The recipe for a winning B2B sales team

Individual mindset

To achieve a better collective result in the area of sales it takes a lot of personal and joint effort. However, it all starts with a individualmindset which should be similar across all team members: a robust work ethic, discipline and exceptional focus, adaptability, and flexibility.

Above all, employees must be trainable and flexible to the extent that when the market changes disruptively, adapting to new circumstances is easy.

Top performing teams are usually made up of people who are proactive and self-motivated, and who above all take responsibility for their performance, gathering feedback to improve their results.

From product to value

For a B2B sales team to be successful it must switch from product selling to value selling. Proximity to the consumer is still essential, but creating it must become an initial step in the sales process and not a goal. The aim is to help the customer win in some way, to overcome a problem or achieve a result which he/she agrees is important, and for that to happen in the best way there is only one solution - ours.

When sales people position themselves with this perspective they become "customer-centric": it is up to the sales assistant to know and understand the customer's needs better than the customer himself/herself, focusing on the results he/she wants to achieve and not on the characteristics of the product or service. This transition is shown to positively leverage more and better sales results.

Strength in diversity

Highest performing teams are diverse. Inclusion and diversity are key factors in sales and the best teams identified in the industry always have a great mix of backgrounds, genders, beliefs, profiles, and tastes.

This diversity in a commercial team represents balance. The multiplicity of profiles in an organisation allows a balanced and complementary combination of different talents, skills, experiences, expertise and ability, in which each brings their strengths to create a stronger collective.

Leader as coach

Sales leaders play a key role in developing a winning sales team. This is because they have to know how to manage these employees with different profiles: people with no experience, senior staff, experienced salespeople, and professionals who come from outside the sales industry.

Therefore, it is necessary not only to know the employees well in order to invest in the most suitable training for each member, but also to know how to evaluate the maturity of the individual within the team or the organisation.

With this in mind, the Nova SBE Sales Lab is creating the first Sales Maturity Index in Portugal, a practical tool to help leaders make this distinction based on a benchmark of excellence, gauging the potential of sales teams in any organization.

Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the team members, the team leader must find the right balance between specialists and generalists, hunters and farmers, inside sales reps and field sales reps.

To optimise the allocation of salespeople by team, segment, and territory you must monitor and align it with your perception of their potential.

To find out more about this new Commercial Maturity Index contact: helga@lead-results.com.