10 tips to improve sales efficiency

Modjo is in constant contact with sales, customer success and account managers.

We took the opportunity of August to ask them about their best practices, and here are the top 10 things that make them top executives.

Here they are:

Recruitment in progress

Part of a sales manager's role is to stand out from the crowd of under-performers.

Maintaining a perpetual pool of candidates minimizes the impact of turnover on team results and gives you more freedom to make the right decisions. Even more costly, recruiting the best salespeople is also essential.

A team of ordinary salespeople will perform as well as you do, while a team of top salespeople will develop skills beyond your imagination.

Knowing how to sell and selling

As an exception to the rule, a manager needs to be a good salesman. Spending a small part of his time selling enables him to maintain his expertise and stay in direct contact with his customers.

This expertise is put to direct use at two points: in customer crisis situations and in mid-course opportunities.

• In the first case, the best managers intervene to control the situation.
• In the second case, to maximize the conversion rate of opportunities, and to help their team when they can still influence the transaction.

Coaching based on replaying conversations with customers

The best sales managers spend more than half their time attending customer meetings and coaching their teams.

Beyond the pitch, they pay attention to the details of the sale or post-sale: the customer's posture, the words used by the collaborator in visios and e-mails, the energy level of the participants.

As each interaction is reviewed, they discuss with the person concerned what went well and what could be improved.

Every moment is a good moment for coaching, and every coaching session strengthens the team's confidence and productivity.

Motivate and inspire for success

The best managers are also leaders. Team motivation rests on 3 pillars: providing clarity, projecting shared success and creating energy on a daily basis.

This may seem obvious, but few managers understand that everyone has different motivating factors.

The best managers invest time in understanding each of their employees and, depending on their introverted or extroverted personality, act on the right levers (private or public attention).

Track "key" indicators

It's a well-known fact that a strategy is only as good as its execution.

The best managers track only a few indicators, the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Instead of focusing on lagging KPIs such as sales, the best managers focus on developing healthy behaviors within their teams, thanks to cutting-edge KPIs:

• Number of customer appointments per week.
• Number of hours of replay and training.

Plan a precise pipeline

The best managers achieve their objectives because they know how to get the right visibility on their opportunities, thanks to rigorous forecast hygiene.

As a result, they have a critical view of their team's conversion rate, can help them convert more or faster, and take on the challenge of new opportunities.

They spend at least one hour a week with each member of their team, discussing the actions to be taken for each critical opportunity.

Setting a commercial pace

Good managers know how to make accurate forecasts, but the best know how to control them, by influencing the pace of the business.

A sales team achieves better results in an environment characterized by a weekly routine, such as Monday morning sales reviews or Friday training sessions.

The best managers use the tools at their disposal to monitor weekly performance and progress, so that employees are not distracted.

Balancing rules and exceptions

Sales teams need a framework for approaching, qualifying and signing with a customer.

The best managers know how to impose standard processes on teams. They know how to manage highly competitive profiles, gather regular feedback and solve problems before they end up in a corner.

They also know that too many rules, or too many sophisticated rules, can distract teams: they fight internally to keep processes and compensation plans simple and limited in number.

Collaborate with other functions

A sales manager needs to be able to spend 5% of his time giving and receiving visibility internally. He knows that at some point he will need the support of cross-functional teams, and that he needs to involve them in their customer reality as often as possible, so as to activate them quickly when needed.

Celebrating success

Success is fun: good managers set up a ritual to celebrate sales successes often and immediately.

Offering a reward, even a symbolic one, creates motivation and commitment.

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Better,

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