What Makes a Successful Sales Team?
A successful sales team is one that is set up correctly, responds to the responsibility it has for the task, seeks constant improvement and sees its Sales Leader as a fundamental support to its success.
A sales team in this situation will do well and is more likely to go on doing well than a sales team who are just told what to do.
The Sales Leader’s role is one of catalyst – constantly helping their team to keep up with events, to change in the light of events and to succeed because it is always configured for success.
The organizational structure of a team is important, especially a sales team who have very tangible measures of success in the form of their targets.
Within a sales team it can be useful to identify specific roles:
* Hunters – who will be responsible for the acquisition of new business from new customers.
* Farmers – who will be responsible for the servicing of existing customer business and the identification of new business opportunities from existing accounts.
* Sales support – who will provide the post sales support to ensure that new customers are given high servicing levels particularly in the two months after they’ve placed their first order? This is vital because typically, many new customers are lost during this high-risk period.
Who does what, how one job relates to another, the lines of reporting and communication – all of these affect effectiveness. This is something to continually re-assess. Sometimes all three types of roles are undertaken by the same sales person, and sometimes organizations have different sales people for each type of role. Sales Leaders should, therefore:
* Make sure that the structure you develop fits the tasks to be done and the sales targets to be achieved
* Implement any changes on a considered basis because sales people are usually incredibly busy, and are more prone to overwhelm when faced with the prospect of change
* Explain changes positively and highlight why they will help sales people achieve their targets more easily
* Keep the sales team under review to ensure you retain a good fit between what the organization requires and what the sales team must do to support this.
Any, even slight, incongruities about the way sales people are organized can easily dilute overall effectiveness and foster an environment where sales people do not expect things to remain as they are forever.
The role of sales people usually requires them to be suitably self-sufficient because of the fact that they are often home-based, and spend most of their time working alone in the field. Building self-sufficiency saves time and promotes goodwill. Having responsibility is motivational – sales people tend to do best those tasks for which they have personal responsibility.
Jonathan Farrington is a globally recognized business coach, mentor, author, and consultant, who has guided hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals around the world towards optimum performance levels. He is Chairman of The JF Corporation and CEO of Top Sales Associates, based in London & Paris.
