4 Tips to Keep Your Sales Team on Track

Shannon McGovern, Area Vice President, Commercial Sales, Salesforce

As sales leaders, our jobs are pretty straightforward: Support our team to close deals, build the pipeline, and make (or better yet, beat) the numbers. But as we all know, it’s incredibly complicated to achieve this. Here are some tips to help any sales leader meet their goals and build a vibrant, well-oiled sales organization.

1. Lead by example and instill rigor.

First and foremost, it comes down to everyone using the CRM system. Sales leaders should lead by example. Whether it’s that new hire or a seasoned pro, we always need to teach the best practices: logging all activities and meetings while also keeping opportunities up to date by filling in next steps and the success criteria. Sales leaders should be actively engaged in the application on the opportunities: using the data (or lack thereof) to coach their people in order to improve outcomes, pulling in the right people at the right time, sharing updates on a deal to key stakeholders, and collaborating on things like deal spreadsheets and presentations to a client.

2. Find coachable moments.

Our AEs know that tracking is something that their entire leadership team cares about. AEs can’t always control what their annual contract value (ACV) is at the end of any given month because they may not have 100% control over whether clients buy or not. But what they absolutely can control is the level of activity (as we discussed in tip #1) and the necessary rigor of documenting it. They can show they’re doing the right things and exhibiting the right behaviors that, in time, will pay off in ACV. And if they aren’t, the leadership team can help guide them in ways to fix it. That’s where coaching becomes a key component.

To read the complete article, 4 Tips to Keep Your Sales Team on Track, visit Quotable.com.