4 Tips for Improving Your Sales Team

Sales performance is reliant on how efficient and effective your sales team is at generating  revenue. With a wavering economy and changing market factors, getting your sales team to maximize their performance can be challenging.

Improving your sales team requires that you keep sales employees motivated and provide them with the tools they need to succeed. Working capital loans can empower your business to invest in your sales teams and create value opportunities. Four of the top sales performance strategies you can employ using working capital loans are:

1. Upgrade Your Sales Tools

There are two sides to enhancing sales tools: technology and processes. Upgrading your technology lets your sales workers take advantage of powerful digital capabilities,while improving your processes makes it easier for your sales team to quickly close out deals.

Improving technology: Small businesses have several opportunities to upgrade their tech in today’s cloud-driven era. You can more easily enlist modern technologies to improve sales with access to cloud apps, making it simpler to get innovative solutions without high capital costs. If you have workers who make sales outside the office, the right app can make a significant difference. 

An end-user app that incorporates invoicing, billing, and sales capabilities makes it easier for your employees to automatically sell added services. For example, a plumber out to make a small fix can provide a price quote for a new fixture installation, schedule the work order, and close out the sale, all while discussing the opportunity with the customer.

Sales technology and software help businesses streamline sales techniques. One of the most popular forms of business sales technology is CRM systems. A CRM system is a software tool that allows businesses to manage customer relationships and the data associated with them.

The challenge with most sales technologies is that they require a monthly fee. While this makes them more accessible than having to purchase them outright, it can be difficult to keep up with ongoing expenses during cash flow lulls. Working capital loans can be used to help with the purchase and integration of sales technology.

Improving processes: Once you have the right technology in place, you can streamline processes to maximize your team’s performance. You can eliminate unnecessary paperwork, automate manual alerts, and make it easier for your sales employees to communicate internally.  

2. Provide Continuous Training

The importance of training is especially evident for your entry-level workers, but it extends across every facet of improving your sales team. Providing opportunities for skills development can:

• Keep employees engaged.
• Help employees perfect their sales strategy.
• Help workers better understand what potential customers need from them.
• Ensure employees aren’t overwhelmed by the company’s expectations of them.

Finding time and resources for training can be difficult. Luckily, you have a wide range of options, including:

• Subscribing to online sales training courses.
• Bringing in specialists for workshops and seminars.
• Sending employees to conferences and events.
• Ensuring your managers and leaders have time to train subordinates.

Using small, short-term loans to fund these strategies can help you overcome the initial barriers to training employees so you can sustain a successful system.

3. Use Stretch Goals to Heighten Expectations

You need to give your salespeople a goal to reach. Many sales teams have simple benchmarks they use to evaluate sales workers. Once employees have brought in enough revenue, they’ve hit their goals and are set for the month or quarter. Stretch goals can motivate specific behaviors, such as selling to certain types of customers or bringing in revenue for certain products.

Stretch goals can raise expectations across your team. They help you reinforce best practices by going beyond basic performance benchmarking and give your sales workers highly specific targets to work toward.

4. Create a Culture of Recognition

You can further motivate your team to perform at its best through contests and recognition programs that reward your highest performing sales employees. You don’t want your employees to have a negative relationship because they’re over-competitive. However, some healthy competition can keep workers engaged and prove essential in improving your sales team.

Using Working Capital Loans for Improving Your Sales Team

Each of these strategies can serve as a tool to help improve your sales team, but they all come with resource demands. Working capital loans and similar short-term financing options from an alternative lender can help you invest in sales tactics and foster sustained growth. Consider how the extra cash flow can help you encourage your team and reach your sales goals.