3 Ways to Manage Sales Performance and End the Summer Slump

Like many operational areas in B2B business, Summer can prove difficult for sales as prospects and employees go on vacation, meetings get postponed and so does the revenue.  However, therein lies the opportunity. In order to reduce longer sales cycles and improve rep productivity, it is critical to keep your sales team focused during the Summer months, so growth doesn’t suffer.

Sales managers; it is vital to keep reps motivated in the workplace in order to drive sales and performance but use the “downtime” wisely. Motivate your team by staying involved with coaching initiatives, highlight the success of top-performers, and instill a sense of friendly competition amongst your sales team. From experience, we believe this can be best accomplished with the help of sales performance management software – especially a platform that can provide sales leaders insights into outbound call activity in real-time.

Below are 3 ways to motivate sales reps, hold them to performance standards, and avoid that Summer slump.

1) Coaching & Staying Involved

If you find you’ve had quiet times during the slower Summer months, put that time into coaching and better training your reps.

“Only 16% of all sales training is retained after 90 days, which is why consistent training is one of the most effective ways to ensure that reps are successful over the

The more well-trained your reps are, the more value they bring to your team. Sales coaching is not a one-and-done occurrence; it’s a process, not an event

To speed up the process, a sales performance management system can give managers the information they need to identify which behaviors are producing desired outcomes over the phone, and which behaviors are not. From there, managers can identify underperformers and coach those who are struggling, helping them to apply the best practices and habits of more successful reps.

2) Highlighting Success

Whether it be on a weekly or daily basis, make sure to celebrate successful calls or big appointments set by your team.

When it comes to sales software options, performance dashboards are necessary to illuminate the success of your top performers and instill further confidence in them. Being able to reference relevant data also reminds reps that, although things may slow down in the Summer, businesses are still running – including competitors.

Also, by having the ability to view reps’ daily performance in a real-time dashboards, your team will likely be more motivated to succeed and surpass their benchmarks.

3) Instilling Friendly Competition

In addition to visibility into individual sales rep effectiveness, sales performance dashboards can inspire average or underperforming reps to up their game and compete for spots on the leaderboard.  There’s nothing like a little friendly competition to rally an underperforming team and even boost the number of calls they are making.

Holding contests – particularly during slow times like Summer – is just further incentive for reps to jumpstart their performance and boost team bonding. Upping the stakes and offering prizes such as sports tickets, gift cards, and time off can only further increase morale.

While ensuring your team is focused on the task at hand via both management best practices and sales performance software, stakes can be raised and help remind reps that the sales workplace doesn’t have to succumb to the Summertime Blues.