Building a Winning Sales Team

The value of a sales force is based on its responsibility to create sales, on its exposure to the public as the "face" of the company, and on the fact that it is entrusted with the most important corporate asset: the customer (Zoltners, Sinha, and Zoltners 2001). In fact, the overall performance and profitability of an organization is directly related to the quality and performance of the company's sales team. Since sales forces represent such a significant role for many companies, developing and maintaining a winning sales team has become a priority among firms today.

Twenty years ago, the most important attribute of a sales person was their "product knowledge". Over the past two decades, however, professional sales jobs have changed dramatically. A number of these changes are determined by the business environment as a whole and include the demand for more attention to customer relationships, new technology, and competitive pressure on companies to leverage the sales force as a driver of competitive advantage (Moncrief 2006). With these changes, building and maintaining a winning sales team is more important than ever.

The first step to building a sales team begins by answering a few key questions. First, why is it that some people succeed in sales, while others, who work just as hard, seem to get nowhere? Next, what do the best salespeople have that others do not? And finally, what does it really take to succeed in sales?

The four attributes and skills of excellent salespeople

Successful salespeople demonstrate a blend of excellent work ethic, ability to build trust and rapport with customers, keen understanding of the products they represent, and finally very strong selling skills (figure 1). Examples of this in practice include; a salesperson can work fourteen hours a day and see ten of their most important customers (great work ethic), however they don't fully understand every aspect of their product (weak product knowledge)…they will fail. Or, a salesperson knows all of the intricate details of their product (excellent product knowledge), yet they lack trust and struggle with building customer relationships…they will fail. And possibly the most common reason salespeople do not excel is the salesperson who is loved by all of his/ her customers, knows everything about their product, and demonstrates a profound ability to influence and sell his/ her customers, but only works a few hours a day…they fail.

Building a sales team begins with understanding a few key steps:

1. Understanding the skills and behaviors necessary to succeed in sales

• Do you have a thorough understanding of what the job holder needs to do in order to achieve success in the job?
  
  

2. Is the salesperson adequately "matched" to the job?

• NOT simply a well-defined job description. Important key…matching the strengths of the individual with the strengths required by the job.
  
  

3. Recruiting great sales people and interviewing

• You must have a consistent process
  
  
• Caution…guard yourself against hiring in your own likeness
  
  
• Hire for behavior…not experience
  
  
• Always involve a peer that you respect…get a second opinion
  
  
• With enough experience…trust yourself (intuition)

Bibliography

Moncrief, W. C., Marshall, G. W., & Lassk, F. G. (2006). A contemporary taxonomy of sales positions. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 26(1), 55-65.

Zoltners, A., Sinha, P., & Zoltners, G. (2001). The complete guide to accelerating sales force performance Amacom New York, NY, USA.