By our friend Tina Martin at IDEASPIRED
A business can only be as great as the people working for it. That’s why hiring can be a difficult, stressful process for most start-ups. If you don’t have a great sales team in place, growing your business can be close to impossible. So here's some pivotal information that can help you hire your first sales team, presented by Social Advisors.
Interviewing Salespeople
The top priority in hiring your first sales team is finding people who are excited about bringing your business to life. As you interview potential candidates, look at their specific skills and abilities while finding out what they know about your business and how they feel about what they do. When selecting the right team members, try to hire the ones who are great at sales as well as problem-solving, communication, and stress management.
Managing Your New Sales Team
Obviously, hiring the right people contributes significantly to the success of a sales team — and ultimately your business. For that reason, new hires should be offered guidance to make the right decisions when getting started on their career path and be efficient in their task. New hires should be effectively led and thoroughly trained to understand the ins and outs of your business and its products.
The most successful leaders are people who've developed relationships with their team members. They know how to listen, help, and give constructive feedback. One of the ways you can become a great leader is by learning from those who've led before you and overcome obstacles to reach their goals.
Goal Setting and Incentives
Consider setting goals for yourself and your team to stay on track each month. Incentives are a great way to help motivate your team to meet these goals. To help the team focus on its goals, create incentives that encourage salespeople to exceed sales targets. Make sure everything runs smoothly and everyone is on track by providing well-defined, measurable goals and consistent coaching.
Lead Generators
To remain competitive, your company needs to excel in lead generation. You'll need a team of lead generators who excel at identifying prospects, understanding their needs, and providing important details about those prospects to qualified salespeople who can close the deal. Your lead generators and sales team should work together toward a common goal: helping your company meet its monthly revenue goals.
Benchmarking
Businesses perform best when they research their market, benchmark, and set achievable goals. Every organization is different, so it's critical to establish a benchmarking process to compare departments across an organization and to compare your business to others in your market. The benchmarking process looks at common statistics and other relevant info to determine where your department or business stands in comparison to external entities. This requires a high-level understanding of the financial standings of your business.
The Importance of Financial Reporting
In business, sales are everything. Sales success can impact more than just your revenue — it shows in all departments of your company, and so it's important to have multiple perspectives and insight in all areas and aspects of your business. To truly understand your company's growth, it's important to take advantage of the tools you have at your disposal, and financial reporting is a great place to start. Whether you're reporting your revenue to the public, stakeholders, or the IRS, using reliable financial reporting tools is crucial. Financial reporting software offers numerous benefits to organizations when used effectively, including help with tracking cash flow and managing projects.
Speaking of financial reporting, if you haven’t already registered your business as an LLC, now’s the time to do so. Not only will registering as an LLC provide you with some tax benefits, but it will also allow you to legally do business in the state. Maybe you’re wondering, “How do I start a business in Florida?“ Luckily, ZenBusiness can help. Research what’s required, and then look into hiring a formation service that can ensure all of the paperwork is filed accurately and efficiently.
When growing your sales team, you need to create a system for managing the tasks that will grow along with it. A reliable system will help you stay focused on your goals and help your new sales team be more productive.
Social Advisors is uniquely qualified to customize and elevate your business development. We recognize that today’s Financial Advisors have custom solutions for their own clients, and we are here to support your mission and optimize your growth.
Comments