How To Improve Sales Team Performance With These 34 Tips
Looking to elevate your sales team's success? Discover 34 expert tips on how to improve sales team performance and achieve your goals.
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Sales teams can often feel pressure to meet quotas and hit targets. When the team struggles to perform, the entire organization can be at risk. To make matters worse, the sales environment is constantly evolving. New technologies emerge, buyer preferences shift, and unexpected events disrupt sales performance. Sales acceleration software helps teams quickly adapt to these changes, so they can boost performance and get back to hitting targets. This blog will explore actionable steps to improve sales team performance, so you can recover from a slump and get back to business.
Aomni's sales intelligence software equips sales teams with the tools they need to improve performance, adapt to change, and recover from disruptions.
What Does Good Sales Performance Look Like?
Sales performance measures and evaluates an individual seller’s or sales team’s ability to reach:
- Sales targets
- Goals
- Objectives
This refers to how effectively they accomplish their objectives during a specific period whether that’s:
- Monthly
- Quarterly
- Annually
Why Does Sales Performance Matter?
Developing a competitive sales process is more complex than ever before, but with the right sales performance management platform, it’s within reach for every organization. By tracking and analyzing sales performance benchmarks, your company can better tailor its sales strategies to meet customers’ needs and work with its reps to achieve new levels of success.
What Does Good Sales Performance Look Like?
A well-rounded view of strong sales performance involves several key indicators:
Target Achievement
The cornerstone of good performance is consistently hitting or surpassing sales targets. This shows that sales reps are aligning their efforts with the company's revenue goals and demonstrating reliability in their results.
Pipeline Health
A healthy sales pipeline is often a sign of solid sales performance. Reps should have about 3-4 times their target quota in the pipeline, ensuring enough opportunities to meet goals. They must use strong sales techniques to convert these prospects into closed deals; otherwise, a high pipeline volume alone won’t drive success.
Time Spent with Buyers
High-performing sales reps typically spend more time interacting directly with prospects. Research shows that even one additional hour per week spent engaging with buyers can positively impact monthly performance, allowing reps to deepen their understanding of buyer needs and close more deals.
Persistence in Outreach
Reaching out to prospects usually takes over 12 touchpoints. Persistence is a marker of effective performance, as it demonstrates resilience in the face of initial silence or disinterest. It also aligns with today’s sales reality: most buyers now prefer digital interactions, so a digital-first approach is crucial.
Conversion Metrics
Tracking conversion rates from leads to opportunities and opportunities to closed deals provides a clear view of performance. A typical benchmark is a 30% lead-to-opportunity conversion rate. This rate acknowledges that most leads won’t convert, but it ensures that the ones that do are valuable and aligned with the company’s goals.
Adaptability and Digital Savvy
As 70% of buyers now prefer digital engagement, high-performing sales teams often effectively leverage digital sales strategies, ultimately creating a streamlined, buyer-friendly process.
This includes:
- Using virtual sales platforms
- Understanding digital sales etiquette
- Personalizing communications for each buyer
Effective sales performance, therefore, isn’t just about closing deals but also involves:
- Nurturing a productive sales process
- Leveraging digital tools
- Continuously working to align sales efforts with buyer expectations and company goals
This multifaceted approach helps foster sustainable growth and maintain a competitive edge.
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How To Improve Sales Team Performance With These 34 Tips
1. Deliver Sales Onboarding and Training
Hubspot reports that 46% of sellers didn’t intend to go into sales, and it’s common for new sellers to feel under-equipped and unprepared for the role. A dedicated sales onboarding program can improve sales performance by equipping new sellers with the knowledge and skills they need in their roles.
This will set them up for success and lead them to quicker performance.
- Ongoing sales training further improves skills
- Equips sellers with best practices
- Helps them keep up with evolving market trends and buyer preferences
2. Provide Ongoing Feedback and Coaching
Continuous feedback and coaching is crucial for improving sales performance. Regularly evaluating your seller’s performance is a great way to identify areas where reps can improve and grow. Effective sales coaching sessions also highlight areas where sellers succeed. By providing constructive feedback and offering guidance for growth, reps are more likely to overcome challenges and maximize their sales performance.
3. Invest in Enablement
Effective sales enablement provides sellers the necessary tools, resources, and content to streamline the sales process and enhance productivity. By investing in enablement, organizations empower their sellers to focus on selling rather than wasting their time on:
- Manual tasks
- Searching for content
- Looking for answers to common questions
4. Control Content Chaos
Sellers spend 10 hours per week tracking down and revising content. Organizing and centralizing your sales content ensures that sellers have easy and fast access to relevant and up-to-date information. This reduces time spent searching for content and allows sellers to focus on engaging buyers and closing deals. It also helps sellers speak to buyers from:
- A more informed standpoint
- Feel more confident during conversations
- Better prepare for future meetings
5. Update Sales Strategies
As the market and your business continues to evolve, it’s crucial to adapt and refine your approach to stay competitive. This can help you identify areas for improvement and update your sales strategies accordingly:
- Analyzing sales performance data
- Gathering customer feedback
- Following industry trends
6. Communicate Sales Goals Clearly and Get Buy-in
Every company should strive to communicate expectations and goals to their sales team transparently. Clear communication fosters alignment and a shared understanding of organizational objectives. To ensure sales representatives buy into your company’s sales goals, involve them in the sales planning process and collaboratively define targets everyone believes are meaningful and achievable. This gives reps a sense of ownership and motivates them to succeed, boosting sales performance.
Sales leaders should continue to communicate these goals and touch base on how representatives are progressing towards them in:
- Regular team meetings
- One-on-one sessions
- Asynchronous check-ins
Develop a culture where open, honest dialogue is welcome so reps feel comfortable expressing concerns and suggesting adjustments to your sales strategy that can further boost performance. Adopting a sales performance management platform with reporting and communication features is a great way to keep feedback channels open and ensure everyone is on the same page regarding where performance stands.
7. Create a Sales Pipeline Structured for Your Sales Team and Target Audience
A sales pipeline gives structure to the sales process, organizing it into stages that reflect your sales team's workflow and are tailored to meet the needs of your target audience. It provides a roadmap that helps sales reps navigate deals from initiation to closure. Building a pipeline starts with a thorough analysis of how buyers advance through your organization’s sales process and their own customer journey.
Then it’s time to collaborate with stakeholders to:
- Define the stages of the pipeline
- Set criteria for progression from one stage to another
- Cover key actions sales reps should take at each step
Leveraging a sales solution that includes features for visualizing and tracking progress across all stages of your company’s pipeline is a great way to see where prospects fall off and address those areas to improve performance.
8. Align Sales and Marketing Efforts with Sales Enablement
Sales enablement synergizes sales and marketing efforts, providing sales reps with the content and messaging they need to connect with prospects while giving marketing professionals insights into what your organization’s target audience wants. Marketing teams should communicate frequently with sales personnel on the types of content prospects are looking for and how to adjust the organization's messaging to attract more high-quality leads.
Establishing cross-departmental meetings between sales and marketing are another great way to keep these teams aligned. Your company should also ensure its sales enablement platform can act as a centralized knowledge base and collaboration hub for both departments.
9. Schedule Regular Sales Team Meetings
Many businesses have monthly or quarterly meetings, while some have weekly meetings. The main focus of meetings should be to make them effective. Holding regular meetings and taking meeting notes helps improve sales performance by keeping the team members focused on their goals and current tasks. It also provides a platform for everyone to share their challenges and best practices.
You can schedule two meetings:
- Weekly team meetings and individual meetings. Weekly meetings should be focused on the overall team performance to strategize the path ahead. Sales managers can provide some more information and case studies about the products/services to the team.
- The individual meetings should focus on each member in particular to find areas for improvement. Teach them to overcome obstacles and get them going in the right direction.
10. Establish a Set of Core Values
Company culture plays an important role in boosting your team's sales performance. The company’s core values should be reflected in each sales conversation. This shows how much you value your customers and are always looking for the right solution for every prospect and customer.
These values can be anything, such as:
- Respect
- Accountability
- Customer focus
- Trust
- Excellence, etc.
You need to decide on these with your team members. Once the list of core values and norms is created, it automatically gets enforced on the team level to provide the best customer experience. Each sales representative has should have that core value and will be at the center of the:
- Every decision
- Interaction
- Conversation
11. Cultivate Customer Referrals
When you offer delightful services to your customers, they feel compelled to recommend you to other potential customers. This can happen online, in person, or through your customers' reviews and testimonials on different platforms. This can significantly impact your sales performance, and your sales team needs to cultivate more customer referrals.
The simplest way to generate high-quality leads is by asking a delighted customer to:
- Leave a review or testimonial on your website
- Sending follow-up emails after a sale
- Asking for anyone else they know who would be interested in your product or service
Start a customer referral program to give your sales representatives a better chance to generate leads through customer referrals.
12. Don’t Become Complacent
You should always stay one step ahead in this sales game. Monitor the business and sales metrics regularly to avoid any surprise attacks. Don’t give your complete focus to the reps who cannot meet their goals, and pay attention to your top-performing reps as well. Motivate them to keep improving and developing their skills. This raises the bar, and you can set bigger realistic goals at the team and individual levels.
As a sales manager, you must bring out the best in the people around you. Help everyone understand their role and provide a performance-based, positive environment so your team members feel supported throughout the sales process. Develop your leadership skills, which will reflect your team’s sales performance.
13. Incentivize Your Sales Team
Offering incentives to salespeople can be a game-changer, especially when a business is experiencing a downturn. These incentives spur performance and inject a much-needed boost of morale when sales are slow. By tying incentives to specific objectives, companies can motivate their sales teams to go above and beyond expectations.
These incentives provide tangible rewards for hard work and dedication, instilling a sense of purpose and excitement within the sales force, whether it’s through:
- Monetary rewards
- Recognition
- Career advancement opportunities
14. Review Results as a Team
Although sales managers are responsible for using sales data to strategize, everyone on the team should be kept apprised of how the team as a whole is performing and how they’re doing individually.
Remember, great sales performance is born out of trust. Creating dedicated time to dig into data together demonstrates:
- Transparency
- Solidarity
- Shared responsibility for the team’s sales results.
15. Encourage Mentorships and Coaching Between Peers
For many sales reps, there’s no better way to improve their sales performance than by learning from someone on their team. Don’t be afraid to pair members of your team according to:
- Ability
- Strength
- Level of experience
Top-performing reps benefit just as much from working with a low performer as the other way around. Coaching or mentoring someone less experienced can help high-performing reps develop more:
- Confidence
- Empathy
- Creativity
16. Create Effective Operational Objectives
Sales teams can only achieve their big-picture goals in a quarter or year. Instead of focusing primarily on huge, long-term targets, help your team create smaller, incremental targets. These are called operational objectives, and should be compartmentalized, achievable, and foundational to the bigger goal. The SMART goal framework can help you determine an appropriately sized goal.
17. Be Involved — But Don’t Micromanage
For sales managers, there must be a distinct line between staying up-to-date on each rep’s progress and being overly involved in their day-to-day activities. Sales managers who cross into the latter territory will quickly lose the trust of their sales team.
Sales managers must be consistently available and provide subtly and explicitly direct. That being said, leadership should avoid micromanaging at all costs.
18. Be Selective With Hiring
The hiring process is often undervalued regarding its impact on sales performance, but it can be quite significant. Sales managers should avoid hiring based solely on a candidate’s results at their last job. Other factors are equally, if not more important in determining how good of a fit a given candidate is for the team. For example, hiring managers need to consider how a new hire will fit into the company culture and whether their experience complements the existing talent on your team.
Many top-performing sales teams hire for qualities mostly unspecific to sales. Hubspot, for example, ranks work ethic, coachability, and passion in the top five criteria of their hiring matrix. For the most part, top performers become successful through training. Hiring people with the right attitude will go a much longer way in building a team with outstanding sales performance than hiring only flashy, lone-wolf-style smooth-talkers.
19. Optimize Your Sales Structure
The three main kinds of sales structures are the:
- Assembly line model
- The island model
- The pod model
It’s important to know which sales processes best suit the needs of your team and target market.
20. Refresh Your Sales Strategy and Methodology
Buyer needs and market trends change quickly, and sales managers must stay on top of these shifts to maintain good sales performance. At least every quarter, refresh yourself and your team on the specifics of your sales strategies and the sales methodologies you expect them to use in the field to ensure that they’re still relevant and effective.
21. Invest in Great Training
Sales training is one of the things that sets top-performing sales teams apart from the rest — but it has to be the right kind of training. Studies show that effective sales training resulted in 54% of forecast deals won versus 44% of forecast deals won by reps trained with a subpar program.
Similarly, reps with highly effective training lost 5% fewer deals than those who experienced lower-quality training. This is one area where spending more usually means getting more, so take the time to learn which training offerings are most effective for your team's particular needs.
22. Create a Safe Environment for Your Team
As a sales leader, you must ensure that everyone in the organization can express themselves without fear of judgment.
23. Analyze Team Data
Focus on prospecting and look at rep statistics to see how close they are to closing. You can discover and help address issues that could later hurt the business by regularly monitoring rep performance early in the sales process. Also try to hold one-on-one sessions with each member of the team regularly.
24. Provide the Appropriate Sales Tools
Don’t you agree that repetitive processes consume a lot of time? Using the right sales outreach tools will help increase your team’s productivity and sales performance.
Finding the ideal sales automation platform that dramatically reduces the time spent on repetitive chores is the best thing you can do for your team.
25. Improve Communication the Team
Schedule time to speak with each team member and keep an eye on their performance. A face-to-face encounter with each sales rep can help them perform considerably better. Furthermore, it is an excellent opportunity to determine if there is room for improvement.
26. Always Include Your Team in the Company’s Vision
Motivation is a critical aspect that can aid your sales reps’ effectiveness. Each person in your team should feel important. But a little motivation can go a long way. Hence we bring you 101 Motivational Sales Quotes. Organize team-building sessions so each can get to know one another better.
27. Set Clear Objectives
Setting them down and splitting them into smaller, more manageable tasks. The fundamental formula for sales success is to set appropriate goals. Your sales force will be more motivated if you set specific targets and track their success to improve sales performance.
28. Shift Focus on Customers
Teach your salespeople how to market to customers’ demands and be customer-centric. It will go a long way in increasing sales.
29. Address Critical Performance Markers During Coaching
Define:
- The outcomes you want to achieve
- Concentrate on quantitative data
- Never measure more than 10 KPIs
Ensure you do so at least once a month, if not more frequently.
30. Work on Developing a High-Performance Culture
A high-performance culture’s primary goal is to assist a company in exceeding its financial and non-financial objectives. Create meaningful employee surveys and regularly get feedback from employees.
31 . Include One-on-One Coaching
Keeping track of the most recent developments in your field has several benefits. Therefore, ensure that your team is current on the latest industry trends. Keep up with the latest developments in this field and schedule coaching sessions.
32. Align Incentives with Strategies That Boost Sales
Incentives should help drive sales behaviors that align with your sales goals. This will enhance performance and retain top talent and ensure your team focuses on initiatives that drive revenue growth and profitability.
Focus on rewarding sales activities that:
- Sell your high-priority products
- Break into new markets
- Help retain customers
You should also be transparent with sales targets and offer meaningful incentive compensation plans for meeting quotas.
33. Embrace Technology and Digital Transformation
Technology and automation can be a huge asset for your sales team, but only when used wisely. Over a third of employees (37%) report using too many tools, and 36% state that working across different tools disrupts sales productivity. To avoid this, focus on adopting tools that improve their day-to-day workflow, such as sales dashboards and CRMs to manage customer data or AI-powered platforms that help prioritize prospects or personalize interactions.
Ideally, your tools can be integrated to streamline your existing processes, from lead generation to closing deals. Sometimes, a quick in-person conversation will get the job done faster than navigating a complex system of tools. Keep things streamlined, but don’t bog your team down with too many tools or red tape.
34. Give Sales Reps the Content They Need to Close Deals
Provide sales enablement content to give reps valuable insights for their conversations. More than three-quarters (82%) of top performers say they “always” perform research before reaching out to prospects (compared to just 49% for other sellers), and 97% consider sales enablement tools “very important” or “important.”
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8 Factors That Affect Sales Performance
1. Deteriorating Individual Performance
When sales team members lose motivation, sales performance drops. The impact escalates if sales personnel lack the training to adapt to varying buyer personas. To reverse declines in sales performance, managers need to identify underperforming team members and understand their challenges.
With the proper support, sales coaches can help struggling employees get back on track, rather than allowing sales performance to deteriorate.
2. Poor Economy
A downturn in the economy is a leading cause of declining sales performance. In these scenarios, businesses often need to make adjustments to their pricing plans to stay afloat. Unfortunately, these changes can decrease sales revenue until the business can recover.
3. Inaccurate Sales Pipeline
An inaccurate and disorganized sales pipeline can reduce the speed at which leads move through the pipeline by up to 18%. This impacts overall sales performance. If the sales pipeline is shorter and more organized, it will positively affect sales.
4. Unrealistic Sales Forecasting
While aiming for the best results is always good, being realistic in business is key to achieving success. Planning for unrealistic expectations can lead to poor sales performance, as the team will likely become discouraged when they fail to meet these targets.
5. Lack of Communication
The sales, marketing, and customer support/operations teams should always collaborate to produce better results. The lack of alignment and communication between these teams can affect sales performance.
6. Competition
The level of competition within your market plays a crucial role in sales performance. Understanding your competitors’ offerings and strategies allows you to differentiate yourself and position your product effectively.
7. Customer Needs and Wants
Aligning your sales approach and product offerings to address your target audience’s needs and desires is essential for sales success.
8. Technology
Technology presents both challenges and opportunities for sales teams. While it can empower lead generation and customer communication, it also allows easier competitor comparisons for customers.
Transforming Sales Processes with Aomni's Innovative Platform
Aomni is an AI agent platform designed specifically for B2B sales intelligence software. Our solution empowers enterprise and strategic account executives to execute account-based sales and marketing strategies with unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness. Our key features include:
- AI-powered prospect and account research
- Comprehensive account mapping and planning
- Data-driven sales strategy development
- Automated call preparation
- Personalized AI agents for sales optimization
- AI chat interface for streamlined sales processes
- AI-assisted Account Based Sales/Marketing campaign execution tool
Aomni addresses critical pain points for sales managers whose Account Executives, Account Managers, and Customer Success Managers must perform better and include quotas. By leveraging our advanced AI technology, sales professionals can significantly enhance their preparation for customer conversations, leading to the following:
- Larger deal closures
- Increased promotion opportunities
For individual sales professionals, Aomni provides the tools and insights needed to:
- Elevate their performance
- Close more substantial deals
- Accelerate career progression
Our platform transforms the way B2B sales teams operate, ensuring they enter every customer interaction:
- Fully prepared
- Strategically positioned for success
Try our sales intelligence software for free today!
How To Measure Sales Performance
Average Deal Size: Analyzing Sales Performance Metrics
Average deal size reveals the average monetary value of individual sales. A sales rep with one sale worth $25,000 earned you more money than a rep with three sales of $8,000 each. That said, if your sellers make roughly the same number of closed sales, average deal size will begin to set them apart.
Monitoring the average deal size helps identify trends in the value of individual sales and can inform pricing strategies. For example, to increase sales across the board, upsells and add-ons might be offered, and each rep should mention these options without being pushy.
Customer Acquisition Cost: Evaluating Sales Performance Metrics
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) measures the cost of acquiring a new customer. Some reps might excel at bringing new customers aboard. They might have the perfect mix of genuine excitement that convinces someone to try a product.
CAC is essential for understanding the efficiency of sales efforts, and lowering CAC while increasing sales is important given that gaining a new customer costs up to five times as much as keeping one you already have.
Customer Retention Cost: Understanding Sales Effectiveness
You should include This valuable metric in your sales performance dashboard. If your company increases customer retention by a mere 5%, you can see a 25% to 95% increase in profit. There’s a 60-70% close rate when selling to an existing customer versus a 5% to 20% close rate for a new customer.
Total Sales Revenue: The Most Basic Sales Performance Metric
Sales revenue is the total revenue generated from a seller during a specific period. It’s the most fundamental sales performance metric to track as it reflects the financial success of individual reps and of the sales team as a whole. If revenue stays flat or decreases, it’s a good indicator that sales performance isn’t as high as expected.
Sales Conversion Rate: Measuring Sales Effectiveness
Sales conversion rates measure the percentage of leads or prospects reps successfully convert into buyers. It helps assess the effectiveness of your organization’s sales process and your seller’s ability to engage with buyers and move them through the sales cycle.
Try Our Sales Intelligence Software for Free Today
Aomni is an AI agent platform designed specifically for B2B sales intelligence software. Our solution empowers enterprise and strategic account executives to execute account-based sales and marketing strategies with unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness. Our key features include:
- AI-powered prospect and account research
- Comprehensive account mapping and planning
- Data-driven sales strategy development
- Automated call preparation
- Personalized AI agents for sales optimization
- AI chat interface for streamlined sales processes
- AI-assisted Account Based Sales/Marketing campaign execution tool
Aomni addresses critical pain points for sales managers whose Account Executives, Account Managers, and Customer Success Managers must perform better and include quotas. By leveraging our advanced AI technology, sales professionals can significantly enhance their preparation for customer conversations, leading to the following:
- Larger deal closures
- Increased promotion opportunities
For individual sales professionals, Aomni provides the tools and insights needed to:
- Elevate their performance
- Close more substantial deals
- Accelerate career progression
Our platform transforms the way B2B sales teams operate, ensuring they enter every customer interaction:
- Fully prepared
- Strategically positioned for success
Try our sales intelligence software for free today!
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