Managing a sales team requires a lot of patience and can be extremely stressful. If your business is in its early stages, you might be feeling out of your depth, so we’ve put together a list of 4 sales team management tips so that you can lead your team towards success.

Specialize early to grow sales

Your sales team is made up of individuals who each have their own skills that can contribute to your team in a positive way. It’s essential that you identify those strengths and weaknesses early on and segment your team accordingly as you grow. It’s also a good idea to ask your team members about their personal preferences – do they prefer to build rapport with small businesses or are they better at going after bigger leads? Your sales team will have the best chance at success if they are all utilizing their own unique skills.

Focus on training

Continuous training is essential to ensuring that everyone in your team is constantly up-to-date with their skills regarding product knowledge, prospecting, territory planning, professional communications, and opportunity management. Consistently developing the fundamentals of successful sales techniques should be a key element of your company culture so that sales performance goals and standards are met consistently throughout your team.

Be results-driven and offer incentives

When you’re growing your sales team, it’s essential to hire people with determination and drive that thrive in a transparent environment that is focussed on key sales metrics. When you gather a group of competitive people together to meet the same goal, it drives your entire company upwards. It’s important to emphasize the importance of results so that people are more focussed on productivity rather than activity.

While straight monetary incentives are great, you should also look at the “money can’t buy” options like gifts, gadgets and trips of a lifetime like a safari in South Africa.  Find out more about Cape Town Tourism here.

Use the volume-versus-value ratio

Your highest value team members (highest paid) should be focusing their time on the lowest volume activities that are the most important, such as securing partnerships and referrals and building relationships. Your lower value team members should instead be focused on higher volume activities that are less important, such as turning prospects into leads.

To fulfill your business’s potential and motivate your workforce, get in touch with our team at Commissionly today for more information about our sales commission software.

Covid-19 has dramatically changed the way businesses operate, almost overnight. Many companies have had to shut their doors to customers, and have their staff working from home. This means that the way companies act has had to change too. While each team will have been impacted in a unique way, sales teams are facing an immediate need to bring in revenue to keep the company stable, despite the new lockdown rules.

Here are three ways that sales teams can adapt during Covid-19 with a little help from sales performance management software.

1. Keeping your sales team motivated

Many sales teams have competitions surrounding their sales performance goals, and this should be true while working remotely. Keeping your team motivated with additional bonuses and benefits will encourage them to stay focused at work, while also showing them that you understand the increased pressures of working remotely. Your existing sales targets can easily be adapted for remote working, especially if you have effective sales performance management software. Also, try these tips [https://commissionly.io/how-to-build-motivation-during-a-slow-period/] for building team motivation too!

2. Continue listening to customers

Listening to customer feedback is always essential, and if your work practices have had to change quickly, then it is important to understand how your customers feel about your new way of working. Ask your team to gather customer feedback, as it is essential to enriching the customer experience. This could be in the form of feedback sheets or questionnaires, but simple verbal feedback is also useful. This may not normally be the job of your sales team, but remind them how important it is, and implement the constructive feedback that you receive.

3. Increase internal communication

Because you no longer have a centralised place for your employees to gather, you need to ensure that they are still getting the important information they need. Everything from information from head office, all the way to new remote sales strategies need to be communicated in a timely manner. The best way to do this is through digital team meetings, where all the new information can be disseminated to the team quickly and efficiently, making sure no one is missed out.

At Commissionly, we are keeping our fingers on the pulse during these trying times. For more information about how our sales performance management software can help you, schedule a demo call with one of our team members: https://commissionly.io/book-a-demo/

No matter the industry, the sales team is one of the hardest working teams within any business. Ask any salesperson what motivates them, and the answer will typically be “money”. Nobody gets into a sales role to achieve a basic salary and commission plays a huge role in ‘the win’.

Sales roles are demanding, and at times can be demotivating. Frequent rejection, the frustration of being passed from pillar to post as you navigate companies to find your buyer, having a customer on the hook and losing them at the 11^thhour. It isn’t hard to understand how many sales reps can find themselves in a slump. Here are just a few tips on how you can improve the general morale of your sales team, and as a result, see a spike in employee performance. 

1. Training

Employee training is important, especially for salespeople. Regardless of their previous background in sales, if an employee does not intimately know what they are selling they are handicapped in the process. Invest in your employees, and ensure they are as knowledgeable as they can be about the products or services being offered and the differentiating factors of the company behind them. 

2. Bonus/commission

A bonus and commission are often the key motivators for people within a sales role, as these are often a big contribution toward the monthly pay an employee will receive. Investing in a sales commission software will take the difficulty out of commission, it will automatically show each individual employee what commission they are earning, as well as show the efforts of the team as a whole. Having a system with real-time updates shows employees exactly where they are at any given time and where their peers are, which is ideal for target setting. 

3. Friendly competition

Within a sales environment, a competitive atmosphere is essential to bring out the best in your sales team. By encouraging friendly competition, whether it be with work targets or a sports sweepstakes, this will encourage the right atmosphere needed to drive up those sales numbers. By being able to track their performance and their commission targets, employees will be able to reflect more easily on what is and isn’t working for them within sales.

4. A happy workplace

Finally, making sure your employees are happy within the workplace and feel as though they are valued and appreciated will do wonders for morale, improve retention levels as well as performance.

In most cases, companies use sales commissions and quotas to motivate their sales reps. Essentially, you hit a particular target, and the company pays you an agreed sum of money. This type of motivator is extrinsic and it is a successful lever but intrinsic, non-financial motivators are important too and getting these working together is the real key to infusing energy into your sales reps, increase productivity and get the very most from your sales team.

A strong sense of purpose

Some sales reps are motivated by a strong sense of purpose. They believe in the products and services they are selling and the benefits that they deliver to their customers. They are personally invested and delighted by the satisfaction their customers get from their products and services. Reps who are driven by a strong sense of purpose should be brought into the client feedback loop to champion their clients and provide insight into product and service development. 

Accountability and ownership

When people are involved in setting their own goals, they are more invested and more likely to achieve them. As much as the company will always have its overarching goals for the sales department, it is essential to allow individual reps to create sales goals that are SMART and map out their own plan to achieve success. Having personal targets that are aligned with the company’s goals helps to improve motivation and attainment. 

Autonomy

Whilst management at varying levels is required in most organizations, ‘micromanagement’ is often one of the reasons given when people chose to leave a position. Innovative, fast-moving business are recognizing the importance of self-management – working our clear goals with employees and giving them autonomy to deliver. Giving your sales reps some control over their own time manage, their daily schedules and the tools and techniques they use, without the need for a lot of bureaucracy may enable them to sore. 

The rapport between sales reps and managers

Managers and sales reps should work together to define best ways of work in term of communication, how they intend to handle supervision and feedback. For some reps, having a quick meeting with their manager every day is quite motivating while others find the weekly sit-down more helpful. It’s important to find out what works best for your team and personalizing the approach for each member in order to get the best out of them.

At Commissionly we offer a cloud-based sales commission and sales compensation management web app to help you motivate your sales team by using a commission-based payment structure. With a well-structured commission coupled with non-cash incentives, you can be sure that your sales team will deliver impeccable results.

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Creating sales goals can be difficult. Ensuring your targets are realistic enough that they are achievable, while also being high enough to boost efficiency, is a tricky balance to find. 

One of the best ways to encourage employees is to ensure that any and all sales targets are relatable. If employees feel invested in their personal targets, they are far more likely to reach them. Here are a few tips on setting relatable sales goals, which are useful for all sectors and teams of any size.

1. Different people should have different targets

Setting suitable targets for each individual is an important aspect. You can base these on years of experience, previous form and other circumstances. Of course, an experienced salesperson is likely to be able to sell more than a new employee so their targets should reflect this. Personalised targets also allow for greater self-reflection if they fail to meet them. This allows them to see where they can improve in the future. 

2. Give your employees context

Targets are always more relatable if your employees know on what basis they are set. Whether targets are set in line with projected company growth or last year’s figures plus 3%, explain to your staff that they aren’t arbitrary. It also shows how their efforts contribute to the wider company goals too

3. Alter targets upon results

Target setting should be dynamic. If an employee consistently achieves their target, then it’s worth considering setting them a higher target to keep them motivated. If an employee falls behind, then discuss reducing their target; it may make it more realistic and help them stay engaged. It’s important to note targets should still be a slight stretch for employees so they don’t become complacent. 

At Commissionly, we pride ourselves on being the first cloud-based sales commission and sales compensation management web app. We are 100% focused on SMEs. For more information about how we can help your business, contact us today [https://www.commissionly.io/contact-us/].