What does it mean to have a good sales performance? It’s the process of calculating sales activity and comparing it to sales objectives and quotas. Good sales performance is highly valued, yet many salespeople and firms struggle to achieve it in viral marketing.
Viral marketing, often known as viral advertising, is a commercial technique that promotes a product primarily via existing social media networks. Its name relates to how customers share information about a product with others, similar to how a virus spreads from one person to the next.
Patience is the key to successful selling. A good sales month may happen to anybody, but a high-performing salesperson and team in viral marketing can regularly achieve or surpass targets over time, regardless of economic conditions or competition challenges.
Related: What is sales training?
10 Ways to Improve Your Own Personal Sales Results
How Can You Increase Your Sales Capacity?
1. Get Into The Right Frame Of Mind.
The perspective you bring to a transaction may have a big influence on the outcome. You’re setting yourself up for failure if you start your career thinking, “I don’t think I’ll make it.”
While becoming a heavy sales rep in viral marketing is more than merely believing you were born lucky, you must work in the right attitude.
It might take months to genuinely become a powerful individual in the field, and obtaining them may appear to be a daunting undertaking — but there are several ways you can utilize to develop the ideal headspace to aid in leading your journey.
You may, for example, create an annual vision board, which is a place where you can collect images and words that connect to your goals and why you want to achieve them.
While it may sound silly or gimmicky at first, it may help you remember why you got into the field when you hit snags — and it’s a terrific way to look at success.
It might provide you with the energy you require to get through the most difficult aspects of your work life.
2. Focus On Your Specific Industry To Improve Your Business Sense.
When you’re selling a product or service, having financial acumen — understanding how a company operates — gives you instant credibility.
The profession of sales in viral marketing is built on the ability to build trust on the fly. You must demonstrate to prospects in a short period of time that you are the genuine thing, with a product or service that is worth their time and money.
One of the greatest ways to get there is to demonstrate a thorough understanding of how organizations similar to theirs operate — thus taking the time to learn how a firm that is typically in your direction operates is always a sensible move.
Approach each prospect with some knowledge of how their sector peers function, as well as the difficulties and strategies that similar-sized companies face and deploy.
HubSpot’s Sales Manager, Mintis Hankerson, says:
“You should study your competitive edge within the market before you ever reach out or send the first email; as a sales agent, the key to success is understanding how your prospect is engaging their purchasing process, what their goals are, and how you would support and fit into that.”
You may improve your business acumen in viral marketing every day by taking little steps. Study reputable business periodicals or dig into important financial data for a better understanding.
Related: Lead Generation: Can It Be Useful For Your Products?
3. Get Yourself In Order.
One of the most important aspects of improving sales effectiveness in viral marketing is making sure you’re focused on the right task at the right time. If you don’t take the necessary steps to designate time to perform a job, such as scheduling time on your calendar, you may be neglecting certain important responsibilities. Inefficiency like this may have a negative impact on your sales success in the long run.
If managing isn’t your strong suit, you should get help as soon as feasible. Allow an established organizational member to lead you through their processes to gain some suggestions. It’s tough to focus on your goals if you’re striving to juggle too many things with too much mental capacity – and this is nearly guaranteed to impair your total performance.
4. Review All Necessary Information For Your Job And Function.
A sales quota and activity indicators in viral marketing are given to the majority of salespeople to help them fulfill it. Some businesses publish these numbers so that salespeople may compare their results to those of top achievers.
It is critical to read the information and implement it into your daily life. Tiki Bis is HubSpot’s Marketing Manager.
“Understand your sales macros. Most people are aware with macros, or nutritional content, in the context of healthy eating, where you track how much carbohydrates, proteins, and fats you consume to better understand what you’re eating and achieve your objectives.
Consider your measures and KPIs as a preprocessor; if you don’t know what metric or KPIs you need to outperform, you’ll have a hard time assessing your performance, because the numbers you need to meet may be very different from those of your peers.
5. Establish Specific Objectives That Go Beyond The Job’s Basic Needs.
Sales attracts people in viral marketing who are high-energy and goal-oriented, and many of them want to surpass their targets and keep their feet moving after they have been fulfilled. Setting high targets like these might help you boost your sales significantly.
It encourages you to work hard and provides some wiggle room if you fall short. Setting objectives that are both realistic and aspirational is critical for improving sales success, but the two must be distinguished.
When it comes to affecting sales success, dreams are ethereal, immaterial, and ultimately ineffective. The objectives are explicit, written down, and measurable.
To keep on track and accountable, you must clearly establish your goals, devise strategies for achieving them, and share your objectives with supervisors and peers. This form of customized coaching will provide you a clear path to follow and, as a consequence, boost your sales effectiveness.
6. Develop A Personal Development Plan.
A sales career in viral marketing offers you several opportunities to learn and advance at every level of your chosen profession. It’s a field where quick advancement is possible, but only if you’re willing to plan ahead and put in the effort.
One of the better methods to expedite that sort of growth is to create a “personal development plan,” which is a dynamic document that defines what abilities you want to enhance in a certain time period.
If you decide to make one, begin by focusing on one or two particular abilities each month and documenting the measures you take to develop those skills as you go – this way, you’ll be able to see how far you’ve come.
7. Enlist The Assistance Of A Sales Coach.
The idea that sales isn’t always intuitive isn’t particularly surprising or controversial. You may need some mentorship or specialist knowledge to properly get your boots on the ground in the industry, and your manager may not have the time, ability, or views to bring you there.
That’s why hiring a sales coach, counselor, or mentor from outside your organization in viral marketing may be able to help you improve your sales skills and get you on the right track when your boss can’t. Getting a second view on your professional development might help you rationalize your efforts.
It’s easy to fall into a habit when it comes to your daily tasks.
8. Maintain A Qualitative Record Of Your Progress.
If you want to boost your sales in viral marketing, you’ll need to know what you’re doing right and where you’re falling short, so keep rigorous track of your progress – both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Try to do this once a week or once a month so you can see where you’re progressing and where you’re struggling. It may not only motivate you individually, but also provide you a high-level understanding of how your performance affects the overall success of your sales organization.
Keep track of your accomplishments at all times. A strong level of personal morale will keep you afloat and improve your individual sales.
9. Problem-Solving Should Be Handled With Imagination.
Because there is no one-size-fits-all method to sales success, your ability to think freely can aid your long-term success.
Tiki Biswal, HubSpot’s Principle Sales Manager, says:
“Your ability to think imaginatively might spell the difference between getting a huge job and having your phone call or email disregarded. Clients value creativity at all stages of the sales process.”
One of my favorite bits of cleverness comes during showcase prep: why not sign up for HubSpot’s brochure and acquire one of their emojis if we’re going to demonstrate to a user how HubSpot will boost their blog and magazine?
10. Congratulate Yourself On Your Achievements.
A marketing career in viral marketing has its ups and downs, and understanding both sides of the coin is critical for long-term success. Many salespeople, on the other hand, are overly focused on the bad parts of their jobs.
It’s self-evident that you need to work on your flaws. They will ultimately catch up to you if you ignore them for too long. However, acknowledging your accomplishments, no matter how large or little, is a crucial aspect of improving sales effectiveness.
Don’t be scared to inform your management or team when you achieve a goal or improve a skill. Every win counts, and applauding yourself on each one may provide the motivation you need to keep going.
Now that you know how to enhance personal competence, let’s talk about some methods company leaders may use to support better performance for the entire team.
How To Improve the Productivity Of Your Sales Team
Some of the above tasks are included in boosting the performance of a sales team, but the fact that multiple salespeople are participating in the program adds another layer of complexity.
When there are more people involved, there are more factors to consider. It is difficult, but not impossible, to improve a team’s performance. Here are a few key tactics that salespeople may employ to boost their sales teams’ success.
Related: What Is Lead Nurturing And What Are The Right Tactics?
1. Prioritize The Needs Of The People.
Every sales organization, like any other collection of people, should be centered on its employees. If you want to improve the performance of your team, keep this in mind. As a manager, you must win the hearts, minds, and trust of the people you supervise.
Getting to know them and enabling them to get to know you is the first step. Meet with each member of your team numerous times to obtain a full awareness of their individual skills, weaknesses, demeanors, and work preferences.
Examine past performance evaluations and quarterly outcomes. Examine any self-evaluations they’ve performed to assess their own performance, and give them time and space to discuss what they’ve learned with you.
Enable customer service representatives to get to know you on a more personal (but still formal) level, and allow them to do the same for you. This level of concentration will motivate them to follow your directions, give them a larger interest in the team’s success, and, as a result, boost sales.
2. Create A Safe Atmosphere For Your Team To Work In.
To succeed as a sales director, you must constantly focus on welcoming other ideas and encouraging open talks in a team atmosphere. You should ask yourself, “Am I developing an atmosphere that is safe and accessible to individuals of various backgrounds and abilities?”
We all know that diverse teams perform better, but they don’t just pop up out of nowhere, and inclusive environments are no exception. That is why thoughtful leadership is so important. Managers are responsible for creating a safe atmosphere in which their workers feel free to express their difficulties and ideas.
Sales leaders must guarantee that everyone in their company has the opportunity to express themselves in whichever way they see suitable.
3. Make Sure That Everyone On Your Team Shares The Same Set Of Values.
Our basic beliefs guide the way our HubSpot teams work. Regarding team norms, Tiki Biswal, Sales Manager, had this to say:
“We all have ‘quasi’ requirements for our sales force as sales agents, but there must be some wiggle room. One activity that has shown to be effective over time is for the entire team to get together and discuss these fundamental ideas.
When a list of essential standards is developed, it provides a degree of authority that starts with the sales leader and extends to the entire team; watching salespeople hold each other responsible is extremely powerful and helps the group grow together.”
Tiki recommends starting with this list if you’re seeking ideas for your team’s essential beliefs.
4. A Useful Political Analysis From The Team.
Emma Hogan, Principal Sales Manager for Hubspot in Sydney, Australia, was a successful salesperson before being promoted to manager. Her advice to aspiring salespeople is to look at the data available at each transaction stage, as this can reveal hard-to-find performance flaws. She proclaims:
“Our salespeople at HubSpot Australians classify their offers in the CRM as Best Case, Pretty Likely, or Commit, and they have specific questions to help them determine the appropriate Forecast Stages.”
As a consequence, our Sales Operations teams are able to construct forecasting dashboards that illustrate where an individual or sales team will finish each month based on previous performance.
What makes this valuable for a salesperson is that it provides them with a clear picture of where we stand in terms of how it affects the transactions they’re working on, allowing them to focus appropriately. They have the option of focusing on pipeline expansion or boosting commitment to their Best Case transactions.”
For Emma and her team, Deals Created is the most crucial deal round. “Depending on your company’ operational rhythm, it’s vital to identify how many net new trade transactions a salesperson has to create on a weekly, monthly, and/or annual basis,” she notes.
Make the following information a priority if you don’t have a Sales Operations team to establish the standards for you.
Focus on prospecting – Once your team knows how many sales they need in a viral marketing to close and when they need to close them, everything else will fall into place. This enables them to remain focused on the marketing efforts that are critical to their success. You can measure how effective your reps are at selling by looking at lead speed and strength, as well as the average length of time it takes to follow up on incoming leads. The number of leads processed each day, the short delivery depth (total rate of prospecting contacts per lead), and even the time salespeople engage prospects are all important pieces of data.
Look at the closing rate by rep data; if a salesperson isn’t closing at least 30% of prospects at the decision-making stage, he or she isn’t performing their job.
By frequently evaluating rep performance early in the sales process, you may identify and help fix issues that could have a negative influence on the company later on.
5. Regularly Have One-On-One Conversations With Each Coworker.
It’s in their best financial interest, just like it is in yours, to have a good picture of how your representatives are feeling, functioning, and thinking in the long run – and one of the greatest ways to achieve that is to have one-on-one sessions with your teams.
These check-ins can also act as a reminder to your employees of how important they are to the broader objective and vision of your firm.
From beginning to end, you must understand the “why” behind your reps’ performance.
“When I’m trying to discover what’s keeping someone from accomplishing their goals in a single meeting, I ask the right questions to figure out what the underlying obstacle is to building a pipeline.
Is it a problem with motivation, time management, or skills? This information should impact the direction, assistance, and coaching you offer to the salesperson in order to help them eradicate the barrier.”
One-on-one sessions can provide a safe haven for team members who require varying degrees of support to work through all of these issues.
6. Discuss The Business Consequences As A Group.
Mintis Hankerson is a sales manager for HubSpot’s National Small Business Division in the United States. Here’s how she suggests discussing sales figures with your team:
“Make sure that the numbers you want your salespeople to track are displayed on a frequent and public basis, such as through regular emails highlighting sales activity scoreboards or a team meeting.
“To make this work, you’ll need to cultivate a culture of transparency, trust, and support, as well as high quality. Through this sort of setup, sales reps will become accustomed to seeing their sales activity and data displayed in publicly available channels and with the appropriate individuals on board.
7. Develop A Culture Of Peer-To-Peer Coaching.
As a sales manager of viral marketing, you have the obligation of being our salespeople’ primary source of direction and technical understanding – yet you’re only human. You’re simply one person with a certain amount of time and energy when it comes down to it.
And, since you should constantly appear to be doing your best, remember that the responsibility for promoting your salespeople’ growth and increasing their sales effectiveness does not have to fall solely on your shoulders.
If your team structure permits it, consider pairing representatives with varying levels of skill together to enhance team-wide responsibility and develop a culture of peer-to-peer coaching and productivity.
This technique is advantageous in two ways. For one thing, you might be able to provide your less experienced representatives valuable insights that will help them shape their skill sets and improve their overall efforts.
Furthermore, representatives that take on the “coach” position in this dynamic receive experience in capacity development, which will help them better embrace any future management opportunities that may occur.
8. Don’t Let Yourself Get Too Comfy.
With inertia, you won’t be able to achieve long-term success as a sales manager or make consistent advances in your company’s overall sales performance. You must stay one step ahead of the competitors at all times. This involves maintaining a high level of activity.
To avoid any shocks that might derail your team’s success in viral marketing or affect your sales performance, keep a careful watch on how your firm is performing and stay on top of your team’s KPIs.
You must also avoid focusing just on the behaviors of your lowest performers. Regularly challenging your high-achievers and long-serving salesmen is also a good idea.
Keeping them on their toes is the best way to keep them on their toes. Rejoice at their achievements. They should be applauded. Make a point of praising their accomplishments while also reminding them that there is always room for growth.
Raise the bar and set more ambitious goals for both the group and the individual. Don’t be scared to thank your employees; they need to know you believe in them and their accomplishments.
9. Set Operational Goals That Are Fair And Feasible.
Your sales organization’s larger goals may be overwhelming on their own, and pursuing them all at once can be tough and ineffective. It should be a step-by-step process to reach your big-picture sales goals.
You’ll need to break down your ambitious ambitions into more digestible portions if you want to retain great morale in your sales organization and enhance sales performance as a consequence.
10. Participate Actively In Your Salespeople’s Work While Avoiding Micromanagement.
Effective sales leaders may find a cautious balance between trust and guidance when it comes to aiding their salespeople’ day-to-day efforts and overall professional growth.
As a result, as a manager, you must stay in touch with your direct reports at all times without interfering with their ability to grow as salespeople. As I previously stated, taking steps such as scheduling regular one-on-one meetings with your representatives will be extremely beneficial.
You should also consider having standups where they can air their grievances, celebrate their successes, and work to create a team culture where your reps feel comfortable approaching you with their issues.
Keep an eye on your team’s performance and work with any underperforming salespeople to identify and correct the root causes of their poor performance.
Again, you want to provide direction to your reps without trying to manage them. It’s not as difficult as it appears, but if you succeed, the performance of your sales team will undoubtedly improve.
11. Before Making A Hiring Choice, Be Sure That Prospects Have Been Carefully Investigated.
You can only do so much as a manager to increase the success of your sales agents if they aren’t highly proficient or motivated to engage. You must hire wisely if you want to build and maintain a high-performing sales organization.
To market to your target personas, carefully consider the features of the product or services you provide, and seek for people with the relevant skills, abilities, and temperament. Ideal candidates, on the other hand, have more than remarkable technical qualifications. You want to employ salespeople who will fit into the culture of your firm and work well with the rest of your team.
Salespeople who lack the intangibles needed to thrive in the atmosphere you establish may be disobedient, undercut your leadership, or have little desire in helping their coworkers. In your organization, a lack of chemistry can have a substantial influence on its overall success.
12. Results Of Sales Monitoring
Key performance measures (KPIs) are used to determine how effectively your salespeople in viral marketing are performing individually and collectively. Some of the most critical and successful KPIs to track are as follows:
The win rate is defined as the percentage of final test prospects who become clients divided by the number of deals in the funnel.
Quota Attainment — The percentage of salespeople who meet their quotas in a short period of time.
Sales Cycle Length – The average amount of time it takes a salesperson to complete a sales cycle.
Pipeline Coverage — The overall dollar worth of your sales possibilities in relation to your revenue target.
Constantly improving sales growth — on both an individual and team level — is the best move you can take to create and sustain a healthy, productive sales organization. And this implies responsibility from all those involved.
Reps in viral marketing must be open to new opportunities that will help them progress professionally, but the performance of a sales team is mostly dependent on the effort and guidance of the manager.
They are required to encourage, assist, and challenge their colleagues to actively improve their abilities and, as a consequence, maximize their strengths. This starts with outstanding onboarding and training and continues with constant attention, sound advice, and a willing attitude.
Related: What is a sales funnel?
