Managing a sales team is no simple task. You must be a master of today's complex sales relationships to provide constructive coaching to your team. With complex sales usually involving a sales cycle of a year or more, multiple stakeholders, and oftentimes a high purchase price, patience and an ability to see the big picture are critical.
You also need to manage every workplace personality style on your sales team effectively. You must consider the unique temperaments and personalities of your salespeople as you coach them. This will boost the success of your sales team for two reasons: motivation techniques and a consultative selling approach.
First, coaching to the unique temperaments and personalities of your salespeople empowers you to motivate them in a way they each naturally respond to. With a certain level of self-awareness, you will understand what makes your sales team members tick. You will be able to harness their strengths and help develop the areas where they need to grow.
To effectively motivate your sales team, you must have a deep understanding of each person's problems, needs, wants, and objectives. You'll need to understand how their personality influences their responses to different situations throughout the selling process. Empathy, or the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, is required to effectively coach a sales team.
Sounds a lot like what your salespeople need to do with their clients, doesn't it?
While motivating your sales team, you're also leading by example. Many of the same techniques that lead to the successful management of a sales team also lead to the successful close of a sale. Members of your sales team learn from your leadership and daily interactions.
Second, a mindset that embraces the power of personality and understands the importance of empathy is a perfect fit for the consultative selling strategy. In fact, the Forbes Business Development Council wrote that “empathy is the foundation of consultative selling."
Consultative selling “is an approach that focuses on creating value and trust with a prospect and exploring their needs before offering a solution. The salesperson’s first objective is building a relationship; their second is providing the right product.”
To first build healthy relationships with prospects, a salesperson may need to experience a shift in their thinking. It's not about convincing someone to buy something. It's about understanding someone's needs to help them. When a salesperson understands the needs of a prospective client they can offer a product or service of value.
The overarching goal of our True Consultative Selling Workshop is to create that shift in a sales representative’s personal philosophy and self-awareness. We can help them hone the skills and behaviors required to consistently improve their influencing efforts. These are the same skills and behaviors you use to successfully manage your sales team.
The True Colors implementation of consultative selling goes beyond mere understanding of the strategy. By building in our personality temperament methodology, we take consultative selling concepts to a higher level of effectiveness. This results in better external relationships, business development, increased revenue, and other lasting outcomes for you and your sales team.
Consultative selling combined with a deep understanding of personality can also improve internal collaboration. When your sales team masters consultative selling, they’ll discover the value of sharing insights gained in the field with one another. Sales teams with this strategy are equipped for increased sales over time.
It's not easy, but you can manage your sales team effectively in today's landscape of complex sales. Enhanced knowledge of personality types reinforces the consultative selling strategy. Together, we can set your sales team up for consistent success.
Start the journey by taking the True Colors Personality Assessment.