In sales, it can feel like a dog-eat-dog world out there. Some sales reps may be breezing through their quotas and pocketing big bonuses, others get left behind.
While that may be all well and good for sales reps hitting 100% – is it good for the business as a whole?
In Tyler Bennett’s eyes, no one wins unless everyone wins. He believes companies should aim to get 100% of their sales team to those 100% quotas – not 50%, not 99%.
Tyler is the Head of Sales at BEE Content Design – a drag-and-drop email builder for designing mobile-responsive emails – and former 2X VP Sales. He joined us on the very first episode of The Revenue Playbook podcast to explain why he wants everyone hitting their quotas and shares some invaluable insights into managing sales teams, using effective tools, and fine-tuning pipelines.
The Revenue Playbook is a new podcast from Dooly, which dives into the secrets behind what makes the top-performing sales reps so successful. We take a look into the revenue playbooks of high-performing sales reps, leaders, and teams to get their insights and practical strategies for success.
Keep reading to hear what he has to say or tune in to the full podcast episode:
Video person? Watch the full conversation below.
Here are 5 tips to help you ramp 100% of your sales team to quota:
1. Audit your sales performance and set goals
Step one in leveling up your sales team is to look at where you are now. What’s your performance like on an individual and team level?
Every manager wants all their salespeople to reach 100%. But most of the time, no one makes a real plan of action to get there. The key to getting everyone to that 100% target is setting the right kind of goals.
Tyler’s goal = Raise the quota instead of lowering it.
The result = 3X the number of people overachieved their quotas.
Any goal you set, keep a close eye on performance and adjust as needed.
2. Reorganize your team
To avoid layoffs and increase team performance, Tyler moved people around and found better fits for them on the team. This wasn’t just for morale. It helped balance the sale roster. The low-performing reps moved into supporting roles:
- RevOps
- Marketing
- BDR roles
- Sales engineering
- Project manager (product)
- Onboarding coordinator (HR)
So, take stock of your current team and figure out if they’re in the best roles for them. If not, don’t be afraid to reshuffle.
Consider your team members:
- Skills and experience
- Desires and work goals
- Personalities and natural talents
And find a place in your company where they (and the rest of your team) can thrive.
3. Determine new quotas based on sales analytics
If you’re not hitting your current quotas, don’t be afraid to change them. Increasing them worked for Tyler’s team because he was able to pair reps with more support. But it’s important to find the right quotas based on your sales analytics.
Look at what the data is telling you. Use that to set attainable goals for your team.
In Tyler’s case, big quotas came with bigger dollars, and bigger dollars meant he got to keep high performers on his team.
4. Set repeatable processes for the team and celebrate wins
Once you…
- Have a strategy
- Decide on a quota
- Reorganize the team structure (if necessary)
…build a new sales process and repeat it until you hit success.
BEE Content Design has a big, once-a-month team meeting (notice how we didn’t say once a week?) where they go through how everyone’s doing and what everyone’s working on. That helps people feel like they’re part of something bigger. It puts their work into perspective and encourages people to constantly improve and refine the process.
5. Reduce unnecessary meetings (ahem, pipeline reviews)
One way Tyler and co like to run a tight ship is to avoid those dreaded meetings that could have been emails.
The team prefers one-on-one meetings kept at 25-minute bursts rather than hour-long meetings with the whole gang (especially when most of them don’t really need to be there).
When it comes to the sales pipeline, Tyler thinks as long as the CRM is up to date, there’s no need for endless meetings about the pipeline.
If salespeople have to regurgitate information from the CRM, it leads to one common problem – they don’t see the point in updating it. So, if you’re still asking your salespeople about every single deal and are wondering why the CRM isn’t up to date…that’s probably why.
Where companies get sales ramping wrong
Companies get quotas all wrong when their team just doesn’t care enough about those numbers. If those numbers are just box-checking rather than relevant and impactful on a team and individual level, it’s hard to get inspired into action.
Tyler also explains that you need leaders to get their bonuses on the success of their team, not just the achievement of hitting a target. That’s how you start to change behavior company-wide.
To recap – when leaders focus on individuals over numbers, rethink how they plan meetings, coaching, KPIs, and CRM updates, you’ll start to see the sales team hit those all-important targets together. See Dooly.ai in action and learn how high-performing teams like Figma, Intercom, and Asana improve sales performance with Dooly. Demo Dooly today.
Join the thousands of top-performing AEs who use Dooly every day to stay more organized, instantly update their pipeline, and spend more time selling instead of mindless admin work. Try Dooly free, no credit card required. Or, Request a demo to speak with a Dooly product expert right now.