Choosing to build a business rather than applying to be an employee of one is a difficult choice to make. Starting your own company from scratch is not a joke. You need to exert effort, be creative, and prepare to spend a lot of money. This is precisely why you must research different ways to earn back your hard-earned investment funds. 

One of the ways to increase the return on investment (ROI) is through scaling. But what is scaling? It’s more than just the expansion of your business. Scaling entails taking on an increased workload in a cost-effective way. It also means meeting high demands without your business suffering or being overstretched.  

Scaling is important, especially for new businesses. Most business owners aim to get to a break even point, where all the costs are covered, and their business can finally generate income. However, lots of planning and brainstorming are needed to reach this goal. If this goal includes building something greater, you’ll need to visualize where you want to be in the next few years and a general sense of how you’re planning to get there. 

There’s no denying that salespeople bring in the majority of the business’s revenue. Because of this, it’s a must that your scaling is focused mainly on the sales team. Remember that a scaled sales team allows the business to gain more income. Here are ways to scale your sales team to gain higher ROI effectively. 

Start with a Well-structured and Repeatable Process

Deskera suggests that while training your sales team, teach them a repeatable sales process aligned with your current and future members. This ensures that each player has identical institutional and product knowledge. Let’s say a customer is pursued by Salesperson A today, then the next day, the same customer will be pursued by Salesperson B; the information given by both salespeople must be the same. This will increase the credibility of your business. 

Additionally, your salespeople will be able to provide consistent sales experiences to the customers. According to sales strategist Lisa McLeod, excited salespeople are at risk of the “spray and pray” model of sales. They spray the pitch as rapidly as possible and pray that some of it sticks out to the potential customer, influencing their buying decision. If this process works efficiently, then it should also contribute to delivering the same results.  

However, you must ensure that your sales process is already well-analyzed and prepared before hiring a team member. Include everything there is to cover: sending cold emails, conducting discovery calls, qualifying leads, drafting proposals, delivering presentations, and giving formal and accurate pitches. 

Your company will continue to evolve and improve. As it does, your sales process will also adapt to the changes. Ensure that it is also scalable on its own so that the entire team can rely on it entirely even in the far future. 

Hire the Perfect Team

Your first employees might be account executives, and you must choose the right personnel. Based on an article in Deskera, exceptional sales representatives may close up to 45% of the pipeline, in comparison to weaker representatives who can only close 15%. 

Great salespeople can think outside the box and respond creatively as they interact with others. It also helps that they’re teachable, inquiring, humble, and eager to learn. You also need to consider other characteristics: people-oriented, quick to learn, resilient, modern, motivated, energetic, and competitive. 

Putting together a group of people from different backgrounds will also bring in more prospects as it makes customers feel well-represented in your company. This will bring in a considerable chunk of markets and, therefore, more sales. 

Give Importance to Teamwork and Collaboration

In the retail world, a salesperson has two rivals. The first one is the company’s competition, while the other is their co-worker, also called an internal competitor. Although it’s great to participate in healthy competition, it’s also important to value teamwork and collaboration within a sales team. According to Nimble, sales is often viewed as a solo sport where people are expected to close deals independently. But it could produce a more effective sales team when it’s considered a team sport. 

You should encourage your team to communicate frequently. Tell the team members to talk to each other about what pitches work and which ones don’t. Be open to their suggestions and encourage them to ask questions during sales meetings. You can also invite them to meetings where senior leaders aren’t around so they can be comfortable talking to each other. 

Despite their individual targets, keep in mind that their accumulated sales make up the whole business’s productivity. A close-knit sales team can work more efficiently together, and their positive vibe will bring in more customers. 

Provide Regular Sales Training

All skills have room for improvement; this is true even with sales. Don’t hesitate to invest in sales training, both in product knowledge and sales skills. However, as this is an expensive solution, you might need to consider other alternatives that won’t empty your pockets. 

Conduct fun quizzes using different apps such as Kahoot! and give prizes to those who have the highest scores. Refresh them on the sales processes and address any other concerns. Coaching them individually to figure out what help or assistance they need in specific deals. Offer a healthy source of literature like books or a regularly updated online drive that your people can read and discuss weekly. 

Help your sales team become the best version of themselves under your watch. They’re the primary source of your income which means if you want your sales to grow, you should encourage your team’s personal and professional growth. Failing to coach your bottom salespeople will only affect them more negatively. Subsequently, if you want to achieve a positive result, you should be active in their development. 

Find the Appropriate CRM

Dealing with a small sales team is easier than dealing with a larger one, but you will eventually come to a point of growth when you become a well-known company. Regardless, having a large sales team is a good problem to have. Ultimately, this also means more customers to cater to. At this point, you must consider investing in better technology, especially your sales CRM. 

The bigger your company grows, the more administrative tasks will burden your employees. A sales CRM can help you automate those time-consuming manual tasks. There are many options to choose from, but there are certain factors you need to consider first. 

Deskera advised asking yourself the following questions: Can your new hire be able to navigate through your CRM? Does it fit in your budget? Are your existing salespeople comfortable with using your CRM? 

You need to choose a system that makes your employees’ jobs easier. It should be user-friendly as you don’t want to spend your earnings teaching your people how to use it properly. Newly hired employees will be able to start with their deliverables within a week. 

Additionally, a good CRM will also help you make your life simpler. As the owner, you’ll be able to access the data and monitor it from time to time. The information can be used as a guide for forecasting.  

Work with Marketing

Salespeople and marketing staff don’t always meet eye-to-eye. Ironically though, their collaboration will bring more sales to the company. If they worked closely enough, they could reach the company’s goal much quicker. 

Nimble gave an example to further support the statement above. Let’s say marketing conducts various campaigns to get leads from different sources; if they work together with the sales team, they’ll be able to shed insight on how to look for these new leads. 

On the other hand, the sales team should be aware when the marketing team releases campaigns based on the lead generation tools. This will help salespeople understand and quickly identify which leads are worth chasing and which ones aren’t even considered marketing-qualified leads. 

Share Your History with Newbies

Harvard suggests establishing storytelling as a company norm. In the same article, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman said that great companies are built on great stories. The first batch of the sales team is usually much more enthusiastic than the following groups. This is because they are attuned to the message that the company wants to express. They are part of the beginning of the company and its products. 

As more and more newbies replace the salespeople, the story gets lost somewhere down the road along with the company’s main vision and mission. You could include this in your daily or weekly meetings and show the newly hired employees how you applied these to their current situations. It will help them realize the importance of the product and make them more effective in customer interactions. 

Engage in Shorter but More Efficient Sales Calls

In modern times like ours, phone calls are a common communication tool where business deals are discussed and closed. Often, salespeople become so invested in the conversation that they overlook how long a call is already taking.  

Salespeople must know when to end the call properly and when the lead isn’t worth chasing. Still, don’t lose your patience over the phone. Remain kind and polite while telling your customer that you need to go.  

You can also share your screen for better comprehension of your products. Or you can ask your customer to share theirs if they will allow it. This works best when they check the company website while talking to you. It helps to know which page they are on so you can best consult them. 

Additionally, you should also utilize the best communication platform. With our phones as our main gadget, it’s much easier to work with cloud customer support software such as Google Drive, iCloud, etc., which allow us to transfer from one device to another. This also provides a few monitoring and reporting capabilities that will enable you to get up-to-date data which ideally will help sales performance. 

Conclusion

According to Investopedia, scalability is an organization’s ability to cope and perform well under expanding workloads. It’s described as the company’s capacity to grow without being hampered by its structure or available resources. Scaling your business is an excellent idea for it to grow in terms of profitability and sustainability. Along with this, your demand is also increasing. Scaling a sales team is a big help in generating a larger income for your company. 

Salespeople are the backbone of every business. If you want to improve your sales, you should first look at your sales team. Are they performing well? Do they need some coaching? What tools do they need to utilize to make their work easier? Factors like these, when left unsolved, will bring unnecessary losses to the company. 

Disregarding the importance of scaling your sales team and your company will ultimately put you in trouble as it will be difficult for you to cater to all the demands and be an owner simultaneously. Since the goal is to increase the return on investment, you should exert extra effort in learning how to scale up your sales team and strictly implement these rules. While scaling a sales team can be a long and arduous process, once it is done, the rewards will be worth the effort.

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