You’re trying to build a successful sales team at your MSP, but you’re not getting the results you want. Why not? The reality is, there’s a variety of factors that influence whether or not your salespeople can reach the goals you have set out for them.
- Are they investing in unqualified leads?
- Are they suffering from call reluctance?
Whatever it might be, we’re here to dive into the reasons, their symptoms, and the remedy you can use to overcome these obstacles in your own MSP. So we sat down with Mike Savard, IT Glue's VP, sales, to learn more about what makes sales teams win (and what can trip them up). This is great advice for your own MSP's sales operation.
1. Over-investment in an unqualified opportunity
You know what they say: quality over quantity. The same applies for your prospects. Not every lead is a good, or qualified lead, and spending too long on the phone with an unqualified opportunity is simply going to delay results. If your salesperson is holding a variety of calls and demos, but not often closing any deals, they might be spending too much of their time and energy in unqualified leads.
Instead, teach your team to focus on daily pipeline reviews. The more research your team does on their leads, the more they can understand the quality, and how much of their time they should be investing in pursuing that prospect.
2. Poor time management
We can all agree that time management is an essential skill, but still one that many can find difficult to master. Your salespeople need to be able to find a balance between researching the quality of their leads, while also making sure to not over invest in the research that they make fewer calls. Too much of either is too much, and will not help them reach their goals.
What do your salespeople spend their time talking about when they hit the phones? Are they spending more time talking about the features of your service, or the benefits that those features can provide to the prospect? Once again, a balance is key. But prospects are looking to be told what your solution can provide their organization, and not just about an array of features that lack use cases for them.
3. Personal motivation
You’re trying to train a team of sales rockstars, but they have to want to be a rockstar as well. If your team isn’t motivated themselves, there’s no way that they can motivate your prospects either.
In sales, motivation isn’t just up to your individual team members, it’s up to you as well. How are you motivating them to reach their goals? This doesn’t just come down to compensation. Tools like gamification, or how you conduct your sales meetings can have positive effects on your team’s motivation.
4. Stagnant skills
The learning should never stop, and it’s a significant problem if it does. Salespeople should consider themselves students, with a variety of new techniques they can always be learning and testing with their prospects. After all, there’s always room for improvement. A salesperson who fails to expand their knowledge will likely fail to bring future results.
5. Not results-oriented
When your salespeople aren’t results oriented, it comes down to a disconnect between their actions and their goals. If you can teach your team to connect the dots with everything they do, they’ll start to take more responsibility for all of their actions, and what’s going to ultimately progress the sale.
6. Call reluctance
Is your salesperson avoiding phone calls? Call reluctance almost certainly leads to underperformance - but it’s not just about avoiding the phone. Once again, quality comes into play. Long emails, less meaningful calls, or useless calls all contribute to underperformance.
The remedy? Goal setting. The more meaningful your salespeople’s goals are, the more meaningful their actions will be when they try to reach those goals.
7. Not coachable
Not everyone starts out as a sales rockstar. In fact most don’t, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You can train a rockstar, if they’re willing to learn and be coached into one. But this responsibility doesn’t just rest on your salespeople alone. What you do to help coach and train your team will directly shape how they develop as salespeople as well.
Ultimately, every salesperson should consider themselves an entrepreneur. When you work for a great organization, you’re in business for yourself, but by no means by yourself. When your salespeople have that mindset, they’re on the right track for success.
Curious as to how IT Glue can enhance your team’s efficiency and productivity? Sign up for a demo today.
Guest blog courtesy of IT Glue, which develops documentation software for MSPs. Read all IT Glue blogs here.
