6 Management Tips for a Pro-Active Sales Force
In our 20+ years of leading sales reps in the pharmaceutical/consumer health sector one of the main things we have learned is how essential it is that our sales force remains proactive in order to effectively drive sales. There are many ways one can foster a more proactive atmosphere throughout your sales staff without increasing administrative work and below are our 6 tips for doing so.
Focus on Sales and Developing Solid Prospects
Make it clear to your employees that securing sales and closing deals are more important than hours worked. Show employees how to properly rank their prospects to ensure that the best prospects are prioritized over the weakest, and focus on developing your employees’ talents towards lead retention and management rather than general sales techniques. Employees may need to be trained in proactive sales techniques rather than passive sales techniques. Passive or conventional sales techniques focus more on the amount of calls and meetings conducted rather than whether the calls and meetings were actually valuable.
Leverage Business Intelligence and Sales Analytics
Business intelligence solutions involve large amounts of data that can be mined to further develop sales prospects. These solutions can tell your employees who to contact and what products they will be most interested in. A solid business intelligence solution will be able to give you detailed sales information, through which you can determine the right products to sell to the right people. Business intelligence can also give a company valuable information regarding the purchasing patterns of businesses and individual contacts before they are approached. Companies interested in fully utilizing business intelligence to increase sales will need to have the appropriate software solutions and staff members trained to use them.
Ensure that Sales Teams Prepare in Advance
It’s very important that sales professionals know how to prime themselves before contacting a potential customer. A sales prospect who is mishandled or improperly communicated with may be lost forever. Use seminars, presentations and other teaching methods to give your sales team the skills they need to succeed.
Consider training courses and practice sessions and thoroughly track your sales team’s performance. Regular reviews and re-training when necessary will keep your sales team on task and effective.
Foster an Environment of Competition and Acknowledgment
Employee incentives are excellent ways to move your sales staff towards proactive behavior. Monitor your sales team’s performance on a regular basis. Allow your employees to compete against each other to ensure that they are always performing their best. Not only does this drive your employees to compete, but it also shows them that you are recognizing and acknowledging their accomplishments. Employees work much better when they know they will be rewarded for their hard work.
Make Their Job Easier through Software Solutions
Fighting with software is the last thing your sales personnel need to be doing with their valuable client acquisition hours. There are many software solutions that will help streamline the sales process and will even help analyze large volumes of data effectively. Having the right software increases productivity across your entire department in addition to making it much easier to monitor reporting from your sales personnel.
Hold Someone Accountable for Metrics and Increase Personal Responsibility
Accountability is an exceptionally important part of driving sales and driving a sales team. Separating sales departments into groups and ensuring that accountability exists either on an individual or group basis is a fast way to make sure that employees are always trying their best. At the same time, having visible metrics, such as employees having the ability to quickly check on where they stand in relation to others, will enforce employees’ own personal accountability and drive them to perform better if necessary. The proper sales force management solutions can provide these functions.