How to Build A Sales Team That Closes The Sale

The Mauldin Group Shares 5 Steps On How To Build A Sales Team

No matter how small or large your business, sales plays a crucial role in profitability. And for most companies this means successfully mastering five strategic steps from recruitment to close of sale. The Mauldin Group, a premier Digital Marketing Agency supporting clients throughout the United States, understands these steps and has developed customized solutions to help our clients master teach step to having stronger sales teams who can close the sale. So, how do you build a sales team?

 

---

Five Steps To Sales Team Success

How To Build A Sales Team  Step 1 – Finding the Right Sales Team Members

As a business owner you are the best sales rep for your company. However, the issue is that you are also most likely juggling several other important company roles. But looking at your strengths is key as to how to build the perfect sales team for your business’s services or products.

Owner Sales Strengths often are…

• • • You know your services or products intimately.
    • You are already comfortable negotiating deals.
    • You are proficient at networking.

So How Do You Build a Sales Team From Scratch?

A great place is to start is making sure your business is attractive to potential sales recruits. While obviously salary, benefits and company culture are going to be most important once in front of a sales recruit, getting them to the table means attracting them to your business. Great sales talent doesn’t just jump at a company offer without doing a little research. That means your company needs to have a great online presence. This starts with several areas of digital marketing.

• • • Hosting a Careers Page on Your Website.
    • Presenting a good About Us Page on Your Website.
    • Having great Online Reviews on Google, Facebook and Glassdoor.
    • Presenting a Strong, Engaging LinkedIn Profile for Staff and on a LinkedIn Company Page.
    • Good Recruitment Tools –Email Marketing, Branded Recruitment Brochures for Career Fairs and Networking Events.
    • A Dynamic Company Introduction Video.
    • An active Social Media Presence.

A Note About LinkedIn

LinkedIn is THE proactive talent sourcing and recruitment tool for all business owners and HR professionals. Not only will LinkedIn offer you the best way to scout out potential talent, but it will also offer you a professional, trusted, and personal way to reach out to sales team candidates. Having a great, strong LinkedIn Profile for all your executives and staff, as well as a LinkedIn Company Page will not only give you the way to connect with potential staff (and have them reach out to you) but will also offer networking opportunities for potential customers, vendors, and partners.

How To Build A Sales Team  Step 2 – Sales Training

As we mentioned usually a business owner is THE best sales team member a company can have. But time is an issue. One of the best ways of imparting that valuable sales knowledge is through a solid training program. But, if as a CEO you don’t have time to perform the sales work, training will undoubtedly be a stretch as well. This is where bringing in outside sources for sales team training can be the perfect solution.

Outside Sales Training can take several forms depending on company time, goals and budget. Many business owners have come embrace online sales training as a comfortable solution. Online sales training can often be done on a sales team member’s own timeline in the comfort of their home or office. The key is assuring the online sales training chosen is performed by knowledgeable instructors who have both the training and sales field experience to back it up.

“Without follow-up, salespeople will lose 80-90 percent of what they learned in training within a month.”

Sales Alliance, 2014

Workshops and Seminars are a viable option for those seeking a quick training course but in a live environment. Bringing in a sales consultant as a Professional Speaker can not only offer a comfortable training opportunity that adheres to your company’s time constraints, but often is a budget-friendly solution with the perks of a great networking opportunity to boot.

Internal Training may be the best option for business owners seeking to “train their sales team in their own footsteps.” One of the best ways to perform this is by having access for your team members to videos, slide deck presentations, and graphically designed training documents. These tools can supplement and expedite your internal sales training program and are valuable resources for future sales team members.

How To Build A Sales Team  Step 3 – The Sales Funnel

We CANNOT say this enough. To not only outfit, but RETAIN your sales team members, you must have a recognized Sales Funnel! This is a critical tool not only for your marketing but for your company’s sale process as a whole. A sales funnel will help you to define each step and its accompanying marketing tool for taking a sale from first contact to close. It also provides team members with the pivotal filtering to define when a lead is qualified and worth their continued pursuit, and when a lead does not meet the parameters to close a sale; saving sales teams the time, aggravation and headaches of chasing down unqualified leads. So many times, we have heard phenomenal sales reps share that their decision to exit a company hinged on the lack of a sales funnel.

“A Whopping 68% of B2B Organizations have not identified their funnel.”

MarketingSherpa

How To Build A Sales Team  Step 4 – Sales (Marketing) Tools

Want to energize your sales team, give them great sales tools. Having great sales and marketing tools will make your teams’ cold calls easier and more productive. To be effective, sales tools should capture and engage potential customers while conveying your company’s products and services clearly. These sales tools can often be designed to function both as a tool in the sales teams’ hands while directly in front of clients and customers, as well as digitally through the company website, email marketing, and social media.

Some of the best sales tools to outfit your sales team with are…

• • • A Digital Sales Presentation
    • Email Sales Messaging
    • Sales Scripts
    • Social Selling Plans
    • Marketing Collateral
    • Online Sales Tools
    • A Robust CRM

 

The importance of ORM (Online Reputation Management)

While many company owners may view ORM as a company marketing tool. Nothing can support your sales team better than stepping out with solid customer reviews and testimonials. These can take the shape of Google and Facebook reviews, as well as a website testimonial page and graphic sales sheets.

How To Build A Sales Team  Step 5 – Sales Support

You can have the best sales team in the world but if the customer drops due to poor customer services or sales support, then all that work is for nothing. Poor sales support can manifest in two detrimental ways, the unqualified lead and lack of proper sales support.  These challenges can lead to profit loss and if not addressed promptly, the loss of good sales team members.

“61% of B2B Marketers Send All Leads directly to Sales; however, Only 27% of those Leads will be Qualified.”

MarketingSherpa

The Unqualified Lead

One of the most damaging threats to sales for a business is the unqualified lead. Not only does this waste the time of sales teams but the company suffers in costs and team morale. In addition, many times sales reps find themselves caught in a cycle of endless data searching for leads, that are missing critical contact information. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) can offer a strategic solution for automation, filtering and management of the customer sales funnel from initial contact to sales rep followup.

“Companies that Automate Lead Management See a 10% or Greater Increase in Revenue in 6-9 Months.”

Gartner Research

A Note About The Importance of a CRM

A CRM not only provides the necessary management of customer contact information for marketing and sales, but it can also play a role in overall company data security. As many business owners can attest, one of the biggest problems when a sales team member leaves, can be the client contact and sales history information they take with them. A CRM is predominantly housed on the marketing team side of the fence, which means that this valuable information can be controlled and consequently shut off to any staff member who leaves the company.

Sales Support That Is Not Supportive

Everyone will agree that those in the receptionist, administrative assistance and customer service roles have some of the toughest roles in the company. Especially if part of that role is the expectation of sales support.

To complicate things, for many companies these roles are often supplied by temporary staff and third-party call centers. Having a way to track leads coming in via website forms and by phone is essential to building a full-accurate picture of your customer’s experience.

“Poor Customer Service Costs Businesses More Than $75 Billion a Year.”

NewVoiceMedia’s 2018 “Serial Switchers” Report

Having Call Tracking Software can provide businesses with the tools to measure, monitor, research and identify problem areas within a sales support environment. Quick and easy to set up, many marketing agencies have found this as an essential solution for both their own and client leads tracking.

Call Tracking Software for Sales Support can…

• • • Identify opportunities for customer service team training
    • Help guide necessary changes to service and product keywords for Paid Ads
    • Assist in filtering qualified and unqualified leads being fed to the sales team
    • Quickly address when there is a poor communication issue
    • Provide key research for assessing marketing ROI
    • Track website form (leads) submissions *Available with certain providers.
    • Alert company officials to possible security threats in the way of leads theft via incoming calls and form collections.

---

The Mauldin Group Knows Sales

How To Build A Sales Team, The Mauldin Group Way

At The Mauldin Group we understand the indispensable role a sales team plays in making a business profitable. But to get, and more importantly retain, top sales talent means having the support and solutions that meet each of the five steps for building a sales team that can close the sale.

That is why we offer customized marketing and sales services that can help our clients recruit, train and support a sales team meeting their unique needs. Our services range from sales consultation and training to digital marketing solutions that equip your team with sales tools that drown out the competition and encourage customer-client sales conversion.

Some of The Mauldin Group’s Customizable Sales Team Services Include:

• • • Sales and Marketing Consultation
    • Sales Training Workshops and Seminars
    • Sales Training Tools Creation (Videos, Slide Decks, Training eBooks, Brochures, and Infographics)
    • Sales Presentation Design
    • Sales Email Messaging-DRIP Campaigns and Newsletters
    • Sales Script Copywriting
    • Sales LinkedIn Social Selling Strategy and Plans
    • Sales and Marketing Collateral Graphic Design and Copywriting (Brochures, eBooks, Posters, Sales Sheets, White Papers, Case Studies)
    • Sales Related Website Development (Website Pages, Forms and Landing Pages)
    • Call Tracking Software Implementation and Management
    • ZOHO CRM Implementation
    • Sales Contact, Email and B2B List Acquisition
    • Paid Ads For Sales
    • Qualified Lead Generation
    • Online Reputation Management

Ready to build your successful sales team? We’re ready to jump in with customized and creatively designed solutions for whatever your business sales needs are at THIS critical moment!  Contact Us Now or Call 866-438-7756.