BY Kathy Crosett
Finding team members with the right mix of skills is a good way to achieve your vision of exceeding sales goals. But your team members also need the right mix of work traits, including the ability to play well together. In addition, your individual relationship with each member is crucial to your team’s success.
Why Work Traits Matter
On paper, managing people sounds easy. And some managers do take the easy way out. They hire people who make them feel comfortable.
They give team members their goals for the year and then head to the golf course to “develop business relationships.” With nobody guiding the department, employees with incompatible work traits may close fewer deals because they’re constantly arguing about process.
Must-Have Work Traits and Your Team
Managers can achieve a far better outcome when they actively engage with sales reps as individuals and as members of the team. Being aware of each person’s strengths and weaknesses with respect to the sales process and engagement with the team is a must.
In our forthcoming Voice of the Sales Manager survey, leaders overwhelming believe successful sellers must be:
- Self-motivated 50%
- Confident 46%
- Problem-solvers 43%
These traits are desirable in salespeople. But managers must also look at the team as a whole unit. For example, if you expect team members to work together to close deals, you don’t need five expert deal closers in one department.
With a sales skills assessment like TeamTrait, you can objectively identify your business hunters as well as your star presenters.
When it’s time to hire another sales rep, managers should study the strengths and weaknesses of their current team. Around 40% of surveyed sales managers report that negotiating and closing deals is a key strength of their existing teams.
But 39% say that their reps struggle with pre-meeting/pre-call intelligence. This is a somewhat alarming statistic. Failing to conduct proper research early on means the rep will likely struggle with understanding a prospect’s business problem. And that lack of understanding could result in the prospect moving on to another seller.
With a good sales skills assessment in place, managers can find candidates with the ability to conduct effective discovery.
What are the Top Traits of Your Team?
Managers should also know where their teams shine in comparison to others. With TeamTrait, managers can compare their team’s scores to the global average. For example, they may find that their team scores better than average in persistence. This critical factor means they won’t give up when a prospect initially says no.
Managers may also learn that their team is below average when it comes to handling rejection or collaborating. Lower than average scores reveal an opportunity for managers to increase training and group activities for the entire team.
How Your Sales Team Can Become More Effective
Some sales leaders may believe it’s effective to pit team members against each other in a Machiavellian style. The old school style of sales management builds animosity between team members who develop a winner-takes-all mentality. And it may be one reason fewer young professionals seek out a career in the field.
The challenges of a sales career are well-documented and range from dealing with rejection to learning how to live with the stress of striving to make quota. Your sales team can become more effective if they feel psychologically safe. When sales meetings offer the opportunity for reps to ask for help, managers are on the right track.
Experts also recommend “inclusive leadership.” An employee with a different background may have a fresh perspective on how to deal with a stubborn prospect. As a sales manager, your key work trait in this case would be signaling openness to listen to and consider new opinions.
Work Traits and Manager Fit
Your work style won’t always be a perfect fit with every employee. Your superpower may be bouncing back quickly from a disappointment; your team member may not have the same level of resilience.
Your level of empathy is key in these situations. Talk through coping strategies and help your employee see that loss of a big sale can be a learning opportunity and steppingstone to the next deal.
Use the FourFitsTM framework in TeamTrait to understand how you fit with team members. The information can help you modify your behavior in your interactions and result in more effective team performance.
Summary
Your sales team may have first-rate work traits. But it’s your guidance and efforts, with the help of a psychometric assessment platform, that will result in optimized outcomes.
