So, you have started your own business and currently pursuing your dreams of being an entrepreneur? Now that your business is booming gradually, you might feel a need to form a sales team. You are working hard to launch a product in the market and done enough research about the demand and other areas, except how will you sell your product? If a well-formed focused sales team promotes your product and then launched it in the market, who knows, it can be the next big thing!
Increasing sales cost-effectively is the main factor for the stable and steady growth of your business. You need to set a sales goal and growth target, which have to be achieved.
How will you do that?
The key is building a high-performance sales team. But how to do it? Building the right team requires hours of screening, deciding on the right people included in the team, the team structure, the right culture of the work environment, and sales efficiency tools. Let's dig in deeper on how to construct the perfect sales team.
Hunting for the right people
The first step to form an excellent sales team is hiring the right people. Decide on what kind of salesperson do you need to hire. It can be specific to the interests, skills, or experience of the people applying for the position.
According to the product and the nature of your business, you need to decide if the people you would be hiring should be experienced or the screening would all be performance-based.
Also, you need to consider if you need in-sales, field sales, or both.
Initially, when you start the hiring process, you would most likely be hiring an account executive.
Always remember that AE's are the key to success. Account executives should be high-performing people with the capabilities of thinking outside the box and thoughtful. They should be coachable, curious, and humble.
You should hire with diversity, including social and cultural. Different perspectives are necessary to gain a bigger picture.
Sales team structure
There are mainly three types of team structures that companies choose from to follow.
Sales team structure 1: The Island
Sales team structure 2: The assembly line
Sales team structure 3: The pod
When choosing a sales team structure for your company, you need to be very aware of the stage where the company is at. Also, understanding the nature company would help in the process.
Firstly, the island-type team structure is a very aggressive and competitive model to follow. You provide your team with basic back-end training, the range of products they can sell, and a commission structure. In this model, every sales rep is responsible for every step, like generating leads, qualifying them, and closing them. This type of sale structure tends to be very competitive and usually not suitable for start-ups. It works well within an already established company with significant market demand.
In the second structure, the assembly line, whereas the name derives, the team will have a specialized salesperson with sequentially arranged responsibilities of the process. You employ people under different units like the lead generation team, SDR's, AE's, and customer success teams. This sales structure is most suitable for start-ups with a simple sales cycle. But as soon as the company starts developing a complex sales cycle, this model becomes ineffective.
Third, the pod structure is a customer-centric structure close to the assembly line, but a pod is a closely-knit group. For example, a six-person sales pod would be composed of two Account Executives, three SDRs, and one Customer Success representative. Instead of having large teams, you form little pods consisting of roles emphasized on every aspect, and each pod is responsible for the entire journey of sale to a specific customer. This structure is very appropriate for more mature start-ups trying to optimize existing sales resources to tap into new markets and verticals.
Don't forget your passion!
Successful salespeople deeply care about exceeding their personal quota as well as the companies too. You should hire people passionate about sales.
How?
For starters, a passionate one would go out of their way to deliver customer feedback to the product team. Also, they would be active and fired up to help the team create best practices and scalable processes. They are also dedicated to protecting your non-negotiables.
It isn't easy to search for all the attributes in a person, but as time goes by, you would notice. Again, take a look around, see what type of culture is there in other companies. To drive the maximum result, you should try to find the best cultural fit for your organization.
The right tools you need
Digitalization and modernization allow you to tap into the vast details of your customers. In turn, this will help the team to make more data-driven decisions.
Invest smartly in the right tools that will help you boost your sales. Some of the tools include CRM that provides you services like team analytics, engagement tracking, template sharing, and much more.
edge CRM is a lightweight CRM explicitly designed for salespeople that boost your sales with its AI-driven algorithms and easy-to-use interface.
For a more detailed list of the top CRMs for salespeople, click here: India’s Top 10 CRM for Small and Medium Enterprises in 2021
Conclusion
So, we hope we made it a bit easier for you! The four points outlined above will surely help you along the way.
Always remember, you should never stop learning. By taking some time to reflect in the beginning, decide what kind of sales team you want. So, once your motive becomes clearer, it gets easier to hire the right people for the job.
Lastly, through motivation and proper guidance, provide the necessary tools to boosts your sales team's performance. This will all lead to the growth of your sales team significantly with the development of the company.
For some important tips to train your sales team, check out this article by our sales expert: 8 Points to keep in mind when training a new sales team
