4 Ways to Supercharge Your Sales Team

Has your sales team lost its spark? Does keeping individual team members motivated feel like trying to drag your feet through thick mud? If so, it’s important to infuse excitement and ambition into your team before they get too comfortable in their slump. Here are four tips to supercharge your sales team and reignite their passion for success.

1. Analyze Your Sales Team’s Key Performance Indicators

When you manage a sales team, it’s important to keep your team members productive and engaged. If they seem bored and unenthused, they’re probably not meeting goals or performance expectations. But you won’t know for sure unless you track and analyze key performance indicators. This is where performance analytics comes into play.

By measuring and monitoring your team’s performance, you can identify where they might be falling short. Armed with this information, you can give them specific guidance on how to improve and start meeting their goals. Let’s say you have one or more sales reps who consistently fail to meet their conversion goals. This information isn’t particularly helpful unless you know why they aren’t finalizing sales.

Performance analytics reveals the “why,” so you can focus on how to help your team members succeed. For example, your performance analytics program may reveal that the team members in question aren’t contacting enough prospects. Since they don’t have enough leads, it’s no surprise that their conversion rates are lower than expected. To help them improve their conversions, demand more accountability when it comes to developing quality leads.

2. Set Concrete Goals

Keeping your sales team motivated without establishing concrete goals is like trying to run a race while blindfolded. Your team members need something specific to work toward or they’re more likely to become stagnant in their progress. As with all worthwhile endeavors in life, you’re more likely to succeed in sales when you write down your goals. In fact, you’re 42% more likely to reach your goals if you write them down.

When establishing goals, it’s wise to be optimistic without stepping into the realm of unrealistic. The sales industry tends to attract highly ambitious individuals who may feel shattered if they fail to reach certain objectives. Creating unrealistic or unachievable goals for these types of people can result in feelings of failure or shame.

On the other hand, setting the bar too low can result in your sales team becoming bored or underperforming. To strike the right balance, work closely with members of your team and consult data to create the right goals. Make sure they’re challenging but still offer some wiggle room if they fall short.

3. Establish an Effective Reward System

Most living creatures are motivated by reward systems, and human beings are no exception. It feels great to reach a milestone simply because it’s an accomplishment. But it feels even better if there’s a prize waiting for you at the end of that accomplishment. If you want your sales team to consistently perform well, make sure you have an effective reward system in place.

Monetary rewards can be highly motivating, but they should never replace public recognition. A survey of 1.7 million employees reveals that recognition is the most important source of motivation for many professionals. Surprisingly, monetary pay came in fifth on the list of motivating factors driving great work.

To keep your sales team morale high and consistently encourage good effort, combine tangible performance rewards with verbal recognition. You can recognize your employees for meeting sales goals, performing above and beyond expectations, or reaching impressive milestones. Consider publicly celebrating top performers on a monthly or quarterly basis. That way team members know they have a certain amount of time to reach their goals if they want recognition.

4. Avoid Micromanaging

When your sales team falls short of goals or expectations, it can be tempting to step in and micromanage them. But this decision could have the opposite impact and cause your employees to become more disheartened and frustrated. It could also encroach on their ability to grow as professionals and learn how to overcome challenges.

You can — and should — communicate regularly with your team and be invested in their success. But you don’t want to come in with a heavy hand and hamper their ability to learn from their own mistakes. It may be better to empower your team by trusting them to take corrective action when things don’t go as planned.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t support your sales team or give them direction and inspiration. As a manager, you need to remain actively involved with your team without controlling their every movement. Invite team members to come to you with any issues they may not know how to handle on their own. But let them know you trust them to meet sales goals and expectations. Your trust can be highly encouraging and help your sales team feel more empowered and motivated to reach their goals.

Keeping your sales team engaged and inspired is essential for the success of your business. If your team members are currently unmotivated and underproducing, there are things you can do to light a fire beneath them. Use the techniques above to supercharge your sales team and start getting the results you want.