The sales industry is full of talented professionals from a variety of backgrounds, and sales encompass so many different sectors that it can be hard to get everyone on the same page. The one thing that all sales professionals have in common, however, is a commitment to being the best they can be. It’s this dedication to performance that motivates sales professionals in every industry, and it would be fantastic to have a way to bring everyone together into one community.

Internal Sales Community Development

Thankfully, there is a way to do this on the company level by creating internal communities. An internal community is essentially like a social media network for your company, and these communities allow your employees to share and develop skills at the same time. Internal communities are usually closed to public access, and only employees who have been granted permission may access the contents of the community.

For your sales professionals, access to an internal community can offer tools for sales development representatives that may be hard to come by through traditional training. Tools for sales development representatives can help your workforce come together and share knowledge and experience 24 hours a day by accessing your company’s internal community from mobile devices, laptops, and desktop computers.

How to Encourage Your Sales Team to Get Involved

Setting up an internal community is only half the challenge. You also need to look for ways to encourage your sales team to get involved with your community. How you go about doing this will depend on your sales team and your industry, but you might consider holding friendly competitions or contests that involve sharing through your internal community.

Additionally, you could provide rewards for sharing updates through your internal community. Some internal community management software also includes the ability to offer display badges and other visual rewards that can be featured on each employee’s community profile. These small rewards are easy, fun ways to encourage engagement while also instilling in your sales team a sense of accomplishment that they can share with others.

Read a similar article about gamification for sales here at this page.

Going from professional ballet dancing to running an AI startup may not seem like the most intuitive career trajectory…but when I share that body language and nonverbal communication is what brings this all together, things start to make a bit more sense read more

Solution selling is a sales methodology that takes into account a prospective buyer’s unique needs. Rather than selling a product or service that your brand wants to promote, solution selling concerns itself more with investigating how your company can help consumers at the moment. Using solution selling for sales teams, your company stands to gain several benefits, including:

1. Solution Selling Builds Brand Trust

When you rely on solution selling for sales teams across your company, you have the opportunity to build brand trust. This, in turn, can build brand loyalty.

When a consumer feels that their needs are a priority and that they aren’t just another sales target, they tend to form closer relationships with brands. Solution selling can improve efforts to build this trust, and solution selling may also generate repeat business as a result. Customers want to do business with brands that care, and this is particularly true of younger customers these days.

2. Solution Selling Promotes Word-of-Mouth Marketing

In keeping with the above, using solution selling can promote word-of-mouth marketing opportunities. Word of mouth is more important than ever these days, due largely to the Internet.

People leave company, product, and service reviews online through social media and other digital channels every single day, and this word-of-mouth marketing is often the first thing a prospective customer sees when searching for your company. When you utilize solution selling, satisfied customers are more likely to spread positive experiences to friends, family, and coworkers, and this type of marketing can be invaluable in gaining new leads.

3. Solution Selling Increases Sales Opportunities

Solution selling can also increase your company’s sales opportunities. Instead of focusing on sales for one specific product or service, you may find that a customer needs a different type of service or product. If your sales team is so focused on only one offering, your company may miss out on opportunities to not only sell other products and services but also to meet a prospective customer’s future needs.

Read a similar article about sales script here at this page.

Sales calls play a vital role in training new sales professionals, and many companies will monitor sales calls to provide quality and training assurance. While monitoring calls as they happen has benefits, your business may stand to benefit more from recording sales calls for training purposes. Recording sales calls provides several benefits to both your sales professionals and your customers, and in the end, your business benefits.

Analyzing Recorded Sales Calls

When you record your sales calls, you have the opportunity to analyze not only the performance of your sales team but also the perception of the customer. Software for conversation intelligence can analyze the content of a recorded call and generate a report based on the flow of the conversation as well as the content.

This report can provide your business with feedback regarding the general tone of the conversation, as well as note key points in a conversation where reactions were strong. Software for conversation intelligence is often used to put together training that is specific to each sales professional in a company since the reports generated by the software are specific to each call.

Recorded Calls May Offer Legal Protection

If your business services customers in an industry that deals with contracts and sensitive data, recording your sales calls may also provide legal protection. Depending on the state in which your business operates, verbal agreements may constitute legally binding contracts. Having the ability to recall conversations in which a customer agreed to the terms of a sales contract can be an important legal resource if a dispute arises.

Call Recording Can Make Onboarding Easier

You can also use recorded calls to make the onboarding of new employees easier. As a training tool, recorded sales calls provide new hires with a better understanding of the pace of the work environment, as well as the types of encounters they will face each workday. You can also establish standards for sales calls by providing recorded examples of what to do in certain situations. This makes it easier to get new employees up and running quickly.

Read a similar article about sales team content management platform here at this page.

One of the best ways to train is to practice real-world scenarios. All the textbook and classroom learning in the world can’t truly be a substitute for hands-on practice. This is true in virtually any learning environment, but it is certainly true in sales training.

Sales training scenarios allow your team to put their skills into practice where they can receive direct feedback, both during the scenario and afterward. This method of training can be beneficial for sales professionals in virtually any industry, and you can adjust scenarios to fit your company’s goals and strategies.

Sales Training Scenarios Boost Confidence

Another reason it’s important to run scenarios with your sales team is that doing so can boost confidence. Handing out sales training material during classroom learning is one thing, but putting your sales team in a scenario where they can test their skills is another.

This isn’t to say that traditional sales training material is unnecessary. It’s quite the opposite. Training material can provide the foundation for running your scenarios, and this can help boost confidence further since your team will have a firm foundation from the start.

Controlling the Situation Through Sales Training Scenarios

When you run sales training scenarios, you also can control the situation and the environment. This is important for training purposes since you can decide how challenging or easy to make a scenario.

Having this ability means that you can slowly make things more challenging over time, giving your newer sales professionals a chance to ease into training. When you control your scenarios and the training environment, you also have the chance to throw in variables that a sales professional might encounter in the field while still having some control over the outcome.

Training Scenarios Can Be Recorded

In the field, there’s no real way to review performance. When you train using scenarios, the session can be recorded and reviewed afterward. This allows sales professionals to see exactly where they succeeded as well as where they can improve.

Read a similar article about sales ramp up time here at this page.

Office parties are fun ways to celebrate special events, holidays, or accomplishments and achievements. Although these events are usually casual, you may not realize that they can also be tools for sales motivation and productivity. Below are just a few of the many reasons why holding office parties should be on your company’s to-do list:

Parties Build Teams

Team-building through office parties can provide a fun, inexpensive solution when you’ve noticed that some teams are underperforming. Often, when a team gets in a rut, it can be tempting to spend a fortune on expensive team-building exercises and motivational coaching. By simply holding an in-office party, you have the chance to provide your team with the tools they need to recalibrate their perspective and realign their goals with company initiatives.

Parties Motivate Your Office

Another big benefit of holding office parties is that they can serve as tools for sales motivation. When your team gathers together for an office party, it helps to build camaraderie and a sense of shared purpose. This can go on to translate to improved productivity, and ultimately, an improvement in your company’s bottom line.

The sense of belonging that can be created by holding office parties can go on to translate to a better work environment overall. When people feel like they are simply a number at work, it can be hard to get motivated. When an employee feels like they are part of a bigger picture, they tend to perform better since they feel personally connected with the shared mission.

Parties Give Time to Collaborate

Although office parties should generally be a time to relax and steer clear of discussing business, they can serve as inspiration for collaboration. During a normal work day, most employees work within their teams and see the same people every single day.

When you hold an office party, you provide your employees the chance to talk with people that they may not have worked with before. This can open the door to collaborations between teams, and it can also provide opportunities to discuss new initiatives between teams.

Read a similar article about software for sales performance here at this page.

Bringing a new employee into the team can be an exciting time. But for leaders, it can also be hectic and overwhelming! When you hire a new person, there are a million little things to do.

In addition to mountains of paperwork and HR logistics to take care of, you must train your new hire. Not sure where to start? Here are a few items you can't forget to include in your sales onboarding program.

First-Day One-On-One

It's always a good idea to schedule personal meetings on your new hire's first day. There's a lot to take in, and most people will have many questions when thrust into a new work environment. The last thing you want is to overwhelm your new sales rep and scare them out the door before they can ramp up.

Spend a few hours discussing the company. You can provide a tour, introduce them to their team members, and go over the basics.

Core Policies

No sales onboarding program is complete without in-depth discussions about corporate policies. You may have a handbook you give out to every new hire. A manual is excellent reference material, but you shouldn't expect new employees to absorb every detail quickly.

Go into detail about core policies. That includes standard topics like benefits and break policies. However, it's also wise to discuss some more unique rules. The goal is to start your new hire off on the right foot and ensure they follow all policies from day one.

Responsibilities and Expectations

It doesn't matter how much experience a new hire has in sales or your industry. You can't expect someone to enter a new work environment and automatically understand the role.

Lay out your expectations. Leave no shadow of doubt about what the new hire should be doing. Talk about what success in this role means and what the new employee can do to reach it.

Sales Technologies and Methodologies

Finally, don't forget to talk about your company's unique sales techniques and tools. Every business has its way of doing things. Your training program should walk your new hires through those various strategies.

Good onboarding software can help you bring your new hires up to speed. Ramping up can take well over a year. But if you have a well-made onboarding program, your new reps will start bringing in revenue in no time.

Read a similar article about remote sales team motivation here at this page.

You've likely come across this scenario before:

After making an excellent sales pitch, the prospect immediately compares your product to that of competitors. Their objections all revolve around your rivals. You know that your product is better, but how do you let the potential buyer know?

It can be a frustrating situation, but here are a few tips on what you can do to convince buyers that your product is the best choice.

Brush Up on Your Sales Objection Handling Techniques

You likely have a slew of enablement resources available to you. Is objection handling part of that? If not, it should be!

Objection handling is a way to counter potential reasons the prospect doesn't want to buy your product. Potential buyers might object to closing a deal because of its price, overall value, impact on their needs, and more. They'll also often bring up competitors.

Having a response to those objections can make all the difference. Create sales objection handling resources to prepare for anything that comes your way. Look at your product, compare it to your competitors, and approach the pitch from a buyer's perspective.

Use Competitive Insight

Another great way to convince prospects that your product or service is the best is to have some information about your rivals. Competitive battle cards are one of the most valuable tools you can have in your enablement arsenal. Gather relevant information that directly supports your sales strategies.

For example, you can have information about the competitor's product. That might include prices, features, quality, etc. Use that information to highlight why yours is the superior choice.

Appeal Directly to the Buyer's Needs

Bringing up competitors when making a sales pitch isn't always necessary. One strategy is to focus on the needs of the prospect. You can do that with buyer personas and adequate market research.

Get to know who you're selling to. Figure out the buyer's needs and determine how your product fulfills them. Focus on those details and create a compelling argument on why your product is a must-buy.

Read a similar article about sales win loss analysis here at this page.

In tabletop gaming, battlecards are sometimes used to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of a particular opponent. These cards list information about the best ways to attack an adversary, the worst positions to be in when fighting the adversary, and more.

In the world of sales, a sales battlecard functions much the same way. A sales battlecard lists the strengths and weaknesses of a competitor’s products and services, but it also lists strategies for overcoming the challenges presented by the competitor. Some battlecards in the sales industry also provide sales professionals with tips on knowing when to walk away from a pitch as the odds may be insurmountable.

When to Use Sales Battlecards

Battlecards in sales are often best utilized when preparing for a pitch. Sales professionals are encouraged to make and use these battlecards as a way to know the competitor’s products and services inside and out. You can get as detailed as you would like when filling out your battlecards, but try to keep everything relegated to one index card or a piece of paper of similar size.

Using the information provided on a battlecard, a sales professional will be better prepared to not only position their products and services in the best light but can also take proactive steps during a pitch to mitigate the damage done by a competitor’s strengths. The goal is to equip yourself with the sales tools needed to win the sale.

The Pros of Using Battlecards in Sales

Among the many benefits of using battlecards, the ability to quickly glean vital information in a hurry is key. Battlecards are often best used when you have little time to do thorough research into a competitor and you need a high-level overview of how your brand stacks up against the competition.

The Cons of Using Battlecards in Sales

One of the drawbacks of relying on battlecards is that they are rigid. If you only rely on the information presented on a battlecard, you may not be ready to handle on-the-spot objections or the changing dynamics of a negotiation with a lead.

Read an interesting article about ‘What Happens When You Blindly Follow Revenue Intelligence Tools For 9 Months?' here.

Competition is a normal part of business life. In the sales industry, competition is often a major factor in motivating professionals to work harder – but is competition in the sales field healthy?

It’s kind of a difficult question to answer. On the one hand, many sales professionals thrive off of competition and need competition to find purpose. On the other, sales professionals who are driven solely by competition may be pursuing self-fulfilling goals instead of concentrating on the company’s goals.

Likewise, someone who becomes overly competitive can become difficult to work with. If everything is a competition, egos and attitudes can become a problem around the office.

Consider Gamification to Breed Healthy Competition

Sales gamification software is a proven way to breed healthy competition that doesn’t easily get out of hand. By using sales gamification software, your company can create fun little sales competitions that have a clearly defined ending so as not to become an ongoing pursuit.

Additionally, when you gamify a competition, aka turn tasks into competitive games, you keep things lighthearted and allow for all of your sales professionals to get involved, not just the ultra-competitive sales professionals. This may help less outgoing sales team members to come out of their shells and embrace the competitive spirit.

Healthy Competition Breeds Innovation

While competition often drives more productivity, it can also be a big motivator to innovate. When placed in a competitive environment, sales professionals may begin to look for new ways to overcome challenges to get ahead of the competition.

The downside to this is that you will need to be mindful that innovation doesn’t turn into unethical behavior. If a sales professional is so driven by a competition that they start to engage in unethical practices, it may be time to reconsider your company’s approach.

Competition for All

Finally, remember that your role as an employer requires your company to follow certain standards when it comes to equal treatment of employees in the workplace. If competition doesn’t involve everyone or isn’t geared to allow eligible employees to participate, you could find your business in legal trouble. You’re encouraged to consult with your company's attorney for more information.

Read a similar article about software for sales coaching here at this page.