9 Apps, Skills, and Services to Quickly Boost Sales Team Performance

Your sales team can always find room for improvement. Especially in today’s ever-changing business landscape, businesses need to stay on top of the latest tools and trends to help boost performance. From services that can handle things for you, to skills that your team can use to improve their efforts, there’s a lot out there that you can benefit from today.

Although it’s not nearly an exhaustive list, here are nine things that we think you definitely shouldn’t live without if you’re looking to boost the performance of your sales team. 

1. Smith.ai 

With our 24/7 virtual receptionists and solutions for outbound sales and support, Smith.ai is your first resource to help boost the performance of your sales team. Time is a precious resource and when your salespeople are stuck behind the desk or on the phone, they’re not making the most of their talents. Hand off the detail work to the pros at Smith.ai and let your sales team get back to selling, which is what they do best. If you have more leads than you know what to do with, we can assist with our Outreach Campaigns by making those calls on your behalf.

2. Udemy

For sales teams looking to improve their skills and sales knowledge, Udemy is a great resource. It’s got tons of courses available in sales, customer service, and other relevant business areas to help you deliver the best service in everything that you do. You can even find courses on things like phone etiquette to ensure that your reps are fielding calls professionally and respectfully. 

Some courses are free while some cost money, but the costs are generally low. They also have regular discounts available and there are rates for enterprise purchases and other large-scale needs, as well. 

3. Gamification

Gamification caters to that competitive streak your sales team has. It also helps people reach sales quotas and drives them to perform above and beyond the call of duty. When you give points for closes, new leads, getting meetings, and so forth, it can add up to rewards like time off, a special prize, etc. In a report from the Aberdeen Group, it was observed that gamification resulted in 85% of reps hitting quota, while companies without gamification had only 78% of reps hit their expected quotas. 

Turn your sales quotas into contests and watch the competition explode. As a result, your sales, retention, and other stats will improve. 

4. Phone etiquette

This is a big one for sales teams today. Learning phone etiquette, including how to talk to customers in various stages of the buying journey, as well as how to better qualify and close leads, will be invaluable. Even the simple tip of smiling when you are talking on the phone will help convey a professional, friendly demeanor that your clients or customers will love. 

Without proper phone etiquette, you’re going to have a lot of trouble with consistency and quality, among other things. Your sales team could be conveyed as rude or disrespectful, or just not get the deals they could if they knew how to properly handle a business sales call. 

5. Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell is a sales CRM that’s designed to engage salespeople and get more out of your transactions than ever before. This tool helps you efficiently manage your sales and turn each conversation into another conversion by striking at the perfect moment of opportunity. It comes with a free trial and integrates easily with all the other tools that you use. Plus, it delivers actionable data that your team can use to make changes to their sales efforts. 

6. People-first focus

This is another invaluable skill that your sales team will need. A lot of people refer to this as “putting yourself in the customer’s shoes,” but regardless of what you call it, it’s important. You need to make sure that your sales team is approaching their deals from the eyes of the customer and attempting to deliver the best solutions for their needs, regardless of what it means for their sales quota. When you focus on the people first, the sales come naturally and your image improves drastically. 

7. Mobile-friendly sales tools

One way to ensure that you step up your sales game is to empower your team with mobile-friendly sales tools like an integrated CRM app and quote apps that make it easy to quote jobs on the go. The arena of available sales tools today is quite vast. Find the ones that you want to take advantage of for your team. 

8. Electronic communications tools

Like sales tools, you can use apps like DocuSign and others to complete entire transactions digitally and save everyone time, hassle, and a ton of paperwork. There are a variety of different tools and resources that you can find and they’ll each offer their own benefits. It’s all about providing agile solutions so that your sales team is always ready to close a deal. 

9. Active Listening

This is an invaluable skill in any career, and even in life in general. Active listening is the art of actually listening to the person who is talking with the intent of absorbing information and hearing all about their problems, pain points, and needs. This allows you to provide a much more targeted solution for your clients and gives your sales team the chance to pitch multiple items by focusing on all the different ways that you can help a single customer. 

Of all the soft skills that come with a good sales professional, active listening is a game-changer in ways that you never imagined. 

Speaking of game-changers, change things up and let Smith.ai take care of the details

When you’re able to get rid of the phone tag, email replies, and endless incoming messages and inquiries, your team will be able to spend more time focused on selling, which is where their focus should be. Thanks to the virtual receptionists at Smith.ai, you can do just that and let us handle the rest. 

Our virtual agents offer 24/7/365 solutions for outbound sales and support, live chat, after-hours answering, and even scheduling, intake, sales outreach, and so much more. To learn more, schedule a consultation or reach out to us at hello@smith.ai or (650) 727-6484.