Scaling sales is a problem that every leader faces at some point in their company’s lifecycle. The amount of information on what to do versus what not to do on every digital platform can be overwhelming. That overwhelming feeling is amplified if you are not someone who gravitates towards sales and salespeople.
For now, let’s not cover sales hiring as it is a huge topic. We’ll cover that in a different post called: “The SMB do’s and don’ts of sales hiring”. In this post let’s focus on common challenges SMB leaders face when they decide to scale their sales team. Many of you are already facing these challenges or anticipate encountering them soon.
92% of businesses fail to scale successfully
Hardik Harsora, Economic Times
A common misconception is that if you put a bunch of salespeople on the phone or in the field, they will sell something. In many cases, they may get lucky and sell a few licenses of your product. However, over time, relying solely on this old-school approach will lead to disappointment. Meanwhile, you’re exhausting resources, overworking your staff, and wasting sales cycles with potential customers.
As a leader your role is to make sure that the sales team scales and ensure that revenue growth happens as quickly and effectively as possible. That said, it’s also your responsibility to ensure that anyone you hire receives the support they need to succeed. Avoiding common pitfalls will help you get on track faster and add more value to your future team.
The 5 most common mistakes are:
- 1.Ignoring the concept of sales culture.
According to recent research by HubSpot, sales teams with high morale were found to be 21% more profitable and 17% more productive. Highly engaged salespeople achieve a 20% increase in sales.
Generally, salespeople are emotional creatures that need to feel energized and inspired when they are at work. They gravitate towards teams and feed off each other’s energy to tackle seemingly impossible tasks.
Keeping their energy high and the team focused on growth is a lofty job. You cannot ignore that culture plays a big part in keeping this revenue engine moving. Your team will need constant reassurance, support and engagement through the peaks and valleys of your “selling season”.
- 2.Not building a realistic compensation plan.
You can make grand promises, but the moment people realize you can’t deliver, they seldom stick around. Many companies try to lure sales people in with promises of tremendous earning potential if they sell a target number of accounts or bookings.
But if those goals are seemingly unattainable or you do not have the infrastructure (marketing support, sales resources etc.) to support these goals, they will soon figure that out and leave.
- 3.Not investing in marketing and lead generation.
Many leaders assume that a team of cold callers will lead to exponential growth. But that isn’t the case. Cold calling can help you build some traction but it should be one of many tools in your sales toolkit. Sales people need leads, the market needs to be educated and you should never underestimate the impact of brand awareness on salespeople’s efforts.
In a detailed blog by Neil Patel he shows conversion rates are nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters. That is 2.9% vs 0.5%.
- 4.Thinking Sales is a “Set it and Forget it” department.
Salespeople need management. Let me emphasize this: salespeople require effective management. . If you’ve never managed salespeople there is a high probability that you underestimate the impact that management has on sales performance. Salespeople by nature are high-touch employees and need constant interaction, inspiration and guidance.
- 5.You are underestimating the work.
Building an effective sales team takes a lot of effort and planning. Between sales onboarding, training, sales and marketing alignment, hiring, compensation plans, sales processes, the sales tech stack and forecasting there is a lot of room for error. It is a lot of work. The best sales people can see when a company is just “faking it until they make it” and they may not stay around to find out how the story ends.
The truth is, scaling sales requires a balanced mix of data-driven strategies, strong interpersonal skills, and a genuine commitment to success.
So here are a few recommendations to avoid making the mistakes we see so often:
- 1.Accept the reality
Embrace the idea of taking a hands-on approach to sales. Until you put a leader in place, try to engage consistently and help keep things fresh. Similar to when you take a flight, flight attendants add value consistently throughout the journey.
Take the same approach to your sales team. Implement a cadence of support outside of the typical meeting cadence. Use product training to support their skills, leverage company events to showcase small victories and always ask for feedback.
Sales is a hard job and the best leaders recognize that they need to constantly invest time and energy in their people to keep them growing.
- 2.Get your marketing game together.
The days of salespeople being fully responsible for generating their own leads are long gone. According to HubSpot, 65% of businesses say generating traffic and leads is their biggest marketing challenge.
If you want to support a long-term sales strategy invest in generating leads from a variety of channels that make sense for your business. Content marketing can save you up to 62% more and bring you three times more leads compared to traditional marketing. If you can’t find the right person, consider leveraging a third-party outsourcing model until you’re ready to hire full-time marketing resources.
- 3.Be honest with yourself
Ensure that you’re prepared and willing to shoulder the workload necessary to help your sales team succeed. If you feel like you are not the one, look into bringing in some external help.
If you need a leader but are not ready for a full-time VP of sales, consider fractional leadership on a contract basis. Fractional leaders allow you to access senior talent but on a part-time basis to fill in any gaps that you may have.
In summary, successfully scaling sales in an SMB environment involves more than simply throwing more salespeople at the problem. It requires a thoughtful approach and a clear understanding of the work involved. Ignoring these factors could lead to common, yet costly mistakes.
Achieving a balanced mix of data-driven strategies, strong interpersonal attention, and a genuine commitment to success is the key to effectively scaling your sales.
Need help navigating challenges with your sales team? Book a meeting with us.
TeamRevenue, empowers businesses to drive sustainable growth. We provide our clients with the revenue enablement experts, best practices, and an accountability framework to optimize revenue teams, systems, and processes to drive results. We’ve worked with hundreds of B2B companies worldwide, breaking the cycle of underperformance. Helping them grow faster, communicate better and bring new energy to their organizations.
