When you run a solar company, the people that you work with are your most valuable assets. Employees contribute to the culture of the company and the work that they do has a direct impact on increasing revenue and growing your business. However, in some cases, team members might not perform as well as they could – especially sales team members.
Work life, especially when it comes to sales, can sometimes be demanding and draining, which is why putting together a strong team and making sure that your employees have everything they need to be more confident and positive at work is crucial. Having a more positive attitude can help anybody make better decisions and be more productive, while on the other hand, a negative outlook can prevent people from seeing all of the options that are available. Positivity is key to building and maintaining a strong sales team for your company. Positive people tend to have more confidence, more energy, and more productive interactions with other people.
Trust Your People
When you lead a team, it’s important to believe in your employees and make sure that they know you believe in them and what they can do. When those in charge have a firm belief and confidence in the abilities of their team members and let them know that they are trusted and valued, this will create a more positive atmosphere in the workplace. Ultimately, this has a positive effect on sales and productivity.
Discourage Negative Self-Talk
Whether you are running the company, leading the sales team, or are a member of the sales team, it’s a good idea to make an effort to discourage negative self-talk in yourself and others. Surround yourself with positivity and try to take a more positive attitude about anything. While sometimes you will need to be realistic and not everything is going to be overwhelmingly positive, chances are that when you change your outlook and perspective to a more positive one, you will see a silver lining easily in the majority of situations. Simply spending more time around the more positive and confident members of your team will help you improve these traits in yourself, which will boost team morale and help maintain a happy atmosphere at work.
Recognize Team Members’ Strengths
While it might be easy to point out mistakes and weaknesses, try to avoid doing this and instead make an effort to recognize the strengths of each team member, while giving them the chance to use them and build them. When sales team members have confidence in their strengths and skills, they will usually be more productive at work, along with being more open to new opportunities for development and growth.
Offer Rewards
Rewards and incentives can be a great tool for motivating your sales team to do better, and the best part is that rewards do not need to be large or expensive. Any way to acknowledge the strengths and achievements of your team will help each team member feel more appreciated and give them something extra to work towards.
Encourage Competition
Most salespeople are naturally competitive people. The best salespeople love selling for the whole experience and not just for the commission that they will receive. If you are running a sales team, it’s worth considering what you can do tap into the competitive nature of your team members and encourage some friendly competition among your salespeople to improve sales and productivity, along with boosting team morale.
Provide Training
The right training can certainly help to strengthen your team and build their confidence. Take some time to work with your team members either as a group or individually, to give them the support and help that they might need to be more productive and work more effectively. Work with them to assess how they execute their strategies and close sales and provide constructive feedback that helps to foster a cycle of continuous learning and improvement.
Promote Information Sharing
If you want your sales team to be stronger and work more productively and confidently, then you should make sure that they have access to all the tools that they need to easily and effectively make sales. One of the easiest ways to do this is to make sure that your sales team is provided with all the information that they need to answer any questions that customers might ask of them. Having a knowledge base at their fingertips will improve confidence by giving sales team members the chance to find the answers to any question, making it easier for them to successfully close sales.
Encourage Creativity
Encourage your sales team to be creative, take risks, and not take themselves too seriously. When people are confident about trying out new things, this can often help them find new ways to make more sales. Providing your sales team members with the chance to spend time together outside of the work environment with creative team building exercises can be an ideal way to do this. Along with this, encourage team members to do things in their downtime that might help them be more creative, like playing at online casinos real money.
Communicate Regularly
Communication is key to improving the performance of your salespeople and building a strong team. It’s always better to over-communicate than not communicate enough. When sales teams are communicated with in an honest and effective way, this will help to keep them connected to the business and ready for success. Make sure that you are regularly in contact with your team, especially if they are working outside in the field, so that they are kept up to date with the information that they need to make sales and that they feel that they are a part of the overall company.
Position the Team as Experts
Training for your sales team shouldn’t just focus on sales; it should also show your team members how they can create more value for your customers. Help sales team members see themselves as an expert in their field and in your company. Training should be regular and ongoing, to help them expand and improve their expertise in order to be better at solving problems for customers. The more your sales team members are able to expand their knowledge base on not only sales in general but also on the products they are selling, the more productive and confident they are going to be.
Use Techniques to Boost Positivity
Keeping everybody feeling positive about their work is key to getting the best results from your sales team. One of the best ways to do this is to encourage the use of techniques that can help everybody feel much more positive and motivated like motivational talks, visualizations, meditation, exercise, and more. These techniques can help your sales team think clearer, feel more confident, and build better relationships with both each other and your customers.
What to Look for When Hiring New Salespeople
You have put a lot of time and effort into providing your solar company sales team with all the tools, training, support, and communication that they need to become more positive, productive, and confident members of your business. The need to hire new sales staff can often be daunting as you will want to hire somebody who can fit right into your company culture and hit the ground running with the same level of confidence and productivity as everybody else. When you are hiring a new sales team member, some of the main things to look out for include:
Performance
While not every good salesperson is going to be somebody with a lot of experience – some people are just naturally quite good at it – it’s a good idea to get an idea of where they ranked in their last position. This will help you get a clearer look at the type of salesperson that they will be and how they view their success. Consider the type of ‘sale’ that they worked in and look at all the different factors such as the industry, time to close, size of the sales team, and more. Discuss the type of training that they enjoy and figure out how competitive they are. Competitiveness can often be directly related to performance in sales, and even if they do not have a ton of previous sales work experience, there might be clues to their competitiveness with interests in competitions, sports, and more.
Perseverance
Perseverance or grit can often be the hardest thing to look for when hiring a new salesperson. It’s a personality trait that people tend to either have or not. Working in sales is not always easy – as you might know, it can sometimes be a struggle, which is why the best salespeople have a lot of perseverance and grit that allows them to push through and still work on getting the best results even when the times are tough.
Coachability
A solid base of knowledge, method, and running a sales process is standard for any salesperson. When interviewing, take the time to find out more about their training and practice to get a better idea of how open the individual is to evolving, learning, and becoming more efficient and productive over time. Sales can often be compared to a sport, where competitors never stop working to improve. In the world of sales, team members can always find something to improve on, whether that’s sharper negotiation skills, better rapport-building, or working on their closing techniques. It’s possible for anybody to get stuck in their ways and do the things that come most naturally and comfortably to them, but it’s important to find sales professionals who are dedicated to self-improvement and growth, building their skills, and helping the team become stronger.
Curiosity
When interviewing an individual for a sales position for your solar company, think about how curious and inquisitive they are during the interview process. Are they asking detailed questions? Depending on your company you may want to find somebody who is thinking more about just the sales team and is interested in every aspect of the company. While interviewing, look for somebody who is an outside-of-the-box thinker who is focused on not only their own individual performance but how they can fit in with the rest of the team and help everybody get better results. Find somebody who looks at the long-term and asks the big questions.
Ways to Strengthen Your Sales Team
Once you have built a strong and positive sales team for your company, it’s time to consider the various ways that you can work with them to strengthen the team and get even better results.
Provide your sales team with all the resources that they need including access to training and development opportunities and ensure that they can easily get the information that is required for them to answer customers’ questions and be in with a better chance of closing deals.
For salespeople, confidence is everything – not only will this impact how they represent your company but also how they present your product to potential customers and how they are able to put customers’ minds at ease when it comes to questions and concerns.
Encourage your sales teams to take breaks and get to know one another outside of working in the field to strengthen them as a team and help them work together. Studies have found that when teams spend time together with team-building exercises and socializing outside of the work environment, this can help to foster better teamwork and collaboration with one another when back in the office or when they are working out in the sales field.
Solar is getting more popular so for solar companies, a strong sales team will help to improve competitiveness and reputation. Whether you already have a sales team to work with or are considering hiring new candidates to work for you and sell your products, there are lots of different factors to consider that contribute to sales team strength and results.
