Not every salesperson you hire will jump on a call, smooth-talk your customers, and immediately win the opportunity. There simply aren’t enough legendary salespeople looking for jobs to fill your sales team. Your new hires may have ticked all the right boxes on an employment assessment test, or come in with a track record of salesperson’s success. That doesn’t mean they are ready to follow your playbook and sell your products on day one.

Even those with natural sales skills need sales training and development to align with your sales process. Over time, they need to understand the nuances of your messaging and leahttps://secondnature.ai/rn how to tell the right stories that move someone from prospect to customer. And not everyone is blessed with natural sales skills, so your company’s training and coaching of sellers may need to go beyond messaging and product features to improve sales performance.

As a manager, one of your biggest challenges is identifying which members of your sales team are underperforming. After placing a significant investment in targeting, marketing toward, and nurturing leads into prospects, the idea of losing a sale due to lack of sales experience or underdeveloped sales skills can be demoralizing to everyone who contributed to getting that prospect onto the pipeline in the first place. More importantly, it also wastes the company’s precious resources.

Fortunately, you can evaluate the members of your sales team, and ensure that they have the sales skills and product knowledge needed to close.

What you’ll learn in this blog

In this blog, you will learn how to improve sales performance, through a series of practical, actionable steps that you can implement straight away. You’ll discover:

• How to apply tools like AI sales training and gamification
• The importance of tracking metrics and identifying underperforming employees
• Critical elements to a culture of improvement, including regular communication, mentorships, and ongoing training

Steps to improve sales performance

Taking action to improve sales performance among sales employees is crucial for driving business growth and achieving revenue targets, making it a top priority for sales managers. It’s worth remembering that effective sales training doesn’t only make your employees more successful at closing sales. It also raises morale across the entire team, increases employee engagement, and boosts retention, which means that you won’t need to hire new reps so often. 

The following 9 steps help ensure that your sales teams are well-equipped, highly motivated, and consistently aligned with the company’s objectives, ultimately leading to sustained growth and a competitive edge in the market.

1. Identify and Address Underperforming Sales Team Members

The first step to bringing your underperformers up to speed is to identify them, and to do so long before leads start dropping through their fingers. The best way to do this is by evaluating them consistently and often. 

Begin by establishing your criteria for success and keeping track of how well your sales team are meeting them. This can be things like deal velocity from stage to stage, number of calls completed, and how well next steps are defined. One easy way to identify them early on is to use AI role plays, like those enabled by Second Nature AI. Each simulation is recorded and scored automatically, so managers can see at a glance who is acing their sales conversations and who needs a bit of an extra push.

While you may be tempted to fire an underperformer, if you catch it early enough and they are amenable to being coached, it’s in your company’s interest to make the effort to help them excel. Whether it’s a need to polish their soft skills, brush up on the competition, learn how to do a better discovery call, or any of the other crucial sales skills, there are many ways to bring your underperforming salespeople up to speed. Let’s take a look at some of them:

2. Assign an experienced sales mentor

Mentorships are a tried-and-true methodology for generating improvement and growth within the team. Your underperformers will get a first-hand look at the efforts that go into a sales pitch – from crafting a sales plan to doing deep customer research – from professionals with proven track records who know what it takes to close.

Let them sit in on customer meetings with their mentor so that they can see all the intangible actions that go into preparation and the pitch.

Mentorships offer benefits that go far beyond sales performance issues. Your new salespeople will be indoctrinated into the company culture and learn work procedures from someone who has been in the company for a while. They tend to learn skills faster and adapt to the new environment rather quickly. Over time, employees who have been mentored are loyal to employers, which reduces your need to onboard new salespeople.

3. Offer recorded sales pitches as a learning tool

If you routinely record sales calls with sales enablement solutions, save some of the best and worst calls and then have your underperformers and new hires listen to wins and losses. Challenge them to pick out techniques that were used successfully, and identify points of failure. The lessons derived from recordings will be invaluable, as they pick up on the nuances of the sale. Recordings from within Second Nature can also be used for this purpose.

Listening to calls will help drive home the type of messaging they need to use to reach their customers, and familiarize them with the pace and cadence of a sales call. Too often, new sellers push to close, rather than really listening to what their prospect is saying and tailoring the message to those needs. Listening to other people’s calls will help them understand the nature of a sales pitch.

4. Improve sales performance by leveraging AI sales training

AI-based sales training software can help prepare your sales professionals for real sales conversations that include everything from pitches to objections. Role plays are one of the best ways for sales employees to develop their selling skills in real world conditions, and AI simulations bring even more benefits. 

AI role plays can be used at any time by anyone on the team, no matter where they are located or what time it is, so they can continue practicing whenever they want. The AI persona offers real-time feedback, helping underperformers take their selling skills to the next level. The platform generates easy to read reports highlighting areas where employees have improved and where they still need more work, helping measure both hard skills such as playbook knowledge, and soft skills like storytelling ability. 

AI sales training like that developed by Second Nature allows your salespeople to practice their pitches with an AI-powered role play persona that can ask and answer relevant questions just like a real prospect. The salesperson speaks with the AI persona just as they would with another person. After each conversation, the platform provides immediate feedback to help improve sales performance. 

Whether salespeople are delivering a pitch, practicing a discovery call, doing a product demo, or any of the infinite types of sales conversations they can have with Second Nature’s AI role play partners, they will always learn some way to improve. Using objective measurements, the AI can grade salespeople’s ability to tell the product’s story, overcome objections, and respond to claims about competitor products.

5. Create a culture of improvement

The key to getting the most out of your team members is to develop an environment of support and improvement. Salespeople should receive specific, judgment-free feedback on areas where they need to improve. Constructive feedback should become an everyday part of the company, and salespeople should be encouraged to practice as often as necessary in order to ace each type of sales call. 

As the saying goes, practice makes perfect 😊. Sharing success stories internally about reps who were able to improve their sales performance will go a long way towards normalizing this culture.

6. Improve sales performance by utilizing gamification

Gamification is another tool that sales enablement teams can use to drive continuous improvement. Creating internal competitions will help push all team members to practice and improve on their sales pitches, so they can have positive sales conversations and finish at the top of the leaderboard. 

This not only helps your underperformers and new hires, but drives improvement across the entire team. Zoom certified its global sales team using a fully gamified process that got great reviews – watch the Zoom Sales Certification video.

7. Regularly Review and Analyze Sales Metrics 

It’s critical to keep an eye on your sales metrics, so that you can tell how your sales employees are progressing and what still needs to be done to improve sales performance. Consistently monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rates, average deal size, sales cycle length, and customer acquisition costs delivers valuable insights into the effectiveness of your sales training strategies, and helps you identify areas needing improvement.

This data-driven approach allows for timely adjustments to sales tactics, ensuring that efforts are focused on high-impact activities. Furthermore, understanding these metrics helps in setting realistic targets, allocating resources efficiently, and forecasting future sales trends accurately. 

8. Encourage Open Communication and Feedback 

Encouraging open communication and feedback is essential for enhancing sales performance. Regular feedback sessions provide sales employees with constructive insights into their performance, highlighting both strengths and areas for improvement. This not only boosts individual growth but also aligns team efforts with organizational goals.

Moreover, a culture of transparency and mutual support enhances morale and engagement, driving a more motivated and cohesive sales force. When sales teams feel comfortable sharing their ideas, challenges, and successes, it fosters a collaborative environment where innovative solutions can thrive, leading to improved performance across the entire department. 

9. Invest in Ongoing Training and Development Programs

By prioritizing continuous education, sales managers can cultivate a highly skilled and knowledgeable team, leading to increased productivity, higher sales, and a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Regular training sessions enhance skills such as negotiation, communication, and customer relationship management, which are crucial for closing deals and building long-term client relationships. 

Continuous learning ensures that sales employees remain up-to-date with the latest industry trends, sales techniques, and product knowledge, enabling them to adapt to changing market conditions effectively. Development programs also offer opportunities for personal growth, boosting employee confidence and job satisfaction. 

Key Takeaways

Developing effective methods to improve sales performance is vital for any growth-oriented sales organization. By using advanced AI-powered sales training tools and adopting the right tactics, sales managers can deliver enjoyable and effective sales training experiences that drive up sales performance and ensure that every employee knows how to move leads through the sales funnel to a successful close. 

FAQs:

How often should role play sessions be conducted?

Employees should participate in a sales training role play on a regular basis, like bi-weekly or monthly. This frequency ensures that sales employees continually refine their skills, stay sharp in handling various sales scenarios, and adapt to new techniques or market changes. Ideally, you should offer role play sessions all the time, so that your sales employees can practice whenever they like. AI-powered sales training role play partners like those provided by Second Nature make this possible. 

How can I create a culture of continuous improvement in my sales team?

The best way to create a culture of continuous improvement is to foster an environment where learning and innovation are valued. This requires establishing clear goals, providing regular training, and encouraging open communication and feedback. When you recognize and reward progress and promote collaboration and knowledge sharing, you’ll motivate your team to keep striving for excellence.

What are the benefits of open communication in a sales team?

Open communication in a sales team enhances collaboration, fosters trust, and leads to the quick resolution of issues. It encourages the sharing of ideas and best practices, boosts morale, and aligns team efforts with organizational goals. This transparency helps in identifying challenges early, improving decision-making, and ultimately driving higher sales performance and job satisfaction.

How can I ensure my sales training programs remain effective over time?

The only way to make sure that your sales training remains effective is to carry out constant review. It’s vital to monitor sales metrics like sales cycle lengths, conversion rates, and average deals won and lost, so that you can see how sales performance is changing and adjust your sales training programs accordingly.