Company growth is exciting as it’s a sign that your hard work is paying off and that things are clicking.
But to truly capitalize on potential opportunities and keep that momentum going, you also need to start scaling your sales team and processes. If this is something you’re not familiar with, however, the process can be daunting. But luckily, there are steps you can take to ensure that everything goes smoothly.
When it comes to scaling your team, timing is everything. Doing it too late means missed opportunities, but rushing into it without a well-defined plan can be just as detrimental. Effective sales onboarding and the strategic use of sales automation are key elements of successful scaling.
In this post, we’ll explore how to leverage these tools and strategies to ensure your sales team grows together with your company, and set the stage for continued, sustainable success.
1. Build a Repeatable Sales Process
Before you start onboarding new sales reps, it’s critical to have a well-defined, repeatable sales process in place. Think of this as your sales team’s playbook. Without it, scaling your sales efforts becomes like navigating a ship without a compass — difficult to measure progress, track success, or make informed decisions.
A lack of process can be frustrating and demoralizing for your sales agents.
Your process should be clear and accessible so that new hires can easily understand their role, the activities they need to perform, and how their contributions drive revenue.
Here are four key components to include in your documented sales process:
- Sales metrics (KPIs). Establish clear key performance indicators to measure progress and success.
- Clearly defined pipeline stages. Outline the different stages a lead moves through in your sales pipeline.
- Structured lead qualification criteria. Define criteria for each pipeline stage to ensure leads are properly qualified.
- Activities at each stage. Specify the activities sales reps should undertake at each stage of the pipeline.
All these elements will give your sales agents context and help them prioritize opportunities.
Standardizing your sales process is crucial for scalability and consistency. A repeatable process allows your sales agents to leverage best practices, creating a cohesive sales strategy, and eliminating guesswork.
During onboarding, a standardized process ensures consistent training and a unified approach to selling your product or service. This eliminates uncertainty and keeps everyone on the same page. And, of course, to create a repeatable and standardized sales process, you need to automate your sales effort and use tools that will allow you to track progress and identify areas for improvement.
Furthermore, as your reps navigate the process, you can gather valuable data to identify what’s working well and pinpoint areas for improvement. Also, it’s easier to spot your new hires’ strengths and weaknesses when they’re stacked up against standardized benchmarks.
This allows you to refine your sales strategy continuously and optimize your onboarding process for future hires.
2. Properly Structure Your Sales Team
Hiring the right people is just one piece of the puzzle, as it doesn’t guarantee successful scaling. It’s equally crucial to place those talented professionals in the right roles within your organization. Finding the ideal structure might involve some trial and error, as well as data analysis, to determine if everyone is positioned to contribute effectively to your goals and revenue targets.
One important factor to consider is the role of sales admins and other support roles within your growing team. It’s no secret that sales reps often find themselves spending time on tasks that aren’t directly related to selling or client interactions.
A recent survey revealed that sales reps spend less than 30% of their day actually selling.
Therefore, as you build and scale your team, it’s essential to consider the roles — and the technology, which we’ll discuss later — that can maximize sales productivity. The goal is to free up your sales reps to focus on what they do best — is engaging with prospects and customers.
3. Develop a Sales Enablement Strategy
To propel your organization toward goals, you need to develop a sales enablement strategy. Together with training, it’s indispensable to the success of a growing sales team.
Sales enablement equips your sales team with the necessary tools and resources to excel. This encompasses a range of assets, such as scripts, battle cards, playbooks, and other materials that empower your team when interacting with prospects and customers throughout the various stages of your sales process.
And speaking of processes, training and adoption become significantly smoother when you have a clearly defined and repeatable sales process in place. Establishing and deploying this process should be a cornerstone of your training program.
However, these materials and the processes they underpin are only as effective as your team’s understanding and utilization of them. Training should be an ongoing focus for your team, not just a one-time event for new hires.
Continuous training helps team members refine their skills and stay abreast of industry developments.
As you strategize about your team and its structure, ensure you have sales leaders and enablement professionals to support onboarding processes and promote a culture of continuous learning. This investment in your team’s development will optimize the sales performance of your entire team.
4. Add Sales Automation Tools to Your Sales Stack
As your business grows and your sales team expands, the volume of tasks and data can become overwhelming. This is where sales automation tools can help you streamline processes, boost efficiency, and ultimately accelerate your onboarding efforts.
These tools are no longer just nice-to-haves, but are essential for managing the complexity that comes with growth.
Sales automation takes care of the repetitive, time-consuming tasks, allowing your sales reps to focus on building relationships and closing deals — the most important parts of their job. Through the lens of onboarding, this means new hires can spend less time on administrative duties and more time learning the ropes, absorbing your company culture, and getting familiar with your sales process.
However, the benefits of sales automation extend far beyond onboarding. These solutions empower your entire sales team to optimize their efforts and start working smarter, not harder. Automating lead generation, data entry, follow-up emails, phone outreach, and even parts of your sales pipeline will not only save time, but also reduce errors and ensure consistency across your sales process.
Still, sales automation tools can introduce a new set of challenges to your sales onboarding process since your new hires need to learn how to proficiently use your tech stack.
That’s why it’s important to be careful when choosing sales automation tools and consider how they integrate with your existing systems and support your specific sales processes. Look for solutions that are user-friendly and offer robust analytics capabilities.
VanillaSoft, for example, provides a comprehensive suite of sales engagement solutions that can automate and streamline your sales processes. From lead management and call automation to sales cadences and reporting, with VanillaSoft, you can optimize every stage of the sales cycle. And, despite being feature-rich and powerful, VanillaSoft isn’t complicated to use. Your new hires can start reaching out to prospects within hours, which will decrease their ramp-up time and help them start contributing to the company’s bottom line sooner.
By strategically incorporating sales automation tools into your sales stack, you can create a more efficient, productive, and ultimately successful sales team.
In Conclusion
Combining a well-thought-out onboarding process and sales automation will set up your new sales reps for success. Remember, scaling a sales team doesn’t mean simply increasing headcount. It’s about giving your new hires the structure, support, and resources they need to thrive while freeing them up from repetitive, time-consuming tasks that hinder their productivity.
