How To Build A Sales Team In 8 Actionable Steps

Last updated on August 3rd, 2023

This guide will show you how to build a successful sales team that is effective and efficient and meshes well culturally.

It’s every organization’s dream to have a strong team of sellers.

But why do so few reach this goal?

More often than not, they may be missing a step or two in the 8-step process of cultivating a high-performance sales team.

This blog post will tell you what it takes, and by the end, you’ll have an actionable plan to help assemble your sales dream team.

Table of Contents:

Key Roles And Responsibilities In A Sales Team
How An All-In-One Cloud-Based CRM Makes It Easier To Build A Sales Team
How do you build a high-performance sales team?: 8 Linear Steps To Follow
Final Thoughts On The Sales Team Building Process

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Key Roles And Responsibilities In A Sales Team

Let’s start with the foundational roles for most sales teams.

Sales Director

Sales directors are responsible for the operations of a given sales organization.

One of their primary responsibilities is tracking company numbers and evaluating how sales managers are building teams for success.

Sales Managers

Sales managers oversee and train the sales team, improve the sales process, and adopt sales tools to add efficiency.

With software like CRM, sales managers can track rep activity, pipeline deals, and forecast sales efforts into the future.

Account Executives

Account executives sell directly to customers to win deals and bring in revenue.

Their role is to position the product or service to match customer pain points.

Top-performing sales reps sell on the outcome rather than just the product itself.

Sales Account Managers

Account managers oversee client accounts to ensure there’s customer satisfaction and success.

Some responsibilities include:

Following-up with clients
Giving feedback
Upselling
Gaining referrals
Asking questions
Solving problems

Sales account managers can be pivotal in increasing average account value and customer retention, thus making them key in a high-performing sales team.

Sales Specialists And Engineers

Sales specialists are sellers with distinct specialties and are responsible for handling niche-specific deals, questions, and more.

An example could be a technical SaaS sales specialist who goes over the technical specs of a product when joining a sales team structure.

Their answers to technical questions increase the likelihood of deals closing since they’re helping customers evaluate the logistics of implementing the product.

Sales Development Reps

SDRs (sometimes known as business development reps) are responsible for prospecting and generating sales opportunities for the company.

In other words, they book and often manage the discovery meetings.

They use tools and marketing channels to get conversations that lead to as many leads as possible at the top of the funnel.

Effective SDRs use marketing avenues that bring in consistent potential business.

How An All-In-One Cloud-Based CRM Makes It Easier To Build A Sales Team

Believe it or, The 7th essential member of your sales team isn’t a person per se but rather a system.

An all-in-one cloud-based CRM is a foundational tool to keep your sales team and operations organized.

Here are features that make all-in-one CRM monumental for high-performing sales teams.

Reporting tools – Helps track sales metrics across your team along with opportunities.

Sales pipeline – Shows your opportunities and highlights high-value deals based on deal size — and buyer intent.

Task management – Let’s you schedule and automate tasks — that way, sales action items are completed promptly

Scheduler – A calendar allows for scheduled meetings and time slots to be blocked off.

Multi-channel engagement – Email, social media, and text messaging capabilities to help reps and SDRs connect with prospects or re-engage them in different ways.

CRM keeps your most important sales software centralized, making it easy and cost-efficient to sell to your buyer personas.

How To Build A High-Performance Sales Team: 8 Linear Steps To Follow

1. Decide On A Structure

A sales team structure outlines how a sales team is divided and its roles.

The best way to start is using a sales organization chart.

And you can further break down your team into smaller teams for selling (1-4 person teams).

Examples of smaller sales team structures include:

The island
The pod
The assembly line
Geographical sales team
By industry vertical
Customer account/structure
Product and service line

Once you divide your team, outline the key roles and responsibilities.

Think about these questions during your “structure” brainstorming:

How do you want sellers to interact with customers?

What are their duties?

What sales enablement resources will they use to train, how often does training occur, and through what mediums?

What values should your team share?

How will team members be paid? (salary or commission structure or both?)

What numbers (by role and as a whole) do you want your team to hit?

How will your team be divided up, and why?

How will sales coaching be conducted?

How should new sales managers manage the team?

2. Have A Sales Onboarding Plan

A sales onboarding plan is the map you’ll use to onboard new hires to be foundationally ready for their role.

This is also part of your structure, but its importance can’t be emphasized enough since it’s what positions new hires for success.

Yes, the end goal of sales onboarding is to help new hires become great at their job, but it’s also for them to gain confidence in their abilities.

So how do you get started?

You can start with a template.

One of the best templates to outline your sales onboarding plan is the 30-60-90 day plan, including digital training, quizzing, shadowing, and check-ins.

With a plan in place, you can repeatably train the right hires optimally.

For more on the 30-60-90 day plan, we have an entire article dedicated to sales onboarding.

3. Begin Hiring

With a structure in place, you have the right environment to bring your new team into.

The hiring process can take time, depending on how you go about it.

So here’s how to hire optimally (gaining the best candidates in a shorter timeframe):

Adding job posts on job board sites

Posting about open positions to your social media network social media (LinkedIn and sales-related Facebook groups)

Seek referrals from your network to find top sales talent

It’s essential to know what you want from an ideal candidate (sales experience, soft skills, professional look, and more)

(Your best hires will likely be the ones that go above and beyond and tend to be avid students of sales.)

After choosing talent to interview, evaluate sales skills with questions, experience, role play, and hypothetical scenarios during interviews.

Another criterion may be their cultural fit with your organization.

A good cultural fit can mean easier coachability, communication, and team relationships.

After interviewing multiple candidates for different positions, compare talent to make distinctions.

Compare what skills some candidates excel in over others and compare how they fare with your current hires (this can tell you how much training they’ll need).

4. Execute On Sales Onboarding

After you hire your reps, implement your sales onboarding plan.

Your onboarding plan should include getting them acquainted with your sales structure, enablement tools, KPI benchmarks, etc.

Throughout the sales onboarding timeframe, monitor performance to see how a new team member is progressing:

Are they completing training consistently?
Are they retaining information and expectations?
Are their deals progressing better thanks to feedback?
Are they engaging enough contacts in a given week?

The insights you take away can open the door for coaching and feedback, whether a manager, account manager, AE, or SDR.

5. Maintain Sales Training And Enablement

Sales training and sales enablement are foundational to post-onboarding.

Because, after all, continued training is what leads to consistent quota attainment.

This is backed by an Aberdeen Research study that mentioned how organizations that leverage post-training reinforcement experience 34% more first-year sales reps reaching quota.

With that said, there is a multitude of ways to conduct effective post-training reinforcement:

Use online training platforms and have reps re-take completed lessons

Leverage in-person and online quizzing

Conduct team sales meetings where you breakdown their team deals

For sales enablement to be maximized, keeping sales enablement updated is vital.

Tools from sales battle cards, scripts, follow-up templates, product information, and more contribute to better training.

And since CRM is such a foundational part of your sales enablement stack, training on CRM usage is crucial.

Ideally, you want an all-in-one cloud-based CRM that doesn’t have a steep learning curve (since new hires are already learning a lot as it is.)

For this reason, VipeCloud is the ideal CRM to keep your sales process simple while giving you the sales and marketing capabilities to make your team members better for customer-facing situations.

For example, the contact scoring feature can help your account executives save time engaging unqualified leads and spend more time speaking to those with more buyer intent.

6. Track Progress And Make Adjustments

Track progress as new reps become more seasoned.

As you hire newer team members, have your seasoned reps reverse shadow new reps and give feedback from their experience.

Tracking progress can mean evaluating how many tasks a given team member is completing and the speed at which they’re doing it from the time they were hired to 6 months into their role.

A more significant metric is the revenue they’re bringing in and, if it’s not where it should be, finding ways for them to improve.

The formula of time, metric tracking, and adjustments help your team collectively improve.

7. Build A Team Culture

Don’t forget to have a team culture centered around company values.

Team culture takes building, so here are a few ways of building culture:

Team-building exercises
Fun sales meeting rituals
Contests

All of these give team members the feeling of being a part of something special, not just having a regular sales role in a company.

The results of a good sales team culture are more team motivation and positive attitudes toward one another.

(And it’s these positive attitudes that should always be present when interacting with customers.)

A superb sales team culture can help keep turnover low, meaning less “starting from scratch” training new people.

Want more on sales culture? Read our guide on sales meeting ideas.

8. Give It Time

Your sales team will go through multiple iterations, from the people you hire to training.

But through time, you’ll see clear patterns, and your adjustments will compound to forming an exceptional team, no matter your industry.

Remember, it’s little effort over time that makes drastic changes. Improving your team by just 2% each week leads to a 104% increase in 1 year.

“The compound effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices” — Darren Hardy, The Compound Effect.

Final Thoughts On The Sales Team Building Process

A high-performing sales team makes sales goal attainment easier.

But before bringing in sales talent, you need a structure that will provide an environment for them to thrive.

Once set, your sales onboarding, training, metric tracking, and sales enablement will build winners.

When first starting with sales enablement, CRM can’t go missing.

So that begs the question:

What’s the top CRM for building your sales team?

VipeCloud’s all-in-one CRM helps your organization fulfill sales and marketing workflows while giving reps the tools they need to make quota attainment easier.

Want to see how it works?

Request a demo today, and one of our experts will walk you through the different VipeCloud features.

If you’re ready to see it for yourself, try it free for 15 days, no card is required.