7 Tips for Building a Sales Team to Help Your Business Grow

By Small Businesses, For Small Businesses

Knowing your audience and what they need can really help separate you from your competitors. Many enterprise companies have dedicated teams constantly parsing and refining data in order to gain this knowledge. While small businesses and startups don’t have the same kind of resources or budget to dedicate to customer insights, they can crib some plays from the enterprise playbook in order to arm their salespeople for success.

CRM apps can increase sales by up to 29%, sales productivity by up to 34%, and forecast accuracy by 42%. CRM helps to expand and convert leads by organizing them, tracking and managing them, and sending important details to in-house users.

1. CRM is the Key

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We’re doing a lot of intelligence around call lists. For example, if a buyer watched a webinar, our sales reps can use Pardot insights to talk to them about that webinar. If they downloaded a white paper, they can talk to them about the subject matter covered by the white paper.

-Roy Keely, VP of Market Strategy, Xcentric

2. Utilize Call Lists

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You'll see a lot of cold emails with sentences like, "Let me know if I can help.” What exactly does that mean? Don’t beat around the bush. Be clear and direct about what you’re asking the recipient to do or consider. Instead of, “I’d love your feedback,” ask, “When’s a good day this week for a 15-minute call to discuss ...?” And no more than one question or call to action per email.

-Aaron Ross, Founder & CEO, Predictable Revenue

3. Make the Most of Your Cold Email

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If you don’t constantly hire reps, you’ll never grow the top line as fast as you could. You need to Always Be Hiring Sales Reps. Once you have an engine going, have faith. Have faith they’ll generate and close the leads. And they will — if they’re great. If your sales team is understaffed, you’ll leave money on the table. A little overstaffed is better. Do that, and you’ve got a chance to exceed your current plan.

-Jason Lemkin, Managing Director, Storm Ventures

4. Always Be Hiring

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All leads aren’t created equal, so, in practice, you should only be responding quickly to the best leads. Sales teams should partner with marketing on a regular basis to identify their most valuable customer profiles, then identify a solution that will push the best leads at the top of the lead response queue.

-Howard Brown, CEO, RingDNA

5. Align With Marketing

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6. Lean Pipeline = Healthy Pipeline

You’d think that a healthy sales pipeline is one that’s full of leads. Research suggests otherwise: lean pipelines generated 48% more revenue than fat ones. The key to a healthy pipeline: disqualify bad leads early, freeing up time to dig deeper with good leads.

-Michael Boyette, Executive Editor, Rapid Learning Institute

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Social media provides an in-depth look into buyer behaviors beyond simple preferences and demographics. One way we’re capitalizing on social media is enabling our reps to proactively research customers’ statuses and their propensity to purchase via their social profiles.

-Paul Leary, President, Bespoke Collection

7. Leverage Social Media

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Thank you

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