Seven steps to supercharge your sales team in 2017

Ensuring your sales engine is well oiled is essential for the year ahead, claims Darren Spence

1. Structural, compensation and coverage planning

The structure of a high-performing sales team needs to be free from politics, territory conflict and self-importance. The more effective a team is at sharing best practices, information and resources, the better the client engagement will be, which in turn will lead to better win rates, better quality deals, and greater confidence - helping cultivate a longer-lasting culture of collaboration and team spirit.

Compensation plans play a key role in determining how collaborative a team will be. If the reward and recognition plans benefit only the individual salesperson who has won a deal, you can expect the culture to be self-centered and aggressive, which in turn will lead to team members being unsportsmanlike and unsupportive. If, however, the reward and recognition plans benefit the individual salesperson who has won a deal and a wider team, you can expect the culture to be collaborative and supportive, thus delivering better results.

Clients buy differently than they did 10 years ago, even five years ago, so reviewing your compensation plans now and amending them in line with your business model will help deliver a fast start through 2017.

In addition to reviewing your structure and compensation strategy, it's also important to ensure there is the optimum number of quota-bearing heads necessary to meet any future targets. If done properly, this can take a while to do but the investment in time now will repay with interest next year. Poor coverage planning can result in continual fire-fighting and persistent under-performance, frustration, and attrition.

2. Tools

High-performing sales teams are better than most others in two key areas: 1) demonstrating relevance to their clients, and 2) up/cross-selling. Tools and technologies can play a key part in these critical areas. There are some excellent solutions on the market that can help enhance both areas so now is a great time to research them.

3. Mentoring, developing and inspiring sales staff

It's essential for your sales team to be proficiently competent and properly supported as they carry out their duties whether in the field or in the office.

Salespeople need to be listened to and asked questions about why they conduct themselves as they do. They need to be inspired and challenged to think about new ways to approach difficult accounts and situations.

Underpinning the mentoring and development strategy needs to be a competency framework that can serve as a signpost to redirect conversations and accelerate behaviour improvements.

If salespeople are not performing or sufficiently improving in line with your company policy, you need to be ready to implement a success plan quickly and see it through until they improve or exit the organisation.

4. Partner with your operations counterpart so that sales and operations work as a team

Conflicts between sales and operations can consume time, weaken bid responses, and have a detrimental impact on customer service and longevity. It is essential therefore that both divisions are tied at the hip and working as one.

Make sure you do your part to foster a close working relationship with your operations counterpart by: attending internal meetings when possible; inviting operational staff to lunches and appointments; involving operational staff in key bid discussions and responses; and making sure you stay within your budgeted expenses to help operations meet their bottom line.

5. Sourcing, recruiting and on-boarding sales staff

Looking for top talent is a critical part of being a sales manager, particularly given that in most industries the turnover of salespeople is between 25 per cent and 35 per cent annually. It's therefore important you have a good in-house sourcing team or have appointed two or three specialist sales recruitment companies which always put you top of their list when they identify potential candidates. You don't want to see others' rejects so work hard at finding the right partners; invest time building strong relationships with them; and pay them well. The latter point is often ignored but if a recruitment partner has an exceptional candidate and one of their clients is paying them a higher fee than you are, they will more than likely recommend the candidate to the other organisation first.

Be sure also to have a competency-based component to your interview process so that top talent can be identified early on and a more effective on-boarding programme can be implemented. Your chosen recruitment companies should do competency-based interviews as a value-add, or can alternatively be outsourced to an independent organisation.

6. Running effective sales meetings

As a sales manager, you must bring your sales team together, usually every four to six weeks, and only for half a day. The meeting should include the usual performance-related updates but must also include role-playing situations and competency-development areas in which you need all your team members to be proficient. This latter point is often overlooked but is critical to the development of the sales effectiveness of your team. Creating a cultural of improvement, collaboration and winning is the difference between high-performing teams and underperforming teams.

Your responsibility is to plan the meetings to start and end on time, to assign pre-work and to appoint members of your team to lead segments - if you aren't prepared for your meetings, you can't expect your salespeople to be prepared for their sales calls.

7. Practising the 'intangibles'

Having a great attitude is incredibly important to your effectiveness as a leader, and offering solutions to any problems that you bring up is just as important to your success. Work on these attributes and develop them in your salespeople - they are proven characteristics of top sellers:

• Don't take "no" personally
• Accept 100 per cent responsibility for results
• Develop a deep desire to succeed
• Be empathetic
• Be intensely goal-oriented
• Be self-disciplined, determined and persistent
• Be impeccably honest
• Practice approaching people you don't know
• Be patient and pushy with marketing - they have a key part to play in establishing trust with your clients
• Get cross-functional executives and managers involved

Darren Spence is director at SalesGym360