Building trust is the foundational step to creating a plan for sales team motivation to maximize revenue.

 

In the last issue of Labels & Labeling, I shared ideas on changes in B2B selling and how sales leaders must understand individual motivations to successfully coach salespeople. With rapport and trust, sales leaders can motivate salespeople and improve sales results.

 

Beyond the effectiveness of your sales team, what else can leaders do to positively impact sales? Sales enablement is about how the entire company supports the sales process to cultivate more prospects, win new business, and deliver increased revenue. Leaders can acknowledge that sales revenues are the result of the combined efforts of every department in your company, not just the individual salesperson.

 

We are all in sales

 

How many people in your companies have said: ‘Well I’m not in sales. I never want to be in sales.’?

 

Common associations of a ‘salesperson’ remind us of pushy door-to-door salespeople or untrustworthy used-car salesmen.

 

In his bestselling book To Sell is Human, Daniel Pink reframes the definition of sales. Pink’s expanded definition includes any position where individuals spend a significant portion of time attempting to influence, sway or persuade others to take action. By this definition, we are all in sales.

 

Consider the daily tasks of your department and production managers. Your managers spent a good part of their days influencing, persuading and getting others to take action. Your estimators persuade sales and client service. Client service teams attempt to sway and influence customers. And production managers spend time getting others to act. One step towards creating a culture of sales enablement is gaining alignment that everyone needs effective skills in persuading and influencing others to do their job well. Everyone is in sales.