Building a High Performance Sales Team (1 of 3)

What a dream come true for any organization, a high-performance sales team. A team feared by competitors and respected by clients for its knowledge, business savvy, value and results.

In a perfect world, such a team would simply be inherited. Every member would be a top performer, satisfied with the organization and eager to improve on their existing success.

In reality, this ideal is considerably out of reach. Given that a ready made faction of determined sellers is not currently assembled for you, how will you go about building one?

One suggestion would be to approach this process as if you were starting completely anew, as if you were just given the responsibility to build and lead a high-performance sales team.  Think about it… what would you do next?

CRYSTAL CLEAR PURPOSE

High-performance sales teams require high-performance leadership.  At the core the sales leader should have a clear vision for the sales organization and a concrete sales plan congruent with the company’s direction.  The key objectives and performance standards required to materialize this vision, and the plans to implement them, must be clearly communicated to the team members.

These first few steps sound deceptively elementary and, as a result, are often missed. This makes accountability nearly impossible since expectations have neither been communicated nor agreed upon and it’s a classic characteristic of nonperforming sales teams.

What is it that this team should deliver? What specific activities are its members expected to perform? What type of accounts will they target, in which markets, at what level of the target organization, selling what type of product mix? Are they to focus mostly on new business, existing business, etc?

Answers to these types of questions are crucially important to developing a dynamic sales team because, in addition to defining the task (job duties and responsibilities), they also define the type of person that can best complete it (personal traits and professional competencies).

What’s next? Evaluating your Existing Team, Bringing New Players On-board, Creating the Right Environment and Providing Ongoing Development.

Click here for “Building a High Performance Sales Team” Part 2

###

John Kypriotakis is the President of Lysis International,
a Tampa based Sales and Management consulting firm,
specializing in B2B Sales, Management and Leadership.

www.SalesAndManagement.com
813-792-8500

Visit the Lysis Blog Connect on LinkedIn Follow on Twitter