Supporting a sales team with the proper tools is equally important in every industry. For example, as a sales manager, your job isn’t dissimilar to that of a homebuilder. Only in this case, you’re supplying tools to strengthen the performance of your sales reps, rather than nail guns and paint. And in the end, you’re responsible for setting them up for continued success.
There’s no question about it: Outstanding sales performance begins with outstanding salespeople.
So, how can you help give your salespeople the tools for success?
Strengthen the Foundation
The type of content your team has access to is just as important as where and when reps can find that content.
Begin by asking yourself the most important and pressing content questions that have helped build your team from the ground up. For example: What types of content are reps finding most effective, and which are being passed over? What pieces of content are receiving the highest engagement, and proving to be of greater value?
Once you’ve established a base of how your sales reps are performing and how they can improve, you can start thinking about how to help each of them get to work together as a team.
Work as One
Sales is a competitive profession, but everyone will go further if they're working together toward a common goal. Focus on how each rep contributes to the overall picture, and how their contributions help broaden the capabilities of the team. One of the easiest ways to get this started: Implement a feedback loop.
Your reps have plenty of opportunities to learn from one another by sharing metrics as to what content is performing well, what sales pitches lead to the highest number of deals, and how well customers are engaging with different types and formats of content. Establishing regular communication among your sales reps goes beyond the day-to-day benefits; it will strengthen your business strategy in the long run with a measureable and disposable insights.
With this in mind, it’s critical to reiterate that each of the individual contributions of your sales team must work together to drive results. Your reps wouldn’t be able to learn from this data without the feedback from their teammates, and your business wouldn’t be able to harness the insights it needs to drive its strategy forward without this type of process.
Focus On Quality, Not Quantity
It’s important to ensure that quality content is being used over a quantity of irrelevant content available to your reps. That’s why we invest so much time talking about putting a smarter content feed and analytics tool in place. Once the power of measurable data is available, you can harness that power to drive your entire sales strategy forward.
In the end, it’s always important to remember: Proper preparation prevents poor performance.
Wasting your team’s time with disorganized and deprioritized content is wasting your company’s money. Make sure your reps are able to easily search, filter, and find the content they’re looking for – when and where they need it.
Don’t Let Your Sales Settle
In the end, it all comes back to basics. When you focus on fortifying your sales reps with a strong training foundation and quality content that's mapped to the buyer's journey, they’ll be ready to drive clear, measurable results across your business.
Rachel Davidson is a content specialist at Highspot, the sales enablement industry’s leading platform for content management, customer engagement, and analytics.
