Scaling your sales team comes with its own set of challenges. At today’s Sales Hacker 2015, four experts discussed overcoming them. We’ve got the highlights, in case you missed it.
The Panelists:
- Shep Maher, Senior Vice President of Sales, Guidespark
- Emmanuelle Skala, Vice President of Sales at Influitive
- Mandy Cole, Vice President at Zenefits
- Saad Shazad, Sales Leader at Gusto
7 Tips for Scaling Your Sales Team:
1. Set aside time to coach on skills. Something as simple as setting a cadence for sales training during Friday lunches can be a great place to start. That’s what Guidespark did.
2. Keep KPIs visible. Influitive hangs posters on the sales floor that tell reps exactly what they need to achieve to stay on track toward monthly goals. (Want an easy way to keep sales KPIs visible? Check this out.)
3. Listen to your team’s feedback on your sales playbook. Implementing a framework around your selling process is critical when scaling. But that’s not it. Seeking out feedback from reps on the structure will keep you in tune with what’s really working. The Zenefits team is a living example of this.
4. Attract sales candidates who show buy-in for your mission. Guidespark, Gusto and Influitive emphasize the value of this tip, and the Gusto team can prove it: They have had 0% turnover in sales.
5. Consider customer advocacy a KPI. “The role of a salesperson is to bring in good revenue,” said Influitive VP of Sales Emmanuelle Skala. And her team believes in that so deeply, part of her comp is tied to advocacy.
6. Move beyond the free beer and no-vacation policy. Mandy Cole, Vice President at Zenefits, made a good point when she said that now everyone’s offering stereotypical startup benefits like free beer. Make sure that you’re focusing on what’s most important when recruiting: finding out whether the role not only fits the candidate, but is something he or she feels passionate about.
7. Take another look at sales enablement. “This next decade is going to be about sales enablement,” said Saad Shazad, Sales Leader at Gusto. He prefaced this by naming the last decade as one of marketing automation. Take time to consider what this prediction means for your team.
Stay tuned to the LevelEleven Blog for more prospecting tips and Sales Stack content.
