
Success in any business is the outcome of teamwork. Teamwork divides the tasks and multiplies the success. For that, you need to build an excellent team where everyone knows their roles and responsibilities well. The role of sales team is crucial for a business. Hiring the right people for each role and training them is important. Well, first know how to build a sales team that gives the results you expect for your business.
Many people think that sales is all about talking and hire purely based on the candidate’s communication skills. That is where they go wrong. There are several roles in sales that require analytical and critical thinking skills. Hence, define the roles and responsibilities for each role of sales team clearly and then place the right people in the team. Let’s discuss in detail the various sales team roles and how to build a sales team from the ground up.
Tips To Build The Best Sales Team
Here are some expert tips on building a top-notch sales team:
- Decide your sales team structure and strength based on your business needs. There are sales teams with 5 and 50 members and even more than that in many businesses. The number doesn’t matter until the results are favorable.
- Next, decide on the hierarchy and role of each sales team member i.e who will be taking care of processes like prospecting, demo presentations, follow-ups, invoices, and reports and who will be leading the team.
- Hire and train dynamic, passionate people who are hungry for achieving something in your organization. They are the ones who will strive for their personal as well as business growth.
- Create a nurturing sales team culture with good values and ethics. As the sales team is a customer-centric one, they need to have some empathy along with their selling skills.
- Last but not least, track your team performance using the KPIs that suit your business. Remember, every performance cannot be measured using sales quotas alone.
The Top 7 Roles In Sales Team
As I earlier mentioned, sales is not just about communication. There are a variety of roles in sales that need unique talents who understand your product well and bring your business the right customers and hence the better ROI. Let’s see them one by one:
- Sales Development Representatives (SDR)
The main role of SDRs in a sales team is to bring new customers to your business, i.e prospecting. They are often called cold callers. They need to maintain the contact list and the status of the very first interaction with the leads and qualify them based on that. These details will be passed on to the sales representatives to proceed with further steps.
- Sales Representatives (Inside & Outside)
Sales reps as we call them are of 2 types – inside and outside. Inside sales reps take care of cold calling and follow-up emails as they work from the office or remotely. Whereas, outside sales reps are in charge of door-to-door selling. They are also called field sales reps as they travel to different client locations for face-to-face interactions.
- Sales Specialists
Sales specialists or consultants are the ones who have in-depth knowledge of your product and business. They are the crucial ones to take care of demo presentations with the customers. How concise they are explaining your products and services plays a major role in customer decisions and hence choose them wisely. They should be able to convince the customers by answering their questions and doubts.
- Account Managers
Account managers are involved in the entire sales process from prospecting to closing the deal. They focus on creating new, innovative ways to sell your products, finding new customer bases, and maintaining good customer relationships. They are the main point of contact with existing customers, so they play a major role in customer retention and satisfaction.
- Customer Success Representatives
Once a deal is closed, it is the responsibility of the customer success team to take care of their needs and support them throughout their lifetime with your product or service. Among the sales team roles, this is an interesting role to deal with your existing customers directly. Also, these representatives take care of upselling and cross-selling, which means upgrading to the premium plans or additional services to be added in the existing plan.
- Sales Managers
A manager role in sales can be regional in large companies or a single person who manages a team in small businesses. However it may be, they are responsible for taking the sales of a business forward by properly communicating the business goals with the sales team. Their key activities include setting sales targets, conducting meetings to discuss the performance of sales strategies and changes if needed, managing and analyzing the team’s performance, and most importantly keeping the entire sales team motivated and engaged.
- Director or VP – Head Of Sales
However you call it, this is basically a high-level management role that reports to the CEO of a business. They will be in charge of setting goals and objectives and constantly in touch with the regional sales managers to check the sales team’s progress. There may be country-wise heads or one director who takes care of the company sales completely based on the business structure.
Summing Up
If you want your business to achieve greater results in sales, think of building a sales team with the best, most passionate individuals. Whether it is an independent role or a role that needs team collaboration, the sales employees should be aware of their goals clearly. When you put the right people together in your sales team, success follows by itself. Successful teams don’t happen by accident – they are made, not born!