Organizations all over the country feel like they’re not reaching their full sales potential. They might be struggling to close deals or they might just think they could grow faster if they had the right resources and the right approach. Whatever the case, if you’re not happy with your sales, you need to make a change.

So what are the best changes to make?

Changes to Make to Your Sales Environment

It’s hard to provide one, a single set of prescriptive actions to “fix” your sales performance. That’s because every organization is different, and could be facing any combination of hundreds of different individual problems. If you want to be effective when improving your sales -environment, you need to understand what specific problems are affecting it and what specific solutions are best to address them.

That said, these changes tend to be some of the most effective for the majority of organizations:

1.  Hire a sales consultant. One of the best first steps you can take is hiring a sales consultant. That’s because the consultant will work to analyze your current approach to sales, the current results you’re getting, your organizational culture, and the goals you’re trying to achieve. They’re going to work with you to analyze everything about your business and its approach to sales; they’re also going to make personalized recommendations for you, providing you with a detailed and specific direction that you can use to transform your approach. Your consultant will likely advise you to follow some of the other changes on this list, but that depends on your current needs and what you’re trying to achieve.
2.  Split into teams. Instead of treating your sales team as one entirely cohesive unit, consider breaking your sales team down into smaller teams. This way, you can experiment with different approaches with different teams. You can have one team focused on direct, more aggressive selling, while your other team focuses on more relaxed, indirect selling. This can help you deal with different types of customers simultaneously and give you more information that you can use to update your overall sales approach in the future.
3.  Improve your quality lead generation. If your salespeople are going to be successful, they need to have quality leads to work with. When a prospect is a good fit and is someone who’s genuinely interested in a solution like this, it’s much easier to close the sale. That’s why you should front-load most of your sales improvement efforts, focusing on quality lead generation rather than exclusively focusing on closing individual deals.
4.  Offer new tools and resources. Sometimes, sales teams fail simply because they don’t have the tools or the resources necessary to do their job productively or reliably. If that’s the case, one solution is to offer new tools and resources. You don’t want to bog your team down with dozens of different unnecessary platforms, but sometimes all it takes is one new investigative tool to completely reshape an internal sales strategy.
5.  Provide new education and training. While you’re at it, consider providing new education and new training to your sales representatives. How much time did you spend with these representatives when they were first hired? Did you give them ample lessons on the right way to approach prospects and close deals?
6. Allow for more autonomy. Consider giving your salespeople more autonomy. You can still give them scripts and training and pointers on how to approach various types of customers, but if you feel confident in the expertise of your representatives, you should give them more flexibility to do things their way. Not only will they feel more of a sense of control over their sales, but they’ll also volunteer new strategies you may not have thought of. As an added bonus, higher employee autonomy is also associated with higher employee morale.
7. Make more compelling offers. Sometimes a lack of sales is not because of shoddy sales work, but because of an offer that just isn’t interesting. If you’re charging too much money for your product, or if your product is clearly outclassed by a competitor, people aren’t going to buy, no matter what. Consider revising your offers to become more compelling.
8. Experiment more. You should experiment as much as possible in your sales -environment. That means tinkering with different strategies, different tools, and different approaches. It’s the only way to get more data and figure out what works best for your target audience.
9. Get customer and prospect feedback. Use surveys to collect feedback from both customers and prospects. If possible, follow up with customers who walked away from a deal and figure out what went wrong. the more you analyze your customer relationships, the better understanding you’ll have of what attracts someone to your business in the first place.
10. Get employee feedback. Don’t neglect the importance of employee feedback. talk to your sales representatives about how they feel in this sales -environment. Is there anything that they’re missing? Is there something they feel could be better? Try to get feedback regularly from the entire team, and make sure to have an anonymous option available so people feel more comfortable sharing their honest thoughts.

When Are Sales “Good Enough?”

At what point is your sales -environment going to be considered good enough? In some ways, it’s good to have some numbers in mind. Is there a specific conversion rate you’re trying to achieve or a certain lead generation quality score that you want to have on average? Setting goals can motivate you to achieve them and provide you with a reliable and objective barometer for success.

However, it’s also important to have a mentality of constant improvement. In some ways, your sales should never feel like they’re good enough because there’s always going to be room for improvement. The most successful organizations on the planet are the ones constantly trying to improve themselves, even when they’re already trouncing the competition. As you start employing these changes and seeing their results, resist the temptation to become complacent.