Is Your Sales Team Struggling?

As a sales leader, it is your job to spot when your sales team is struggling and find solutions that bring about positive change. To achieve this, you must first assess the root of the issue, then highlight areas for short and long-term change to make the biggest impact. There are four areas of sales effectiveness where inefficiencies can cause poor sales metrics; use them to identify where difficulties are arising for your sales team.

Sales Messaging

Your buyer is paramount to your company, and engaging them well is fundamental to success. Your salespeople should have the skills to consistently identify customer needs and communicate how your solution is right for them. Is there a consistent message throughout your team to engage your buyers, or is everyone just improvising?

Sales process

If your sales cycles are drawn out and win rates aren’t the best, it’s likely that your selling methods are out of alignment with your customers’ buying habits. To improve the execution of your sales, you need to be speaking the same language as your customers with a sales process that your team members can implement easily. Think about retooling your sales process if your current one lacks impact.

Sales planning

If sales planning is the root of your problem, you will find that reps frequently miss targets, revenue forecasts are off and you consistently have to skrimp to make the numbers. If every quarter is a giant ball of stress, you may want to focus on developing a predictable planning process that helps you control the critical factors of maximizing value from your team. Bring discipline to the development of territory, account and opportunity planning.

Sales talent

A bad hire can be a costly error in the world of sales. You should have a talent management process to lower turnover rates and have a strong bench. Identify what success looks like in your team, and create an archetype for the right candidate to ensure your sales talent is strong.

If you are observing that your sales team is struggling, your first move should be to identify which area is at the root. This will enable you to determine processes and tools to get back on the right track. There are plenty of standardized processes and tools out there to help a drive towards consistency, so equip yourself with what you need and start seeing measurable change.