Commission Strategies for Unpredictable Sales: How to Motivate Your Sales Team
Unpredictable sales can demotivate and discourage team members. But your company can avoid this by
Are you a busy startup founder? Use these actionable tips and strategies to build the best sales teams efficiently.
As a startup founder who has to wear multiple hats, you probably don’t have any free time to spare. But no matter how pressed you are, ‘s important to dedicate enough time to build an excellent sales team. After all, without sales, your business isn’t going anywhere. And the path to success starts with finding the right talent, integrating them seamlessly into your working environment, and then continuing to develop their skills.
If that all sounds too time-consuming, you’re in luck. Because there are ways to build a world-class sales team without sinking too much time (or money!) into the process. Keep reading to find out how.
The sales team structure
Before creating your sales team, you need to determine how you want it to be organized. That means outlining everyone’s roles, responsibilities, and ties to other team members. This ensures that your employees will understand what you expect of them and how they fit into your business goals and objectives.
Stumped on how to get started? Use these hacks to structure your salesforce superbly:
- Begin by listing the foundational principles of your sales culture, encompassing an array of habits, values, and attitudes. The goal is to establish a positive sales culture that benefits both your company and your team members.
- Next, you need to decide how big your sales team should be. Consider factors like your company’s goals, financial capability, and growth objectives. Additionally, assess the size of the market you’re targeting and its number of potential customers.
- Once you’ve decided how many people to hire, you need to decide what they’ll do. Define the roles and responsibilities of everyone on your sales team, from managers and executives to inside and outside sales reps.
- Finally, choose between having a remote vs. an in-house sales team. If you’d rather have a virtual sales team and enjoy perks like reduced overhead costs, go remote. But if you think your startup will benefit more from closely monitored employees, build an in-house team.
Hiring and onboarding
No business can afford to be sloppy in the hiring and onboarding process. If you downplay these crucial steps, you might end up with lousy employees, and the associated damages can be catastrophic.
When done right, however, onboarding ensures that your startup has the talent it needs to reach for the stars. Here’s how:
- Step 1: Identify the skills and traits your salespeople will need
Some of the crucial skills and traits that your prospective sales recruits should exude include confidence, subtlety, persistence, and eloquence. In addition, resilient salespeople are a gem worth considering since they can take sales objections in stride and overcome them without losing hope.
- Step 2: Ascertain where and how you want to find top sales talent
This part is relatively easy. If you visit popular job boards like Indeed.com, you’ll find countless skilled job seekers. Or, you can seek referrals from social networks, friends, and colleagues. Recruitment agencies can also recommend candidates likely to fit in your company – for a fee.
- Step 3: Interview and select the most suitable candidates.
Ask each potential employee questions that relate to the roles and duties that will be assigned to them. Take that opportunity to gauge their knowledge base, confidence, and overall behavior. Don’t forget to discuss the expected salary range and career goals.
- Step 4: Onboard and train
These two elements are the key to ensuring new hires acclimate to their roles and understand what your company expects of them. Onboarding and training are also indispensable in enhancing employee commitment, retention, and productivity.
Leveraging technology
In order to build a truly world-class sales team, you have to give them the tools they need to succeed. Integrating a quality customer relationship management (CRM) system into your operations is a great place to start. It can help streamline your interactions with prospects and existing customers seamlessly, making the entire sales process run much more smoothly.
A good CRM is really the secret sauce to building long-lasting customer relationships and boosting sales. The trick is selecting a system that aligns with your needs. Excellent options include HubSpot, Insightly, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, and Salesforce.
Another technological solution that can help your startup grow exponentially is sales automation tools. They can perform mundane, repetitive tasks like data entry, prospecting, and sales reporting, freeing up your team to do what they do best – sell. With sales automation tools in your arsenal, your team members will have all the time they need to focus on reaching out to prospects and nurturing existing customer relationships.
Are you ready to build a high-performing sales team?
As a busy startup founder, you may never have enough time to create that world-class sales team of your dreams — after all, there are only so many hours in a day. But the good news is that you don’t have to go it alone. At MetaGrowth Ventures, we specialize in helping startups like yours build high-achieving sales teams from the ground up. Our experienced consultants can guide you through every step of the process from recruiting to training and beyond.
If that sounds like time well spent to you, get in touch with us today for more information about how MetaGrowth can help scale your sales to the next level.
