Getting your sales reps to perform to the best of their abilities can prove to be quite challenging, especially without knowing what issues are preventing them from succeeding on the job. The following can provide insight into overcoming the psychology of tentativeness or complacency in sales reps who are afraid to take risks in their process or follow one at all. Here are a few ways to increase buy-in from your sales reps with success.
1. Give Them Incentive
If you want your sales reps to be less tentative and complacent, you’ll need to step your game up when it comes to incentives. If there’s no reward to perform well on the job, they simply won’t do it. Consider giving employees incentives like:
- Gift baskets
- Perfect attendance bonuses
- Recognition for each year worked
- Telecommuting
- Flexible schedules
- Tuition reimbursement
- Profit-sharing
- Flextime
2. Get a CRM
A customer relationship management (CRM) system can give your agents the tools they need to communicate with customers with confidence and trust in the sales process. A CRM can help solve pains such as sales performance management, lead-to-revenue management, and response time to customer issues. Infor CRM provides a modern interface focused on usability — driving user adoption and solving the problem of employee buy-in. It has the customer-centric functionality you need as well as extensive customization capabilities that other CRM systems lack.
3. Upgrade Your Training
Upgrading your training method can make a big difference in how your sales reps communicate with customers and how they perform on the job. If you want to boost your sales team’s performance, you’ve got to invest in training them. That means ensuring they have both the hard skills and soft skills they need to perform well on the job, as well as sufficient knowledge of your company, products and/or services. Go over your training materials and upgrade the content where you see fit so that sales reps old and new have a chance of success at your company.
4. Praise Good Performances
When your sales reps start doing a better job, make sure to praise them for it. You can offer a rewards system that gives employees special perks for closing a sale, bringing in new business, etc. Sometimes, a simple “thank you” works, but there are tons of ways to let your employees know they’re doing well. Start with a nice card with one of the following phrases:
- Thanks for always being willing to lend a hand
- Fantastic work
- You always find a way to get the job done
- We’re continuously impressed by the work you do
- You have an amazing work ethic
- Thank you for setting a great example for your co-workers
No matter what words you use, it’s important to let your employees know when they do a good job so that they feel validated.
Finding Ways to Increase Buy-In From Sales Reps
If you truly want to increase buy-in from your sales reps, use the above as a guide to determine where you should start to give them the confidence and skills they need to perform successfully on the job. Whether you decide to offer employee incentives, get a new CRM, upgrade your training program or praise good performance, you’ll be well on your way to seeing better results from your sales team.