How To Hire A Sales Team [Complete Guide For Growing Businesses]

The sales department plays a vital role in the success and growth of a business, no matter the industry.

A sales team is responsible for working together to sell the products or services on behalf of the company. The team works to build customer relationships and acquire new clients. They also maintain relationships with existing customers to encourage repeat purchases and brand loyalty.    

No matter how good your products or services are, you still need to hire a sales team effectively to sell your offerings. 

If the team isn’t running with a smooth workflow, clarity around consistent sales processes, and being guided by best practices for sales, you have a problem. 

In this article, we’ll share some expert tips on how to hire a winning sales team, how to define your sales team roles and responsibilities, and how to avoid common mistakes. 

What Does a Sales Team Do?  

The sales department in any organization plays a vital role in the success of a company. The team performs the following functions:

Make sales   

The primary objective of a sales team is to make sales, but it is not the only goal to think about. It is vital to have the sales process optimized to keep costs low and have prospects feeling nurtured and satisfied. 

Lead Generation   

Generating leads is the key first point for a sales department. The sales team devises strategies to market products or services to the targeted audience to find potential customers. After discovering prospects, they bring them into a sales funnel to convert them into customers.

Retaining Existing Customers   

A company’s customers continuously look for other options and businesses offering the same products or services. The sales team’s responsibility is to make relationships with existing customers and retain them for further sales. 

Growing The Business   

The sales team plays a vital role in the company’s growth. It generates leads, converts them into customers, and retains existing customers, which helps the company make sales and continuously generate revenue. Generating sales and revenue allows a company to scale its business.

How to Build a Sales Team or Sales Structure   

There are many things to consider while creating a sales team structure. If the following best practices aren’t considered, your company may find itself with a sluggish and ineffective sales process that isn’t delivering the value it could.

Keep An Eye On The Prize 

If the sales team is too focused on short-term results-oriented goals, this can make it difficult for the team to be on the same page and really be working for the overall success of the company. An example of this is when the sales team isn’t working together in how they decide to downsell and upsell. 

The way you structure your sales team (based on the overall company goals) will affect its performance. Therefore, having a clear vision for the future is necessary to develop a successful sales structure. 

Focus On Your Customers   

The most important factor for the sales team is to focus on the needs and problems of their customers. A sales team performs well only when it addresses these pain points and displays great solutions to the prospects to land the sale.

Stay data-driven   

Having the right tools is essential when expanding a sales team. A data-focused approach also enables you to identify the areas where the sales team encounters challenges or roadblocks and where you need to provide support. 

One way to do this is to record your sales team’s discovery calls. It can give insight into how to structure the team (certain sales reps might perform better in different ways of communicating with clients than others). For example, some reps might have a fantastic call script, and you hear this in the recordings and notice the impact it has on prospects. That gives the opportunity to implement this into the structure of the entire team’s discovery call process.

Create Systems

Sale is a long-term process, and businesses need to implement multiple strategies to sell their products/services successfully. A sales strategy is a collection of choices, activities, and objectives that direct how your sales force promotes the company and its goods to win new clients. 

With specific goals for sales processes, product positioning, and competition analysis, it serves as a manual for sales representatives to follow.  The majority of strategies include a thorough outline of management-established best practices and procedures and using great customer relationship management tools, like Active Campaign.

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Use Incentives and Perks/Bonus 

Although money is a great motivator, there are other things that can work well such as sales team incentives. The sales incentives and perks motivate your team to meet their sales targets.  

Companies can offer sales team performance incentives for a period, like monthly rewards, quarterly rewards, or yearly bonuses.

Here are the various types of incentives and perks you can provide to your sales team.    

  • Cash Rewards   

In many reward schemes for sales teams, a predetermined sum of money is often used as a bonus for the effort. Cash is effective because your team is working to make money.   

You can utilize cash bonuses to help your sales team concentrate on a specific objective or establish a clear commission structure to make this incentive effective. Usually, this entails paying a predetermined sum of money in exchange for a particular success. 

  • Product Rewards   

A great technique to inspire your sales team is to give away tangible goods as a sales incentive, for example: 

  • Tech devices, like the newest iPhone or a smartwatch   
  • Entertaining products, like a coffee maker, 4K TV, or music system   
  • Products for hobbies like a high-end bicycle, climbing gear, or musical instruments.
  • Entertainment Bonuses    

Businesses offer entertainment bonuses to the best performers in their sales team. You can offer tickets for movies, passes for amusement parks, or event admission.

  • Recognition    

Despite the fact that most employees are generally happy with their jobs, a recent American Psychological Association study found that a staggering 44% of employees are dissatisfied with the acknowledgment they receive from their workplace.   

Therefore, praise in and of itself can be a strong incentive. (Therefore, there is a widely used “employee of the month” award system.) 

Finding the Right Sales People for Your Company  

It is essential to know how to hire sales team with the right people, as they are the ones who will bring business to your organization. As salespersons need to handle many responsibilities and important tasks, you must consider the following hiring criteria while hiring a sales team.    

Dedication   

There are multiple ways to determine whether a salesperson is enthusiastic about working for your company. Keep up a positive dialogue and ask numerous questions to evaluate not only the sales experience of the candidate – but how they handle problems, what they are motivated by, and where they see their future growth.

Drive   

The salesman you choose must be enthusiastic about driving improvements for your business. Do they prioritize growth? A strong desire to advance both personally and professionally drives a successful sales representative. 

Capabilities   

The skills and expertise required to work in sales for your industry must be present in your ideal candidate. If your business is in the retail sector and the applicant doesn’t know what retail is or bothered to search it online before the interview, that’s a warning sign. You want to be hiring people who are well-versed in the language of the industry and the products/services of the scene.

The Cultural Fit   

An unreliable employee can severely harm customer relationships and team morale. Ensure that the workplace won’t become unwelcoming with the appearance of a new sales representative because employees spend a lot of time there. When conducting interviews and implementing a trial period, you can understand whether they’re a good fit for the culture of your business.

Hire a Sales Team: FAQs

Why Build A Sales Team?  

Companies spend millions of dollars on marketing, including market research, choosing the right product, creating brand awareness, and creating demand and interest. Marketing is a long-lasting process that leads to sales. 

The sales process finally sells the products or services and generates revenue for the company. Without a well-structured sales process and team, a business cannot imagine generating revenue. Therefore, members of a sales team are the pillars of any business on which it can stand strong and run successfully.     

When to Build a Sales Team 

You might need to expand your sales team throughout particular seasons and phases of your company’s growth. Budget, necessity, and business goals should all be considered in the decision to build a sales team. If you feel that you have the budget to dedicate an entire sales department (even if just made of 1-2 people to start), then building a sales team as soon as your resources allow it would be ideal. 

How to Train a Sales Team?

Self-motivation and self-training are not sufficient to develop a sales team and keep them on track. As a part of their overall sales enablement strategy, training programs are super helpful for their team members. Programs for sales training can be tailored to your sector or company’s requirements: it could be live online training, recorded videos, or one-to-one mentoring.

Wrapping Up: Hiring Sales Teams 

Hiring the right sales team is crucial for any business. Following the tips mentioned above will allow you to hire productive people that will work together for the common goals of your company. Remember to keep your sales department motivated by offering performance and appreciation rewards from time to time.
Since you’re at the stage of hiring a sales team, you’re focused on scaling your company. That’s what we do for our clients. We build profitable client acquisition systems that are guaranteed to work. If you’re interested to learn how we can help you scale your company, book a free consultation call and one of our advisors will get back to you.

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