We are currently helping more than 500 companies manage their entire sales operation and in this post, I’m gonna tell you how you can build and train your rockstar sales team from scratch in less than a month. So, lets figure out how to build a great sales team.
Step 1: Understand what qualities you need in your salespeople…
This is not a list of qualities you can find on Google.
Selling in India is different and you need people who are capable to sell in India to Indian customers.
They have to be
- Multilingual: Your customers speak multiple languages in India so your salespeople need to as well.
- Comfortable in talking: Inside salesman stocking, if the candidate is not a talker he can’t sell.
- Quick learner: He needs to be able to quickly learn everything about your product and present it like a ninja.
- Use the CRM: He needs to be tech-savvy and CRM friendly because you don’t want people and we will have to physically monitor all the time.
- Genuinely help prospects and build a rapport: Sales is not about using tracks it’s about helping prospects and building relationships.
- Have emotional intelligence: He has to be able to understand what the prospect of saying versus what his concerns and worries are!
- Empathy: He can’t close big deals with tracks, he’ll have to genuinely put himself in the prospect’s shoes and understand their problems from their perspective.
- Ability to listen: He has to know how to ask the right questions and listen to find what the prospect really wants and needs, instead of just blabbering about the product and offer.
Read the detailed article on this: Top 8 must-have skills and qualities of a sales executive in India
Step 2: Hire the right people without wasting time on unnecessary steps
- Attract 300 good candidates on automation: Create a paid job post on Linkedin (or Internshala if you want to hire freshers) and receive 300 candidates within 2 to 3 days.
- Reach out and automatically filter people who are not the right fit using a google form: Use questions like their years of experience, expected CTC, willingness to relocate, etc. to automatically filter out the candidates who do not match your criteria.
- Filter out introverts and completely inexperienced people with a video assignment: asking them why they are suitable for the job and what’s the toughest deal that they have cracked.
- Take a group interview to find the 5 to 6 candidates that deserve an offer letter: you don’t have to get involved in any other step, go through this process and only about 10 to 20 people show up for the group interview. In the interview, you can quickly filter out all the people who are not the right fit.
Read the detailed article on this: How to hire the best salespeople without the unnecessary steps!
Step 3: Quickly train them to present themselves as experts
Most sales training is conventional wisdom and a complete waste of time. If you can find your new hires on 4 to 5 key skills then they can quickly get up to speed and present themselves as confident experts.
- How to open conversations: Avoid common sales calls opening templates that every prospect already hates, research about the prospects before the call, and try to genuinely help them solve a problem.
- How to hold conversations: Ask the right questions, listen actively and intently to figure out what are the problems that your prospect is trying to solve, and try to genuinely help them in solving that problem!
- How to design follow-up templates that don’t suck: Draft visual messages, and send follow-ups on WhatsApp immediately after the sales call.
- How to call with the right intent: Research about the project before the call, call with the intention to genuinely help the prospect, and ask yourself after every car how could I have been more helpful.
- How to listen and learn from samples of old successful calls: you simply can’t afford to train your entire team from scratch. But with the TeleCRM call recording feature, every call is recorded so you don’t have to! Just Get your new sales hires to learn from and try to emulate the successful sales calls of your existing sales team.
Read the detailed article on this: How to hire the best salespeople without the unnecessary steps!
Step 4: Track & monitor every team member’s work and see where they are going wrong
It’s not just about tracking vanity metrics like the total sales. Because that does not tell you who is making mistakes and who needs help. Instead, know and understand what are the metrics that matter for you and only track those metrics
- Execution Metrics: These are metrics that tell you if your team members are doing their job or are they just pretending. The total number of calls by each member, total time spent on calls, and total sales closed/revenue generated. If any of these things are off then you know who is making mistakes and who needs help
- Quality Metrics: These are the metrics that tell you who is doing their job well versus who are the people who are just crunching the numbers but are not really effective! The number of late/missed follow-ups, number of calls below 1 minute, sending after-call follow-ups to leads, call notes for longer calls. These metrics tell you who are the people who need guidance to improve the quality of their work
- Business metrics: These are the metrics that tell you who are the people who are not just executing the task well but also who is making the biggest difference for your company and business. Leads by different statuses (hot, warm, cold, etc), average revenue per customer, retention rate, upsell rate and lifetime value, and month-on-month goal achievement/growth rate. People who are performing well on these metrics are basically the winners in your sales team. These are the people you make team leaders and managers.
You can track these metrics continuously and automatically on TeleCRM, using thanks once you have the tracking in place it’s all about using the insights from the tracking to provide regular guidance & assistance to all the team members who need it
Read the detailed article on this: 12 key metrics every sales manager needs to track for every team member
Conclusion
You can’t simply follow the five steps and have a rockstar sales team on day one, but it reduces the timeframe for the entire process from months and years to weeks.
Thing is, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel!
You can simply use these tried and tested methods to get started and get going.
As you start executing these ideas eventually you’ll start finding your own ideas that work well for your team.