How To Build Large Sales Teams (Starting from 0)

Scaling a Sales Team Process

In this video, the speaker discusses how to scale sales within an organization. The topics covered include the interview process, onboarding process, training process, and management process.

Hiring Process

• When hiring salespeople, test for speed of response, intelligence, listening skills, social awareness and coachability.

• To measure coachability, role-play with candidates in different situations and give feedback. If they take feedback well and improve on the second try, they are coachable.

• After hiring someone with general knowledge of sales, transition their knowledge to your specific product or service.

Onboarding Process

• Have a 14-day onboarding period where new hires listen to good sales calls or recordings if there aren't any available.

• During this time have them work on a question-based framework script that leads prospects naturally to a conclusion.

Sales Script

• The script should clarify why you're there and label the prospect's problem. Then overview their past experiences and pains before inviting them to sell (S). Explain in short analogies why you can solve two to three of their problems before asking for the sale (E). Finally explain their concerns (R).

• Boil down the decision into its most basic unit possible so that by the end of the call it is clear what decision needs to be made.

Importance of Prospect Knowledge in Sales

This section emphasizes focusing more on who you are selling to rather than what you are selling.

Understanding Prospects

• Understand your prospects' problems so deeply that you can explain it to them in a way that they believe you intrinsically understand what they're going through.

Sales Process

• Clarify why you're there and label the prospect's problem. Then overview their past experiences and pains before inviting them to sell (S). Explain in short analogies why you can solve two to three of their problems before asking for the sale (E). Finally explain their concerns (R).

• Have structure in your conversation with prospects, do fact-finding, and don't just present the price without any context.

Building a Great Sales Team

In this section, the speaker discusses how to build a great sales team by role-playing with them and training them.

Role-Playing and Training

• Role-play with new salespeople every morning during the training process.

• Put new salespeople on a half schedule to review calls and meet with them twice a day.

• Review sales calls with written notes prioritizing where they can improve the most.

• Bold or prioritize one to two highest impact things that they can do to improve.

• Role-play again with them with the new changes.

Maintaining Culture

• Maintain culture through three things: having a leaderboard, clear KPIs, and cutting the bottom 10 on a quarterly basis.

• Optimize for cash up front by having some sort of big little thing that they can brag about winning some sort of sales competition of the different objectives that we have optimized for.

• Cut the bottom 10 on a quarterly basis if you're not cutting you're communicating with the team that's okay to suck and it will drag down the culture of the team.

Sales Management Skill

• The job of Sales Manager besides training is motivation which comes from culture and standards set for ourselves.

• Tolerance is fundamental in Sales Management as it determines who has the weakest team.

Building a World-Class Sales Organization

In this section, the speaker discusses the importance of building a world-class sales organization and how to achieve it.

Vision and Expectations

• The speaker emphasizes that everyone on the team must buy into the vision of building a world-class sales organization.

• The speaker sets clear expectations for sales managers, including attending training sessions, showing up on time for calls, cleaning pipelines daily, and putting call notes in CRM. Failure to meet these expectations will result in termination.

• The speaker explains that setting a culture of excellence is crucial to achieving success.

Sales Manager Qualities

• The speaker notes that being the best salesperson does not necessarily make one the best sales manager. Sales managers need to be stable individuals who lead by example and set high standards for their team.

• Sales managers should exemplify work ethic, follow-through, and punctuality.

Cadence

• The first 14 days involve talking to new hires once or twice a day during onboarding. Afterward, they move onto a full schedule if they meet quota.

• If an employee drops below KPI for two weeks, they go on a performance improvement plan (PIP), which involves reverting back to trainee status with more attention from management.

• Weekly meetings are held with each employee after graduation from trainee status. Monthly meetings are also held along with one-on-one meetings as needed.

Feedback Structure

• Managers listen to two calls per week per employee and provide written feedback afterward. They then message or email salient points discussed during the call.

• Managers should keep an organized tab of their salespeople and the things they need to work on each week.

Scaling a Sales Team

In this section, the speaker discusses how to scale a sales team in an organization and keep the team motivated.

Motivating Sales Teams

• Attending mandatory culture teams is important for scaling a sales team.

• Competitions and reading testimonials of clients can keep people motivated.

• Selling from a place of empathy is important to help customers make decisions.

• Having someone who believes in the product and transformation can push through rejection.

• Watching videos of testimonials with the team before starting the day can be helpful.

Reading Testimonials

• Reading testimonials out loud can be helpful, especially if the person who sold it reads it.