Your company can’t be successful without a good sales team. If they aren’t performing well, you need to figure out why and take steps to help them out. Check out these four signs your sales team is in trouble and what you can do about the problem.
Your Sales Team Is Focusing Too Much Time on Favorite Accounts
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It costs more money to get a new customer than it does to retain an old customer, but that doesn’t mean your sales team should spend too much time on favorite accounts. Those accounts do need attention, but your sales team should always be going after new customers. To help out your sales team, you can designate an individual or two to manage current accounts to take your sales team out of the equation.
Your Sales Team Doesn’t Follow Up on Leads in a Timely Manner
Cold calling is the worst form of sales. It’s rarely productive and sales professionals hate to do it. Your sales team should never turn to cold calling until all leads have been exhausted. Some sales teams neglect to give leads enough attention or wait too long to act. This can cause potential customers to make a purchase elsewhere. If your sales team isn’t meeting the numbers you want, make sure that they are making the most of the leads they get and are always following up.
You’re Employing Too Many Inexperienced Sales Professionals
It’s no secret that sales professionals can make a lot of money if they have good people skills and know how to close a deal. That’s why lots of people apply for the job even when they don’t have any previous sales experience. If you hire the wrong people, your sales team won’t be as productive as you’d like. Plus, you’ll have to invest a lot of money in extra sales training.
It’s better to focus on a small sales team and give them the resources they need to succeed. Mark Hurd came in as CEO of Oracle and successfully overhauled the company’s sales team. He saw the company hiring too many employees to do sales. He implemented a solution to use Oracle’s current sales team but better utilize technology to get the needed sales.
Your Sales Team Doesn’t Have Much Freedom to Act
Sales professionals usually have to get permission from upper management before lowering the price of a product or giving customers other incentives to buy. This hurts the success of your sales team. To fix the problem, you should give your sales team the freedom to act to close a sale, within reason. You can give your sales team examples of appropriate actions they can take during training so that upper management doesn’t have to step in all the time to close a deal.
If you’ve made changes to your sales team and the processes they follow, and your business still isn’t getting the sales you desire, there could be a problem with your product. Make sure that you also do market research and create products that customers want and need. A good product can sell itself. Even the most persuasive sales professional can’t sell a bad product.