5-Step Framework to Set up Sales Teams for Success

Often, startups feel that they can hire great salespeople with a phenomenal track record of winning historically - and somehow, magically, these sales folks will come in and start delivering results.

It rarely works out that way.

The sales team at any organization is not so different from a sports team.

Each sales member, similar to athletes in a sports team, contributes to the team winning. And, much like team scouts, we try to spot athletes with raw energy, unique talent, and the attitude to play to win.

Very similar to how sports teams need excellent coaches, great physios, best-in-industry fitness trainers, and many other folks to really help each scout do their best and win, the sales team too, is naturally dependent on the support from other cross-functional teams such as Product, Marketing, Engineering, Sales Ops and more.

Companies may hire the most talented of the sales teams, but if they are not rightly set up for them to be successful, failure is inevitable.

To empower the sales teams to succeed - there is a multitude of levers that need to be thought through. A lot of these things will look obvious for many, but it is surprising to see so few startups adopt a systematic approach to help their sales teams win.

Here is what we learned devising a rock-solid foundation for all the new folks who join the sales team at Hevo.

A. Training Design

A scientifically thought-through training program sets up the stage to enable the sales team from day 1. The better the design of this process, the higher the chances of success are for the sales team.

1. Technology and Product Training - An in-depth training program helps them be the expert on the product and technology landscape
2. Tagging to a Buddy - Having an onboarding buddy is super important. A buddy is someone who helps the new member of the team on board smoothly. The buddy acts as a liaison, a mentor, a friend to help the new joinee acquainted with all things Hevo. To have someone internal to discuss the silliest of doubts and extract all the tribal knowledge from has helped folks to learn faster.
3. A thorough understanding of the Buyer - To help the sales team succeed, one needs to break down the nuances of the buyers and map their thoughts with the product that is sold and set the sales process in line with that so anyone who joins the sales team can understand, internalize and execute.
4. Ongoing Self-assessment and feedback - This goes a long way in getting people ready for battle. This is similar to how sports teams play mock games and prepping tournaments to assess where they stand - self-assessments and timely feedback enable each individual to identify their own strengths and weaknesses early. Additionally, it helps them to reflect on their skills and recoup.
5. Sharing the Tribal Knowledge - Documenting the past experiences with customers, building case studies to learn from different customer conversations, and showcasing how to navigate them has been a cornerstone to an individual’s success. With this knowledge passed on, the new members know what to expect from a customer and how to navigate tricky situations.

B. Empowering Sales Automation

Once the Sales team starts working on their accounts, the systems built to simplify sales efficiency are instrumental in shaping the success of the sales team. Imagine a setup where the Salesperson is

1. Promptly notified about a prospect's progress within a product enabling them to contextualize their conversation
2. Emails when a prospect has visited the product’s pricing page or initiated a conversation with the chat support
3. Gets a list of prospects they need to call/email in a given day
4. Are reminded about the warm lead whom we have not followed up in a week’s time
5. Are delivered a detailed note on the customers they need to re-initiate conversations this quarter

And - these are just a few examples of the whole gamut of automation workflows set up.

Leveraging the power of automation, guides the actions of the sales team and empowers them to reach out to the right prospect at the right time.

It takes away the need for the sales team to “remember things” and allows them to focus on having meaningful conversations with customers.

C. Analytics-Driven Sales Coaching

Setting up robust analytics systems allows the Sales team to self-diagnose in real-time. Sales folks are often on top of simple metrics like quota attained, deals close, and so on. Powerful analytics can enable them to see “The Why”.

Think about detailed performance reports that highlight exactly what they are doing well (or not doing well) and what aspects they need to tweak to improve their numbers.

The Sales coaches / Team Leads leverage reports to qualitatively analyze the customer conversations, study gaps and provide detailed feedback to the sales team. This goes a long way in improving conversations with customers and in turn win rates.

D. Ongoing Training

Learning is an ongoing process. Similar to how sports teams need to keep learning and practising, it is super important for the sales team to keep themselves abreast about new products, features, enhancements in sales processes ensuring that they always stay sharp.

E. Identifying the Attributes of a Winner

In the process of designing and developing these practices, we also started identifying the traits of salespeople who have been successful and nurturing them. The attributes of salespeople who have been successful are the ones who:

1. Are generally curious and have shown a keen interest in learning about new space, new products, and new people.
2. Walked extra miles in the initial stages to come up to speed
3. Remain highly coachable. They are able to unlearn and understand that not everything that has made them successful in the past role would apply in the new context. A+ players are able to clearly understand what is needed for them to be successful in the new role - what they already have and what they should learn.

These have been strong feedback pointers and inputs given to the hiring team to scout for talented sales folks.

At Hevo, we have made a cautious effort to set up all these systems early in our journey to ensure sales have everything they need to go out and win.

Like any good system, it is continuously evolving, learning, and adapting and that is exactly how we like it here.

Did this blog get you excited? Shoot us an email at sales.talent@hevodata.com to chat more about the Sales ethos at Hevo.