Tag: SALES MANAGEMENT

Build a Collaborative Sales Culture By Encouraging Teamwork and Knowledge Sharing

Posted on by Nick Mann

It may sound cliche and a little cheesy, but the saying “success is a team sport” applies to sales 100%. If your salespeople exist in a silo with little to no collaboration, it’s hard to succeed, let alone reach the top of your industry.

But don’t take my word for it. For this article, I’ll share some concrete data that quantifies just how big of an impact building a collaborative sales culture can have and proven strategies for making your team more collaborative.

Need to Know Stats

To put things into perspective, I’ve compiled several illuminating stats that show why having a collaborative sales culture is so important.

First, it’s been found to increase customer satisfaction ratings by 41%. Next, it improves product quality by 34% and product development by 30%.

And the stat you’re probably most interested in is that it increases sales by 27%.

Here’s a graph to help visualize this data.

If you’re looking to check all the most critical boxes for getting ahead in business, strong collaboration is just the ticket. It helps improve the customer experience, enhance product quality, and boost sales for a win-win-win.

Conversely, “A recent survey revealed that 85% of employees believe that poor communication is the primary reason for project failures. When sales teams struggle with collaboration, sales performance takes a hit. In fact, teams that experience high levels of miscommunication can see a decrease of up to 20% in their overall sales performance.”

The question now is, what exactly can you do to make your sales team more collaborative?

Like any other area of sales or business, my philosophy is to keep it simple and practical, focusing on the most critical areas. This brings us to our next section.

Teamwork and Knowledge Sharing: The 2 Pillars of Building a Collaborative Sales Culture

Let me start by saying that there are a ton of factors that can contribute to building a more collaborative sales culture. Here are eight that apply across the board.

While it’s nice to incorporate all of these elements, I find that it’s best to concentrate on two in particular when shifting momentum initially. As you improve, you can always work on these other areas later on. But at first, you need to zero in on what will get the biggest overall results.

From my experience, teamwork and knowledge sharing are “the big two” that should get the ball rolling when sparking sales culture transformation.

Encouraging Teamwork

Typically, the best way to get started is to build a framework that promotes cross-functional collaboration between different departments, such as marketing and customer support. Because company departments don’t exist independently and depend on each other greatly, it’s important to create a system where there’s heavy communication between all departments.

A simple example would be using a robust CRM platform where all departments have a 360-degree overview of each customer. Marketing would input the initial customer profile, which your sales and customer support team could easily reference. And whenever changes are made, updates should be made in real time.

Another good way to improve teamwork is to have a policy where open communication is welcome, as long as it’s constructive. When your sales team knows they have a safe space to voice their opinion, this naturally creates a more collaborative environment where individuals can share ideas and work on correcting problems so they don’t have a chance to fester.

And something you can do as a sales manager is to lead by example by doing the following:

  • Be quick to communicate and collaborate with all team members
  • Praise salespeople who are committed to teamwork
  • Celebrate successes by congratulating salespeople (if they’re comfortable with that)

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s a great resource for more innovative ways to improve sales teamwork.

Encouraging Knowledge Sharing

The second part of the equation is getting serious about knowledge sharing. When information is siloed, it hurts everyone.

For instance, if your marketing team doesn’t provide your sales reps with enough information, it makes it harder to prioritize leads and make conversions. If your sales team doesn’t provide customer support with enough information, it makes it more difficult to retain customers. And if your sales team doesn’t keep the information flowing with one another, there could be clunky handoffs and your customer may not get the optimal product.

So how can you remedy this?

You can make a lot of progress by simply leveraging the right tools in your tech stack. Start with the basics like having your sales team use a collaboration tool like Slack or Microsoft Teams. That way, everyone can stay up-to-date on what’s happening in real time without skipping a beat.

When it comes to knowledge sharing between marketing and sales, a lead scoring tool can be invaluable, as it quantifies how hot a lead is so your salespeople can prioritize their efforts. For example, Pipedrive provides a simple system that lets marketing hand off leads to sales and lets them know who’s primed to buy and who needs more nurturing.

Finally, I suggest creating a centralized resource where everyone can instantly find essential information like:

  • Your sales playbook
  • A list of customer personas
  • The UVP and key features of different products
  • Customer testimonials
  • Case studies

This should keep everyone on the same page and should accelerate the ramp time of new sales reps.

Infusing Collaboration Into Your Sales Culture

To recap, collaboration contributes to optimizing the three most crucial areas of your business —customer experience, product quality, and conversions. The numbers don’t lie.

While a lot goes into building a more collaborative sales culture, zeroing in on teamwork and knowledge sharing should help you make big gains the quickest. From there, you can make iterations until you’re firing on all cylinders.

Ready to take your sales hiring to a new level and eliminate weaknesses while increasing screening accuracy? Take the HireDNA Hiring Readiness Assessment today.

Identifying Sales Rep Struggles: How to Recognize and Address Performance Issues

Posted on by Nick Mann

According to Salesforce, “67% of sales reps don’t expect to meet their quota this year, and 84% missed it last year.” Also, 53% of sales pros say it’s harder to sell than a year ago.” While I doubt that the numbers are this high across the board, this data shows how common sales rep struggles are.

And let’s be honest. This is not an easy profession. With quotas to meet, tons of stress, and skeptical customers, most reps have their work cut out.

For this post, I’ll identify what I believe are the biggest sales rep struggles, pointing out how to recognize and swiftly fix them to get your sales team operating at its peak potential.

Poor Product Knowledge

Let’s start from the top. Sometimes the main reason for a rep struggling isn’t due to anything complex or convoluted. Sometimes they simply don’t have proper command of the products they’re selling.

When this is the case, it creates a negative domino effect where they struggle to convey value to leads, demonstrate how your products will make the lives of your leads easier, build trust, and so on.

And it’s easy to see why poor product knowledge can be such an issue, especially when it comes to SaaS. Many SaaS products, for example, have a wide range of solutions and features, and cater to different demographics like solopreneurs, small businesses, and enterprises. Just look at how many popular features HubSpot has.

If you throw a salesperson in head-first without adequate time to learn the ins and outs of your products, understand the greater context, and how the dots connect, their conversion rate is likely to suffer. That’s why offering robust training to ensure new reps not only learn how your products work and their benefits but how they fit into a customer’s business processes.

Also if you offer a wide range of products, it’s usually best to allow new reps to only focus on a few initially and gradually have them branch out over time as their knowledge grows. To learn how salesperson training can have up to 350% ROI, check out this article.

Inefficient Time Management

Here are a few stats I couldn’t believe regarding salesperson time management.

If your sales team is anywhere near these numbers, it’s guaranteed to hurt their performance. Just imagine only spending two hours a day actively selling.

So what’s the solution?

First, I suggest creating a tech stack that features the perfect mix of tools for activities like:

  • Setting appointments – Calendly is great for this
  • Customer relationship management – HubSpot is an excellent choice
  • Task management – I love Trello
  • Time tracking – Toggl Track is great

That alone can make a big difference.

Next, your salespeople must prioritize tasks and focus their attention on 1) actually selling rather than administrative tasks and 2) going after hot leads rather than squandering their time on those that still need nurturing.

There are a ton of lead-scoring platforms out there, but ActiveCampaign is one of my favorites because of its simplicity and user-friendliness.

Also, if you find your team constantly swamped with repetitive administrative tasks, it’s smart to hire someone to handle this part of sales so you can free up your sales reps’ time for more important matters.

Lack of Motivation

Even if you have the most skilled, talented, superstar salespeople, their productivity will likely be minimalized if they lack motivation. And considering 79% of today’s workers are disengaged to some extent, this is an issue you’re almost guaranteed to encounter at some point.

So what leads to a lack of motivation?

Poor compensation and lackluster incentives like rewards and benefits are a big reason. Overlooked achievements where major accomplishments go unnoticed are another. Also, having little to no career development opportunities can cause salespeople to stagnate, as there’s not much of a reason to keep pushing.

While you can’t necessarily expect every rep to give 110% effort every single day, your workforce should be sufficiently motivated. Otherwise, you’ll want to identify the root problem (likely one of the issues I just mentioned) and figure out what you can do to remedy the situation.

For a deep dive into this topic, I suggest reading this article from The Harvard Business Review.

Difficulty Closing Deals

Imagine this. Your marketing team has done an amazing job cultivating high-quality leads — individuals who have expressed a clear need and interest in your product — and served them up on a silver platter for your sales team. But despite being ultra-qualified, the conversion rate is far lower than what it should be.

This can be incredibly frustrating, and if left unchecked, it can suck the life out of your ROI and put a damper on company morale. But what can you do about it?

It starts by understanding some common reasons why reps fail to close deals, such as:

  • They don’t fully understand your product (this goes back to our first point)
  • They’re unable to explain the full value of your product
  • They’re not truly listening to the needs of your leads
  • They’re not skilled at persuading leads to pull the trigger
  • They give up too easily

Of course, there are a ton of other potential reasons for a low conversion rate, but these are good places to start. Once you identify a possible culprit, zero in on what you can do to help your reps improve in that department.

For instance, if they’re unable to convey your UVP, you may want to create a bullet list of the core benefits for each customer persona. Or if they’re not fully listening to your leads, you may want to provide coaching on how to improve active listening.

Identifying and Overcoming Sales Rep Struggles

Even the best of the best salespeople will struggle from time to time. Your job as a team leader is to quickly pinpoint performance issues and help steer your reps back on track.

To streamline the process of identifying and eliminating weaknesses in your sales recruiting, check out the HireDNA Hiring Readiness Assessment.

Remote vs. In-office SaaS Sales Teams: Stats That Show the Pros and Cons

Posted on by Nick Mann

In 2015, 10-15% of SaaS sales teams worked remotely, at least some of the time. In 2024, that number ballooned to 71%.

This begs the question. Is it better to have a remote SaaS sales team or stick with the traditional in-house model?

While there’s no black-and-white answer, let’s look at some interesting stats that should indicate what’s right for your company.

The number of SaaS salespeople who work remotely at least part of the time increased by 26% from 2022 to 2023.

A recent study by HubSpot found that 45% of SaaS salespeople worked hybrid in July 2022. By July 2023, that number grew to 71% — a 26% increase.

Now these stats refer to reps that work remotely part of the time (only 10% are fully remote). However, it still illustrates the huge spike we’ve seen in remote work in the past few years. The shift from in-house to remote was already underway pre-COVID. But the pandemic really threw gas on the fire and greatly accelerated the growth of remote SaaS sales teams.

Now in 2024, we’re at the point where it’s become ubiquitous. While only a small percentage of sales teams are fully remote, that number is almost guaranteed to increase in upcoming years.

84% of sales reps say working remotely would make them happier

Employee satisfaction is extremely important, as it tends to correlate with less turnover, better morale, and increased performance. A study by Owl Labs that surveyed 2,050 full-time workers found that the vast majority (84% of reps) said, “Working remotely after the pandemic would make them happier, with many even willing to take a pay cut to continue to work from home.”

You might say that “the genie came out of the bottle” during COVID. By sheer necessity, a large percentage of sales teams were forced to work online. And though it certainly has its drawbacks, the data suggests that most people consider having the option to work online as a good thing.

The fact that many are even willing to work for less shows just how popular this working arrangement can be.

90% of salespeople say they’re more productive when working remotely

One of the biggest concerns for sales managers is productivity. After all, with minimal supervision, can you expect a sales team to maintain as high of a level of productivity at home as they would in an office?

According to the same study by Owl Labs, the answer is overwhelmingly yes. “90% of respondents said they were equally as (or even more) productive when working remotely — compared to when they worked in-house. And 55% said they worked more hours when working remotely than they did in office.”

Some potential reasons for this productivity spike can be attributed to no commute time, flexible work hours, fewer distractions, and a comfortable working environment.

67% of sales managers say managing remote SaaS sales teams is challenging.

Given that working remotely tends to translate into increased employee satisfaction and higher productivity, it sounds like sales managers should go all-in, right? Like implementing most major changes in a workplace, there are also some downsides to be aware of.

One of the biggest is that over two-thirds of sales managers (67%) say that managing SaaS sales teams is more challenging than they anticipated. This stat references the work-from-home environment that was thrust upon so many companies during the pandemic.

According to a study by Saleslion, the two biggest challenges cited by most sales managers were the breakdown in communication and collaboration that often happens without a physical working environment. As they put it, “Without the ability to walk over to a colleague’s desk or hold impromptu meetings, sales teams can become siloed.”

Besides that, it can be trickier to assess a SaaS sales team’s performance and offer feedback when everyone is working remotely.

While there are plenty of tools that can measure performance to some extent and quantify progress, you just can’t get the same personal touch as you would in an in-house environment.

Remote workers are nearly twice as likely to change jobs than those working in-office.

Here’s the stat that really caught my attention. And it’s not something I had given much thought to beforehand.

One study found that remote salespeople are “twice as likely (37%) to switch jobs compared to those working in an office (21%). The top reasons for changing jobs were better pay (84%), better career opportunities (82%), and better work/life balance (78%).

And this makes sense when you think about it. Say a salesperson is working a traditional in-house position where they live in a particular area, have a home, their kids are in school, and so on. They’re fairly well-rooted and are less likely to jump at the first opportunity that comes their way.

However, say someone is working online and can easily take another position without having to uproot their life. It would be far easier to jump ship.

While giving salespeople the option to work remotely can increase satisfaction — something that correlates with lower turnover —, it also has the potential to increase turnover because of how easy it is to switch companies.

So this is something to take into consideration when deciding which approach to take.

Remote vs. In-Office SaaS Sales Teams: Which Option is Best?

With remote sales teams (at least on the partial level) becoming the norm, it’s easy to jump in head-first. But as we’ve learned, there are pros and cons to each working arrangement.

You obviously want to keep your sales force happy and productive and keep up with the competition. However, you don’t want it to hinder communication and collaboration and have to continually replace your staff because they leave for greener pastures.

If you’re considering making the move to remote, I suggest giving careful consideration to the pros and cons and doing some experimentation before going all-in. Also, you may want to stick with a hybrid model, which many SaaS companies are having success with.

Looking to recruit elite SaaS sales talent and retain the maximum percentage of your reps? Register with HireDNA and leverage our cutting-edge sales recruitment technology.

From Startup to Enterprise: Strategies for Scaling Your Sales Team

Posted on by Nick Mann

Regardless of the industry or the products sold, the end goal of nearly all businesses can be boiled down into one word — growth. You want to go from a fledgling startup just finding its footing to a profitable, well-established company with a solid slice of the market. While countless factors contribute to achieving this growth, a big one is effectively scaling your sales team.

Unfortunately, the odds for new startups aren’t great, as only 10% succeed in successfully scaling their business. However, if you can get it right, you should be well-positioned, because businesses that successfully scale up see an average revenue increase of 40-60%.

On that note, here’s a step-by-step process you can follow to scale your sales team and go from startup to enterprise.

Build a Strong Technological Infrastructure

Whether your sales team is 100% in-house, 100% remote, or a hybrid, you need the right tech stack. This helps your teams do their jobs more efficiently, be more productive, collaborate better, and provide the best possible customer experience.

When you’re at the initial startup stages, it’s crucial that you build a strong technological foundation from the start — one that meets your current needs as you gain initial momentum and one that’s capable of growing along with you over the years.

While the specific needs of each business can vary, some of the primary types of tech you usually need are a CRM platform, meeting and demo scheduling software, customer engagement tools, resource management software, and something for handling proposals and contracts. To simplify things, here’s a table that breaks down popular options for each category by each stage of growth.

Develop a Sales Talent Pipeline

Let’s be honest. Turnover is going to happen.

Studies have found that the average sales turnover rate can be as high as 35%, which is nearly three times the average for all professions at around 13%.

Like it or not, sales is an inherently high-turnover career. No matter how great your company is to work for and how far you go to retain top talent, unfortunately, turnover is going to happen. Without a process in place to “reload” when salespeople leave, scaling your sales team is going to be an uphill battle.

That’s why it’s so important to develop a streamlined system that allows you to quickly replace lost reps with talented new ones. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t work diligently to reduce turnover and twiddle your thumbs while rockstar reps walk out. But you should have a realistic game plan in place when salespeople inevitably leave at some point.

I find the best way to do this is to build a talent pipeline through techniques like:

  • Enhancing your brand
  • Creating a dedicated careers page on your website
  • Building your social media presence
  • Creating an employee referral program

We actually wrote an entire blog post that discusses the concept of a sales talent pipeline in detail, which you can find here. That’s a great starting point and can help you get the ball rolling.

Leverage Sales Automation

One of the biggest drains on a salesperson’s time is non-selling activities like handling emails and inputting customer data. These tasks can be tedious and time-consuming and take away from a rep’s ability to focus on more important activities like engaging with leads and closing deals.

What’s crazy is that Salesforce reports that “sales reps spend 66% of their time on non-selling activities.” And “in light of these responsibilities, 57% of reps expect to miss their quota.”

Needless to say, if your sales team is bogged down with burdensome, redundant tasks like these, it’s going to minimize their impact. And long term, this can be extremely detrimental to scaling your sales team and growing your business.

Fortunately, there are a ton of repetitive tasks that can be largely automated without skipping a beat.

Here are some examples.

  • Automated email reply tools
  • Automated data entry on CRM platforms
  • Lead scoring tools to automatically score leads
  • Online meeting scheduling software that allows leads to set up meetings

If you haven’t been using sales automation yet, now is the perfect time to get on board.

Stop Wasting Time on Unqualified Leads

One major hindrance to closing deals and business growth is sending unqualified leads to your sales team. And this is a bigger issue than you may think, considering that one study found that only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales.

While the definition of a qualified vs. unqualified lead can vary, for simplicity’s sake, I’m referring to “qualified” leads as sales qualified leads (SQLs), which “have been qualified, vetted, and expressed intent to engage in a sales cycle.”

Marketing qualified leads (MQLs), on the other hand, are more likely to buy than other leads but are still higher up in the sales funnel in either the awareness or interest stage. MQLs may become SQLs in the future, but they’re not scorching hot and likely still need some nurturing before being passed off to sales.

By having a clear understanding of which leads are SQLs and which are MQLs, you’ll be in a much better position to supply your sales team with the best of the best leads. In turn, this makes their jobs easier, and they can make more conversions, which should help grow your business quicker.

The question is, “How do you effectively qualify leads?”

It usually starts with creating your ideal customer profile (ICP), so you have a clear understanding of who you want to send to sales. And, as I touched on earlier, lead scoring tools can be incredibly helpful for objectively assessing a lead’s odds of buying through quantifiable data.

A simple example would be assigning points based on actions like visiting your pricing page, opening an email, and downloading content.

While this doesn’t always tell the entire story, it’s a reliable way of giving each lead a score so you know who’s ready to be sent to sales and who still needs nurturing.

Scaling Your Sales Team From the Ground Up

Confidently scaling your sales team and growing your business requires a well-defined, systematic process that you can build upon as you go. Although every company’s game plan will look a little different, the strategies outlined above should cover the essentials and spark noticeable, sustained growth.

When it comes to finding top talent to add to your sales force, HireDNA can be a huge help. It uses a data-driven, scientific approach to finding elite salespeople that can take your business to the next level. Register today and build an all-star team with HireDNA.

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Building a Sales Talent Pipeline: Long-Term Strategies for Recruitment

Posted on by Nick Mann

Finding and retaining quality sales talent is a constant challenge. Even with all of your ducks in a row, you’ll inevitably encounter issues at some point. Therefore, it’s not enough to be reactive with your recruiting, where you find yourself scrambling to fill a position. You need to be proactive and build a sales talent pipeline to ensure you have a steady stream of qualified candidates at all times.

In this post, I’ll highlight what I’ve found to be the most effective and practical strategies for developing a sales talent pipeline so that you don’t find yourself in a bind.

Show Sales Candidates Why They Should Choose You

Before doing anything else, it’s important to show sales candidates that your company is the one they want to work for.

  • What makes your company stand out above your competitors?
  • What makes it special?
  • Why should sales professionals want to develop their careers with you?

These are just a few questions you should answer for candidates so that when you pique their interest they’ll want to take the next step and apply with you. There’s a lot that goes into this, but it starts by striving to improve your company culture and focusing on reputation management.

Create a Dedicated Careers Page

In the past, very few companies had a dedicated careers page, and it was typically reserved for larger enterprises with deep pockets. But I’ve noticed a significant increase in recent years, where a growing number of small and mid-sized companies are now using this strategy as well.

I like a dedicated careers page for two main reasons. First, it actively recruits for you. Through search engine queries, sales candidates can find your company, learn more about you, and apply. It basically acts as an automated recruiting funnel.

Rather than having to post on multiple job boards every time you need to fill a position, sales candidates can come to you. Take SaaS productivity and note-taking company Notion for example. Their careers page is set up so candidates can find them through search engines, social media, and other digital outlets.

And after landing on that page, candidates can get a basic overview,…

…learn about Notion’s story,…

…and check out open sales positions.

So if you haven’t gotten around to creating a dedicated careers page yet, I highly suggest doing so. Here’s a basic guide for getting started.

Improve Your Social Media Presence

Another way to build brand equity while simultaneously funneling candidates into your sales talent pipeline is by going all in on your social media. By this, I don’t mean simply slapping up an occasional post on Facebook. I’m talking about putting together a full-scale campaign that targets consumers, as well as sales candidates.

Let’s look at Notion again for an example. They have an impressive social media presence, with 324k followers on Instagram, 267k subscribers on YouTube, and 551k followers on LinkedIn.

On their LinkedIn page, users can learn about their company, check out their LinkedIn posts (something that establishes thought leadership), see what employee life is like at Notion, and look at recent job openings.

From there, users can learn more about job opportunities and apply directly from LinkedIn.

Through this social media campaign, Notion can build their reputation while seamlessly connecting with professional sales candidates. It’s baked right into their campaign.

And while you can’t necessarily expect to build a following quite this size, it shows how social media kills two birds with one stone and can send a steady stream of sales candidates coming your way.

Encourage Referrals

You may already know that salesperson referrals can have a big impact. To quantify:

  • “Referred employees are 18% more likely to be satisfied with their jobs.”
  • “Referral hires are 40% more likely to be retained after one year than non-referral hires.”
  • “$7,500 is the amount of money saved in productivity and sourcing costs when hiring a referral.”

Besides massively increasing salesperson satisfaction and retention and decreasing costs, referrals are also an excellent way to build a sales talent pipeline.

So at the very least, I suggest encouraging your existing salespeople to send vetted candidates your way. Even if you don’t need to make a hire right away, this will provide you with a list of candidate profiles that you’ll have at your fingertips whenever a position does open.

And if you want to go all in, you can create an employee referral program, which you can learn about here.

Offer Career Development Opportunities

Finally, hiring from within can ensure you always have a short list of top-tier candidates at the ready for mid and upper-level positions. While this won’t necessarily help with hiring entry-level sales reps, it’s perfect when hiring for more advanced positions and gives you access to salespeople you know and trust.

And here’s the kicker. Salespeople who are hired from within stay an average of 41% longer than those who are hired from outside. Further, 69% of companies who hire internally say they’re able to bring those team members to a positive state more quickly.

Not to mention, salespeople who have a legitimate opportunity to climb the ranks tend to work harder and be more invested in their jobs than those who don’t. By taking a hiring-from-within approach to recruiting, you not only have immediate access to high-quality salespeople, it also helps strengthen your overall culture at the same time, for the ultimate win-win.

Building a Strong Sales Talent Pipeline From the Ground Up

While it’s impossible to never feel hiring stress, constructing a sales talent pipeline in the way we discussed here can dramatically lower your chances of running into issues. Instead of waiting until someone leaves or you need to scale up, having processes in place should ensure you always have access to a pool of amazing candidates.

Speaking of amazing candidates, register with HireDNA today to use our all-in-solution to attract, recruit, and retain the best of the best.

The Role of Leadership in Shaping Sales Team Performance

Posted on by Nick Mann

The stronger your leadership, the better your sales team’s performance. There’s simply no denying the correlation. From coaching to communication to collaboration to culture, the caliber of your internal leaders impacts all aspects of your company. For this post, I’ll analyze this correlation in-depth, looking at concrete data and identifying key areas where leadership shapes sales team performance.

Some Telling Stats

To begin, let me paint a clear picture of how the competency and commitment of your leaders affect your sales team by looking at some compelling data. Here are some statistics that jumped out at me.

“High-performing sales leaders reported an overall average annual quota attainment of 105% compared to 54% for underperforming sales managers.” That’s nearly double! At the most fundamental level, having elite sales leaders heavily impacts your ability to reach your quota.

And this makes sense. If you have top-tier sales leaders at the helm, their professionalism will trickle down, helping you make more sales and generate far more revenue.

Next, “Employees who are supervised by highly engaged managers are 59% more likely to be engaged than those supervised by actively disengaged managers.” This illustrates another way your sales leaders’ behavior rubs off on the rest of your sales team.

If you have sales leaders who are truly committed and highly engaged, your salespeople will take notice, and most will feel compelled to follow their lead. It’s all about leading by example.

Going deeper, “Engaged employees had 59% lower turnover rates,” which, as we just discussed, is something largely impacted by sales leadership. In other words, when you have highly engaged sales leaders, it creates more engaged salespeople, which should significantly reduce turnover.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Excellent sales leadership can also help:

  • Boost productivity
  • Motivate the rest of your team
  • Ensure accountability
  • Increase customer satisfaction and loyalty
  • Increase company resilience

On that note, let’s look closer at some specific ways leadership influences team performance.

Goal-Setting

Whether you’re dealing with lead generation, customer acquisition, customer retention, or any other aspect of sales, goal-setting is essential for accomplishing your objectives. Strong sales leaders understand this and 1) set clear, specific, measurable, realistic goals and 2) effectively communicate these goals to the sales team.

By doing so, this helps your salespeople know exactly what they need to accomplish and when — something that’s a critical precursor for sales success. On the other hand, lacking clear goals is almost always a recipe for failure, as your sales team won’t have any real direction.

If you’re looking for further examples of goals top sales leaders tend to focus on, here’s a great list for reference.

Coaching and Development

Even the best salespeople have to start somewhere, and hardly anyone comes out firing on all cylinders right away. It takes consistent coaching and development to fine-tune a rep’s skillset so that they’re able to fully realize their potential.

Another way leaders actively shape team performance is by acting as mentors to aid in this development. Consider these stats.

  • “77% of companies report improved sales performance as a result of coaching.”
  • “Companies that provide effective sales coaching can see up to a 16.7% increase in revenue.”
  • “83% of companies said that coaching helps new hires become productive more quickly.”
  • “92.8% of sales leaders believe that sales coaching has a significant impact on sales performance.”

Long story short, solid sales leaders facilitate coaching and development, either doing themselves with a hands-on approach or matching salespeople with other mentors who can help them in their progression.

Building a Positive Culture

I think we can all agree that having a positive company culture is a vital part of long-term success. And what’s one of the most important factors in creating a positive culture?

Strong leadership.

I like to use a pyramid as a metaphor. When you have great senior leaders at the top who are genuinely passionate about their role and committed to helping everyone else around them, it trickles down to managers to supervisors and ultimately to salespeople on the front line.

A leader’s mission, values, engagement, communication, work ethic, and so on spreads downward to every other branch of your company, including your sales team. So to establish a thriving culture, it starts at the top with dedicated leaders who are invested in helping your company succeed.

Adapting to Change

Today’s sales world, and the business world in general, is incredibly complex and ever-changing. Fueled largely by advancing technology, new trends are constantly emerging and entire industries can seemingly go from thriving to defunct overnight. No one is immune.

A huge part of not only adapting to change but thriving amidst it is having strong sales leadership. These individuals can successfully navigate change, plow through setbacks, overcome challenges, and capitalize on new opportunities. When you have people like this in charge of your sales team, it doesn’t matter what’s thrown at you.

Whatever the circumstances, they’re agile enough to make the necessary adjustments and ensure your sales team is equipped to succeed. When compared to a competitor that shirks from change, this can make a world of difference.

Enhancing Sales Team Performance By Finding Elite Sales Managers

In my opinion, sales success almost always requires a top-down approach, where you start by recruiting the cream of the crop sales managers, making this your main priority. Of course, you’ll want to also put plenty of effort into recruiting quality salespeople. But by giving elite management the reigns, the rest will usually fall into place.

Not only will their leadership aid in the areas mentioned above like goal-setting, salesperson coaching, and culture-building, they’ll have a final say in the reps you bring on board when hiring. So by recruiting top sales leaders, you should also be able to recruit top salespeople, creating a positive cycle.

When it comes to attracting, recruiting, and retaining top sales talent at all levels, it’s helpful to use cutting-edge, data-driven technology. With HireDNA, you can find sales leaders by analyzing 26 profile data points to find individuals who are most likely to succeed in your unique sales environment. You can get started with HireDNA here.

Using Data for Informed Sales Coaching: Metrics that Matter

Posted on by Nick Mann

No matter how skilled, experienced, or flat-out amazing a salesperson is, there’s always room for improvement. For perspective, studies have found that companies that invest in informed sales coaching see 8% more annual revenue, a 28% higher win rate, and 88% more productivity.

But how do you decide which specific areas of sales coaching to focus on?

For this post, I’d like to share the three core areas we base our evaluation process on for existing sales employees to facilitate optimal coaching and development programs.

3 Core Areas for Informed Sales Coaching

Let me start by saying there are a nearly endless number of factors that can impact a salesperson’s performance. Everything from product knowledge to negotiation skills to sales technology comprehension plays a role in a rep’s results.

But to streamline sales coaching, there are three core areas that we zero in on:

  • Will to Sell
  • Sales DNA
  • Tactical competencies

“Will to Sell measures an individual’s sales-specific drive to succeed, Sales DNA measures the core underlying beliefs and actions that either support or limit sales success, and Tactical Competencies measure skills and abilities necessary throughout the sales lifecycle.”

Within each area are individual competencies that go more granular. With Will to Sell, for example, there’s desire, commitment, outlook, responsibility, and motivation. Here’s a full breakdown.

The key to truly understanding where a rep is currently at and how to deliver the best sales coaching starts with assessing each of these core areas and quantifying the results. In other words, it’s all about the data.

Once you’re armed with this information, you can customize your sales coaching accordingly to address their weaknesses and develop better overall habits.

With that said, let’s fully unpack the three core areas for informed sales coaching and look at how you can objectively analyze an existing rep’s performance.

Will to Sell

Having a strong Will to Sell is an essential precursor to success. You could argue that regardless of how knowledgeable and skilled a rep is, they likely won’t reach their full potential without the Will to Sell.

Again, measuring this involves analyzing five main competencies:

  • Desire
  • Commitment
  • Outlook
  • Responsibility
  • Motivation

Here’s an example of how these competencies can be objectively measured using an assessment like the Objective Management Group Sales Assessment.

In this example, a rep scored:

  • A score of 86 for desire
  • A 70 for commitment
  • A 75 for outlook
  • A 67 for responsibility
  • A 72 for motivation

By these numbers, the rep meets or exceeds their target for each competency. However, considering that the rep barely reached their target of 75 for outlook, that would be the primary area of focus for sales training.

This is only a mock example, of course, but it shows which specific competencies are most important with the Will to Sell and how you could use data to objectively assess those competencies.

Sales DNA

The next core competency is what we call Sales DNA, “which measures a salesperson’s beliefs and actions that support or limit success in sales. Salespeople are often unaware of how their biases can negatively impact their interactions with customers.”

Under the umbrella of Sales DNA are six core competencies:

  • Doesn’t need approval
  • Stays in the moment
  • Supportive beliefs
  • Supportive buy cycle
  • Comfortable discussing money
  • Handles rejection

Here’s an example of how these competencies could be evaluated objectively.

According to the results, this salesperson exceeds their target in all competencies. However, stays in the moment, supportive beliefs, and supportive buy cycle are just barely above target, indicating that these could potentially be areas of focus for informed sales coaching.

Tactical

The third and final area is Tactical, which includes several competencies, including:

  • Hunting
  • Reaching decision-makers
  • Relationship building
  • Consultative selling
  • Selling value
  • Qualifying
  • Presentation approach
  • Closing
  • Sales process
  • Sales technology

Here’s an example of how you could measure a salesperson’s Tactical competencies.

Among the first six competencies, hunting is the only one that’s below target. That means it would be a critical area of focus for sales training. Otherwise, everything looks quite good.

As for the other four remaining competencies, closing, sales process, and sales technology scores are all lower than they should be. Therefore, those would also be important points of emphasis.

Putting the Pieces Together

Now let’s zoom out and come up with a tailored approach for the mock salesperson from this example.

According to the results, a sales trainer would want to focus on the following:

  • Will to Sell – Outlook
  • Sales DNA – Stays in the moment, supportive beliefs, and supportive buy cycle
  • Tactical – Hunting, closing, sales process, and sales technology

Keep in mind that the competencies from Will to Sell and Sales DNA were all on target or better, which means they wouldn’t be top priority. The four Tactical competencies, however, were all below target, which means they should receive top priority.

From there, the sales coaching team could come up with an individualized game plan to improve these areas of weakness and get the rep to where they need to be. Again, this is an arbitrary example, but it clearly shows which specific competencies you should analyze and how objective data can be utilized to fully understand a rep’s current abilities and figure out the best approach for enhancing their performance.

Optimizing Your Talent with Informed Sales Coaching

Sales coaching should never take a one-size-fits-all approach. Every rep is different, with their own unique strengths and weaknesses, and each is at a different stage in their sales career.

That’s why you need to 1) identify core competencies to focus on and 2) objectively measure how a rep is currently performing in those areas. From there, you can tailor your sales coaching to laser focus on the areas that need the most improvement. Also, you’ll know where a rep is thriving so you can refine those areas even more to help them reach their absolute peak potential.

To learn more about the sales skills assessment featured above, check out the Objective Management Group Sales Assessment.

The Art of Sales Team Evaluations: A Practical Guide

Posted on by Nick Mann

Your sales team is the lifeblood of your company. It’s that simple. Regardless of how great your marketing team is at generating leads and your customer service team is at resolving issues, it’s all for nothing if your salespeople can’t close. To ensure you A) have a team of qualified professionals and B) they’re operating at their best, routine sales team evaluations are essential.

In this guide, I’ll provide a practical strategy to effectively evaluate your salespeople to get them firing on all cylinders.

Assess Your Sales Team as a Whole

When determining performance, you’ll need to look at the macro level of your collective sales team and the micro level of individual salespeople. I recommend starting at the macro level because it should show you your team’s performance as a whole.

To do this, you’ll need to identify the specific KPIs that are most important to your sales team’s success and analyze them. While numerous KPIs play a role in sales team performance, here are some of the most fundamental.

  • Revenue
  • Conversion rate
  • Quota attainment
  • Average deal size
  • Sales cycle length

This graphic illustrates even more potential sales KPIs to look at.

Assess Individual Salespeople

Once you’ve got a clear idea of what your collective sales team’s performance is, it’s time to go more granular to individual salesperson performance.

Most of the KPIs here will look the same, and you’ll want to look at revenue, conversion rate, quota attainment, average deal size, and so on. However, there are a few other KPIs you’ll want to measure on the individual level to gain a deeper perspective on how big of a contributor each rep is to your organization.

Some of those include pipeline contribution, win-loss ratio, and activity metrics like the number of emails, calls, and meetings over a particular period.

As you generate this data, it’s helpful to create a graph that provides a visual overview of individual salesperson performance side-by-side. Here’s a simple example.

While this won’t necessarily tell the whole story and you’ll want to take extraneous factors into account, this should provide a fairly objective overview so you can get a sense of who your top performers are, as well as who’s underperforming.

Look at the Overall Growth Trajectory

At this point, you should have a pretty good idea of how your collective sales team and individual salespeople are performing. You should also have identified any specific issues that need to be addressed, such as a particular sales rep’s conversion rate being noticeably lower than other team members.

But to really get a bird’s-eye view of which direction you’re heading, you’ll want to look at overall sales growth by comparing numbers over a period of time (you’ll usually want at least one year of data). While there are multiple areas you can analyze to assess overall growth trajectory, total revenue tends to be the best starting point and should give you a good baseline reading of what your trajectory looks like.

Creating something as simple as a spreadsheet table with a breakdown of annual revenue like this usually should be adequate.

For more on calculating your company’s sales growth, I suggest reading this post from HubSpot.

Look at Customer Satisfaction and Retention

At first glance, salesperson performance may not seem like it would have all that big of an impact on customer satisfaction and retention. But in reality, there’s a significant correlation.

I like what global brand marketing strategist Angela Hausman has to say about it.

“Consistency plays a crucial role in fostering customer satisfaction across various touchpoints in a company’s interactions with its clients. Customers expect a consistent experience when engaging with a company, whether it is through product offerings, service delivery, or communication. This consistent experience creates a sense of reliability and predictability, which, in turn, helps to build trust and confidence in the brand.”

If, for example, a lead who eventually becomes a customer has a positive experience with a salesperson where the rep promptly follows up after inquiries, effectively addresses their unique pain points, and helps them choose the best product version, this is likely to build a good rapport. In turn, this should increase customer satisfaction and help retain them longer.

On the other hand, if the person has a poor experience with a salesperson where the rep is slow to respond and fails to point them to the right product version, it will likely create friction, which could be detrimental to the customer experience, and you may lose the customer earlier than you should.

The bottom line is that customer satisfaction and retention will often lend insight into sales team performance. While you will certainly want to look at other factors like product quality and customer service, I feel it’s worth taking these factors into account during sales team evaluations, as this can help you spot problem areas.

For assessing customer satisfaction, you can use a mix of customer surveys, complaints, social media monitoring, and your Net Promoter Score (NPS).

And one of the better tools for measuring retention is Woopra, which offers a comprehensive overview of your churn rate over time.

Using Sales Team Evaluations to Propel Your Company Forward

Due to the extreme impact your sales team has on your bottom line, evaluating their performance at least annually is highly important. By staying on top of it both collectively and individually, you should be able to identify minor issues before they escalate and further refine the areas you’re succeeding in.

While the specific strategies used in sales team evaluations can differ significantly from company to company, the formula outlined above should ensure you cover all the major bases.

To get started with an evaluation of your sales team check out the OMG salesperson evaluation, it provides the most comprehensive and holistic sales-specific evaluation. You can request a free sample evaluation here.

And if you’re looking to assess potential candidates to find the best of the best, check out The OMG Sales Candidate Assessment, which accurately predicts the likelihood of a salesperson succeeding based on 21 proven sales core competencies. 91% of recommended and hired candidates has positive on the job performance.

Overcoming Common Objections in SaaS Sales: Strategies for Addressing Customer Concerns

Posted on by Nick Mann

Objections in SaaS sales are inevitable. After all, buying a SaaS product is often a big decision, especially when it comes to robust packages that are costly and require extensive effort for implementation.

So it’s only natural that you’ll encounter resistance. It’s just part of the process, and objections should be anticipated, both when a lead is interacting with a salesperson or performing their own individual research.

A big part of overcoming SaaS sales objections, however, is to 1) identify those that are most common and 2) prepare a response for each scenario. That way, you can cover all the bases to keep more leads in the sales funnel and ultimately make more conversions.

Here are some of the most common objections in SaaS sales, along with the appropriate rebuttal.

The Product is Too Expensive

This is one of, if not, the most common barriers to making a sale. Many leads just don’t feel they have the budget to justify buying.

That’s why you should always be ready to tackle this objection head-on.

The best way to go about that is to help leads see the big picture, focusing on the overall value, increased productivity, cost savings, and long-term ROI. Even if your product is more expensive than a major competitor, clearly articulating the core value your SaaS product offers is essential to overcoming this objection.

At HireDNA, for example, we quantify the real-life results our users get from using our product as you can see here.

Why Should We Choose You Over a Competitor?

Let’s be honest. The SaaS industry is incredibly saturated. No matter what niche you’re in, you’re likely up against some stiff competition, with everyone battling for their slice of the market.

Modern SaaS buyers know they have tons of choices. So, naturally, most will examine at least a handful of products before making their final decision.

Further, many will ask themselves or a sales rep why they should choose you over a competitor. So this is an area you should put plenty of effort into — something that online appointment scheduling software Calendly does expertly on their website.

On the Compare page, they provide links to eight separate product comparisons with leading competitors so leads can see firsthand how Calendly stacks up and why they should choose Calendly.

I recommend creating a resource similar to this that leads can browse, as well as having your salespeople fully familiarize themselves with each comparison so they can fire off the benefits of choosing your product at a moment’s notice.

We Need to Try Before We Buy

In the past, many SaaS companies strictly had paid versions of their products, and that was it. But in more recent years, offering a free version has basically become ubiquitous.

“If you’re a growth-stage B2B SaaS, there’s a 71% chance you offer some type of free version of your product—even higher if you’re a Cloud 100 SaaS,” writes Peer Signal. “Why? Removing friction increases growth potential; free is how people want to research and buy software products today.”

With a large percentage of leads wanting to try before they buy, the best way to accommodate them is to offer a free version of your product if you haven’t done so already. Even better, make it so no credit card is required, as popup builder Sleeknote does.

I Don’t Fully Understand How Your SaaS Product Works

Most SaaS products are loaded with features, integrations, and more which contribute to the value. And that’s great.

The only downside is that figuring out a new product can feel overwhelming. And whenever a new client implements a new product, they’re likely to encounter at least some resistance from team members because, after all, they have to learn something new and get out of their comfort zone.

Therefore, this is something you definitely need to address, and make sure you take steps to succinctly explain the fundamentals of how your SaaS product works and why using it is beneficial.

This is another area where Sleeknote excels, where they have a “Learn” section of their website that includes a help center, webinars, and more.

Besides that, they give leads the option of getting their own personal Sleeknote tour.

By clicking here, a person can “Get your tailored introduction to Sleeknote or tons of popup inspiration for your site and book a free personal call.”

The Contract is Too Long

While offering flexible, short-term contract options has pretty much become the norm, I felt this was an important SaaS sales objection to include. That’s because limiting customers to overly lengthy contracts (like annual contracts only) can really put a damper on your conversion rate.

If you’re one of the SaaS companies that only offers annual contracts, I would say it’s almost a necessity to have shorter terms available. While this will likely result in a higher churn rate, it should be beneficial in the long run, as it should get more leads to go ahead and buy.

I like how Zendesk approaches it by giving customers the option of choosing a monthly or annual subscription term and toggling between the two choices to see how much each option costs. For instance, here’s how much a customer will pay for different plans for the platform to support five agents with a monthly contract.

And here’s how much they’ll save if they opt for an annual contract.

Handling Objections in SaaS Sales Like a Pro

Again, SaaS sales objections are unavoidable, and that’s fine. Potential customers should be diligent about researching a potential product and make sure it’s the right fit for them.

Whether one of your salespeople is interacting one-on-one with a lead or a lead is doing their own research, having responses for the objections listed above should help you overcome a lot of resistance, make leads more comfortable with making a purchase, and ultimately boost your conversion rate.

Looking to assemble a team of elite sales reps? Use HireDNA’s cutting-edge technology to attract, retain, and recruit the best of the best.

How to Optimize Each Stage of the SaaS Sales Funnel

Posted on by Nick Mann

You’re probably well aware that very few SaaS leads are ready to buy right away. According to the RAIN Group, it takes an average of eight touches to get a conversion. To move leads smoothly through the SaaS sales funnel, you need to understand how the pieces fit together and optimize for each stage.

This is essential for 1) reducing friction points, 2) creating a positive customer journey, and 3) setting your sales team up for maximum conversions. Here’s how to do that.

The SaaS Sales Funnel I Use

First off, let me say that there is no one-size-fits-all SaaS sales funnel that works perfectly for everyone. There are multiple variations, with some longer involving several steps and some shorter with only a few steps.

But for simplicity’s sake, I like this one, which involves four key steps — awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty.

Note that not all SaaS sales funnels include a post-purchase stage like loyalty. But given how critical retention is to SaaS success, optimizing for a post-purchase phase is incredibly important.

With that said, here’s how to tackle each stage of this particular SaaS sales funnel.

Awareness

The awareness stage is at the very top of the funnel where potential customers first become aware of your SaaS product and brand. For the majority of prospects, they’re simply conducting some preliminary research, or as I call it, doing their “recon” on potential SaaS products that may address their needs.

Sometimes, they’re actively searching for solutions. Other times, they just happen to stumble upon them.

While there are numerous ways potential customers may become aware of a SaaS product, more often than not, it’s through one of three ways:

  • A search engine
  • Social media
  • Content marketing (this is often found through a search engine or social network)

Therefore, these are the three main areas you want to optimize.

Search

Start with on-site optimization and technical SEO, which includes creating a sitemap, increasing site speed, and internal linking. You can find a ton of great information on this here.

Also, follow best practices when creating content, such as performing keyword research and using proper headers (H1s, H2s, H3s, etc.). This is a great resource for learning about optimizing content for search.

Social Media

Leverage multiple networks that your audience is active on to boost your brand exposure and find targeted leads.

Content Marketing

This overlaps somewhat with optimizing content for search. Having a variety of content should help you raise brand awareness and pull in targeted leads from a variety of sources. Here’s what types of content perform best in 2023, according to Semrush.

Consideration

Once your brand is on a potential customer’s radar and they’re considering your SaaS product, they’re officially a lead. To optimize this stage of the SaaS sales funnel, you’ll want to focus on lead nurturing, which can be done in a variety of ways, including:

  • Email marketing
  • Product comparisons
  • Case studies
  • Webinars
  • Testimonials

And if you offer a free trial version of your product, you can tap into product-led marketing. When done correctly, this can have a tremendous impact, not only reducing the sales cycle and boosting conversions but also enhancing the customer experience and instilling deeper loyalty.

If you’re not familiar with product-led marketing, I suggest reading this guide.

Conversion

Now is the fun part. After successfully moving potential customers through the awareness and consideration stages, you’re ready to pull the trigger and make a conversion.

There are three key strategies for optimizing the conversion stage of the SaaS sales funnel.

One is to use strategically placed, crystal-clear CTAs that encourage leads to buy. Here’s a good example from Zendesk.

Next, be transparent with your pricing so leads know exactly what they get, how much it costs, and what features each plan includes. Zendesk does a great job of this as well.

Finally, get in the habit of continuously A/B testing the content you use for conversions. You may, for example, want to experiment with different CTAs to see which gets the most clicks and results in the most purchases.

As you accumulate more data over time, you should be able to refine every aspect of the conversion stage and convert the maximum percentage of potential customers into actual customers.

Loyalty

The fourth and final piece of the puzzle is everything that comes post-purchase — the loyalty or retention stage.

As I mentioned before, retention is vital to the long-term success of a SaaS company. After all, it doesn’t matter how great you are at converting if you can’t retain customers for the long haul. And with an average annual churn rate of 10-14% annually, it’s something you need to be diligent about optimizing.

So what can you do to increase customer loyalty?

For starters, I suggest taking customer support seriously. This includes having a section of your website dedicated specifically to customer support like Zoom does…

…and making it easy for customers to get in touch with a support rep.

Next, it’s smart to send out period engagement emails to keep in touch with customers. For instance, you could provide them with tips on how to get the most from your SaaS product, information on new integrations or features, product usage reports, and more.

Third, always be looking to get feedback from users and implement that feedback to improve your product. This kills two birds with one stone because users want to know a company is listening, and it sets the stage for ongoing product improvement.

Lastly, you can use analytics such as churn reports to objectively track churn so you can determine what’s causing it and what you can do to stop making the same mistakes. Here’s an example from customer journey platform Woopra.

Fine-Tuning Your SaaS Sales Funnel

Optimizing your SaaS sales funnel end-to-end is of the utmost importance. By doing so, you should prevent major drop-offs from occurring, increase conversions, and generally make the customer experience more enjoyable. The formula outlined above addresses all four major steps and should get your funnel firing on all cylinders.

Looking to build an elite sales team? Use HireDNA’s cutting-edge technology to find the best of the best candidates.