How to Build a Sales Team
Meta: Learn how to handle the challenging situations that arise when you’re a CEO building a sales team as your business grows.
One of the biggest challenges that some CEOs struggle with as they build their sales team and grow their business is giving up some of the control they once had over the sales process.
When you’re just a CEO and a salesperson, one person has control over all the leads that come in and, as a result, there’s no need to think about who’s doing what. They can act on a lead when they are ready. When they close a deal, all the money goes toward their goals and is paid in their commission check.
Not surprisingly, when this dynamic shifts as a result of growth and other people are hired to help with sales, this can cause a problem. Dealing with this means having what could be an uncomfortable conversation.
More than half of employees report having difficult conversations at least once a month. As much as we’d prefer they not have to happen at all, uncomfortable conversations are both a sign of growth and a part of doing business. If you need help with how to manage sales team growth, you’ve come to the right place.
How to build a sales team and manage changes (without burning bridges)
When you start bringing new salespeople into the mix, the dynamic shifts. It might have been possible for one person to sit on potential leads until they were ready to act on them before expanding the sales team. Once you do expand, it may no longer make sense to do that.
If you’re about to expand your sales team, you can think about this like the time when you were looking for a domain for that business idea, and you realize someone got there before you, and is just sitting on it until the market pays them for it. This is similar to an established salesperson sitting on unworked accounts waiting for one of them to send an inquiry.
When a salesperson holds on to all the leads, it generally impedes business growth as it’s practically impossible to be actively working a huge number of contacts while also managing a growing sales pipeline. So what can you do about this common issue?
If your team has a national territory, or more than one rep in a specific territory, you may consider bringing contacts that are not being actively worked by a rep back into a central “pool” when they have not received contact from the sales rep for [x] days, which creates an opportunity for a fresh approach from another team member.
A solid approach for small sales teams without dedicated territories is to create a pool of leads and a kind of round-robin system for re-distributing those leads. What happens here is that when leads come in, they’re distributed in a circular fashion to the sales team. If a rep takes a lead, meets with them, doesn't close the deal and then doesn't keep in touch afterward, it drops back into the pool after [x] days, so another Account Executive can reach out to connect with this lead and try to close them.
There are a couple of impacts you may see when using this round-robin strategy of redistributing leads. The first is that sitting on leads without working them can potentially reduce the number of sales opportunities for your business, which can get in the way of business growth. This is especially true in a smaller market.
The second impact of using the round-robin system is that it can reduce tension among members of the sales team. Tensions can arise when new team members join a sales team only to find that someone is sitting on all of the leads and not actively working them.
Having a strategy to redistribute leads which are not being worked is a win/win. Your sales team will be happier and your revenue will very likely increase.
What you should do when building your sales team
Another challenge you might encounter when building your sales team is the likelihood of some level of attachment between the sales rep and his or her sales leads - even if he or she is not actively working them.
Make sure that you have a marketing campaign running that is generating leads. You can’t just take money out of the hands of employees who have been with you for a long time. Be sure to communicate with sales repos prior to reallocating their leads so that they have a clear vision for still earning money using the leads they are keeping. You may choose to change their focus, adding responsibility such as having them own higher value clients, focus on closing larger deals, or simply explain that if they work their assigned leads they should be able to earn the same money as they were earning before you reallocated some of their sales leads. Ultimately, your business needs growth and that means leveraging every opportunity for your sales team by making sure leads are all worked regularly.
Be proactive about having these conversations. The sooner you open the lines of communication and establish the new process for managing leads, the better. The last thing you want to do is have to resolve a complicated situation that’s been brewing for months.
Be prepared with a few solutions when you start talking. As mentioned, it could be moving them to higher-value customers or having them own a high yielding territory or industry, as examples.
Play to their strengths and compensate them accordingly. The original salespeople are one of the reasons your company is growing, after all. The more you’re able to frame this as an opportunity for them to take the lead in a way that helps grow the company, the better.
Need help with building your sales team?
Having these conversations can be tough, but they’re necessary.
If you’re struggling with growing your sales team, we can help. At Mindracer, we’re familiar with the struggles that can occur in sales teams as they grow. We’ve developed systems for dealing with them proactively to help you grow your business with fewer headaches. If you’d like to find out about how we can help you better manage your growth, or even run your sales team for you, please contact us today.