All sales leaders kick off the new year with bold goals and a positive outlook. But by mid year, these goals may not be on track due to staffing changes, changing buyer sentiment, new market entrants, or shifting business priorities.
Now that we’re at the mid-year point, it’s an ideal time to take note of how your sales teams are performing and if necessary, determine new strategies to course correct and pick up the pace to get them back on track.
The mid-year check-in — no matter how successful or brutal — is the best way to gauge the status of your team’s success and measure the effectiveness of your sales enablement program. Follow these three steps to quick start your mid-year check-in process and gather fact-based data on where to focus in the second half:
Take a holistic look at both qualitative and quantitative sales data to help you fully understand what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs to change in order to improve.
Each rep has a unique set of skills, but it’s important to find the common denominator collectively holding your team back so you can enact a plan to fix it. Maybe your sales reps lack discovery skills, don’t know the product well enough, or don’t know how to structure complex deal pricing. Without precise analysis on what reps do and don’t know, frontline managers and sales enablement leaders can’t focus on delivering precise coaching and new training content where it is most needed.
Once you understand where your team can improve, it’s time to roll out an action plan to address the areas where your reps are struggling. This can be as specific or as big-picture as you’d like, but it’s important to set milestones to ensure your team stays on track. We recommend the SMART goal-making method, which encourages you and your team to work together and make feasible goals heading into the third quarter. These team milestones — in combination with individual check-ins — should guide the sales enablement program to make yearly goals more attainable.
An effective way to quickly move your development plan into action is with microlearning, a programmatic learning strategy that delivers daily, bite-sized bursts of job-specific sales content through scenario-based questions, fitting in-the-flow of your sales reps’ busy schedules. Microlearning helps identify knowledge gaps, so you can coach team members to develop their weaker areas and change sales behaviors.
By incorporating game mechanics and peer-to- peer interaction, microlearning also encourages friendly competition between peers and increases engagement by giving real-time feedback — both of which motivate sales reps and team to improve.
Whether your sales reps need to improve their product knowledge, message delivery, competitive knowledge, or sales skills, Qstream can help your sales team reach its goals and finish out the year strong.
Contact us to learn more about how Qstream’s best-practice microlearning can be a part of your mid-year check-in strategy to increase sales proficiency and performance.