknesses are so you can fix them. Thus, feedback is imperative.

It would be best if you let your employees know what you’re going to be wanting for their feedback. Although, you want to make sure you explain why you’re asking for feedback and how you are going to implement it.

As a sales leader, you must be able to take feedback from your team. And, if you model the behavior and show that you are open to feedback, you’re encouraging your team to do the same.

Feedback can be an excellent way to help you reach your professional goals. The more feedback you get, the easier it can be to grow and improve.

If you ask for feedback, this shows others you’re willing to learn and grow. Being open to your team’s comments gives you the opportunity to see your actions from a different perspective.