As we all know, growing your venture is an extremely challenging endeavour.
In a world full of marketers, it’s important to understand that marketing alone will not necessarily get you sales.
To convert marketing leads into actual sales, you may need to build a sales process (a series of steps the customer must go through to convert) or even a sales team.
In this article, we take a look at all the things you should look out for when building your sales process and sales team.
Here goes…
Why Build a Sales Process or Sales Team?
A sales process or sales team is probably one of the most important investments that a company can make. However, it’s astonishing how many confuse sales with marketing.
Marketing is designed to build awareness and create a feel-good factor around your product or service. Whereas sales is designed to convert that interest into actual revenue.
Many ventures, even established ones, often believe that if the product is good enough, then the sales will just happen with sufficient marketing and awareness.
Unfortunately, that is often not the case. Even with the best marketing in the world, there is no guarantee that all the eyeballs on your product or service will convert into sales and turn into actual money in the bank.
In order for that to happen, most companies need some kind of sales process or a sales team.
Bear in mind that even online/digital businesses may need some kind of sales process or a sales team to convert website visitors into paying customers.
You will need to find out through real-world data gleaned from your marketing efforts whether your visitors convert by themselves or if you need to do more work to turn interest into sales.
It’s important to take on board that it is very rare for potential clients to convert by themselves. Most businesses (even established ones) will need to do more to convert potential prospects into sales.
Read more about How to Sell here:
Sales Team and Growth
The sales team is the engine of your company. A strong sales team no matter how small, will take the interest or leads created by your marketing and turn them into tangible cash.
The problem is that creating an effective sales team takes more than simply hiring a collection of characters that can ‘close’ deals.
It’s important to take into consideration things such as personality, compensation, how success will be evaluated and the sales strategy that’s required to achieve revenue growth and success.
If you get this combination wrong, it can impact your business and even undermine growth rather than accelerate it.
Sales Personality
One of the first things to consider is getting the right personality types on board.
Many companies focus highly on perceived ‘confidence’ and communication, but it’s important to understand that turning sales leads into actual money needs something that is often hard to find: consistency.
Personality types that are suitable for the task will need to be consistent, resilient and should be able to take on multiple rejections without getting demotivated.
Initial in your face ‘confidence’ can easily wither within days of multiple rejections, and morale can plummet quickly in these circumstances.
In addition, personality types that work well internally within the company may not work well when client-facing.
It’s important to ask the question, will your salesperson be friendly from the viewpoint of your potential client? Or will your client find them too pushy or even annoying?
Hunters and Farmers
Generally speaking, there are two kinds of salespeople, ‘Hunters’ and ‘Farmers’.
As the name implies, Hunters are able to go out into the wild and bring in the deals with little or nothing by way of support or introduction.
On the other hand, Farmers will require some kind of warm introduction, a pre-existing contact or an established relationship to bring in deals.
Of course, it’s possible that an individual has a combination of these traits and if you find such an individual who genuinely has both of these traits, they are rare and should be appreciated accordingly.
Hunters are useful if you need to build your venture from the ground up. They do not necessarily need established leads or even marketing. They are able to build sales from zero.
Farmers are useful if you need to grow an established client base. It’s often easier to sell to someone you’ve sold to before, so Farmers are often good at nurturing a pre-existing relationship.
As a new venture, it’s important you understand these two types of sales roles and personalities so you can get the right balance of people on board to meet your growth expectations.
Strategy
Every venture wants sales and money in the bank as quickly as possible!
However, it’s important to take into account the effect on your business that ‘aggressive’ sales techniques may have.
Be realistic about your sales expectations; pushing too hard may not only drive away potential clients and cause reputational damage, but it may also demotivate your team while they struggle to achieve near-impossible targets.
Ensure your sales strategy aligns with how your customers prefer to be approached.
Make sure that you operate within the laws in your jurisdiction regarding outreach and cold approaches.
Sales Evaluation
One area that often gets overlooked, even in large organisations, is how sales success is evaluated.
Often, all sales are viewed as equal, and the final sales figure is the one that is celebrated.
However, as discussed previously, there are often two sales roles and personality types, Hunters and Farmers.
If a Farmer brings in double the sales of a Hunter, it does not necessarily make the Farmer a ‘better’ salesperson.
Yes, the figure is larger, but there’s a bigger picture.
The Hunter has brought in a brand new client and achieved possible future growth for the business. The Hunter may have spent vast amounts of time and energy building a relationship from scratch.
The Farmer, on the other hand, may have upsold an existing client that needed to upgrade anyway and future growth from the client may be minimal.
The Farmer may have done little to create the sale. In fact, the client may have contacted the Farmer on the basis of the existing relationship to begin the sales process themselves without any prompting from the Farmer at all.
So, it’s important that ‘new’ sales are treated differently to pre-existing client sales.
Paying attention to this will ensure your sales team members are compensated and recognised fairly according to their contribution.
Lead Division
How you divide leads or prospects within your team is often a large area of contention in most organisations. So ensure you have this under control from the outset.
Since most sales teams are compensated by the value of the sales they make, most salespeople are well aware that the quality of their leads will have a huge impact on their commissions, and therefore, their take-home pay.
Therefore, it’s essential that pre-existing leads or prospects are distributed fairly to avoid internal squabbles amongst team members. Avoid inadvertently alienating team members with low-quality lead distribution.
As we have seen already, Farmers will be heavily reliant on ‘warm leads’ or pre-existing contacts, so ensure that they do not get all the ‘easy’ pickings.
Ensure your Hunters also get a fair share of these ‘favourable’ contacts.
It’s also important to ensure you have a robust system in place to ensure that only one member of your sales team is able to reach out to their assigned client.
From the client’s point of view, multiple outreach attempts from different team members may be perceived as unprofessional.
Metrics
As discussed already, the sole purpose of your sales team is to create revenue growth, but sales figures should not stand alone.
Some important metrics you should take into consideration are:
Revenue – Most visible but should not stand alone
Conversion Rate – The percentage of leads converted into actual paying customers. This will differentiate efficient salespeople from those who simply receive a high volume of opportunities.
Deal Size – This will show those who can not only gain quick wins but can also close larger opportunities.
Activity – Calls made, emails sent, client meetings booked, demos made and proposals sent are all important to assess effort and consistency.
Forecast Accuracy and Pipeline – Realistic judgment is essential. Good salespeople do not bloat out their forecasts with inflated numbers. Inflated forecasts may look good in the short term but can hinder planning for your business in the long run.
Response Times – How quickly your salesperson responds to enquiries will often determine the perceived customer experience and correlates to higher conversion rates.
Customer Retention and Renewal – This is important to track if the salesperson is able to attain sales growth via client retention.
Things to Watch Out For – Pitfalls
A culture that celebrates only top performers – This may unintentionally marginalise other salespeople who still provide substantial value.
Public leader boards – Public leader boards and rankings can motivate some individuals while discouraging others. This may establish over-reliance on a few ‘star’ performers over time.
Evaluating purely on short-term outcomes. Not taking into consideration longer sales cycles. Some deals will inevitably take longer than others. Usually, high-value deals and deals with large organisations can take several months to finalise.
The difference between ‘Hunter’ and ‘Farmer’ sales roles and personality types is also a factor here. A Hunter may take longer to establish a deal due to having to build a client relationship from scratch.
A Farmer, on the other hand, already has an established relationship with the client and deals can often be turned around much faster.
Poor lead assignment. A salesperson can be easily set up to fail without quality lead assignment.
Without quality leads, even experienced salespeople will struggle. Farmers are at particular risk when assigned low quality leads.
Lead Poaching or Scuppering – Salespeople can be highly competitive. Ensure you have systems in place to prevent promising leads from being ‘poached’ or scuppered by overly competitive members of your team.
Remember, people often buy from people they like. You should avoid changing the salesperson mid-deal to avoid disruption to your potential new client. This applies in particular to Hunters.
If a Hunter has brought in a new prospect, don’t be tempted to pass the lead on to a Farmer to convert.
The rapport has already been established by the Hunter; you should allow the deal to continue to its conclusion with the Hunter.
Coasting – Coasting often develops when a salesperson’s compensation plan plateaus or when their expectations become predictable.
Once a salesperson realises they can comfortably maintain income with minimal effort, motivation can decline. This is especially common in mature territories with established clients who bring in regular commission for the salesperson.
‘Box Ticking’ – Salespeople may focus on appearing busy rather than targeting the right prospects effectively.
Signs of this may include inflated calls, pipeline, LinkedIn messages, emails, or proposals sent with few actual client meetings or any real substantial client development.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking a large amount of outreach is necessary for success.
Quality is better than quantity, especially if you are in a high-value sales environment.
Sales teams will naturally adjust for visible activity metrics if you overemphasise the importance of these figures. Optimise for genuine progress rather than inflated reporting.
Final Thoughts
Establishing an efficient sales process or sales team is an important part of any venture.
Entrepreneurs should ensure that they hire the correct personality types for the role.
While confidence is important, consistency should be paramount for potential salespeople.
In addition, founders should ensure that they include the right types of salespeople in their team.
Hunters should be utilised where revenue growth is needed, where little or no traction has been achieved to date.
Farmers are needed where existing accounts need to be developed and grown.
Entrepreneurs should ensure that leads are divided fairly and should keep an eye on sales metrics such as revenue, conversion rate, deal size and activity.
Founders should avoid obsessing over metrics such as activity metrics to avoid pitfalls such as box-ticking. This will help to optimise for genuine progress.
Savvy entrepreneurs who incorporate these concepts into their sales process should see an uptick in performance over time.
Good luck!
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***Disclaimer: This article is not financial advice and is given for informational and entertainment purposes only. Readers should conduct their own research and not invest more than they can afford to lose. Crypto is extremely volatile, and as such can drop in value considerably without notice. Pop Up World has a global presence and is not specifically targeting any jurisdiction with its content. Any crypto references are not intended for UK businesses or consumers. You should always seek legal advice to understand if the use or investment in crypto is allowed in your jurisdiction.
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