The sales force is the set of human and material resources that a company uses to market and sell its products or services. In other words, the sales force is made up of the sales team and all the tools it uses to do its job.
As a company, it is important to organize the sales force well in order to create an effective sales strategy and achieve the highest performance. In this article we tell you how to organize it in the most effective way and we tell you real cases of companies with a well-designed sales force to inspire you.
What is the mission of the sales force?
The objective of any sales team and the tools that the company makes available to it can be summarized in three points:
Study the market: sales managers have the mission of analyzing the competition, detecting business opportunities and knowing well what the product/service they sell is, as well as the company’s target audience.
Serving customers: the sales team is the first to come into contact with the customer and is responsible for starting to forge the relationship with them, especially if we are talking about B2B businesses.
Now that you know what is the purpose of the sales force and its role within a company, it is time to go deeper into it.
How to organize the sales force for good performance.
1. Choose the right people
The first step to have a powerful sales force that meets the objectives is to select the most suitable professionals for the position. To do this, it is crucial to have a well-developed selection process that establishes the essential requirements for the position and also takes into account the skills of each professional.
In this sense, it is advisable to take into account what are known as soft skills, those that have to do with personality traits and how the person reacts to the surrounding environment. Obviously, giving the theoretical and technical knowledge the value it deserves. Since he or she is constantly in contact with people, a good sales professional must have good social skills.
2. Do a good onboarding
It is very important that you give the professional enough time to get to know the work dynamics and adapt to the company’s methods. That is why, before going into action, it is interesting to dedicate the first few days to what is known as the onboarding phase or landing period.
During these days, a professional from the company who has already been working there for some time and who is from the same sector can act as a guide during the onboarding and explain everything you need to know.
3. Incorporate the right tools to your sales force
Remember that the concept of sales force not only encompasses human resources, but also the materials and technological tools that support their work. In this sense, when organizing the work of the sales team, it is necessary to take into account what support they need to carry out their work.
All the tools that allow them to organize their meetings, conduct them, prioritize the leads, follow them up and structure their work will be of great help.
Tools such as HubSpot, Zoom, Pipedrive or Salesforce are examples of tools widely used by sales teams in companies.
4. Define your objectives
How many sales do you intend to make on a monthly or annual basis? What type of customers do you want to reach? What is the period of the year when you make the most sales? Why? How many potential customers do you want each sales professional to convert?
All these questions and others related to sales must be answered in order to subsequently design an effective commercial strategy adapted to your objectives.
5. Design an effective strategy
Now that you have established the foundations of the sales force, it is time to draw up what will be the sales strategy. This means establishing the steps that the team must follow during the sales process to achieve the objectives set in the previous step.
Professionals must have a clear methodology to apply it autonomously. In addition, it is convenient that it is well established and defined to speed up the processes.
6. Analyze the performance of the sales team
Finally, the company must periodically analyze whether the team is achieving the objectives set. In short, it is essential to carry out an analysis of results and performance to check whether the strategy is being effective or whether it is necessary to implement any changes.
Examples of successful sales forces
HubSpot
HubSpot organizes its sales force in a very specific way that is also widely used by companies in the same industry.
This software platform offers different product packages that potential customers can purchase through the web by selecting the one that best suits their needs.
In that sense, the sales team does not do much, as users can purchase the solution of their choice completely independently. However, for larger customers (who may need more complex solutions) the company does encourage more direct contact with the sales team.
This is a very good way to optimize the time of the professionals to devote to customers who may really need guidance and help because they require a more customized solution.
However, smaller customers can also get in touch with the sales team, but to avoid saturation it is not offered in such a direct way.
On the other hand, these types of companies also offer free tools and resources to the customer before they even buy. Thus, they generate a high level of trust and credibility and create potential customers who are more likely to buy, so they can invest less in the sales force.
Johnson & Johnson
This global pharmaceutical company organizes its sales force both by product and by type of customer, applying different strategies in each case.
But if it stands out for anything, it is for investing a lot of resources in training the human part of its sales force, something very interesting if we want to take advantage of its full potential.