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Assembly a Successful Sales Team

Guest post by: Joe Ippolito

Article Overview: Does your company's success depend on the performance of your sales team? Take a close look at those on the front line. Do you believe that you have the people on board who can take you where you need to go in 2012?

Assembly a Successful Sales Team

Does your company's success depend on the performance of your sales team? Take a close look at those on the front line. Do you believe that you have the people on board who can take you where you need to go in 2012?

Assembling a successful team is a process. You see it in business, sports or any endeavor that requires a team effort to achieve a goal. How do you know if you have the right people in place? Assess them. A good assessment of the individuals on your team will reveal their strengths, weaknesses and areas for development. You'll discover who is underachieving and why. More importantly, you will learn what to do to remedy the situation.

Next, understand the art and science of recruiting, interviewing and hiring. Do you have high turnover? Chances are you are hiring wrong. Low turnover? You still might have hired wrong, but are slow to fire. The cost of hiring and firing can cripple a business. The ability to effectively interview and evaluate prospective salespeople is one of the most valuable skills to acquire. Without it, the person doing the hiring usually looks for superficial traits such as a "sales personality." They don't understand how to check a candidate's hard sales skills or internal motivation, true measurements of sales success. Remember, most candidates prepare to get the job, not do the job.

Great salespeople are like great athletes. They are never satisfied with their results and continually work on improving their techniques, skills and behaviors. Even the best athletes train the basics on a consistent basis. Your sales team needs this support to achieve the results you desire. And like great athletes, experience alone and knowledge of the game is not good enough to stay on top.

Invest in your team and hold them accountable. If you accept mediocre standards, you'll get mediocre results. Most sales managers are unable to develop and enforce accountability systems and spend too much time trying. Unfortunately, managers, who need to be leaders, are working on the wrong end of the problem. They are holding people accountable for the numbers rather than their behaviors.

Coach your team. Coaching provides feedback, ongoing skill development and improvement. Each person's accelerated growth will contribute to the success of your team in 2012.

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Article Tags: management training, Sales Team, sales training



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Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
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Re: What's 1 word to describe what your business will be in 2012 - Successful.


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