Sales teams are a crucial part of any company. They help increase revenue and provide a better customer experience. But all too often, they’re overlooked because the management is confident their current team will do just fine. And if that’s you, it’s time to rethink your strategy. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to build a successful sales team from scratch and some mistakes that others have made along the way. You won’t want to miss out on our checklist for creating an awesome team!

The Importance of Building a Successful Sales Team

Building a successful sales team is not an easy task. But the benefits that come with having a great sales team are definitely worth it. And when I say “great”, I mean effective and productive, and everyone within it cares about the company they represent.

Benefits of having a sales team include:

• Greater revenue 

with a good team in place, companies can expect to see an increase in revenue with less time and effort. This is because most of them effectively promote the business’s products and services while others even go as far as finding new and potential customers.

• Improved customer satisfaction

this happens for two reasons: (1) your sales team focuses more on providing a better customer experience and (2) the increase in revenue. When you have a good team focused on providing a positive experience, your business will stand out from the rest.

• Better work-life balance

when employees get to focus on their strengths, they feel more fulfilled. This allows them to spend time with family or other interests while still being productive at work.

• Higher benchmarks for internal team members to achieve. It’s always inspiring when everyone on the team is doing well!

One thing remains true, building a successful sales team will take time and energy. You’ll need to get your hands dirty before you see results. Be prepared for that challenge because it will all be worth it. Let’s get into some of the common mistakes companies have made in the past when building a successful sales team.

Common Mistakes When Building a Successful Sales Team:

1. Overlooking the team and not putting an effort into training them. Employees need to be properly trained before they can effectively do their jobs. When you overlook this process, it leaves your employees feeling unmotivated and unappreciated — which leads us to mistake #2.
2. Not providing ongoing training with regular refreshers. Even the best companies need to keep their employees up-to-date on all that’s happening in the business. They need scheduled time during the year to go over new products, services, policies, and any available discounts.
3. Focusing too much on “experts”. There are always those one or two people with a wide range of knowledge about the company’s industry. One problem is that they might have valuable information but don’t know how to effectively convey it to others.
4. You need employees who are able to pass on this valuable knowledge while also knowing when it’s best not to do so. Not enough hours are allocated for training sessions and employees feel like they don’t have enough time for other tasks. This mistake can happen if management doesn’t spend enough time with their employees. Training is a process that requires everyone’s involvement and support. Failing to provide the necessary training leaves your team feeling lost. And when they don’t know what to do, it can lead to mistakes or even more costs in the long run…
5. Not having enough time for training sessions. Management doesn’t understand how important it is to properly train employees which leads to this common mistake. This usually happens because management has too many other things on their plate that are taking up all of their time. The problem with this mistake is that it can often be avoided if management would step back and take a closer look at everything else going on within the business.
6. Assuming you’re doing enough training you have an internal trainer available. One common mistake companies make is thinking their employees are well trained to do their jobs. You can have an internal trainer but that doesn’t mean your employees are prepared to sell the products or services they’re selling.
7. There are different levels of training and your employees should be set up for success – not failure! Employees spend too much time on social media, web surfing, etc… Many times, this happens because management fails to provide guidelines when it comes to using company computers or devices for personal use. This is a serious mistake if it’s occurring because your team members will spend more time outside of work hours working than with family and friends.
8. Not providing adequate office space for everyone who needs it. When you have just one or two open desks or cubicles available it can be a problem for your employees. Even if you have the resources to expand and provide more office space, they’ll most likely choose not to stay with your company — unless there are other reasons why they want to work there in the first place.
9. Not having enough office supplies or equipment readily available. This mistake happens when management doesn’t see their role in making sure every team member is being fully supported so they’re able to do their job effectively.
10. Team members might feel unsupported when this error occurs because they’re doing everything themselves instead of receiving help from someone else who’s supposed to have that responsibility. Having too many people on one team member’s desk. If you have an open-office environment then this problem can be common. It’s definitely not easy to have too many people on one person’s desk because everyone needs their own space to work efficiently within an office environment.

How to Motivate Your Employees?

Motivating your employees is not difficult. But you need to be able to tell them how much value (money, respect, etc.) they can potentially gain by working harder or more efficiently. You also need to make sure that everyone on the team feels like teammates instead of opponents since they’re all trying to reach the same goal – better sales numbers! Some examples of what you could do are giving away prizes throughout the year (bonus, vacation days, etc.), creating competitions between teams or even within each team, maybe set up a lottery so it gets your people thinking about earning more money. Let’s say there’s $1000 every week and only one company employee will win 50% ($500) of it — It would be similar to playing the lottery as a team. Everyone wins this week, but it’s all or nothing next week!

Tips on How to Increase Your Sales Team’s Productivity:

Productivity is the key to achieving success. You will need to measure and track everyone on your team so you can tell who needs more “motivation” and coaching throughout the year. We recommend using quick, easy-to-use tools like Toggl — which is a free time tracking tool for small teams that want to get stuff done! This way, when they’re working together you’ll be able to monitor how much time different employees spend with each other when it comes down to brainstorming new ideas or having informal meetings outside of scheduled sessions.

Increase Productivity by Tracking Your Employees’ Time:

As we mentioned before, most managers assume their team members are productive because they work hard during scheduled sessions. That’s not enough anymore because employees have too many distractions these days. It’s a fact that team members waste a lot of time on social media, web surfing, and having meetings with each other outside of office hours. You need to have better insight into what everyone is up to during work hours so you can take action before it becomes a serious problem!

It’s important to build a successful sales team, but it can be difficult finding the right people. If you follow these tips for hiring new employees and training your new hires, you will increase your chances of building an effective sales force that works well together. To make sure they stay motivated during tough times or when their prospects are low, use some of these motivation techniques to keep them going strong! Building a successful sales team can take time, but it’s well worth the hassle knowing you hired the right people and created an effective business model. Also, if you’re trying to improve on your productivity feel free to check out our blog posts about best practices for web-based companies. We hope they’ll help you reach your goals faster!