At this point in the Growth 101 Bootcamp, you’ve built many of the systems you need to grow, but without the right team to close the deal, even the best systems can fall short. 

This is where most companies start to feel the pain. You’re driving in qualified leads… and watching them evaporate. This is not because the market is cold, but because your sales execution is lacking.

Let’s fix that.

First, you need the right people for the right job.

It’s easy to assume someone with “sales” in their title knows how to sell for your business, but that’s not always the case. There’s a big difference between an order taker and an adaptable salesperson.

Order takers wait for warm leads to close themselves. Salespeople drive activity, create urgency, and handle objections to move deals forward.

Your team may be great in meetings, but their primary objective is to guide a deal from awareness to close. 

Ask yourself:

• Who is consistently updating the CRM and moving deals forward?

• Who makes excuses vs. who takes ownership?

• Who has a repeatable process and hits their quota month after month? 

In sales, you need a team that can deliver on your goals. Building relationships matters, but don’t fall into the trap of managing salespeople based on how much they talk or on personal feelings. Instead, let data drive the majority of your management decisions.

Activity metrics (calls made, emails sent, meetings booked)

• Pipeline metrics (value, velocity, conversion rate)

• Performance metrics (quota attainment, close rate, average deal size)

 Lean on your CRM for support here. Once you measure these, you can look at their close rate and success across each vertical. 

Managing an effective sales team

If someone is missing their number of sales, but their activity is high, it may be a training issue. If their activity is low and results are flat, it could be a motivation or company fit problem. 

I worked with a company that had a call center. Their number one salesman, with the highest close rate (by far), used their script zero percent of the time. The problem was obviously the script, so we fixed it and watched some of the underperformers close more often. 

You can’t fix what you’re not tracking. And your team is not a group of mind readers. They need to know what they should be doing and how their performance should be measured compared to what’s expected.

Clear expectations eliminate 90% of performance issues. 

Make sure your team knows:

• Their quota

• Their activity benchmarks

• Your non-negotiables (CRM updates, follow-up cadences, etc.)

• What happens if they hit their goal (rewards)

• What happens if they miss consistently (replacements)

Most salespeople love their freedom (they’ve all been trained differently or adopted quirks that help them sell), but they need structure to thrive. That means coaching weekly, reviewing dashboards, celebrating small wins, and holding the bar high. Or even better—having a sales team manager do all of that for you. 

Creating Incentives for success

Now, to keep them motivated and aligned with your company and your offer, you want to make sure your sales team is being offered the right carrot.

Figure out what means the most to your team: 

• Compensation

• Recognition

• Mission

You don’t have to choose only one; the correct answer is often a blend of many things.

So use all three to motivate your team:

• Build comp plans that reward personal and team performance

• Run competitions that spotlight top producers (and praise them both personally and publicly for specific achievements)

• Remind the team how they help customers and power company growth

Make sure incentives align with your goals. Don’t celebrate vanity metrics. Tie the rewards to real business outcomes, whatever you’ve chosen as the most important for your company.

To ensure that you’re able to do all of the above, you will first need a great team in place. Hiring a bad salesperson can burn through perfectly good leads, waste your time, or even damage your brand (I’ve seen it happen).

You owe it to your business to hire and fire efficiently. Offer a short, clear ramp-up period with clear milestones and expectations, and regular reviews so that they know where they stand.

This isn’t cruel for a sales position, and if they’re good at what they do, it shouldn’t be an issue. Just make sure you’re being fair and clear at the same time. 

If you hire a salesperson who isn’t a fit, move on. Growth waits for no one.

So look over your team. Do they each match your process and bring in results, or are they just costing you leads that you’ve already paid for?

Think about this one and work it out before we get into the next lesson. And if you want to consult with an expert, they’re only a click away:

👉Book a call with a Growth Advisor