performance improvement

Last month we addressed Sales Fundamentals and Sales Management, part of the Five Business Dangers series. Continuing our exploration of the ingredients for a successful sales program, we’ll now get specific about developing a high-performance sales team, a necessary element for a highly effective sales-focused organization.

Creating a High-Performance Sales Team:

Together Everyone Achieves More (T.E.A.M.). What goes into building a great, high performing team? In our series, we have addressed elements that include sales process, messaging, the conversations salespeople have, and sales management. We now turn our attention to a high performance sales team. Critical elements that must come together include people, talent, execution, and effectiveness – all to achieve a desired result.

With a professional sports team, let’s say ice hockey, the goals are clear to almost anyone – players, coaches, management, officials, and even the fans. The success of a professional hockey team is influenced by many factors that may include talent, roles, synergy, practice, focus, coaching, leadership, drive, perseverance, mindset, and so on.

Is your sales team really different? Maybe the correct question is ‘should your sales team be any different’? With hockey, the basics are to skate, pass, shoot, and score. If we reverse-engineer what winning looks like, a top performing team must win the most games, score the most goals, take the greatest number of shots, etc. All of these must be well planned, practiced, and executed with micro adjustments made all the way through each minute of each period in a game. The coaching staff will help players see beyond their blind spots and overcome obstacles imposed by the competing team. This is all accomplished with practice sessions, meetings, and video reviews, both on and off the ice.

We’ve found that many organizations want results, but when it comes to a high-performance team, gaps in this concept emerge. These gaps include unsuccessful recruiting of sales team members, not being clear about the role and results expected for the position, and not providing the right tools or direction that supports the optimal success of the sales team. While a sales manager can be key to building and sustaining a Performance Sales Team, each team member must have the potential to grow and excel. An effective sales manager will help grow that salesperson and work to release their potential.

When it comes to creating a high-performance sales team, having, adding, or enhancing talent is critical. A high-performance team needs goals, direction, and feedback about how they are doing, progress toward sub goals (milestones, KPIs) and their approach, acumen, volume of work and effort. They may need to split their time up strategically, so a certain portion of their day is geared toward developing new business opportunities and some of their day to expanding existing business. A sales leader/manager should squarely be focused on the development of strong performing sales team members and working closely with them to refine skills and abilities that result in enhanced performance and therefore better results. All salespeople should be highly focused on their goals that align strategically with the organization – the activities required to build a robust, predictable pipeline and have sufficient volumes in both areas that goal achievement is reliable, predictable, and greater than expected.

Is your sales team effective, focused on the right areas, and producing the performance and outcomes you seek? Thinking of your current sales performance, including team members and their management, read the statements below and ask yourself: are these in place and are they optimized? If your answer is NO to two or more statements, then you would likely benefit from a shift in your sales management solution, mindset, or approach.

  • The sales manager is effective in leading, coaching, and growing sales team members and the overall ‘sum of its parts’ performance
  • We celebrate wins and goal achievement on a regular basis
  • Annual sales plans and goals are in place for each salesperson
  • Salespeople are not spending valuable “sales” time doing non-value added tasks that don’t contribute to results
  • Sales training related to sharpening the saw on selling skills, process, and effectiveness occurs at least quarterly
  • Each salesperson has a dashboard or individual sales plan that is reviewed regularly

Every sales-focused team has room for improvement! If you aren’t implementing all the statements above, or only a few, you may need to adjust your thinking or priorities around sales performance… it may be time to get help.

To a great degree, enhancing your revenue performance depends on how well your sales team performs and all the elements that create a high performance sales team. For the specifics of your business, its sales efforts, and their success we’ll need to rely on your candid assessment. Don’t wait, take stock today, and figure out where success or the lack of it is coming from.

In future months we will examine, separately and in depth, building a sales-focused organization, and each of the other Five Business Dangers. We will also provide a free assessment tool that will highlight specific gaps within the Five Business Dangers.

Your Gateway to Performance Improvement and Business Success

If you’re feeling some pressure to address the success of your business, don’t wait – it doesn’t take more than a brief phone call…

David is an accomplished and experienced business professional who brings over 40 years of insight to the table. As a business coach, he specializes in helping business owners prioritize their needs. He can help you examine the health of your business and find critical areas which once addressed will result in performance improvement for your business.

It all starts with a single, free conversation. Call 734-726-5208 today for a free coaching session or contact David. Your success is waiting!