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Sales is a volume-driven industry. When you work as a salesperson, there’s an expectation that you’ll exceed the goals your manager has set. For some reps, that’s easy. The average rep, though, could use a little more help with meeting their quotas.

Many sales managers think that the solution to driving revenues up is hiring more high-performing individuals. In a sense, they’re right; the majority of a company’s revenue usually comes from its best reps. Having effective sales conversations means closing gaps in a sales team though, so it needs a better strategy than just recruiting people with glowing records.

An all-star roster doesn’t mean seamless sales

It sounds counter intuitive, but stacking your team with high performers isn’t going to bring you more revenue. Instead of getting more help from the outside, focus on developing existing talent. 

Sales is a highly competitive field, and only a few top-tier salespeople are looking for a job at any given time. What’s more, you need to compete with other companies who are also looking to attract the best talent for their business.

A rep shines the best where they get the balance between comfort and challenge. A star employee who exceeded their quota regularly in their old company will not automatically perform well when they transfer to yours. The best way to develop a high-performing team is by growing the potential in middle-tier sales representatives.

Closing sales performance gaps

Sales performance gaps are present even in the best teams and among the best reps. Proactively thinking of opportunities to upskill the team or the group will help you sidestep recurring issues with skill gaps.

For instance, reps not following sales processes is a common gap. Sometimes, low performers skip your standard dialogue on buying or selling a product or rush through it, and this affects the customers’ interaction with your product. They might also forget to follow up on email cadences or forget to check in on leads after they have connected once. They might also give up easily or fail to prepare for calls.

It’s risky, especially since not planning the flow of a sales call may be disastrous. A customer might react in an entirely different way than you expect, and if a rep does not account for all possibilities, they might end up flustered and frustrated. There are even extreme cases where the rep calls without knowing who the prospect is, or why they are on a list for a company’s product or service.

How to address these performance gaps

In some cases, the gaps are easy to address—all you need to do is coach your sales reps through each step and retrain them as necessary. Sometimes all the rep needs to do is memorize and execute. They could also benefit from lessons on messaging techniques or conversations with clients and customers.

Sometimes, though, the gap is more complex and needs more training. For some reps, you might need to discuss the importance of sales in business while others might need to learn technical skills like mirroring. Still, others might need coaching in reading nonverbal cues or facial expressions. As the manager, it’s your duty to keep tabs on your team’s strengths and weaknesses so that you can come up with effective solutions.

If your reps have a sales conversation playbook they could follow, it would make sure all of your reps are on the same page with messaging and help them be consistent with every call. It may be a good idea to hire a sales trainer to train all of your reps, no matter their experience, and make sure everyone is up to date on the latest techniques to communicate value in their sales conversations. 

Circle back when necessary

Once a manager has identified a performance gap and coached their team on it, they usually assume that the case is closed. However, that’s not true—you must keep checking in with your trainees to see how they’re applying the skills they learn during your coaching sessions. A great way to make sure your reps are still following what they learned is by using a microlearning program. Programs such as Qstream can quiz your reps on skills they’ve learned, helping their memory stay sharp. 

Performance gaps will stay where they are if you’re not able to provide them with the feedback and sense of accountability they need to learn. You must also know how to foster relationships between pre-sales specialists, your sales team, and other sales teams in the company. Customer engagement should be as smooth on the back end as it appears from the front.

Conclusion

When a company prioritizes coaching and development, it will reap the benefits in terms of higher revenue. Your sales reps are an important human connection with your customers, so help them build rapport, close performance gaps, retain clients, and increase your team’s overall productivity.

If you are interested in investing in sales training, we would love the opportunity to be a part of the discussion on how we can partner together to help you and your team achieve your goals. The content of our training workshops is taught by a 35-year sales veteran who specializes in elevating value by understanding the science of decision-making. Every rep will walk away with mastery of a conversation framework scientifically proven to communicate high value in every conversation they have with prospects and customers.

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We understand it can be difficult to know where to start when building a framework for sales conversations, so we’ve developed a Sales Conversation “Cheat Sheet” you can download HERE.