How to Get the Most Out of Your Sales Team

The competitive nature of sales can be enough of a motivation for many professionals, but what do you do for the rest of the team? Often people that are mid-performers are the hardest to encourage. Top performers are spurred on by their own success, while those at the other end of the scale have obstacles that managers invest time in trying to help them overcome.

This means mid-table salespeople often slip into a rut; they are consistently outperformed but don't struggle enough to get the most hands-on support from leadership. So how do you get the most out of these professionals?

Gamification

Including gamification as part of your sales team development can be a really effective way to motivate across the scale. It's extremely versatile, with the wide variety of gamification practices meaning it can be implemented into most sales teams, and its application can allow all types of professionals to succeed.

By encouraging independent learning and self-motivation, gamification allows you to give your sales team autonomy and ensure individuals are hitting their own personal targets, even if they are outperformed by others.

Prioritize selling hours

It's easy to become demotivated if you're constantly getting dead-end leads. Ensuring your mid-performers receive a good proportion of the strongest sales leads will allow them to experience success, and motivate them to become a top seller.

Your top performers should have the range of skills to tackle more difficult leads, so ensure mid-table salespeople get the biggest share of sales opportunities. This way you get your most skilled and motivated professionals dealing with the complex leads, while your mid-performers are excelling. Over time, this will give you a much stronger team as a whole. 

Determine data-driven best practice

Sales techniques should be based on data-driven best practice, usually coming straight from your top sellers. This puts them in the ideal position to develop their own leadership skills when mentoring other members of the team. Doing this allows your team to spread the wealth of knowledge to as many professionals as possible, while recognizing the work your top performers do for the wider company.

Setting up this style of mentoring scheme also provides your team with plenty of learning opportunities. Nobody is made the perfect salesperson and it's important that everyone knows there's room for improvement - even your top performers.

Personalized development plans

Regardless of how individuals are performing, it's essential that everyone has a personal development plan to help them improve their skills and enhance their expertise. This is the best way to get the most out of any member of your sales team and can complement gamification practices, making personal development much more engaging.