Do you want to build a sales team that you can trust to bring in more business consistently?
You need to know how to find the right people that will support your vision, who have an amazing work ethic, and are great at what they do.
Building a sales team that’ll generate more revenue for your business is a sure way to long-term success.
Companies need people with the right skills to understand customer needs, communicate effectively, negotiate, and close deals. A strong team can truly make or break a company’s success.
Unfortunately, many companies find it difficult to bring on motivated and driven professionals who know how to succeed in sales.
If you’re wondering how to create a sales team that closes high-value deals, you’re in the right place.
With proper strategies and planning, building a sales team is within reach. This article outlines tips and best practices to build a sales team from scratch that can skyrocket your profits in today’s competitive market. Read on to learn how to make it happen.
What Is a Sales Team?
A sales team is responsible for actively selling products or services to customers to generate revenue for the organization. Sales teams identify potential customers’ needs, discuss their requirements, provide product information, negotiate prices, close deals, and increase revenue.
To build a sales team effectively, you need people who have extensive knowledge of competitive market environments, target audiences, and customer psychology.
This department is headed by a sales manager responsible for lead generation, customer acquisition and retention, and business growth. You need to build a sales team of high-performing sales representatives, sales specialists, and customer service representatives.
Who Is Your First Sales Rep?
In your company, you are going to be the first sales representative. Most founders believe outsourcing sales early to build a sales team will benefit their business, but it can backfire. Your company will never see a more effective sales representative than you.
You may not be great at sales, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t make the best sales rep for your company. It’s only by taking sales calls and practicing how to communicate with prospects that you can get good at sales.
As entrepreneurs, we should avoid delegating or hiring sales reps too early. It’s a good idea to take sales calls yourself early on so you can learn how to train your sales team when you are ready to hire.
After a while, you might find yourself fulfilling client orders once you make eight to ten sales calls daily. Finally, at midnight, you stumble into bed only to wake up the next morning and repeat the whole process.
This is when you hire your first few sales reps to build a sales team. Until that point, having only one to two calls a day won’t justify hiring a sales rep to start building a team. You won’t have enough appointments booked to attract the best sales reps to your team. So, the first step is knowing when to hire sales reps. More on that below.
When To Hire Sales Reps
The success of any business depends on its ability to attract and retain customers. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, companies must ensure they have the resources to reach their target audience effectively. Building a sales team is one way that businesses can do this.
Here are some factors to consider when deciding when to set up a sales team:
Sales Goals Have Increased
Are your current representatives unable to reach a higher goal due to a lack of resources or an increase in customer demand? As your customer base expands, so should your sales goals. Hire new sales reps to build a sales team that can help increase revenue and accelerate growth.
You Need More Specialized Skill Sets
Increasing skill sets could benefit existing customer service/sales rep functions and customer needs. Building a sales team with personnel who can provide those skills will skyrocket growth. Having the right expertise can be extremely beneficial to any business, whether it’s technical support, marketing analytics, or ad development.
You Want To Break Into A New Market
You may need to hire new representatives to expand beyond your current market. To evaluate whether more employees are worth the investment, you need to understand how they may affect areas or markets yet to be explored.
Research potential areas thoroughly and consult market forecasts whenever possible – they’ll help you decide whether the move is feasible.
KPI Setup: Building A Sales Team
Establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is important to ensure your business is on the right track. These metrics will also play a vital role when assessing whether you should hire new reps and when to build a sales team. Here’s a guide on how to set up KPIs in regards to sales:
1. Identify Your Core Sales KPI
Take time to articulate what your core sales KPIs are. To determine your team’s success, determine objectives such as target quotas and customer acquisition goals. Consider whether additional resources or re-allocation of current personnel are needed when building a sales team.
2. Track Your Business Goals With Metrics
Use metrics such as customer satisfaction ratings or market share to track your core sales KPIs regularly. By tracking these metrics, you can continually assess your operations and determine what needs to be changed internally or regarding resources.
Adjust KPI objectives according to changing trends. This data helps you build a sales team that’s helping your business grow exponentially.
3. Analyze Data Used For Gauging Hiring Needs
Make decisions about building a sales team based on the data collected from monthly/quarterly reports. This gives an objective view of where current personnel is lacking and which areas may require resources to maintain efficiency. During this process, make notes related to organizational culture and what may work best based on needs identified by data analysis.
Why You Need Two Salespersons At The Same Time
This is one of the most effective strategies to create a sales team. Have two salespeople work together on the same sale to maximize sales performance. It allows you to take advantage of different skill sets, offers more compelling presentations, and closes bigger deals.
Plus, different people use different selling styles to their advantage. Having two salespeople in the room allows them to play off each other’s strengths and provide a well-rounded sales presentation for customers.
This can also encourage customer participation and help build rapport during a customer meeting. Often customers may express concerns about a product or service, and it can take time for a single salesperson to address all of them.
Having two well-prepared members can provide different insights and perspectives when objections arise, making it easier to assure customers that their needs will be met.
Ramping Sales Team: Commission Breakup
Business owners are practical when it comes to ramping up their sales teams. Setting the right commission structure is essential in recruiting productive and efficient workers. This helps you build a sales team that brings in millions in profit.
Here’s a look at how businesses can devise commission structures to reward outstanding performance while controlling costs:
Set the Commission Rate Based On the Performance
Sales commission rates should be appropriate enough to incentivize your team to make sales without adding too much cost or reducing profits. Establish a per-sale commission rate specific to your company’s product or service.
As a rule of thumb, design this rate as keenly as possible. You’ll want it low enough that your team makes consistent sales and the commissions don’t cut too deeply into your profits.
Install Performance Tiers if Applicable
If the products you offer have varying degrees of difficulty (or length) in sales, consider differentiation in per-sale rates based on performance tiers.
Reward high-performing sales reps for reaching certain thresholds ahead of schedule if you offer multiple services at different complexity levels. This can drive performance and help business owners keep costs down while rewarding outstanding performers.
Implement Pipelining Parameters
Businesses can use pipelining parameters to track and nurture leads through various stages, leading to conversion and achieving real sales values. Differentiating lead generation, lead nurturing, and lead conversion allows those with higher salaries more control over their reps interacting with customers.
These systems can generate reports evaluating the impact of employee efforts from the presale stage to the closing stage.
Focus on Multiplier Goals for Agents
By introducing multiplier goals – i.e., timespan-specific quotas – sales reps will be able to concentrate more on launching short-term campaigns rather than long-term ones. This allows them to increase their earning potential sooner than originally intended.
Make sure these goals stay reasonable yet encouraging. The goal is to prevent burnout before it starts by preventing unrealistic expectations set by management within the company structure.
More tips on how to motivate your sales reps to perform are detailed in this article.
Sales Team Leader Requirements
Sales Team Leaders supervise and manage a team of sales professionals to increase sales, maximize profits and ensure customer satisfaction. If you’re building a sales team from scratch, you need the right sales leader.
Being effective in this role requires certain qualities like motivation, excellent communication skills, attention to detail, and problem-solving skills (explained below).
Leadership Skills
One of the most important roles of a sales team leader is motivating their team members to do their best work. Such tasks may involve:
- training and orienting new staff
- setting clear standards for performance
- recognizing good work
- dealing with underperformance
- developing future leaders within the team.
Problem-Solving
Business is ever-evolving which means unforeseen problems can arise quickly. During the sales process, sales team leaders need to think on their feet and come up with creative solutions. If necessary, seek external support or use available resources to resolve small issues before they become more difficult.
Relationship Building
The sales team leader should be able to foster positive relationships across departments and company divisions to optimize results for all stakeholders. Communicating complex ideas to diverse audiences requires competent verbal and written communication skills.
Strategic Planning
A successful sales team leader plans a strategy based on desirable market conditions and accurate information about customer preferences and competitor activities. By assessing risks and benefits, they continually adjust plans while monitoring the overall performance metrics of campaigns.
Building A Sales Team: FAQs
How to build a sales team?
Decide on your high-level goals. Before posting job openings, you need to determine the expectations for your sales force. Then, choose the right scale for your business – how big do you need your team to be? Start hiring with interviews and spend time training staff. Track the team’s performance and create SOPs for sales so your team can be consistent.
What are 7 team building strategies to build a sales team from scratch?
The seven strategies to build a sales team include: Lead by Example, Encourage Group Socialization, Make Sure Every Voice Is Heard, Keep an Open Line of Communication, Foster Debate, Not Conflict, Reward Good Work, and Invite Feedback.
What are 3 ideas to setup a sales team effectively?
Establish trust. The best exercises for building psychological safety and interpersonal sensitivity are those that increase trust between team members. Build dependability. Ensure the sales process is accurate and smooth. Strengthen communication. Invite your team to communicate regularly.
The Bottom Line: How To Create A Sales Team
The time and effort you invest in creating a sales team will ultimately pay off. Investing in your sales team means providing them with all the resources they need to achieve their goals, from motivation to professional development. These investments will boost your team’s pipeline and increase sales.
By implementing our strategies, you can build a sales team that exceeds your sales goals. If your sales structure and segmentation are in place, your teams will meet and surpass their quota.
Set your people up for success from the start. Design a repeatable sales process and define measurable performance indicators.
When scaling your business, we understand the challenges you can face. That’s why we’ve developed strategies to help companies build out their teams and automate their tasks. We’ve helped scale hundreds of sales teams for our clients and create effective client acquisition systems. Book a free consultation call with our team, and one of our advisors will get back to you.
