Building and leading a high performance sales team

Building and Leading a High Performance Sales Team

Here are 10 great ways to build a high performance sales team. Done right, they will yield both short and long term results. You will be better positioned to consistently achieve revenue goals and you will build a stronger, more committed sales team.

1. As a sales leader, get into the trenches with your team. Support them at every phase of the sales cycle – from initial calls, capability presentations and needs analysis through to preparing proposals, recommendation, pricing. Support them where they need it and work with them to transfer knowledge and boost their own capabilities for next time. Remember – you are in it together. Once they know you have their back, they will drive hard for results.

2. Inspire your team. Paint a vision of where you want the team to be, in addition to individual quota achievement. Set stretch goals and agree on how the team will celebrate when the goals are achieved. As a team, create the plan to get there. Lead the team to the goal. Share success along the way. Recognize everyone’s contribution. This is hard work – it’s not announcing a prize for the end of the quarter – it’s leading the team every step of the way and working through all the details to ensure success.

3. Challenge the team and lead them into uncharted territory – every team needs home runs. They help rally the team as well as showing that anything is possible. Home runs in terms of new business development could be opening new sales channels, signing a major new customer, a large multi year deal, new applications that were not considered before, opening international markets, licensing intellectual property in new ways, new revenue producing partnerships, successful new product launches, etc. Set challenging goals and work towards them – stretch the team’s thinking and raise the state of the art. The sales cycles are likely different. Hire specialized Business Development pros or change the sales structure or compensation to reward achievement of major milestones on the way to opening new revenue streams.

4. Leading and managing change. From the sales force’s perspective, change can hurt. Change in territories, swapping of accounts, change in compensation plans, increases in quotas, consolidation of business units, mergers and acquisitions, new products, new systems, etc, etc. Often changes are made for strategic reasons – need to strengthen sales of certain product lines, need to improve coverage on specific accounts, need to support new strategic initiatives including new product launches. As a great sales leader, you need to show the sales team the value of the change, the upside. And then lead them though it! Be extremely hands on. Show what they need to do in order to come out of the change cycle better positioned for continued success.

5. Reduce non-selling time. Your best sales pros are great at this – they don’t spend time on anything that does not advance an opportunity or enhance a relationship. At the other end of the range, reps need your guidance to ensure they are focused. Worst case, underperforming reps start work on non-selling activities thinking they are laying a foundation for future sales. I have seen reps spend time re-working company sales collateral for later use. Generally that’s not their job. Keep them focused on sales activity that matters. But go deeper. What is taking their time that they would like to stop doing or do more efficiently? Are they rewriting proposals because they can’t find the best standard? Are they writing reports that are not driving benefit?

6. Customize your support for each member of your sales team – you are working to enable their success! No two sales reps are the same in terms of strengths, funnel status, quota achievement, etc. Figure out what each one needs to get their performance up to the next level and deliver. One might need help crafting a winning proposal, another might need help in custom pricing, another might need your support in new business development. You might have a star that has met quota consistently year after year, yet could use assistance clearing internal obstacles, thus increasing effectiveness. If your sales team believes you are there for them and will do whatever it takes to ensure their success, you will in turn have their commitment.

7. Hire the best you can afford. This is easier when you are working for a name-brand company with deep pockets and reps want to move to you from the competition. But what if your one of thousands of mid-market companies and can pay good compensation, but not necessarily at the very top. How do you get the best people? You hire for proven sales talent, and you hire people that you believe can transfer their skills to your industry. You hire people on an upward career trajectory. You look for the right core competencies – the right character, the right cultural fit. And let them see your passion for the business!

8. Mediocre performers need to go. Sure you might say that some reps still make a positive cash flow contribution even if they are consistently well under quota. Will they ever get there? Do they have the internal drive to succeed? Anyone can recover from a slump, but if their bar is lower than your bar, than they don’t fit. And you risk showing the entire sales team that you accept this level of performance. And if they speak negatively about the company, than their time is up!

9. Refine your sales methodology. Ask tough questions.
o Is sales process being followed? If not why not?
o What could be improved?
o How well does the process align with prospect’ and customer’s buying cycle?
o Does the process make it easy for the customer to buy and does it accelerate the sales cycle for your reps.
o Do your reps have the skills to execute on the sales process?

10. And finally - set clear expectations on sales performance – leave no room for misinterpretation. This sounds too obvious, but expectations are not always as crystal clear as they should be. Expectations define what great sales performance looks like. Expectations reflect the overall sales methodology and cover a full range of activities from account planning to call activity to sales funnel metrics to quota achievement to being an overall ambassador for the company. Expectations enable you to more effectively lead and coach your sales team – both in recognition of overachievers and in coaching those reps that are not targeting to achieve quota. Celebrate the successes – particularly when a stretch goal has been achieved.


Comments? I welcome discussion!

In transition, but not for long.

It's been a few weeks since I left my role as VP Sales at Tenzing, and I'm getting really excited about the opportunities ahead.

Tenzing was a fabulous place to be and the company is well postioned to continue on its rapid growth trajectory. Tenzing has a great team and we earned the right to provide our services to high growth organizations across North America and around the world. Managed services and managed hosting - particularly for SaaS and e-commerce companies is a high potential sector and I look forward to evaluating opportunities in these sectors as I seek out my next gig. And leveraging the cloud - that's the icing!

Best of luck to all my former colleagues at Tenzing.