Breaking through a sales plateau may be challenging, but not impossible with the right approach. Even if demand for your products or services is high, you can still run into problems. For example, you can encounter a sudden slowdown if you have limited sales enablement efforts for your team and sales needs resources on a product/service with rising demand. Other factors that can cause problems include outdated sales training, cross-functional misalignments, and customer service issues.

Luckily, there are proven methods on how to improve sales performance. In this blog, I’ll explore how you can improve sales performance in both the short-term and the long-term.

10 Tips on How to Improve Sales Performance

1. Revitalize your sales strategy.

Ask yourself and your sales teams, “Are our sales strategies still effective?” Your business must remain agile and responsive to any changes in consumer needs.

Every sales strategy benefits from ongoing reassessment and tweaks. Don’t just re-evaluate your sales strategy once a year only. Do it quarterly or, better yet, monthly. Examine your approach often to help it stay as relevant as possible to your target customers.

2. Don’t make blind decisions.

Never base your decisions on intuition. Data collection is a lot easier today than in the past, and there are many tools available to help you analyze these data sets.

However, it is also essential that you use the correct data to make your decisions. You can implement a better sales strategy and more relevant sales training for your team if you use data-backed approaches.

3. Provide up-to-date sales training.

The best possible tip you can get on how to improve sales rep performance is to provide relevant training. However, a comprehensive training program will not help you achieve your sales goals if they are old and outdated. Have your reps go through the most recent and relevant training to help them quickly and efficiently close deals.

Remember that dumping all training sessions and materials in one go can be overwhelming, so it is best to do them incrementally and repeatedly. Psychological studies tell us that people forget information within weeks or even days if they don’t repeatedly relearn that information.

4. Extend training to your managers.

While providing training to your frontline sellers is essential, you also need to ensure that your managers’ training remains current. Having them improve their approach in managing your sales representatives can significantly improve your sales team’s performance. Ultimately, this will help them provide better guidance to each sales rep and lead to a consistent meeting of quotas.

5. Keep team communication open.

Regular team meetings help bring your team together and provide an opportunity to share information and encouragement. It keeps each team member aligned to your sales plan and goals. In addition, meetings help your team members remain accountable for their performance.

6. Encourage customer referrals.

Referrals from existing customers are a powerful way of increasing sales. When your existing customers remain loyal to your business, they will naturally refer you to their friends and family – giving you more potential clients. You can facilitate more referrals from customers and employees alike by offering incentives such as reward points or gift cards.

7. Use the right sales structure.

Your sales team should be using the proper sales model suitable for your type of business and the products or services you offer. Remember that sales structures do not have to be static – they should be adaptable. Also, take the time to create a sales performance improvement plan template to meet your target customers’ ever-changing needs.

8. Level up your customer service.

Regardless of your type of business or industry, you need to provide customers with reliable and solid support services. While the customer service team focuses on delivering post-sales support, it will make work easier for your salespeople. They can bring in more sales if existing clients are happy and satisfied with your service.

Take your customer service to the next level by measuring and analyzing customer service performance. A great way to implement this is to get your customers to fill out a feedback rating after they’ve consulted with one of your customer representatives. You can also improve your customer service representatives’ performance by:

• Incentivizing and recognizing good work carried out by your customer service team. The incentives can be gifts, discounts on business products, etc.
• Use a smart CRM software – this will help your team get in touch with customers instantly wherever they are in the world. Your sales team and your customer service team can work closely with each other, allowing for better communication across channels.
• Ensure your website offers a “Help” section or “Self Service” portal and that your customers can quickly and easily access a FAQ page, should they need answers to their questions.

9. Use every appropriate sales channel.

Take advantage of every sales channel you can use. For example, identify social media platforms where your potential customers gather and approach them from there. You can customize your approach, introduce tailored sales plays, and attract more customers if you branch out to other online sales channels. Plus, it will help your business stay connected and informed of any developing trends in your niche.

10. Keep your own people happy.

Nothing is more debilitating to a sales force than disgruntled and unhappy sales reps. Remember that they represent your business in every customer encounter. Keeping your employees satisfied means a better sales output. Here are some strategies to ensure employee satisfaction:

• Reward and recognize high-performing employees by praising them for their efforts and creating successful incentive programs.
• Maintain an open line of communication with employees so that they feel comfortable bringing their concerns to the table, and offer them solutions.
• Develop a social culture in which employees feel part of a family.
• Provide ongoing training wherein employees can better their skills and further their careers.

Rev Up Your Revenue with These Sales Acceleration Tips