7 Keys to Building a Sales Team

I once had a manager tell me that very few small security guard vendors are successful at creating effective sales teams for their organizations.  It is a fact that many of the successful small – medium sized security guard vendors that I have known grew their businesses through the direct efforts of the ownership team.  There is truth to the statement that “…no one can sell your business as well as you do.”

Many companies start to encounter problems continuing to grow their businesses when they reach a point where the owner can no longer manage both the sales and operations functions of their company’s simultaneously.  When that point arrives, many owners will hire a business development manager or sales executive to come in and continue that growth.  Unfortunately, many business owners don’t understand the dynamics involved in building a true sales team.  Don’t fall into that trap of believing that because you were able to hit the street and just make it happen, that salespeople should be able to do the same thing.  Because the truth is, as you may have learned by now, that it just doesn’t work like that.  Here are seven steps that you can take to help ensure the success of your sales team.

  1. Hire the right people – Keep in mind that unless the salesperson has come from a small business like yours, this could be a bit of a culture shock.  Make sure that you let them know that the sales effort will be more collaborative and maybe less structured than what they are used to.
  2. Give them the tools – Make sure that you have the necessary tools that they will need to win business:
  • Technology like cell phones, laptops, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, etc.;
  • Collateral such as business cards, presentations,  and brochures;
  • Leads or a way to generate them.
  1. Training and on-boarding – It might be tempting to hire salespeople and let them loose as quickly as possible.  However unless they understand your customers, understand how you want them to sell, and how you want them to document their activity, you will be setting them up for failure.
  2. Define the process – Have a predetermined map of what a sell looks like from beginning to end and what is required of the salesperson at each stage.
  3. Give them the metrics – Make sure that they understand how they are being measured.  What do those metrics look like 30 days from now, three months from now, 12 months from now?  Make sure you explicitly understand how you will be evaluating their efforts.  Are they expected to make a certain number of calls per week, schedule a certain number of appointments, etc.?
  4. Give them time – Remember how long it took you to get your pipeline filled and make sure that you don’t have unrealistic expectations.  Although there may be some short term success, the work that your salesperson does now will really start to pay off in 6 months to a year.
  5. Coach Coach Coach – Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty.  Go out on sales calls with your salespeople so they gain a clear understanding of what it takes to be successful selling to your customers.

Starting a sales organization can be both a rewarding and frustrating thing.  Take the steps above and tweak, massage, and reshape them to best fit your needs and help move your organization toward success.  

As we continue to grow our business helping security vendors replace their paper daily activity reports, incident reports, etc. using our Officer Reporting App we look forward to sharing lessons learned.  If you have tips on how you grew your sales team please share your comments.  Did we overlook anything on our list?

By Courtney Sparkman 

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