4 Steps You Can Take To Tune Up Your Sales Engine

If you want to accelerate your business, tune up your sales engine so you are firing on all cylinders. Here are 4 steps you can take to get the most out of your sales team:

1. Pare down and simplify.  How many steps are there in your sales methodology? Reduce them to no more than 7. The process will be far simpler to follow and easier to track. Work together with marketing to ensure you understand where they begin and end. Misalignment between the sales and marketing functions can cause confusion and loss of productivity.
2. Provide the training and tools that support the sales process.  Whatever sales technology you use, make sure that it is a help and not a hindrance. A well-oiled CRM system will allow salespeople to be more efficient on their own and more accountable to the team and their sales manager.  From a solution selling training perspective, ensure that you rigorously focus only on the critical few sales scenarios, skills and behaviors that have the highest impact on the sales metrics that matter most to you and your team – i.e. revenue, margin, win-rate, portfolio mix, sales cycle etc.  What matters most for one sales strategy, culture and industry is different from what matters most for another.  Beware of off-the-shelf or “tailored” programs based upon best practices that do not allow you to truly differentiate your sales experience.
3. Measure and support the activities that work.  Once you have identified the critical few sales scenarios, skills and behaviors that lead to success in your unique sales culture, find a way to measure, support and encourage them. Then make the metrics transparent and visible to all. 
4. Keep the focus on the customer.  We know. You’ve heard this many times before. But how many sales teams really make this an integral part of their strategy? Make sure your whole team has adopted best practices from solution selling training so they focus on what the customer truly needs.

Learn more at http://www.lsaglobal.com/solution-selling-training/