How To Get Your Sales Team On Board With Your Brand?

The sales team is, more often than not, the first face (or in many cases voice) of the brand that a potential partner or customer sees (or hears). So by all means, they’ve got to be hand-in-glove with the brand, it’s positioning, it’s USP etc. 

But research has found a major disconnect between the internal marketing teams and the sales team sharing their messages. 

So how do you ensure that the frontline employees are on the same page?

• Identify the knowledge gaps: Sales teams are overloaded with extensive training,that leaves them burdened and confused. The result? Training like those fail them on the floor. By asking them questions about the brand, the product/service, the best way to communicate all of that to the customer, you can point out knowledge gaps. Once you identify these gaps, you can, accordingly, use training tactics that will not just load them with information, but will specifically and strategically tackle problems at hand. Use bite-sized material, one-page infographics, bullets-basically instruments which will fill those gaps and nothing more. That way you don’t steer them off with an overload of information.
• Customise training experience based on more targeted feedback: Feedback post training can be quite misguided. Employees end up saying what the trainer wants to hear. One of the ways you can get valuable feedback is to create a forum where they could share their feedback without fear of retaliation.  You can create steering  committees with the help of the leadership team, for various roles in the sales division and set up regular calls with each group/committee. These close-knit groups encourage employees to open up about the training, the material used and the way training was delivered. For eg: Employees may want to be part of training during their work, instead of making time for it separately. In such cases, you could switch from webinars (which is difficult to consume while chained to the desk) to podcast episodes, which will allow employees to train on their own time.
• Focus on building confidence: Remember, your sales team needs to be fuelled by confidence in themselves and the brand. Communicate your brand’s success stories, consistent brand messaging across teams will help the sales team to have more in-depth conversations with potential customers and clients. The strategies that marketers use to change customer behaviour can also drive consistent behaviour among employees, including the way they communicate brand’s story. Empower your employees to be part of your brand story, so that they can represent the brand in their own way. This leads to highly personalised conversations which are customer friendly.