4 steps to a more productive sales force

Build a confident sales force
Confidence shows up in the very way your sales force approaches customers and handles their queries and complaints. And this confidence stems from good dressing style, personal hygiene, deep knowledge about the product, and willingness to go the extra mile for the customers.

Be with them through thick and thin
You lead the team and your job is to get the most out of them. It’s okay. But keep reminding yourself that you are dealing with human beings and not machines. There would be days when a sales person would not be able to sell a single product despite all his or her efforts; those would be the days when he or she would need your support the most. So be there for your team and they will never let you down.

Training is the key to success in sales
A well-structured training program can make all the difference to your team’s sales performance. Arrange behavioural, product, and sales and distribution management training programs for your team. Training does not cost much both time and money wise, but it yields great results.

Take the tough decision
See in the end, it’s all business. Each one of you has to justify your existence. So if a member is not showing improvement despite all required support, you need to speak and tell him or her possible repercussions if he or she does not show results in a given time frame.

There’s more to building a more productive team. We’ll share all that in our coming posts. You can also check out our published posts to know more about sales & distribution management and skill development training programs.

What to do when learning & skill development solutions become obsolete and do not help you with your primary objectives?

Smart companies understand the growth that comes with training solutions. But, they are also smart enough to judge whether the solutions are helping them achieve their primary goals – their desired business outcomes, bottom line, KPIs to name a few. So, what options do they have at their disposal, if the training solutions, say sales and distribution management training solutions, do not impact their business outcomes?

Big and smart companies do not mind spending a great deal of their resources on looking out for a corporate training partner and arranging different training programmes for their people, but they want results. So, what’s the best way out when you’re not seeing results or improved performance among your people?

The very first step should be to “Speak to the training provider, communicate (once again) as to what you want out of the programs like sales and distribution management training, and develop a time frame in which you expect to see the results.” 

If the first step doesn’t help, you can take the other route that is to speak to some other training solutions providers. But this time you should be a little more careful in the selection of a training company. Ideally, you should hire a company that has been in the training industry for a good number of years, and understands your business the way you do. Whether you want the training providers to conduct a series of sales and distribution management training or some other skill development training programs, you must ensure that you’re hiring a company which is professional in its approach and knows what it is talking about.

To be on a safer side, we’d suggest you to visit the website of the training company so that you can understand whether the company is an ideal fit for your training needs. Once you feel the training company is offering what you need for your people, the next step could be to speak with someone from the company’s end. This telephonic/mail conversation should ideally pave way for an official meeting, wherein you’d be in a better position to decide whether you should partner with the training company.

There are more ways to react to solutions that do not help you improve your key business indicators; we’ll cover them in our future posts. So stay with us.