In our experience, most B2B buyers don’t consider their sales team as a resource for helping solve revenue problems, and most sales leaders aren’t convinced that their sales team has the talent to generate future success.
Do you share those feelings? Do you have a skeptical view of sales talent and don’t consider your hiring strategy a strength?
Especially post-pandemic, more and more organizations have started to realize that their problems run deep, and they can no longer hide behind inflated sales numbers. Businesses need to take a closer look at their sales systems and strategies to ensure that they can rebound in the future and be resilient enough to withstand whatever challenges might come up. It might be time to create a holistic sales talent strategy that encompasses the entire lifecycle of a salesperson.
At Altus Alliance, we have the tools and resources necessary to help establish an integrated solution so that sales organizations can ignite their revenue growth. From hiring to training to ongoing coaching and consultations, we’ve compiled a list of ways that you should guide your team through a sales talent development process.
5 Ways Sales Organizations Can Ignite Revenue Growth
You are likely already aware that training is crucial for improving a sales team’s performance. However, these training tactics must be accompanied by a formal process that supports a successful sales talent strategy. The best sales teams start with hiring the right people and then rely on proper training, performance assessment, and constant reinforcement.
It Starts With Hiring
If you really want to set your entire business up for success and ignite your revenue growth, you must start with hiring. Most sales organizations higher subjectively, focusing solely on industry expertise and traits instead of using a hiring profile. Using a data-based approach to hire might help you find out some hiring mistakes. For example, top performers might only be top performers because they benefit from market trends or a mature sales territory rather than personal expertise.
We think it’s critical to use leading and lagging indicators to identify who your best-sellers are. Additionally, a data-informed approach can help you focus on the skills and competencies necessary for success in your industry. Rather than simply hiring someone who is clearly “assertive,” success for your team might instead come from a sales rep who learns quickly.
Altus Alliance has years and years of experience and job analysis on our side to help you identify the behaviors and traits that deliver exceptional sales outcomes. In addition, we’ll help you create a benchmark that your hiring managers can use to measure their talent against so that your entire organization can thrive.
Frequent Assessments
Some studies suggest that great salespeople within your organization can account for more than half of a business’s yearly revenue. However, most companies don’t actually know why their top sellers are succeeding. When you consistently assess your top performers, you can better understand why they are achieving and what skills they have that are driving their success.
Altus Alliance recommends that all organizations conduct frequent performance assessments and identify why their sales team is successful so that they can replicate those qualities and strategies when they hire, coach, and develop strategies. In addition, we can help provide key insights into how their sales talent might stack up against our profile of success. Understanding your sellers’ strengths can give you more opportunities for training and growth with your team.
Adequate Training
Sales organizations can ignite revenue growth by using assessment results to build a tailored strategy for each seller. These assessments can address individual skill gaps and learning needs so that you can focus on the behaviors that are critical to sales success. This type of ongoing seller development can increase commitment and drive in your sellers.
Training is only effective if your sellers are engaged, so any training process you implement should be easy to use. Most sales experts want a self-guided learning experience so that they can learn on their own terms and at their own pace.
If you want to kickstart your revenue and add a better training strategy into your organization, then let Altus Alliance help. We can help you evolve your seller’s skills, provide more engaging and relevant training, and add value to the entire organization.
Coaching
Though many sales organizations use coaching to describe any interaction between leaders and their employees, we think that coaching is more formal. Sales managers should be focussing on helping their sellers find opportunities for improvement and build them up so that they can continue on a path for success. Your coaching conversations should include leads and other sales opportunities, behaviors and skills to practice, where they are at in certain sales funnels, and client accounts.
The best coaching strategies follow a consistent process and include specific techniques that tie directly into seller enablement activities. A strong coaching approach directly correlates to better sales.
Reinforcement
Using the seller’s assessments we discussed earlier, sales managers can learn to emphasize the skills that will drive more sales and reinforce positive learning behaviors. When you pair consistent assessments with coaching training, your sales managers can become stronger mentors, develop the right skills in the team, and ignite revenue growth. Reinforcement is beneficial for the entire organization as it helps encourage continuous improvement, improving employee engagement. When leaders promote the right skills and behavior, it can lead to long-term sales and greater profitability within the organization.
Altus Alliance Can Help You Achieve Peak Revenue Growth
Are you confident that your sales team has the talent they need to succeed in an ever-changing market? Regardless of your industry, the world is full of constant transitions, and your team needs to be prepared for whatever happens. With an expert team like Altus Alliance, your sales organizations can ignite revenue growth.
Your business and industry have unique challenges and needs, and our Revenue Growth Services, coupled with our methodology, ensures that your revenue actually grows. If you want revenue traction and healthy, sustainable business growth, we have revenue and marketing consulting experts who are here to help.
Reach out today for hands-on leadership from seasoned marketing consultants who can provide your business with an instant offense that can increase your revenue.