How to Build a Successful Sales Team: a Complete Guide

No matter how good your company’s product is, it won’t sell itself. If your sales operations are coasting along without a strategically designed team, you could be missing out on growth opportunities.

A successful sales team does a lot more than just sell. It establishes and maintains loyal customer relationships. Sales experts can improve lead conversion rates, customer retention, and customer satisfaction. But when it comes to building a successful sales team, where do you start? Keep reading to learn how to onboard and retain talented sales employees, and more.

Essential roles in a sales team

Every sales team is unique, but the most successful teams tend to have these key players in common:

Business development representatives (BDRs)

Business development representatives (BDRs) kick off the sales process. Before an account executive (AE) swoops in to make a sale, a BDR must identify and reach out to prospects. These reps research leads and make initial contacts with prospects through cold calls and emails. A great entry-level sales role, a BDR’s must-have qualities include:

• Research abilities
• Networking skills
• Communication skills

Sales development representatives (SDRs)

Like BDRs, sales development representatives (SDRs) focus on pre-sale tasks that take place early in the sales process. SDRs focus on clients who are already interested in the product — also called warm or inbound leads. Some companies use the terms BDR and SDR interchangeably, and both roles require many of the same skills.

Inside sales representatives (ISRs)

Inside sales representatives (ISRs) connect with prospects via email, phone calls, or video conferencing, which makes this sales role particularly remote-friendly. A good ISR should have the following:

• Research skills
• Product knowledge
• Excellent listening skills
• Communication abilities

Account executives (AEs)

These are the boots-on-the-ground sellers who convert leads into customers. AEs inform prospective customers about a product, make proposals, run negotiations, and close sales. Strengths to look for in an AE include:

• Deep knowledge and understanding of the product
• Robust negotiation skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Demonstrated sales experience

Customer success representatives

Also called customer success managers, these reps handle existing customers. They onboard customers and liaise with them to resolve problems, renew contracts, and cross-sell and upsell clients. Customer success representatives keep your customers happy and loyal. Hire customer success reps with:

• Excellent communication skills
• Deep knowledge and understanding of the product
• Empathy

Sales engineers (SEs)

If your company sells a tech-related product or service, you’ll probably want a sales engineer (SE) on your team. SEs have both sales prowess and technical skills, positioning them to provide strong support to prospective and existing customers. These reps identify consumer needs and provide solutions. They also troubleshoot technical problems. Look for the following when hiring for an SE:

• Technical knowledge
• Business skills
• Problem-solving skills
• Communication abilities

Sales representatives

Also called account managers, sales reps focus on existing customers. They ensure your company’s internal departments are aligned with client needs. Sales reps also field customer complaints and identify solutions. When hiring sales reps, keep an eye out for these qualities:

• Active listening skills
• Excellent communication skills
• Strategic thinking abilities

Sales director

Sales directors, also called heads of sales, are team leaders. They set budgets and determine key performance indicators. Sales directors are largely responsible for a company’s overarching sales strategy and often report to C-suite executives. Your sales director should have these qualities:

• Demonstrated history of meeting sales targets
• Negotiation skills
• Extensive experience selling to customer needs
• Relationship-building skills
• Mentorship skills and experience

Sales managers

Sales managers work alongside sales directors as team leaders. They oversee budgets and sales operations and determine plans, goals, and performance targets for team members. These professionals manage hiring and training for sales reps. A good sales manager should meet the following qualifications:

• Prior experience in sales management
• Proven success across the sales process
• Excellent leadership abilities
• Mentorship skills

Challenges of building a sales team

Building a sales team is not easy: Expect to sift through a high volume of candidates to find the cream of the crop. And once you hire the right people, training cycles can be long and complex, especially if you’re building a remote sales team.

Even after you conquer training, the challenges may continue. Sales teams often see high turnover rates, due in part to burnout and overwhelm with administrative tasks. The latest Salesforce State of Sales Report found that most reps spend less than 30% of their workweek selling, with mundane admin tasks eating up large chunks of their time.

But if you put in the effort to overcome these challenges, the results are worth it. By assembling a solid sales team, you’re investing not only in your product, but in your company’s future.

Setting your sales teams up for success

Once you’ve hired a team of sales rock stars, it’s important to give them the tools they need to streamline operations and lighten their administrative load.

An easy place to start is Slack, an AI-powered work platform that centralizes your operations and helps your team accelerate work, share knowledge, and collaborate faster. In Slack channels, reps can not only communicate, but assemble files, stakeholders, and data in one place.

Slack’s innovative features and automations with over 2,600 software integrations help your reps make the best use of their time. Take, for example, Slack Sales Elevate, which natively integrates Sales Cloud accounts and customer insights right in Slack. Not only are reps able to access customer records, accounts, opportunities, and key metrics, they can effortlessly update pipelines, tap into process automation, and get notified of real-time deal changes. Automatic alerts and personalized reminders help increase engagement and speed up customer response times. With access to their go-to tools and resources, they can quickly take action and collaborate with their team right in Slack — without wasting time switching contexts.

Reps can also accelerate sales with Workflow Builder, a visual, no-code tool that enables them to automate routine functions by creating custom workflows for any Slack channel. Leaders can leverage such workflows to remind reps to share everything from deal win reports to expense report submissions. By taking some of these administrative duties off your team’s plate, you can free them up to focus on selling.

Building a strong sales culture

Communication is the cornerstone of a positive sales culture. To start building trust, survey your team in Slack to gauge how they prefer to be managed. Establish clear goals and ensure that your reps understand their performance metrics. Implement incentives to spur motivation and create an atmosphere of encouragement.

To further facilitate an efficient and collaborative culture:

• Use sales templates from Slack canvas to encourage alignment on sales planning, customer briefings, and more.
• Tap into Sales Elevate and Slack integrations to fast-track sales cycles.
• Use Slack channels to communicate openly with your reps and publicly recognize team accomplishments. You can even automate celebratory messages so no wins go unnoticed.
• With visibility into Salesforce deals in Slack, leadership can offer feedback and capitalize on learning opportunities as they unfold.
• Check in regularly, and ensure your team feels comfortable providing honest feedback (and make it easy with Slack integrations like Polly).

To make the sales process more collaborative, fold customers into your company’s workspace with Slack Connect, which allows you to securely communicate with external partners in Slack channels. Victoria Jones, a Slack senior account executive for large enterprises, said Slack Connect enhances reps’ relationships with customers.

“It used to be that if you got a customer into a texting relationship, the deal was as good as done. Today, getting them into a Slack relationship is the new gold standard,” Jones said, “You’re able to expedite what might have taken hours or days into minutes. You’re collaborating together, and it’s fun.”

 

Get out there and close deals

A good sales team can help move your business forward by bringing in new customers and strengthening relationships with existing ones. If you’re building a sales team from the ground up, it’s critical to establish a positive culture that makes collaboration and communication easy and efficient.

With Slack’s tools and integrations, you can put together an effective sales team that’s empowered to work together to deliver a better customer experience and close deals faster.