The key to a successful sales strategy is in the details. According to the Harvard Business Review, too many managers run their teams by telling salespeople to sell as much as they can to whoever will buy. To meet quotas, sales reps will often end up selling products at a discount. As a result, the value of both the deals and customers decreases over time. Fortunately, there are many tactics managers can employ to fix this problem and create a winning strategy for their sales teams.
1. Identify the target customers
Experts overwhelmingly emphasize the need to establish target customers. Business2Community said managers should discuss what sales teams view as their most and least significant opportunities to determine if their priorities are in order. HBR explained the importance of mapping out the best possible customers – those who have a genuine need for your product and will not require a discount for the sale to be made.
According to HBR, sales managers can incentivize sales reps to seek out more valuable customers through tracking the number of calls they make to specific types of customers. A sales rep’s performance should not solely be measured on the number of calls and deals made. Rather, communicate to your reps that they will also be evaluated on the metric of calls made to the most valuable customers.
Compensation management software allows both managers and sales reps to keep track of the number of calls they make per day and the number of opportunities gleaned from those calls. With compensation management software, everyone can be kept constantly informed of whether they are reaching the goals they have set for themselves or their managers have set for them.
2. Maintain consistent customer communications across your team
HBR discussed how companies can establish what it calls a Strategic Deal Profile, an explicit outline of the best tactics sales reps can use when interacting with customers. These tactics can be a part of sales team training or development so that every team member incorporates them into his daily sales strategy.
3. Communicate with your marketing team
Pardot Salesforce discussed the necessity of a marketing team maintaining open communications with its sales team. When a marketing team is open with the sales team about its target audience and the content it creates to reach that target audience, the sales team will be better informed and more equipped to speak with customers during sales calls.
Both teams should also be on the same page regarding the profile of the ideal customer and how to reach that customer. Pardot Salesforce even urged marketing team members to sit it on sales meetings and listen in on sales calls to gain a better understanding of the way sales teams work.
Compensation management software allows sales managers to share metrics and data with anyone they think would benefit from viewing it. The software can help managers put together daily, weekly or monthly emails to share with other teams.
4. Make sure everyone knows your company’s mission
Business2Community explained how every sales rep should understand their company’s value proposition. An ability to communicate the value of a product will earn sales reps more valuable customers. The only way they can communicate a product’s value is if they are wholly informed.
