12 Tips to Scale your Sales Team

One of the most challenging aspects of running a sales organization is growing. When you’ve built a great team and are finally having the success you wanted, you can find yourself in a very difficult situation. Your sales process works perfectly with a 15-rep team, but will it still run smoothly when you’re in charge of 100 salespeople? This transition might seem daunting, but with solid, repeatable systems and consistency, you can navigate it smoothly and achieve the same level of success as you scale up.

1. Assess Current Team Capabilities

Before you can scale successfully, you need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your current team. Evaluate your existing team's performance to identify areas of excellence and those needing improvement. This assessment helps pinpoint training needs and highlights the qualities to seek in new hires. By understanding your team's current capabilities, you can build on what's working and address any gaps before they become bigger issues as you grow.

2. Implement Strategic Hiring Practices

Hiring the right people is crucial for growth. Develop a clear profile of the ideal candidate based on your team's needs and your company's culture. Use structured interview processes to ensure candidates align with your company's values and goals. Look beyond just sales skills; consider traits like adaptability, coachability, and potential for leadership. By bringing in the right talent, you'll create a strong foundation for your expanding team.

3. Effective Training Programs

The key pillar of effective scaling is dialing in your training process and making it easy to replicate. If your training process is haphazard or inconsistent, there is no way you will be able to maintain quality and performance as you scale up. Due to lack of time, too many managers improvise sales training as they go, or expect their reps to learn on the job. But the key to consistent and replicable results throughout a large sales organization is well-trained reps.

Attention uses the latest artificial intelligence technology to measure and track your reps' performance and train them consistently and efficiently. This allows you to save time as a sales manager and train your reps in a systematic way.

4. Good Data Management

Another essential component of a successful scaling strategy is to keep track of important data points. Having access to the right metrics and knowing which ones to focus on is a crucial element for success in sales but becomes even more important once you scale up. Keeping track of performance across a large organization can be a challenge, and to be able to recognize and solve problems quickly you need to be looking at the right data points and analytics consistently.

5. Hire Future Sales Leaders

If you want to build and scale a great sales organization, it is not enough to hire great sales reps. You should be identifying reps with the potential to be great managers and leaders as your company grows and expands. The skills needed to close sales and the ones required to grow an organization and manage salespeople are not the same, so you should focus on identifying 

New hires that have either or both of these qualities. Great sales leaders are organized, great communicators, able to inspire and motivate people, and know when to be flexible and adapt to new situations. If your sales organization is growing fast, you should try to identify these traits in new hires. 

6. Think Globally

In the era of Zoom and remote work, there is no reason for your team to be confined to one location. You should encourage and train your reps to work remotely and put the systems in place to communicate consistently and without friction. Communication is the key to scaling and becoming location-independent. 

7. Peer Coaching

A team where sales reps help and coach each other is easy to scale. You want to avoid fostering a hypercompetitive, cutthroat sales culture and instead breed collaboration and close relationships among your reps. Create an environment where salespeople learn from each other and share their experiences with each other. A team that scales efficiently has to be collaborative and focused on constantly learning and exchanging information.

8. Cultivate Star Reps

Many sales leaders view star reps as unicorns- a rare, irreplaceable find that you occasionally stumble on by luck. But there are many traits that are easy to identify in your hiring process that can help you determine if a new salesperson is a future star. Some of these traits are basically innate, but some can also be cultivated and trained. In any case, the important thing is to be able to recognize or develop these traits in a repeatable and scalable way. Characteristics like ambition, coachability, and passion for sales need to be identified early on, as they cannot be trained. All of your hiring managers should be trained to identify these abilities and telltale signs, rather than just making decisions based on intuition. Find out more about the essential traits that make a superstar rep here. 

9. Create a Powerful Sales Culture

One of the keys to scaling and growing a sales team is to build a solid company culture. Everything you do as an organization should tie into a guiding mission and be aligned with your company culture. You cannot expect this to develop and expand on its own- you need to actively and explicitly define your company culture, and make sure that you can communicate it effectively to new hires.

10. Boost Motivation

If your organization is going to grow successfully and remain successful, you have to prioritize your reps’ motivation levels. There are countless ways to do this, such as celebrating and encouraging your team’s wins, however small they may be, and using gamification to keep them engaged. Frequent positive feedback and public recognition of success are the most powerful motivators around, so make sure these are encouraged throughout your company. Learn more about boosting motivation in your sales team here. 

11. Align Sales and Marketing Efforts

Collaboration between sales and marketing boosts efficiency. Encourage regular communication between the two teams to share insights and align objectives. This leads to cohesive strategies that drive better results and enhance customer experiences. When sales and marketing are on the same page, your messaging is consistent, and prospects receive a seamless journey from initial contact to closing the deal.

12. Use AI-Powered Tools

Incorporating AI-powered tools can make scaling your sales team more efficient and effective. Manual data entry can slow down sales reps and lead to errors. AI that automatically fills CRM fields based on sales conversations saves time and ensures data accuracy. With less administrative work, sales reps can focus on engaging with customers and closing deals.

Real-time sales coaching offers actionable insights during calls, helping reps navigate conversations more effectively. AI analyzes customer interactions on the spot, allowing the team to adapt their approach and address concerns immediately, leading to better sales outcomes.

To scale your sales team, you need to provide effective training and good data in order for reps to be successful. You also want a team of future leaders that can take over the reins when it's time for them to move on from their current role. Track what metrics matter most so you know which ones are working well and which ones aren't giving you the results you're looking for. Communication is key! Your company culture should empower employees by providing the resources they need to succeed in an environment that fosters collaboration among fellow employees. Hire star performers who fit into your culture and have the skill set necessary to thrive at your organization today--and tomorrow as needs change or evolve with new technologies or innovations in your industry sector.

If you need help training new reps, Attention can make your life much easier and save valuable managerial time. Give us a try here!