What are you doing to ensure your team hits quota this quarter? For the year? With sales teams working from home across the U.S., it is vital that managers have a strategy in place to help reps hit their goals and ideally, surpass them to drive more revenue.

Establishing an effective strategy is the first step of a successful manager. After all, the root cause of most performance issues can be traced back to a lack of visibility and lack of strategy in place. As a manager, it is your responsibility to ensure that reps have the proper knowledge, coaching, and training they need to succeed.

While 60% of salespeople anticipate a decrease in quota attainment this year, your team does not have to fall victim to that statistic. By having a strategy in place to properly coach and train your reps – along with the help of the right technology – managers can boost morale and improve overall team performance.

Here are 5 sales management strategies that sales leaders can adopt to achieve greater overall success this year.

Define goals for both individuals and your team.

Communicating with your team and setting goals at the beginning of the quarter is essential to hitting your numbers at the quarter’s close.  Ensure your reps have a concrete goal to work towards, and that everyone is on the same page. How can reps be expected to perform to a standard if that standard is not well established and visible to them? Established benchmarks of success and clearly outlined KPIs are necessary to achieving your team’s sales goals.

Continuously train all reps – even veterans and top performers

Sales training should not be a one-and-done event. For reps to perform their best, training should be reinforced on a monthly or even weekly basis. It is the responsibility of a sales manager to ensure that reps are up to date with all product updates, service changes, and so on. No matter how successful your first training session is, it is only natural that reps won’t be able to hold on to every piece of information. Recurring training sessions, therefore, set reps up for success, rather than leaving them to return to old habits.

Seize opportunities to coach every day.

After setting expectations for your team, make sure to follow up with reps, and target any problem areas along the way. Giving reps weekly, detailed feedback will allow for continuous improvement and higher performance standards. Specifically, utilizing call activity data can allow sales leaders to identify their reps’ strengths and weaknesses, reinforce script adherence, and identify behaviors of successful reps to set an example for others.

Implement technology to enhance your leadership.

Training and coaching initiatives may be enhanced with the adoption of a sales acceleration tool. With this type of tool, managers can access 100% accurate data on reps, rather than base their management on hunches. With capabilities like conversation intelligence and virtual learning, coaching and training can be articulated and improved with the visibility needed to make better, more accurate decisions. If you aren’t managing your team based on actual numbers, you likely aren’t managing them to the highest standard.

Celebrate success regularly.

Every individual win is a team win. Make sure to recognize and celebrate how your reps are already succeeding along the way. Team morale and company culture play an important part in your reps’ daily performance – especially as they work from home. Make sure to balance the emphasis on improving numbers with celebrating small successes. As team morale improves, it is likely that your numbers will as well.

How current is your sales management strategy?

By implementing these sales management strategies at your organization, your team will be better prepared than ever to excel and surpass sales goals this year. What works in sales is constantly changing, and in order to succeed, it is necessary to update outdated practices, technologies, and management techniques. With these strategies, managers can ensure their teams are in-the-know with the latest information and technology updates, and that reps are properly prepared to reach success.

Learn about the Gryphon ONE platform and how it can improve management effectiveness at your organization.

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