Most of the time, it’s usually the engineering, product, and management teams that are most in the spotlight in most startups and small and medium-sized businesses. But any worthwhile entrepreneur will swear by it that having a strong sales team is a key success factor.

Great sales teams don’t come about by accident, they are created by design. And putting together the perfect sales team that is crushing it month after month is no easy task. Sales is a function that has a direct correlation and impact on sales and bottom line. After all, it’s the sales teams that bring in the money.

The importance and necessity of a killer sales team has not escaped you. You need salespeople who have the will to be successful and the potential to help your company maximize its revenue. But one hurdle you may face is figuring out how to find these selling rock stars.

Key Skills You Must Evaluate a Sales Team On

When it comes to hiring a sales role, you need to look far beyond the standard job description and resumes. Sure, prior experience and past excellent performance are good indicators.

In fact, they are the first things you should check. However, these should only be the first step in the screening process, not the determining factors.

To build a killer sales team, you have to look beyond the obvious. Because it will be these skills that will make or break the team.

The patience to build a relationship

The salesperson is the face of the company – they are usually the only one who speaks directly to your target audience. They represent you every time they get a phone call and email you. As the face of the company, the art of relationship building is one of the key skills they must possess.

Sales teams need to develop a personal relationship with their prospects. You have to understand the individual customer really well in order to sell to them. Through this relationship-building process, they will learn how to:

• the details of who they are selling to
• where the product or service they are selling fits in
• what drives the prospect and how he can add real added value
• their motivations and the real problems they need to solve

By building such a relationship, they can empathize with the person they are talking to. The empathy shown enables leads and prospects to place their trust in them. Trust is key to any business, and trust built on a solid relationship with a prospect always generates revenue.

You will have customers who are far more loyal to your company simply because they enjoy doing business with you. And that’s because your sales team is connected to them on a human level and has developed a thorough understanding of what they need.

“Great salespeople are relationship builders who add value and help their customers win.” – Jeffrey Gitomer, writer and business trainer.

Trust is always an asset

It is vital for a salesperson to be confident about themselves and the business they represent. It is the trust that enables them to reach out to potential customers and start the conversation. It is also trust that drives them to be tireless in their pursuit.

Working in sales has its drawbacks, with rejection coming first. Rejection never feels good. It is the human instinct to feel down when faced with rejection. But it’s the quality of self-confidence that allows them to shake off denial, pull themselves up, and stick with it. The gain comes from standing up after we fall and having the confidence to move on.

It may sound like a cliché, but confidence is the inherent skill a salesperson needs to be successful in their job. Salespeople need to be fearless – that is, they must never be afraid to take their shot. You mustn’t be afraid of rejection, because the job brings a lot with it.

Willingness to exceed expectations

Like any job, sales have expectations that employees have to meet. A salesperson should always be ready to exceed what is expected of them. You may not be able to do it every time, but your willingness to do so is an important indicator of your success.

It shows their determination and courage and their desire for success. This is an important quality for a salesperson as their job often requires them to do more than is required. If you stop at the expectation line, they will rarely get the results they need.

Their urge to do more and get more will enable them to never give up. As you know, giving up never leads to success.

The ability to learn new techniques

Like any role, the sales job also evolves. And can vary greatly between sectors and domains. But it’s the ability to learn quickly, to work with new tools and techniques that will help you settle in faster.

For example, in a B2B environment, customer acquisition skills and the ability to research the customer are critical. This also includes spending time understanding their business, their potential vulnerabilities and letting them know how to address them. But if a seller is new to this field, they may not be aware of it. But if they are able to learn this quickly, they will do better.

With automation now rampant in sales, they should be able to automate their emails and follow-ups. According to a McKinsey report, over 30% of the tasks in sales can be automated. Sales automation is a great sales booster and helps keep costs down.

Any redundant and repetitive process that they can automate gives them more time to focus on more business and profits.

The challenges of building a great sales team

Now that you know what to look for, let’s take a look at the challenges that come with finding your killer sales team.

Good only on paper

Most of the time, you will come across salespeople whose work looks great on paper but is not necessarily reflected in the perfect attitude.

It is difficult to evaluate someone when they are hired for a sales role. They may not be able to express the skills they listed on their resume.

This could either be because they can’t explain themselves, or because the accomplishments they list are irrelevant or have added meaningful value to the business. Both of these are things you don’t want from a salesperson.

If they are unable to sell their own skills to you, it will be difficult to expect them to sell your product or service.

The rarity of the right seller

Let’s face it, great sellers are rare and difficult to find. This is probably the biggest challenge in building a successful sales team that delivers. The demand for sellers is always high. Trying to find one that is available within your budget and has exceptional sales skills is a daunting task.

It is unusual to find salespeople who have this inherent curiosity. It is this drive that helps them learn more about a prospect. It also helps them build their professional relationships.

In addition, there is the challenge that they are already employed elsewhere. Getting them to see the value of this leap into your business will prove difficult. Nobody wants to let go of a skilled seller, and competing bids lead to a bidding war.

Evaluation can be anything

There are times when you fail to spot the right person or bet on someone who seems like the right choice but doesn’t turn out to be right when the going gets tough.

The skills that need to be assessed for those perfect salespeople are not straightforward and take a lot of effort to identify. Standard recruiting processes do not take this into account.

Being able to test them for these skills is not as easy as with some other roles. Someone is either a great salesperson or they are not, there is no middle ground. And it’s these extremes of the range that make it even harder to tell the big ones from the good ones.

Because at first glance, the differences between the two are subtle and invisible to someone who doesn’t know the difference.

Development of the dream sales team

Now suppose you’ve found the great salespeople you’ve been looking for. The next step is to bring it all together and it is the responsibility of leadership to do that.

Education is the key

To build the killer sales team you want, you need to understand their individual strengths and weaknesses. As the business leader building the team, the responsibility is yours to provide them with everything they need to pursue that success.

It is important to understand and optimize each team member’s strengths to get the most out of them based on their unique skills. You must receive extensive training in the following areas:

• the product or service what exactly it does
• how it solves a problem the customer is facing
• the previous product philosophy and development
• the right questions to maximize the information learned

Goals set incentives for their work

Once they have the necessary know-how about the product, the company and the market, you need to set the goals and expectations of them. Because without setting goals it will not be easy to align them all and bring them to one side.

The expectations must be clearly formulated and the goals must be taken into account in both the short and long term. Tying their bonus and incentives to long-term goals helps them see the bigger picture and work towards it.

Show them what their progress would be if they achieved their goals. Explain to them how the growth of the company will directly affect them and their role.

Create an environment in which they can be successful

When it comes to working with great sellers, the best thing to do is give them what they need and get out of the way. And then see how they thrive.

It is important to keep them regularly informed about developments in the range of products or services. You also need to learn what customers are saying about the offer. This creates a learning loop for them and with each iteration they get better at understanding market needs better.

If they haven’t already, teach them how to automate their repetitive tasks. Conducting regular workshops and training courses helps you to center yourself and to pursue your goals in an even more focused manner.

Killer sales teams are not easy to set up. But if you’ve done it right, there’s no stopping you. As a leader, when you put the extra effort into tirelessly building and refining your sales team, the results will speak for themselves.

Nothing has such a big impact on the development of your company as a well-coordinated sales team. When it clicks, it’s almost like magic.