How Can I Drive Sales Performance? Follow These 10 Important Tips

The sales funnel, as effectively described by mention.com, is the way in which sales teams lead potential customers through their buying journey.  The basic steps include Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action.  In order to move prospects through the sales funnel, sales representatives are integral in most industries.  However, what once worked well isn’t always good enough today to drive sales performance.

In order to help you drive sales performance better, we have compiled 10 important tips for you to follow in order to create and maintain long-term client relationships.

10 Important Tips to Drive Your Sales Performance

Tip #1 Make a Difference

No matter what you are doing for your clients, show them that you are making a difference.  Even if you aren’t able to get them the answers they need or the product exactly how they want it, show them that you are giving it your all in order to try to make it happen.  By showing them you are making a concerted effort, you are making a difference for them and, ultimately, helping them gain trust in you and your products and driving better sales performance.

Tip #2 Choose Your Attitude

Have you ever woken up “on the wrong side of the bed” and thought, today is going to be a bad day and it ends up being just that?  Well, it’s not a coincidence, nor are you psychic, most likely.  Rather, you got out of bed and you chose your attitude.  Instead, when you are getting ready for work or for your appointment with a potential customer, decide that it’s going to be a good day and a good meeting.  Choosing your attitude can make all the difference during interactions with your customers and prospects.

Tip #3 Follow Your Mission and Values

Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the grand purpose of it all.  You may be focused on selling a particular product or service, but don’t keep in mind the greater mission of the organization, thus forgetting what your organization’s ultimate goal is.  Make sure you clarify for yourself and your customers what the organization’s mission is.  Also, make sure you are following the company’s values.  If you are straying away from them yourself, it will be difficult to portray them to your customers adequately. 

Tip #4 Find Out What Your Customers Need

Before meeting your customers’ needs, you’ll need to determine what they are.  Ask your customers questions about what they need from you, your product, your organization, etc.  Find out what their pain points are and create solutions to help with those pain points. 

Tip #5 Know Your Products and Services

Not all sales reps have the benefit of an easy product to sell by explaining how their product solves a simple problem.  Rather, there are many reps that are charged with selling products or services that are complicated.  In fact, they may even be too complicated for them to understand, let alone try to sell it to a customer.  Have your sales team get to know your products and/or services like the back of their hand.  They’ll be more confident and portray that confidence with their customers. 

Tip #6 Meet the Needs of Your Customers

Once you have determined what your customers’ needs are, do what you can to meet these needs.  This information will be helpful as a whole to determine what all of your customers may desire, but it will be most helpful in your interactions with that particular customer.  Make sure you document this information well and store it where all of your sales reps and marketing team can access it. 

Tip #7 Be Accountable

Ensuring your customer service representatives are accountable for their own sales and that they play a part in the greater good of the organization will help keep them on track.  This certainly doesn’t mean you need to punish them for not doing something.  Instead, make it known what their tasks are to the team.  Greater transparency can help everyone stay on track and be accountable, leading to better sales performance. 

Tip #8 Network

Hiding away in their offices isn’t going to help your sales team make effective sales.  Instead, have them get out there and meet with people.  This can be as simple as being on-site for meetings with the customer in order to have the opportunity to speak to others in the organization.  However, sending your sales reps out to wine and dine at networking events will also make a big difference as you gain visibility for your organization at industry-related events.  Plus, it can be used as a little bit of a reward for your top sales reps.

Tip #9 Don’t Forget the Basics

Sometimes, as seasoned sales professionals soar through the ranks of their organization, they may forget some of the basic sales skills.  It doesn’t hurt and can definitely help to get your sales team re-oriented with these basic skills.  Perhaps you can have them mentor a more junior sales team member, in effect forcing them to remember these skills.  Or you could have a brush-up session that is mandatory for all members so the experienced sales reps will just assume it’s for the newer reps, but will inevitably be reminded of the basics.  Whichever way you choose, going back to basics can help drive sales performance.

Tip #10 Be Efficient

Last, but certainly not least, make sure your sales representatives are being as efficient as possible.  This means that they will need to have all of their customers’ information available to them wherever they are.  This is where an effective customer relationship management (CRM) software would be of significant use to your sales team.

The Top CRM Solution

Agile CRM offers a solution that not only allows your sales and marketing teams to access all of your customer information at any time from anywhere but will also automate their processes, saving extensive time and money. Agile CRM is an all-in-one solution that allows for consistent messaging throughout the customer journey driving your sales performance in an affordable and reliable platform.

Conclusion

Getting your potential customers through the sales funnel should be a deliberate and prescribed process in order to get them fully engaged in your product or service.  Hubspot research indicates that 19% of buyers desire to speak to a sales rep during the awareness stage of the customer journey.  If you miss out on that window, you may just miss out on the sale.

Following these 10 tips to drive your sales performance will help you optimize your sales team’s capabilities and, ultimately, optimize the window of opportunity for the sale.

Implementing a comprehensive and effective CRM will help ensure you don’t miss that window of opportunity and that your sales team has all of the information they need at their fingertips to keep track of the journey and where each of their customers are within it.