Your sales team is an essential force behind the profit your company generates as they convert promising leads into concrete sales. The loss of a sales team member can damage the company’s finances through recruitment and training costs and lost revenue. You might be shocked to learn that the turnover rate of sales employees is twice the rest of the labour force, but this can be partly explained by the fact that only 46% of sales people receive consistent coaching, with an alarming 35% not receiving any coaching at all.
But— not to worry, there are steps you can take as an involved sales manager to stop your best sales talent from even wanting to look elsewhere for a job. To retain and engage your high performing sales team and keep them happy, consider implementing these five useful tips into your management style and see instant results.
Challenge them
Employee disengagement can be a powerful antagonist to job satisfaction and productivity and eventually leads to employee turnover. But as a sales manager who understands how important it is to retain and engage, you can keep your sales team motivated and enthusiastic by setting them high-level and important objectives. This will allow your employees to feel they are making a real difference within the company rather than feeling side-lined or underutilised.
In order to retain and engage your high performing sales teams, it’s also beneficial to set stimulating tasks, vary their work duties and challenge them to break out of their comfort zones. There are vast benefits to encouraging innovation and learning within your employees as they may discover a new sales strategy that works better for them. Not only will this keep them motivated, but it will also increase revenue and productivity as companies with a higher engagement level also produce 20% more sales. The best sales people are driven by challenges and thrive from the fast-paced, proactive nature of their jobs. Keep them engaged with active tasks that peak their interests and you’ll see a boost in satisfaction and sales.
Play to their strengths
As a high-performing manager, you’re expected to reach your targets and lead your team to an excellent and efficient standard. This next tip will help you over-achieve in both of those objectives. If you take the time to assess each employee’s strengths and allow them to shine in their area of expertise, you’ll be rewarded with a streamlined working process that exceeds targets. You might even be awarded a ‘Best Manager’ mug at the next work party too.
For instance, if you have a star talent who is amazing at phone engagement, but instead they’re stuck researching on the computer — get them on the phones. Utilise each person’s specific strengths and interests to create a more optimised, cohesive team. This contributes positively to job satisfaction, productivity, revenue, management satisfaction and you topping all previous sales targets.
Provide career development opportunities
All sales people want to progress, or at the very least, know that there are options for progression within the company. Career development is a great incentive in many careers and is particularly crucial to sales which attracts candidates through its increased income potential. It’s important that you deliver on this promise and give your talented sales team recognition and rewards for consistently hitting their KPIs.
Non-cash incentives can sometimes be more effective than monetary ones. If you’re looking for inspiration, you could increase sales people’s level of responsibility, recognise them publicly in the company newsletter or at internal awards, invite them to meetings with senior executives or feature them at company events. PTO, gym memberships and other benefits are great rewards which will keep your team motivated to work hard.
In addition, consider investing in your employees and offering them skill development training. It’s no surprise that high-performing sales organisations are twice as likely to provide ongoing training than low-performing ones since keeping your employees up-to-date and skilled in their job can only benefit the company.
Offer them flexibility
While it can be good to have a tested and proven approach to management, it’s more applicable in a sales setting to be flexible and adaptable when managing your team.
Instil confidence within your team by not micromanaging them. Following a strict, methodical approach to sales might hinder your team’s creativity and ability to reach their full capacity, often leading to turnover. As long as they’re hitting their KPIs, allow them to do so in a way that suits them. Each sales team member is unique — try to assess and cater your management style to the individual in order to find the best way to support and lead them.
What’s more, sales leaders recommend offering flexible working patterns to attract, and in this case, retain and engage employees. Allowing your team some autonomy will do wonders to increase their job satisfaction and productivity.
Tailor your management style to your team and you’ll find yourself leading a happy, motivated and remarkably efficient team who are skilled at what they do.
Get it right the first time, hire the best with BMS Performance
At BMS Performance, we understand how important it is to hire the best sales talent and we know how to make your company irresistible to the best sales candidates. With years of experience recruiting for the sales industry, we’re confident we can provide you with a winning sales team that you won’t want to let go of. Curious as to how we do it? We’ve created a 6 step sales recruitment assessment to ensure we only offer the best candidates for roles.
Contact us to learn more today.
