You’re missing your sales numbers, and the ramp is getting steeper. Your job now is to understand why. Among many factors to consider are whether you have the right players on your sales team and if they are effective in their current role. 

Market dynamics and changes in your company’s go-to-market strategy often require changes in sales coverage and the tasks required of your current sales team in order to achieve your goals. As a result, assessing your sales talent becomes increasingly important. Do you have the right players doing the right sales tasks? Are they effective in their current roles (i.e., do you have farmers in hunting roles and vice versa)?

Exit interview research indicates a major cause for poor sales performance and turnover is the salesperson being a “poor fit” for his current role. Generally, annualized sales turnover is 25 percent. If that’s the case, your entire sales organization will need to be rehired and trained every four years. This is an occurrence that could challenge you as a sales leader to consistently make your numbers and potentially cost you millions of dollars in incremental costs and lost revenue. Are you prepared to deal with that challenge? 

To combat these challenges, companies must have the right people, processes, and technologies in place to ensure all sales positions are filled with optimal sales talent assigned to the appropriate sales tasks. As a result, you will reduce your sales turnover, achieve your sales goals more consistently, and likely deliver a better experience to your customers. 

To accomplish this, consider the following: 

Create a Continuous Talent Pipeline of Right-Fit Candidates

Maintain a dedicated recruiting effort with the right acumen, processes, and enablement technologies that will allow continuous profiling, sourcing, hiring, and onboarding of the right sales talent. This will allow you to continuously have a pipeline of talent who are the “right fit” for the specific sales tasks at hand. When you profile and hire the right sales talent for your sales team, they will be more engaged and motivated to create an experience for current and prospective customers, differentiating your company from the competition. Getting this step right is the foundation for ensuring your revenue goals are consistently met, and your sales costs are fully optimized. 

Be Agile

Develop the ability to quickly reconfigure and scale your sales team to meet ever-changing market conditions, adapt to new account coverage requirements, and immediately take advantage of new market opportunities. This will enable you to expand your sales presence, grow your revenue through engaging new markets, activating new channels, and launching new products fast. 

Establish a Continuous Improvement Process

Create an ongoing, disciplined, continuous improvement process that identifies sales constraints, defines areas of improvement, and develops specific action plans to drive change. This process will drive the adoption of enhanced processes and procedures, increasing productivity and efficiency, and ultimately ensuring your sales team continually achieves their sales goals in a fully optimized operating environment.