Branding for your business is an important cornerstone. For any size of business, it’s vital that customers receive roughly the same messaging and understand your brand's values clearly whenever they interact with your business.
When you have a massive or spread out sales network, ensuring that your sales team is communicating the right kind of information and sending your buyers through the right paths can be difficult.
Below are some of the common causes we’ve found that lead to misaligned sales and how you can get your sales team to be working together. Through these efforts, you’ll be able to increase sales and not lose them from having your customers confused.
Causes of misaligned sales
Scattered information
In order for a large sales network to work coherently, it’s vital to outline business processes, clear messages, and distinct business values and to communicate that to your sales team. However, when dealing with a large or spread out network, those pieces of information can slip through the cracks.
Or worse, some of that information is scattered amongst multiple files and company information.
The situation can get even worse if you’ve created new products, offered new services, or you’ve stopped using certain practices or products.
All of this leads to a misaligned sales team because each team could be using outdated content and communicating that to new customers.
Different views or difficulty with training
Combined with scattered information, the training of a new sales force can also be difficult. Furthermore, different sales groups could be performing different sales tactics as well.
While there are different sales styles and tactics, an aligned sales team will be hitting the main points that your business wishes to communicate to customers. When you introduce scattered information to the training, some of that communication could be omitted or misinterpreted.
All of these lead to a sales team where some sales reps will be able to communicate properly and get the buyer on the right sales path while others will miss the mark.
Lack of consistent information flow
Another major cause we found in a misaligned sales team is lack of or inconsistent flow of information.
One of the reasons for the lack of information flow is from a lack of communication amongst relevant departments. For example, if you have a new product or you’ve made some changes to an existing one, you may provide new documentation or send an email to the sales department. Not every member in the sales force may check emails or use the company database to see if there were any updates to the products or services offered.
In other cases, the flow of information isn’t consistent enough. Due to other business processes, it may take longer to communicate changes or provide a point of contact for sales to get updated information.
Lack of monitoring
On top of this, there may not be a proper system in place to monitor every single person. When a sales team is spread out or is large, it’s hard to track what is being instructed and what methods are being used. Even if you’ve put in place strong channels of communication such as weekly meetings with key sales reps and managers.
How to fix sales misalignment
Centralize information and update it regularly
The best way to communicate your messaging is by having a central point where information is gathered and also organized. Keeping it updated regularly while removing older and irrelevant information from it is also essential.
Communicate
The causes mentioned above have a common problem: miscommunication. It’s a major problem amongst misaligned departments, however it’s also a big problem amongst a large sales network itself.
You don’t have to be talking to every single sales rep, however it can be vital to host regular sales meetings with sales managers and ensure that information about your products or services, and business messaging is being communicated properly.
Be open to feedback
Feedback can come in through various ways. If you’re dealing with a large sales network, conducting surveys to get an idea of how the sales team is feeling and what information is being used can be helpful.
In other cases, it can be more direct by asking sales reps or managers directly in meetings if there is any feedback about anything. Gathering data of any kind and leveraging it can lead to making proper changes that improve the alignment of your sales team.
Alignment takes time, but it's worth it
When you have a misaligned sales team, the value your sales team will be communicating to customers will be mixed. And as a result, it can lead to lost sales, and confused sales and dealer networks.
You can mitigate all of these things over time by ensuring that your sales team is getting the proper information on time, that the training across the whole network is the same, and that you’re quick to take feedback and make any changes that are necessary.
Showell is a sales enablement tool that allows companies to centralize their sales collateral in an easy to use software, permitting large and dislocated sales teams to access content even offline and present it with ease, offering prospects a seamless and professional user experience during sales meetings. Showell also allows marketing and sales professionals to track content consumption and make data-based decisions about content strategy, training needs and prospect interest.