Have you unknowingly placed barriers in your sales team’s way? Is there something subtle standing between them and success?
Good managers make these simple mistakes every single day. Their best intentions can sometimes actually hurt their sales team.
Are you guilty of doing any of these 4 things?
1. Only Training Them to Start
Do you train your employees vigorously for 2 weeks, and then turn them loose into the real world? It’s good that you give them that much onboarding guidance, but the training doesn’t end there. Far from it.
You need to invest in your team’s success by continuously training and up-training your staff. For example, bringing in outside experts to train your team in salesforce efficiency could make a huge difference and help your output.
2. Micromanagement
Are you a micromanager? Too much guidance is just as harmful as none at all. Great sales leaders occupy the sweet spot in between.
You need to give your team freedom. More specifically, they need the freedom to fail. They need the freedom to make their own mistakes, dust themselves off, and learn from the experience. And they need to know that you have their back when they do so.
If you’re constantly hanging over their shoulders and telling them how to respond to emails, they will be terrified of failing. Now, they’re more focused on avoiding failure than they are achieving success.
3. Holding off on CRM or Automation Software
These solutions represent a sizeable investment. You may be waiting to reach a certain level of sales before you invest in new software. But ask yourself if a lack of a CRM is, ironically, keeping you from reaching that milestone.
When looking for the return-on-investment, take a look at how long your team currently spends doing any actual selling.
The average salesperson only spends about a third of their day selling. The rest of the time they’re stuck doing labor-intensive and time-sucking activities like writing emails, prospecting/ qualifying their own leads, and preparing detailed sales quotes.
Consider how much more money you could make if your sales team was selling full-time, instead of just a third of the time.
4. Stale Marketing Materials
What assets would help your sales team do their jobs?
Would a case study on Client X help them close more deals? Are they asking for a detailed fact sheet on Feature Y? Why don’t they have it?
You need to make the time to ensure that your team has access to content to send clients at every stage of the sales cycle. They also need industry-specific and product-specific materials that address certain pain points.
You may think that your marketing team doesn’t have the time or the bandwidth to work on this right now. However, if you consider that a lack of this content could actually be costing you sales, you can make the business case to prioritize fresh content.
These are just a few of the little things that you may be doing to hurt your sales team. There are many more! However too much/ too little guidance and a lack of the right tools or content are the most common issues.
Often times, getting the best from your sales team means getting out of their way.