Should You Hire A Sales Consultant?
If your team is struggling, a qualified sales consultant can make a significant difference. While some companies hire full-time sales consultants that remain with the company and perhaps act in a management role, others hire sales consultants, or sales coaches temporarily, for specific purposes.
Some examples of these purposes may be to help new sales team members learn the ropes, or to help with new software, such as Salesforce.
Still others may be called upon to coach a struggling team through a dry spell. If your sales team is not progressing, if sales have stalled and morale is low, a sale coach or consultant can help get things moving again.
What Does A Consultant Do?
In this case, an outside consultant, or coach will come in and evaluate your team to identify problems in the sales process. Maybe your team isn’t getting leads, or closing sales. Underperforming sales reps may be evaluated and coached to improve technique or increase confidence.
Sometimes, a consultant will come in temporarily and set up a new system. It is important that you choose a consultant or coach that doesn’t just breeze through and make a bunch of changes that are difficult to implement or follow through with. One complaint that many sales managers have with sales consultants is that they don’t have a lasting impact. A consultant needs to be around long enough to make sure that their methods are fully understood and that the sales team is able to integrate them into their daily routine.
A combination on group and one-on-one coaching is a good idea. Making sure that each sales person is able to maintain their responsibilities and pull their weight is essential. This includes being able to generate leads via cold-calling and pounding the pavement, being able to follow through on leads and being able to close deals and maintain customer satisfaction.
Every sales person is different, and has different strengths and weaknesses. Some are better at cold-calling, some are better at building rapport, and some are better at damage control. It is important that each member of the team build on those strengths and improve weak areas. Hiring an outside sales coach can make this happen.
