Marketing leaders say that a motivated sales team is required to ensure the success of a good sales strategy
CMOs point out that a great marketing and sales strategy is ineffective without an efficient team to carry it out. They propose extensive training of the sales team to ensure better returns and productivity. Sales training need to be knowledgeable, motivating, and easy-to-adapt with the least disruptions to successful pre-existing practices.
Marketing leaders emphasize on training because it improves employee retention and satisfaction. Employees look forward to in-house programs as a way to learn more and move forward in their careers. It promotes the sharing of insights and intelligence, ensuring a win-win situation for both employees and the organization.
CIOs believe that a manager coaching their teams is an excellent way to increase sales efficiency. Spoken information is lost quickly, whereas a full-blown coaching session will help in the training results. Organizations with effective coaching programs like sales enablement training increase their success rates significantly. The training has to be designed with a focus on well-defined strategy, performance measuring metrics, and successful case studies.
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Measuring performance
CMOs say that before creating a strategy, it is necessary to decide on metrics and performance baseline. Now organizations may proceed with metrics like an increase in client numbers or close rates; however, these factors are out of the sales team’s control.
Marketing leaders suggest following the AOR approach as performance measurement.
Activity: Sales professionals will have absolute control over their activity. The activity can be measured by keeping count of phone calls made or attended, emails sent against the results.
Objectives: Measuring activity without goals is a waste of time and effort. Sales representatives should have the activity results in engagement, conversations that convert to sales.
Results: CMOs say that the measurable results would be considered the revenue increase and increased contracts. Leaders suggest working backward from the desired results to understand the required goals and relevant activities needed to reach them.
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AOR method makes it easier to identify the root cause of the issue and changing the training tactics to correct the problem. It is imperative to provide the best tools for the sales team to help them reach their goals. The team needs to be coached on the proper implementation of tools like sales management tools, customer relationship management (CRM), and scheduling software, call managers, etc.
Coaching is different from supervising
CMOs point out that often coaching is misunderstood to be the same as supervising. Coaching involves reviewing the pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, and conducting open conversations to ensure steady movement towards achieving set goals.
It is essential to set key performance indicators (KPIs) and quotas, but managers should guide them on efficient routes to reach the objectives. Setting expectations and bonuses is not part of the coaching strategy. A good coaching strategy involves training the team on how to more efficiently utilize sales tools and deploy new processes to have effective and better results.
Marketing leaders say that sales representatives should be trained on critical components like Correction, Diagnosis, and Consistency as part of the coaching session. Practical training results in the following conclusion: be it qualified employees, reduced attrition rate, better personal satisfaction, and higher quality sales.
