food for thought - building a high performance sales team

There’s lots to consider when building a high performance sales team and mistakes can be costly in far more than just a financial sense, so we’ve designed this overview guide to get you thinking along the right tracks and help

prepare you for the challenges and choices ahead.

The role of the Sales Manager is to maximise the performance of the team in place. So… Do you need one? Should they be ‘first in’? Or is that you?

Knowing your weaknesses helps you identify the skills you need to look for when recruiting.

What are your year one expectations for the team? How have you arrived at these and what are they based on? Must be clear and justifiable!

What is your ultimate vision or long term goal for scaling your sales operation?

Do we go for less experienced, more malleable candidates or seasoned Pro’s who can hit the ground running? We need to establish the pros and cons of each.

Our time is extremely valuable so how will we attract and source the right talent?

Need to be different!! How will we question (interview) and qualify candidates to ensure we get the best possible people on board?

Expectations, expectations, expectations!!!

Are probationary periods, minimum standards etc well engineered, appropriate and fair?

Sales driven, fast -paced, high energy, fun, activity oriented, KPI driven, competitive?

We are a Sales Organisation – Must include some sales activity from the very first day! How will we set expectations, ours and theirs?

How will we find out what really motivates the individuals on our team?

We are NOT using spreadsheets!

Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, Sugar CRM – So many choices! Which is best for us?

Good data is mission critical. It doesn’t matter what skills we have in the business, it’s going to be tough without it!

Outbound calls, cold calls, opportunities, meetings, webinars, conversion rates?

Tracking metrics is important – being able to take insights, learn and adapt from that data is even more so.

Sales are driven by one thing – activity. Remember that!

Achievable targets and objectives are essential. They can always be adjusted appropriately when met!

Everyone in the business should always be working towards a sole, clearly defined objective. The only important thing – Everything we do should be working towards this one thing.

We therefore need…

This can take time to get right so lots of split testing and on the job refinement may be required at first. Are you up to it?

Can you map it? Is it effective? Tried and tested? Have you simplified any complexities?

What other activity will run alongside your day to day lead generation? Events, Seminars, Webinars LinkedIn?

Will we be more proactive or reactive? Note the trending shift in most industries towards more outbound activity!

Raised some tough questions…? We can help accelerate the growth of your business. Talk to us, it’s what we do!