Revenue Ops & Automation Blog

According to HubSpot research, the average salesperson only spends about one-third of their day selling. The rest of their day is spent on non-revenue generating activities such as writing emails, entering data, prospecting and researching calls, going to meetings, and other administrative tasks. 

The most successful sales teams are made up unique individuals with different backgrounds, personalities, and levels of work experience. As a sales manager, you understand that working with and coaching a diverse group of talent can be as challenging as it is rewarding. 

Sales skills are one thing, but building a world class business development organization is a whole different ball game. From motivating your team to follow a unified process to aligning your sales and marketing teams, creating a business development engine is just as much art as it is science. 

While many companies have been selling their products online with a remote sales team for years, sales managers that are new to this “COVID-19” sales model face tremendous challenges. Tasks such as keeping your sales team engaged, finding new ways to demo/sell products online, and promoting collaboration within a remote team can seem daunting to even the best sales executives. 

While product, markets, and messaging may vary, a successful sales organization always starts with plugging the right team into the right culture. The best people in an unhealthy culture will result in unproductive habits and slower than expected growth. And eventually, you’ll lose top talent. If you have the wrong people with a strong sales culture, you are not much better off.

Creating a successful, repeatable sales process in your organization is the holy grail for sales managers. However, seasoned executives know that what works for one salesperson may not work for another. 

So, how do you create an effective, systematic playbook for a sales team with varying strengths, backgrounds, and capabilities? More importantly, how do you do this without overcomplicating everything? 

Enterprise sales is vastly different from selling to mid-sized or small companies. The metrics are different. The teams and processes are structured differently. And in a lot of cases, it is exponentially more complex than SMB sales. However, most sales leadership advice is geared toward selling to consumers or smaller companies.

So, how can you set your enterprise sales team up for success in today’s environment?  How do you tackle issues such as sales and marketing alignment and become an expert on your prospects' growth strategies?

HubSpot was founded in 2005 with zero customers. Today, over 78,000 businesses in 120 countries use HubSpot to grow. With the company pulling in $675 million in revenue last year, HubSpot is one of the most impressive growth stories of the past 15 years - from the raw numbers and thought leadership, to their culture and transparency.

What would you ask someone who was in the room that first year and has been instrumental at the company every step of the way since?

Every one of us knows a rock star salesperson. You can usually find at least one on every sales team. These top performers have found a way to build strong relationships, ask the right questions, and close more profitable deals than those around them. 

Let’s flashback to your sales team in the year 2019...