With 2011 just around the corner and the economy clearly in recovery mode, entrepreneurs are all scrambling to address one question – how do I get my sales team fired up and boost my revenue?
Thankfully, SmartCompany has found a group of sales experts who can provide you with advice on how to fire up your sales team, increase leads and grow profits. Whether it’s choosing your pricing carefully or giving your sales team enough training, there are plenty of methods you can explore to boost your performance.
Jon Manning, principal of Sans Prix, says too many businesses don’t actually understand what they are selling. By making sure each salesperson is trained to understand and explain the product, he argues, SMEs will be ahead of the curve.
“Understand your product, understand your value. Then you can develop a strategy around showing off that value and then justifying a price for it. Only when you understand your product can you start convincing others to buy it.”
Sue Barrett, chief executive of Barrett Consulting, says one of the biggest problems facing sales team is the fact that many don’t have a clear leader.
“The biggest issue I see with sales teams is a lack of leadership. They have no clear direction, they have no strategies and are really left up to their own devices. So it’s no wonder they often find themselves falling short of sales.”
The answer, she says, is more training for managers to teach them to set targets for teams and in turn help sales people develop strategies for finding the best customers.
“The largest problem I see is a lack of direction. The other problem I see is that instead of focusing on the best performers in the teams, managers often focus on those who are doing the worst jobs. They shouldn’t be doing that.”
Nexsell co-founder Andrew Ridley agrees, and says the buck needs to stop with the manager.
“There are a million reasons why the manager needs to have the most authority. They can constantly be asking people for results so they can make their budgets, they can improve performance quickly, and so on. They are the key point of responsibility for the team.”
Nexsell principle David Arkles says managers should also focus on building up sales teams to multitask.
“The most misunderstood and under-used tool is proper sales management. It’s all about pipeline management… so making sure your people are working on new opportunities, closing opportunities and managing opportunities at the same time.”
One of the biggest problems among retail businesses in the past year has been the rampant use of discounting. Jon Manning, principal of Sans Prix, says SMEs can avoid this and actually increase sales as a result, but they need to use some clever marketing.
“You really need to understand the value that you’re offering and then justify your price. If you have an iPhone app selling for $10, and the average price of apps is $1.39, then you need to tell customers why it’s so much more and you need to have a good reason.”
Barrett agrees, and says businesses, especially in retail, have only hurt themselves through discounting along with everybody else.
“Businesses aren’t helping themselves by engaging on price, because it really hurts their sales. It’s much harder to talk about value, and using price to set yourself apart.”
“If you aren’t justifying your price, then you are being lazy. Use your training and don’t engage in a price war. Be confident in your product, but just have a strategy to deliver that idea to the customer about why they’re paying what they are.”
Manning says businesses don’t often analyse their products enough and fail to come up with creative solutions for increasing sales. One small tip businesses may be able to try, he says, is splitting products into basic and premium offerings, with separate price points.
“There are plenty of ways to increase sales this way. You may want to take your product, and then split it into two.”
“One example might be a hotel, which charges for a room and then provides an upgrade for an extra price. You can then market those, and create more sales around them by focusing on them as separate products altogether. Split where you can.”
Ridley says many sales teams often fail because they aren’t putting the right people on the right accounts. He says managers should determine which salespeople work with the best accounts, and build them up from there.
“I think one of the biggest issues is around identifying the right sales people for the right jobs. A lot of people put managers and other salespeople into positions they aren’t used to. Don’t put product salespeople into areas where they are selling other types of services.”
“Make sure people are in the area they are naturally good at, and then train them up in that. You see in the IT market that people particularly try and sell both products and services and it often doesn’t work well if they have people working across all channels.”
Barrett agrees, and says the sales manager should have enough training and skill to recognise who should be doing what.
“The sales manager should be identifying who is good at bringing in new business, and who is better at managing the established accounts.”
Trevor Young, partner at Park Young, says improving your soft sell is perhaps just as important as developing your sales teams. And one of the best ways to do that, he argues, is through the use of social media.
“We believe in longer-term strategies,” he says.
“With the growth of social media, businesses need to focus now on building your reputation. On the one hand, sales is all about getting out there and convincing people to buy, but on the other hand, it’s about attracting people.”
Young says part of sales now is all about ensuring people simply know about you and why you are there. This can be done through Twitter, Facebook and through various other social networks, he argues.
“There are people who won’t buy from you, ever. There are people who don’t need you. But they know people who do, and as a brand, they like you. They are important, they create word-of-mouth and they influence sales.”
“That is where sales is at, at the moment, and that’s why social networking is so important. Never forget the influence of this stuff, because you are creating a community and a group of fans, and you don’t know who they are talking to.”
If you want more advice about building sales teams, structuring pricing and developing gun sales managers, make sure you get along to this week’s great sales event, called Sales Accelerator. Our editor James Thomson will host a great team of panellists, who will help get your 2011 sales strategy into shape. It’s on Thursday, November 11 and prices start from $55.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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