Without a strong sales team, scaling a business is impossible. Recruiting top talent is just the beginning; you must also give your team members reasons to stay.

Salespeople have some of the highest employee churn rates, up to 35%, while other employees average approximately 13%. This means you must ensure thorough vetting from the start of your recruiting process and make sure that your training and retention initiatives are effective in keeping your salesmen from leaving.

Recruiting

If you want to attract great sales people, you must make your organization stand out. What is your one-of-a-kind offering? Why should top talent choose your organization over others? You must attract the ideal job candidates in the same way that you attract the right clients with your unique selling proposition.

Job Description

Start by having a clear and realistic job description. It is recommended to include the exact job requirements as well as a description of what the ideal candidate would look like. Many companies only list hard skills, for example, the ability to use data management systems, but it’s important to remember that soft skills are just as essential—if not more so—than hard abilities. Technical skills can change as the industry changes or technologies advance, but soft skills such as communication skills can help a person adapt and deal with all the different scenarios in their life.

Company Culture

You should ensure that your new employee’s personality meshes well with the characteristics of other employees, especially if they will be working closely with others in the organization. You’ll also want to make sure they share your company’s values. Consider including your other staff in the hiring process. You could even make it a two-part interview procedure, with them meeting with you in the first half and the rest of your staff in the second.

Competitive compensation and perks

Although there are many different compensation options, providing opportunities for progression both financially and position wise is a great way to differentiate yourself from your competitors. At the end of the day, if you look after your employees, they will look after your consumers. It’s all a cycle, and it’s important that people feel valued.

Training

It is important to train your employees if you want to ensure their success. For example, ask your new staff to record their sales conversations so that they may go back and identify where they may have lost the client. Prospecting, qualifying inquiries, nurturing, pitching, and objection handling are all important parts of the sales process.

Listen more, talk less

In B2B sales, top sales associates only speak 43% of the time and allow their prospects to speak the remaining 57%. This is why it is necessary to have your sales representatives record their calls. Teach your salespeople how to ask open-ended inquiries in order to entice their prospects to chat more. It will not only help your reps better understand the prospect’s pain points, but it will also help the two of them build a stronger rapport.

Focus on solutions and value

When it comes to pitching, many sales representatives fall short, focusing on the product’s qualities rather than the value delivered. After your sales staff has pitched, they can also question prospects about why they believe this particular product would solve their problem. In this manner, the prospect is persuading themselves that your product is the best solution for their problem, and they’re reaffirming the value of your product. This method also helps your sales professionals ensure that they don’t overlook anything vital when communicating it to clients.

Ask for the sale

Approximately 63% of sales calls finish without the sales representative asking for the close. It is recommended to write a sales script for your reps that contains a list of important questions to ask on every sales call. Once they are more comfortable with the process, encourage them to go off script and make it their own, but until then, it’s essential to have a standard protocol that everyone follows so that no critical steps are missed.