Episode 12: The Talent Approach to Building a High Performing Sales Team

In today's episode, Ben Wright speaks of his experience with a successful sales leader, who had been in their role for 6-7 years. This individual was a great motivator to their team and was working hard on improving their leadership skills. The issue this leader had was with reacting emotionally when confronted with another person who was also emotional. Rather than letting the person calm down and work through the problem, the leader also became emotional themselves. Ben encouraged this leader to focus on improving this area of their leadership and reminded them of the importance of managing their personal health for a happy and productive year.

This podcast discusses the four key habits of successful sales teams, which include having a well-defined sales process, the Team STEP Playbook, a measurement metric and a long-term focus on training. The Team STEP Playbook includes a focus on the strategy, talent and energy levers in order to drive peak performance. The focus on talent is a monthly focus and is all about investing time into people in order to make them the best versions of their salesperson, so that they become the envy of other businesses and competitors. Richard Branson’s quote “Train people well enough so they can lead, treat them well enough so they will want to” is a great reminder of the importance of investing time into people to ensure they stay with the business and that they can reach their full potential.

Finding great talent for a sales team is difficult, and it's rare that a team can just recruit five immensely talented individuals who will immediately start performing. The successful sales teams blend experience with new, more junior salespeople who have the ability to learn and grow. The more experienced performers can impart their ways onto the emerging talent, while the junior members can motivate the more experienced performers. This blend of experience and enthusiasm can result in a sales team that is able to succeed and reach their goals.

0:00:00 Intro

0:01:14 Encounter with a Sales Leader

0:03:19 Recap

0:04:35 The Talent Approach to Building a High Performing Sales Team

0:06:46 How Do Successful Teams Succeed

0:08:50 The Talent Levers

0:09:43 The Talent Levers: Sales Skills

0:11:23 The Talent Levers: Technical Skills

0:11:57 The Talent Levers: Business Skills

0:12:55 The Talent Levers: Experience

0:13:221 The Talent Levers: Team Training Program

0:14:33 The Talent Levers: Mindset Training

0:15:19 The Talent Levers: Team Culture

0:15:37 The Talent Levers: Negotiation Principles and Delegation

0:16:21 The Talent Levers: Remuneration Instructions

0:17:27 The Talent Levers: Leadership

0:17:42 The Talent Levers: Market Changers

0:18:13 The Talent Levers: Objection Handling

0:18:33 The Talent Levers: Technical and Industry Support

0:19:29 The Talent Levers: Closing Strategies

0:20:40 The Talent Levers: Coaching

0:21:19 Sales Leaders Who Gets the Team STEP Playbook

0:19:23 "Encouraging Self-Learning and Closing Strategies for Sales Teams"

0:23:55 Health and Fitness Tip

0:25:001 Outro

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