Motivating the sales reps

Sales is one of the loneliest and frustrating jobs for many people because of constant rejection. Many a times, we have felt that we are not in control of the selling situation. This is because of the unmanageable element in this case – Prospects Mind. We have seen that we have been able to finish a successful meetings with clear outcomes that will take the meeting to a closure. However, we have also heard that the prospects have decided not to go ahead with us because of fear, laziness and being comfortable in status quo. So, the teams need to be motivated the most to remain energetic and enthusiastic all the time. Inside sales teams face the most rejections from their cold call and cold email initiatives than the outside sales teams.

Managing the resistance from the sales reps

Many of the sales reps will not be willing to execute your sales plan. They will not be willing to put in the effort in terms of calls as per your plan. They will want to work in their own style but you know that this will not get the desired results you want to get. So, you will have to break the resistance and convince them about the efforts that they would have to put in or atleast get the desired numbers on a weekly basis.

Being saddled with an existing team but to get the best results out of them

Many times, we have felt this. I did not hire this person or the team but I am asked to manage them. This happens when you become a manager in your existing organization by way of promotion and you are asked to manage the team. This may also happen when you join a new organization as a leader and you are asked to get results out of the existing team. You will have to infuse your energy, get them to work like the way you would want them to work and should manage them

Training them the way they understand

We have seen that many of the sales people will have limitations in speaking beyond a few lines to the prospect on the phone. This is because of the way they have been trained. The functionalities of the product and the capacities in services that includes the case studies are trained from a technology perspective and it gets very difficult for the sales team to understand those. So you have to train them in a way that they understand so that they speak with the prospects comfortably,

Giving them the right job responsibilities

The KRAs have to be fixed in the beginning of the year or when they join. Very few companies give the right responsibilities and fix the KRAs at the beginning. This leads to the people not knowing what they should aim for when they would work. This will lead to a clash between the management and the sales team at some point in time on what the performance metrics are.

Time and Task Management

A sales person time is split among prospecting that include calling-emailing, and linkedin connects, presentation , participating in the solution discussions and administrative tasks that includes filling up the data in the CRM or a Marketing automation tool. The first thing to take a hit when multiple activities are to be done is prospecting. You should ensure that they put in adequate amount of time in all the activities and still reach their numbers across multiple stages of their sales cycle.

Support from the rest of the organization

Adequate support from the rest of the organization to ensure the sales teams to get the help required is important. The support involves presentations, proposals, technology discussions with the prospect to name a few. All of these involve getting in the right tech person or someone from the management layer and the support should be delivered on time .