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Operational marketing: how to lead a sales team?
In Marketing
How to Lead a Sales Team?
Encourage, support, train, and equip: As the sales function evolves, marketing is taking center stage in driving engagement. Discover the keys to building a truly high-performing sales team.
- Leading a sales team means creating a positive dynamic around a company goal and supporting it with the right resources
- 5 engagement strategies: content mastery, challenges, individual goals, training & coaching, Sales Tech
- 3 Challenges for Sales and Marketing Teams: Increasing Revenue, Customer Satisfaction, and Reducing Employee Turnover
- A sales enablement application streamlines communication, content distribution, training, and management
Leading a sales team effectively means setting it up for success through a dynamic and agile organizational structure that enables sales reps to achieve the best sales reps results. Since every sales function has its own team, market, offerings, and products, effective leadership is a science that must be tailored on a case-by-case basis to be successful. Encouraging, supporting, training, and equipping are common elements of winning strategies. The evolution of the sales function places Marketing at the center of leadership challenges and reinforces its importance.
Why lead a sales team?
A recent Uptoo study reveals that 77% of sales reps there is an urgent need to modernize their company’s sales techniques. This figure can be attributed to changes in how sales meetings are conducted (Modern Selling) and buyers’ evolving expectations. Software, content, storytelling, agility, and a personalized approach are now at the heart of the tools mastered by the best! As part of this shift, the Marketing Department is becoming a key player in supporting and coaching sales teams. Marketing must receive a massive influx of information from the field to tailor its support for sales reps sales content, engagement activities, training, insights, and more.
With the tools to tailor its contribution to sales performance, the marketing department must find the best way to communicate with and support the sales team in its day-to-day activities. This is precisely the role of sales leadership. Leading a sales team means creating a positive and cohesive dynamic centered on a company-wide objective, and then supporting the team with the appropriate resources: training, coaching, sales content, and more. The goal is to build a high-performing sales team capable of thriving in this complex B2B sales environment.
Modern Selling
Put the sales rep in the best possible position to make sales during meetings
Find out how to create a customer experience that drives sales in our dedicated white paper.
Characteristics of High-Performing Sales Teams
The different ways to lead a sales team
An effective sales initiative must set the sales team up for success by leveraging the specific characteristics of its business. Five key drivers underpin this approach.
Mastering Content to Drive Sales
Marketing content provides context for the sales representative’s message and personalizes the approach to the buyer. The sales representative doesn’t just share this content—he or she must embody the marketing message and bring it to life. Ensuring a well-managed sales pitch means aligning the marketing strategy with the realities on the ground.
sales reps Challenges
Challenges generate excitement and motivation, both during busy periods and slower times. Product launches, sales promotions, and special events (B2B trade shows, door-to-door sales, etc.): an excellent way to boost sales over a given period.
Individual Goals
Setting personalized goals provides purpose and motivation. SMART goals (Simple, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic, and Time-bound) align teams with the overall strategy and serve as benchmarks for feedback and accountability.
Training & Coaching
Managing skill development in content and the associated pitch is a powerful driver of performance. Training programs that are more engaging, targeted, varied, accessible, and personalized—for both new hires and experienced employees. Gamification and quizzes boost engagement.
Sales Tech
A comprehensive suite of technological tools to support sales activities: alignment between Sales and Marketing, time savings, optimization of the sales process, improved management, transparency and traceability through KPIs, and accessible training content. A robust CRM and a high-performance sales enablement platform remain universally strategic, as they impact all aspects of performance.
A unique solution that sets the overall tone for the brand while allowing each team to tailor the experience and create the most relevant customer journey for each client.
Leading a sales team: what's at stake for sales & marketing managers?
Three key factors justify the investment by sales and marketing departments in sales promotion.
Increase in Revenue
The team's performance depends on its sales skills and its environment: content tailored to on-the-ground needs, effective onboarding, ongoing training, and data-driven tools.
Higher Customer Satisfaction
The meeting must be customer-centric: a personalized presentation and sales pitch. The sales representative acts as a trusted “guide,” capable of creating the experience the customer expects.
Reducing employee turnover
Accelerating skill development and providing ongoing training reduces recruitment costs. Resilience, motivation, and team spirit all impact sales reps retention and engagement.
sales reps have a better grasp of the offers, so customers understand them better, which leads to increased sales.
Customer satisfaction is therefore naturally at the heart of your sales performance strategy. 81% of business buyers say that a supplier’s sales experience is just as important as its products and services (Salesforce).
According to G2 Learn, if your sales reps like they’re learning and growing within your organization, you risk losing more than 60% of your entire workforce within four years. Knowing how to effectively lead a sales team is therefore crucial to reducing turnover and improving sales reps satisfaction.
Used during the onboarding process and then in the day-to-day work of our sales reps, Salesapps has enabled us to reduce the turnover rate of our sales reps by 30% sales reps a year.
What kinds of people are responsible for leading a sales team?
According to these organizations, four types of roles are involved in managing the sales force.
Operational Marketing Manager
It streamlines and optimizes the work of sales reps. It distributes marketing content to help them perform better in meetings by making their presentations more impactful and easily accessible.
Sales Force Development Manager
He manages and leads the sales team, helps develop sales pitches, and implements training and incentive programs to help the team meet its goals.
Marketing & Communications Manager
The sales force is a powerful communication channel. Its role is to ensure that marketing messages are disseminated quickly and effectively to field teams.
Director of Marketing & Sales
He gets involved during key moments: ensuring sales pitches are polished before the big day, monitoring the proper use of content during the campaign, implementing regional incentives, and then using an ROI-focused approach to evaluate success.
Motivate your sales team
Effectively Motivate Your Sales Team
See Salesapps in action and learn how the app helps your sales team succeed.
Sales Enablement: How to Effectively Lead a Sales Team
Specifically, a sales enablement application addresses four key aspects of sales support.
Ongoing and Effective Communication
Aligning sales and marketing through a sales enablement tool ensures real-time information sharing and facilitates constant communication between headquarters and field teams. Targeted or personalized push notifications (links to content, tiles, quizzes, news) and bottom-up feedback from the field (competitor insights, customer feedback, opportunities)—enhanced by branching functionality.
Ensure that users are familiar with the offerings/services
90% of marketing content goes unused (Forrester), and sales reps more than 7 hours per week searching for or creating content (Salesforce). By centralizing content (100% offline, always up-to-date, multi-device), usage increases by 30% when feedback from the field is incorporated (Forrester).
Organize training around teams
Start training right away and continue at your own pace, on any device. Always-up-to-date learning materials, quizzes, gamification (badges, scores, levels), and notifications when new materials are available. Learning becomes natural and continuous.
Monitor and track sales activity
A KPI dashboard for management: sales funnel by appointment, statistics (by session, user, document viewed/shared), and skill development. The Salesapps back office includes notifications, surveys, quizzes, news, and gamification.
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