The days of easy sales are probably gone for good. This is certainly bad news for organizations that haven’t taken a proactive approach to sales. However, for those that have invested in optimizing the performance of their sales team, opportunities are plentiful and customers are buying.

Do your salespeople have the tools they need to be competitive? If you’re not sure, there’s probably much you can do to improve their chances for success.

Here are the four strategies that absolutely must be taken to get your sales team primed to function at peak performance.

Train Effectively


You wouldn’t want your doctor to perform surgery on you without being properly trained. You also don’t want your sales team to represent your company and sell your products and services without training. It’s not a luxury. It’s an absolute necessity, and without it, their performance will suffer, and that will ultimately lead to lack of motivation, energy, and effort. An initial and an ongoing investment in training will always pay for itself many times over in more sales and higher employee retention.

(That’s a picture of me doing some training!)

Manage Well


It can be a fine line between showing that you’re there for your sales reps and being downright overbearing. Do make yourself available and communicate that you’re there to support them with both information and assistance. But, don’t hover to the point that they don’t feel competent or capable. If you’ve hired well, they should be able to do their job without you holding their hand.

Give Them the Technology to Improve Efficiencies and Effectiveness


Sales is all about high touch and low pressure. To accomplish this, your team needs a good customer relationship management system, a tablet, and all of the other items that are required to stay organized, communicate with their customers, create reports, collaborate with others, and move their leads through the sales process.