Your sales team is doing a great job, but they could do better, and you can help them improve by empowering them in new and exciting ways. So…do you know where to begin?
4 Ways to Empower Your Sales Team for Success
There’s a technical side to sales and there’s a psychological side as well. If you want your sales team to succeed, you’ll have to pay attention to both. Here are some very specific ways you can pay attention to the softer part of sales and empower your team to generate better results.
1. Gamify the Sales Process
Sometimes the best way to motivate your team and push them to new heights is to take a unique approach that works in other areas of life and paste it into your sales process. If you know your team is competitive, why not leverage gamification to bring out those competitive juices?
As Centrical explains, “Gamification is all about using game mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics to drive desired behaviors and performance. When done well, it really works. More than 70% of companies using sales gamification tools report between 11% to 50% increases in measured sales performance.”
Gamification can take any number of forms. Contests and leaderboards are one great option. Other companies use point systems and assign “badges” based on accomplishments. You can even run challenges for specific campaigns, offering high-value rewards for lofty achievements.
2. Empower Your Salespeople By Offering Incentives
The use of incentives to empower your sales team goes hand-in-hand with the idea of gamification. But don’t automatically assume that cash bonuses and money are the best incentives. In many cases, financial incentives have a limited impact and fail to produce long-term results. You might do better by offering benefits such as recognition, autonomy, flexibility, and time off.
3. Offer Ongoing Support
At the end of the day, there’s one thing your team craves more than anything else: support. Your salespeople want to know that you’re behind them and that you want them to be successful. The best way to prove this is by offering the kind of support they want. Here are some ways you can make this happen:
- Use CSAT surveys to gather insights on customers. The insights can then be condensed and sent to salespeople to help them understand what’s working. By empowering your sales team with the right information, you make it easy for them to optimize their approach and proceed with confidence.
- Training often gets a bad rap, but it can be an excellent tool for empowering your salespeople. The key is to make the training relevant. Whenever possible, give your team choices over the type of training they pursue. This allows them to address weaknesses and get better in areas where they feel like they need to grow.
- Avoid undercutting your salespeople when they’re close to getting a sale. If there’s a small issue holding them up from getting a customer on board, work with them to overcome that point of friction. Even if it means taking a small hit on profit margin. This could look like offering free shipping or giving a discounted rate on a service.
A salesperson notices when you have their back. By supporting them in small ways, you empower your sales team by establishing an environment of trust that motivates them to perform even better in their role.
4. Be Flexible
Don’t be such a stickler. Give your salespeople the freedom and flexibility to do their jobs without feeling like they’re being carefully watched and/or restricted.
For example, one way to empower your sales team is to let employees set their own hours, within reason. If one salesperson needs to drop his kids off at 9 a.m. and show up at 9:30 a.m., so be it! Be understanding and work with your team to help them become the best possible version of themselves.
Effective Leadership Empowers the Healthiest Sales Teams
You could make an argument that good salespeople are born with an innate skill. While there certainly are people who enter this world capable of selling ice to an Eskimo, these individuals are few and far between. Most great salespeople reach that point through hard work. More importantly, they’re surrounded by great leaders who push them to succeed.
As a business owner or sales leader, it’s your job to step into that role and encourage and motivate your salespeople to become the best possible versions of themselves.
