6 Strategies to Improve Sales Team Performance in 2025 [Step-by-Step Guidelines, Examples, Prompts]

Sunday night. Picture you sitting in front of a laptop as you plan the week ahead. Meanwhile, your buddies are hanging out in a new spot someone dropped in the group chat last Thursday.

You flip between their Insta Stories and your calendar, packed with meetings. Back to Stories, then to Slack – you can’t miss any asks from your sales reps from the last week.

Just wrapped up: another 60+ hour work week is officially done. Now get some sleep and get ready to rock and roll on Monday (tomorrow).

First thing on agenda: check-in with CEO/CRO/CMO (you know who) and BAM…. the least wanted phrase you can hear from them is “{Insert your name here}, we need strategies to improve sales team performance”.

“I’m on it” you reply confidently. But inside, you’re already picturing next Sunday – quality time with your favorite pal, a 15-inch laptop, brainstorming ways to “improve your sales performance”.

Sound familiar? If you were smiling along or nodding – congratulations, this article is created for you.

Let’s dive into boosting sales performance today, so your next Sunday will be less about sales strategy and more about, well, Sunday.

In this article, you’ll find a list of key findings, sales tools, and actionable insights that you can implement tomorrow - from free, quick solutions to more advanced approaches that require more time but can significantly boost your reps’ results.

We will focus on:

1. Making essential changes in sales enablement and role-playing
2. Optimizing sales processes using AI-powered tools for deal management, prospecting, coaching, and writing
3. Selecting the best sales methodology for sales conversations and team management
4. Perfecting your hiring with the right interview and candidate evaluation frameworks
5. Accelerating team growth through peer-to-peer activities
6. Building a culture of a high-performing sales team through personal meetings, gamification, and strong values.
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First Things First: What Makes Sales Performance?

Let’s start with the recipe: What is good sales performance, how do we measure it, and what factors affect it?

Sales performance is how WELL your team is selling (e.g., sales revenue, average deal size, number of customers), the TIME it takes (e.g., sales cycle), and the EFFORTS required (e.g., number of calls) to achieve your target action (e.g., close the deal or book an appointment).

Why do you need to keep all three dimensions in mind?

A salesperson closing a $100K deal might seem to be doing well, but what if it takes 2 years and thousands of face-to-face meetings?

You can’t call this a great example of performance.

But by improving each dimension step by step – reducing time, and optimizing efforts, while maintaining or increasing deal size – you’ll see real improvement in sales performance.

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How to Measure Sales Performance?

"What gets measured gets done," state McKinsey & Company authors in their essential article on performance management for business leaders. We couldn't agree more.

To measure sales efforts, we first need to define sales performance metrics.

Let's stick to the how WELL, TIME, and EFFORTS dimensions we discussed earlier.

How WELL reps are performing:

• Quota Attainment: The percentage of the sales target achieved
• Win Rate: Number of deals won ÷ Total number of deals
• Deal Size: The average value of closed deals
• Revenue per Rep: The total amount of revenue generated per rep
• Upsell/Cross-sell: Percentage or revenue generated from upsell/cross-sell activities
• Booked Appointments: Key metric if you're responsible for a lead generation team

TIME:

• Sales Cycle Length: The average time it takes for a sales rep to close a deal or perform target action

EFFORTS:

• Number of Calls/Demos/Presentations/Meetings needed to perform target action or achieve overall goal
• Conversion Ratios: The ratio between sales stages to measure efforts between them (e.g., ratio of qualified opportunities to closed deals)

💡 Pro Tip: No sales dashboard yet? Use these sales metrics as your checklist.

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What Factors Impact Sales Performance Most?

Okay, so you've defined your performance metrics and built your dashboard to track them.

What's next? How do you start improving your "how WELL, TIME it takes, and EFFORTS needed"?

Several key factors will impact your results, and understanding them first will help you build a clear plan for improving sales performance.

Let's take a look at the image below:

Now, let's discuss each one and what it takes to make the most out of them.
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How to Build Sales Enablement That Works?

What is sales enablement? HubSpot offers a clear and simple definition:

So the goal of enablement is to make your sales process E-A-S-I-E-R.

Why does this matter?

According to Qwirl's research, search volume for enablement rose 32% compared to three years ago. Even more compelling: businesses that implemented enablement achieved a 49% win rate on forecasted deals.

There's a high likelihood your competitors are already working on their enablement programs.

How can you stay ahead without hiring an entire enablement team (or without expanding current)?

Let's explore some unexpected tactics for seemingly obvious sales strategies below.

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How to Create Sales Content Reps Need - Faster?

Buyers across all industries are becoming more informed: they read blogs, watch YouTube Shorts, ask ChatGPT, and talk to friends.

Let's face it - you can't sell products to customers who know more than your sales reps.

So you need to support your reps with high-quality content, right?

(No, simply writing down scripts and lists of objection rebuttals isn't enough)

Creating good content takes time - a lot of time. You're not alone here: Content Marketing Institute's research shows that 42% of respondents struggle to create high-quality content, and 20% can't produce enough of it.

Let's look at a typical buyer journey and learn how to generate sales content faster to enable your reps at each stage.

1. Keep Product Information Up-to-Date
Create a knowledge hub with comprehensive product descriptions and expert insights.‍

How to do it quickly?
Record video overviews of product features using Loom or Vidyard → Get the transcription → Ask your AI assistant to structure the text → Add screenshots... and voila! Another article in your product knowledge hub is ready.

💡 Copy this prompt:
I have a transcript from a product video overview about our [Feature]. Please help me transform this raw content into a well-structured article for our sales team's knowledge hub.

Here's what I need:
1. Analyse the transcript and organize the key information into clear sections
2. Format the content for easy scanning and reference
3. Include relevant technical specifications and key selling points
4. Add appropriate headers and subheaders
5. Highlight any competitive advantages mentionedTranscript:

[Insert transcript here]

Here is an example of output using Claude's 3.5 Sonnet.

Feel free to adjust the prompt and the article you get from the AI.

2. Create Case Studies
Nothing convinces like others' success stories. Almost 80% of customers review case studies during their purchasing process.

How to do it quickly?
Schedule calls with satisfied customers and prepare targeted questions about their experience (check out the question list here) → Use an AI notetaker to record the call (try Noty.ai or Otter.ai) → Get the call transcription → Have AI structure it into a case study article → Publish.

💡 Copy this prompt:
I have a transcript from a customer conversation about their experience with our product. Please help me transform this into a case study for our sales team's knowledge hub.

Please analyse the transcript and structure the case study using this framework:
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Customer Background:
- Company industry and size
- Key challenges they were facing
- Their specific needs and goals

Solution Implementation:
- Which of our products/features they implemented
- How the implementation process went
- Any customizations or special configurations

Results and Impact:
- Specific metrics and improvements achieved
- ROI or business impact
- Time to value
- Customer quotes and testimonials

Key Learnings:
- Success factors
- Obstacles overcome
- Best practices identified

Transcript:
[Insert customer conversation transcript here]

Feel free to adjust the prompt and the case study you get from the AI.

3. Add Customer Testimonials
Selling to customers is much easier in their own language. The list of testimonials will help sales reps speak this language naturally.‍

How to do it quickly?
Go back to your call transcripts from case studies → Ask AI to extract the list of testimonials → Pick the best ones and publish them → Later you can use them in scripts or share them with your marketing team.

💡 Copy this prompt:
Please analyse this customer conversation and extract powerful 2-3 sentence testimonials that capture both emotional satisfaction and business impact.

Each testimonial should blend the customer's genuine feelings about our product with specific ROI or business outcomes. For each testimonial, please:

1. Capture authentic emotional language showing their enthusiasm
- Personal expressions of relief or satisfaction
- Natural conversational tone

2. Pair emotions with concrete business results
- Specific improvements in numbers/percentages
- Time or money saved
- Process improvements
- Team impact

Transcript:
[Insert customer conversation here]

Feel free to adjust the prompt and the testimonials you get from the AI.

4. Offerings & Upsell Playbook
I hope there's no need to explain why you need a doc with all available offers.

But here's what's interesting: 37% of salespeople miss upsell/cross-sell opportunities. What could be the reason? They're not confident about how to do it right.

Let's fix this in our sales hub:

Add a page with all available add-ons to increase average deal size, plus clear scripts and guidelines on how and when to offer them.

💡 Pro Tip: Challenge your reps to offer add-ons to every customer for one month - no exceptions. Want to guess how this could boost your revenue?

By the way, do you know the difference between upselling and cross-selling?

Here is the easiest example to remember by Victor Antonio:

5. Presentations/Decks
Probably the most time-consuming part of enablement - because design matters.

Lucky if you have a designer in-house or freelance who can bring your ideas to life. If not, no problemo - it's 2024, and you can use AI presentation generators like Canva or Pitch.com's sales presentation gallery.

💡 Pro Tip: Use this proven sales deck structure:
Slide 1: Intro – Brief company overview → Slide 2: Industry challenges → Slide 3: Impact of these challenges → Slide 6: Your solution → Slide 7: Solution benefits → Slide 8: Solution features → Slide 9: Customer success story #1 → Slide 10: Customer success story #2 → Slide 11: Customer references → Slide 12: Credentials (Certifications, awards, investor names, team details - whatever's relevant)

Remember: While one master sales deck is a start, creating specific decks for each product or sales stage is always a plus - customers need different information at different stages.

Now we done with creating content! But where should you store all this sales data?

You've got options: Google Docs (classic choice), wiki apps like Notion or its alternatives like xTiles, or invest in enablement platforms (we'll cover these later).

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Sales Role-Plays: Classic vs AI

Among sales activities, that can significantly boost conversions at every sales stage role-playing is definitely at the top of your list.

Why?

Don’t get tricked by this old picture from the research dated 1969. It’s still true that we can forget 70-80% of any information in two weeks.

So none of your efforts in building enablement, sales training, and coaching will make the sales team successful without practice.

And instead of making team practice on real calls, you can bring more role-playing to improve the sales team's performance.

At PitchMonster, we see 20-40% better sales productivity among newcomers in their first 6 months of work.

Complete rookies can cut HALF of their ramp time with consistent role-playing without any extra legwork you need to do in your onboarding and sales training programs.

How to implement role-playing?
‍First of all, there are four main ways you can do role-plays:

1. Sales leader-rep:
   Good old classic exercise everybody should do at least several times with each rep.
2. Peer-to-peer:
   Put two reps in front of each other and let the action begin.
3. Group role-plays
   These might work in case you have large training classes. Organize a Zoom (Google Meet, Team wherever you prefer) room and do a live practice with one of the reps (you might ask for a volunteer) and let other reps observe.
4. AI role-plays
   As your sales organization implements AI software to improve the sales pipeline, AI role-play might be your next big thing in sales coaching. Same benefits as traditional role-play but many more perks inside.

How to create AI role-play?
There are several solutions on the market to help you with AI sales role-playing. But you always need to start with content preps:

• Write down role-play cases: start with current conversation gaps like discovery objection handling and scenarios to test reps on product knowledge. 10-12 scenarios could be good to start with.
• Set the scoring benchmark - what sales rep should to do succeed. Which could be tailored to your sales ale methodology or best practices in conversation.

The question is: where should you upload all this content to create AI role-plays?

Let me show you how easy this is with PitchMonster:

1. You can either upload your actual sales calls or start from scratch.

2. Then, customize the settings – like who your typical buyer is, what situations you want to practice, and how your sales process works. This way, your practice sessions feel just like real calls.

3. Your sales reps can then jump into these practice sessions anytime and get AI feedback that's based on your best sales practices.

That's how it works with specialized software like PitchMonster.

But if you'd rather try a different approach, here is a guide that shows you step-by-step how to create AI role-plays using custom GPTs.

Now that we've covered practice sessions, how about rest of enablement tools?

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Sales Enablement Platforms: Why to Invest?

Why choose an enablement platform over keeping sales content Google Docs?

Reason #1: Get full visibility into how both your reps and customers are engaging with content.

Reason #2: Enablement platforms go far beyond content management. You can onboard new hires effectively, upskill experienced reps, and with some vendors, even get conversation recording and analysis to streamline coaching.

Let me show you 3 ways to use enablement platforms:

Content management:
You know that feeling when rep can't find that perfect case study, or wonder if anyone's even reading your sales decks? Enablement platforms solve exactly it.

But they go even further - showing you if your content is literally "working." – like tracking how specific content pieces impact your sales revenue.

Here's a peek at how Seismic does it:

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eLearning included:
Here's another great thing about enablement platforms – you can skip buying a separate LMS for your sales team.

Most platforms already come packed with features to streamline sales training: content editors, quizzes, assessments, plus progress tracking for all learning activities. You can build complete onboarding programs or certification courses right there.

Check out the course library from Mindtickle:

Recorded presentations:
‍How often do your champions have to pitch your solution to multiple stakeholders?

They'll probably remember only half of your key messages and manage to communicate maybe 15-20% to others.

Here's a cool trick I learned from a B2B agency owner:

Record short, personalized presentations for each stakeholder type: C-level decision-makers, finance, sourcing team, security, and your direct champion explaining your solution and benefits in each stakeholder's language.

With enablement platforms, you can deliver these targeted messages and also track how each group engages with your content.

Check out how Showpad makes this happen:

Popular enablement tools to check out:
Seismic, Mindtickle, Showpad, and Allego.

What is the average price of a sales enablement platform?
While they provide great value, they're not cheap. Expect to invest $400-800 per user per year. Keep in mind: that some vendors will also charge additional fees for setup, training, and maintenance.

So, we've got our sales content and tools to distribute it. We've set up AI role-plays for practice.

But is that all there is to enablement?

Here's the thing: one day you'll feel like you've done everything possible, but your sales metrics hit a plateau. That's your signal to implement a new sales methodology.

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Choosing the Right Sales Methodology

Who's going to tell you that sales techniques from the '80s or getting three "Yes" answers (😂) still work today?

Customer resistance to typical sales tricks keeps growing, and they're getting smarter about gathering information.

Modern sales methodologies can transform your conversations, significantly shorten your cycle, and help you manage your sales team more effectively. Plus, their fundamentals can guide everything from content creation to hiring and coaching.

Let's explore the five proven sales methodologies on the market and find your team's perfect match:

• The Challenger: Perfect for long-cycle B2B sales, this methodology comes from Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson's research. They found that Challengers – reps who love healthy debate, push customers, and really get their needs – consistently outperform other types.
  Your sales rep will learn three key skills of Challengers: teaching customers, tailoring offerings, and taking control of deal closing.
  ‍
• The INFINITE Selling: written by Mentor Group, this approach addresses what older methodologies miss: today's sellers have less face time with buyers who do their own research and prefer digital channels.
  Used by giants like Dell, Lenovo, and Infor, this methodology equips sellers with the key attributes needed to grab (and keep) today's buyers' attention.
  ‍
• Sandler: Relevant from SMEs sales to Enterprise big tickets, this seven-step system turns sellers into consultants who still stay in control. Sandler teaches your team to treat buyers as equal partners in the process.
  But here's the twist: If buyers aren't fully invested in sales process, the methodology recommends walking away early - saving everyone's time.
  ‍
• Gap Selling: Crafted by sales coach Keenan, this methodology teaches reps to discover the gap between a customer's current state and where they want to be. It teaches reps to dig deep and understand how problems truly impact customers' lives and businesses.
  Here is the analogy: would a good doctor just hand you a $6 pill for your headache, or investigate what's really causing it? That's what Gap Selling is about.
  ‍(several years ago, this book changed my perspective on selling and inspired creating PitchMonster, helping reps perfect their skills before customer conversations)
  ‍
• SPIN: An undeniable classic among sales methodologies. SPIN isn't about spinning like crazy around customers - it's a framework for asking the right questions to uncover buyer needs.
  Here's the breakdown: Situation (understand where prospects stand today), Problem (uncover what's really hurting them), Implication (show cost of inaction), and Need-Payoff (paint the picture of life after solving problems).
  Perfect for customers who haven't done extensive research or for initial B2B discovery stages.

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What AI Tools Should You Use in Your Sales Process?

As of late 2023, 45% of customer-facing teams have already implemented AI in pilot programs or production environments. According to Orum's 2024 research, 87% report that AI has made a positive impact on their sales teams' daily work experience.

This is a year difference.

Rather than pitching you on why AI adoption is important (the benefits are quite clear), let's focus on tools and examples that can improve sales performance.

No need to rush out and purchase these specific tools – this is about showcasing use cases that AI can bring to your business. I always recommend exploring multiple vendors to find the perfect fit for your needs.

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AI+CRM=$?

CRM is usually the first tool we think of for successful sales team 😁

So how is AI changing the platforms where we spend most of our workday?

Have the search you've always wanted:
Remember digging through your CRM just to find when you last talked to Champion A? It's always been a pain - first searching for the Account or Contact, then clicking through notes to find the right date. Not exactly quick when you're prepping for a team call, right?

Now with AI, you can search the way you actually think:

• "When did Jane from Acme last reply to our proposal?"
• "What feedback did we get on pricing from Tech Corp?"

Here is the demo of Salesforce:

1. Reps can ask AI to find what worked for similar customer issues
2. The AI lists similar cases and breaks down what happened in each one

Think about how much time this could save everyone - both sales leaders and reps.

Read your customers' minds (well, almost):
As you log more conversations and deals, it starts spotting patterns about your buyers – like when customers usually make decisions, what features they care about most, or even how they feel about your product.

Let's look at how Humantic AI helps to understand prospects and predict how they'll respond:

Reporting:
Remember those hours building custom reports just because your boss needed "that one specific insight"? Yeah, nobody misses that. Now you can just tell your CRM what you need:

• "Show me all deals over $50k that went cold in Q4, grouped by sales rep"
• "Give me a pipeline forecast for enterprise accounts, excluding renewals"

Look at the example from Marc Hans explaining how to generate reports using AI in HubSpot:

and the outcome:

CRM is where we live most of our workday, so why not make it work smarter? Whether you're exploring AI features in your current system or looking at AI-powered CRMs, this is your chance to say goodbye to report-building headaches.

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AI in Prospecting

Sit at any bar networking event with other sales folks and it won't take long till someone starts complaining about prospecting.

There's a reason 40% of salespeople say it's harder than qualifying and closing - all that research, campaign building, and follow-ups eat up tons of time.

And who enjoys prospecting? Well, AI does! It loves handling repetitive tasks at scale.

Let's explore how AI tools can do the heavy lifting in your prospecting.

AI SDR:
AI is already replacing humans in prospecting – at least part of it. Today's tools can build databases, reach out to prospects, and even chat with them to book appointments.

They cost surprisingly less than a full-time employee.

Sure, some might say "But what about personalization?" They've got a point – especially for big-ticket deals.

But for smaller contracts (under $10-15K), AI sales assistants are already doing a solid job. Why not let them handle the routine outreach while your team focuses on high-value prospects?

Here's a look at our friends, Reply.io's AI SDR (reviewed by Salesforge, which also makes AI tools):

1. You tell the AI about your business and what makes you special.

2. Then, it helps you find prospects looking for your product - you can filter them just like you do in Sales Navigator.

3. The AI  writes personalized messages and follow-ups to reach out to these companies

And you've got an AI agent in the sales team filling up your calendar - in a good way.

Now, let's talk about how AI can help with sales performance on the calls.

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Conversation Recording and Analysis

There is another time-consuming task in sales - analysing calls (and giving feedback to reps).

You've probably heard of the big names like Gong, Chorus (which is ZoomInfo now) and Clari. They let you record calls, analyse them, and get a good view of your sales pipeline. If your company had the budget to get any of these - lucky you! Skip to the next section.

But if not, your poor soul might be saved today.
(and I don't say you're poor because you don't have money, I say you're poor because you still have to analyse calls manually!)

So... all the big brands mentioned above are sophisticated sales tools that might be expensive. Prices range from $100-200 per user yearly, with lengthy contracts and sometimes service fees included. They're great tools, no doubt about it.

Whichever brand you go with, here are the things you get with them:

Call recording and analysis (obviously):
Sales can reps get AI feedback on their calls: Did they listen well? How did they handle objections?

Just like with PitchMonster AI role-play, you can customise the feedback to match your sales methodology.

Most tools offer dashboards showing conversation gaps, helping you fine-tune your sales training program or letting reps improve on their own time.

Trends and performance insights:
Discover patterns in how your sales representatives talk and what customers actually say. You'll get dozens of insights on shortening your sales cycle length, tweaking your value props, and finding those magic words that increase customer lifetime. Think of it as an all-seeing eye over your conversations.

Sharing finding:
‍With the right conversation intelligence tool, sales and marketing teams can be like Lakers' Kobe and Shaq of '00 - an unbeatable duo for revenue. What if you add operations and product teams too?

There's some gold you can find from conversations:

• Sales can share real customer objections and questions with marketing, who can create content using actual customer language (goodbye, content gaps!)
• Marketing can analyse prospect conversations to adjust campaigns in real-time
• Product teams get direct sales data about feature requests and trial experiences

It creates the ultimate feedback loop and a clear picture of what's happening in your business.

Now does that $100+ per seat price tag make more sense?

Still not sure if company will pay for CI tools? Here's a clever workaround that Max and Maryna came up with:

1. You can use Make.com to analyse call recordings and send the insights straight to Slack or email. Here is their sequence ready for you to copy:

2. Use this prompt with SPICED framework for discoveries (though you can easily adapt it to other sales methodologies we've discussed earlier).

These tips came from one of their workshops - definitely worth checking out their other content for more useful tricks.

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Writing Tools

The funny thing is, I'm using Grammarly right now on my couch to write this. My friend who closes $30K deals is searching for the best AI writing tool for sales emails. Even one of our AEs with an English degree uses AI writing tools!

Why so?

Many sales teams worry AI will make their emails sound robotic and bland. But there's no need to replace your writing completely. Use it to brainstorm and polish your ideas.

Lavender's example:

Writing tools to check out:
Lavender, Twain.AI, Grammarly

Tools covered. But what about the most important component of business growth? 

How to find the best reps?
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Hiring the Right Salespeople

Get great people onboard and expect great things to happen.

One of our investors told us this, and it hits as good as a great burger after leg day.

But does a fancy CV or someone's brilliant LinkedIn and X/Twitter posts really mean they're great?

We often make the classic mistake of hiring salespeople who are awesome at selling themselves, expecting the same performance in the actual job.

It doesn't always work out that way.

The buying process and hiring someone are totally different games. When a salesperson closes a deal, other teams take care of customer satisfaction. But as employers, we're dealing with sales reps' skills and personalities 365 days a year.

So how do you spot someone who'll bring better sales performance?

Let's look at two solid interviewing techniques: the crowd-favorite STAR method and Mark Roberge's hiring approach (the mastermind who helped grow HubSpot from 0 to $100M).

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The STAR Technique

If you haven't heard of the STAR technique before, bookmark this for your next interview.

STAR helps you dig deep into how sales candidates actually handle tough situations, not just how they say they would. It's built around four key areas:

• Situation: Describe the situation you had. Get the full who/what/when/where/why
• Task: What were their sales goals?
• Action: How did they solve it? (This is where you get the real insights)
• Result: What did they achieve? Show me the numbers

Example? Let's see it in action with a BDR interview (not entry-level):

• Situation: "Tell me about reaching out to a tough prospect who previously showed no interest"
• Task: "What were you trying to achieve?" (Listen for how they describe goals and align with team sales targets)
• Action: "Walk me through exactly what you did" (Pay attention to their research methods, tools, personalization, and follow-up strategy)
• Result: "What happened, and what did you learn?"

You can quickly hear if someone's speaking from real experience or making it up on the spot.

While STAR is great for uncovering behavior patterns and problem-solving skills, there's still a question: how do you compare candidates objectively?

Let's review the approach from Mark Roberge, the early HubSpot VP of Sales.

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Sales Hiring Formula by Mark Roberge

In his early HubSpot days, Mark narrowed down all sales success traits to five key traits:
Coachability, Curiosity, Prior Success, Intelligence, and Work Ethic.

He created an interview scorecard that weighs these traits to predict sales performance.

💡 Pro Tip: Copy this image and paste it into an AI tool, asking it to build the scorecard and formulas for you.

Use this prompt:
Please help me create a spreadsheet scorecard template that I can easily copy and paste into Google Sheets or Excel.
‍
- Use tab/comma-separated values format for easy copying
- Include column and headers from visual reference
- Include all formulas in separate section

Visual Reference:
[Attach the image of scorecard]

How to assess each trait in the interview?

• Coachability: Run a role-play → ask them to self-evaluate and suggest improvements → rewind the session → watch how they apply feedback.
  This shows their ability to actually learn and adapt. This could be also reinforced with AI role-play after the interview.‍

• Curiosity: Watch how they ask questions throughout your hiring process - during rapport building, role-play, discussing the job, and next steps.
  Great questions often signal genuine interest in understanding customer needs.‍

• Prior Success: Look for achievements in both sales and non-sales areas (sports, projects, competitions).
  Mark suggests finding people who consistently land in the top 10% of whatever they do.

• Intelligence: Test their ability to learn and explain new concepts. Give them industry materials before the interview, then check how well they can educate customers. Example: "Could you explain how inflation impacts savings and ways to protect against it?"
  ‍
• Work ethic: Look at how they match your company values (we will talk about them later in the article) and their behavior during hiring: manners, response time, and effort in assignments. Don't forget to reference check with past employers.

These are just highlights from Mark's Hiring Formula. Get the full book on Amazon for deeper insights on hiring strategies, sales management, compensation plans, and running sales experiments.

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Peer-to-Peer Training and Coaching

Nothing drives sales teams growth like sharing best practices with each other. Here are three peer-to-peer sales activities you can start tomorrow:

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Call (meeting) Shadowing

Yes, most likely you are occasionally doing it with new sales reps. But why do many sales professionals miss the chance to do it with the team regularly?

Here's your shadowing framework:

Use your AI Assistant to create shadowing pairs. Feed it your reps' names and ask for matchups with at least two sessions for each rep: being an observer and then one doing the call.

💡 Pro Tip: Use this prompt for matchmaking:
Please create a  call shadowing schedule table optimized for Google Sheets with the following requirements:

Sales Team Members:
[Insert rep names]

Requirements:
- Each rep must appear  exactly twice - once as a Call Leader and once as an Observer, with no duplicate pairings
- No rep should be paired with the same person twice

Schedule should be formatted as a clear table with:  
- Date/Time slot  
- Call Leader  
- Observer  
- Status/Notes column
- Format using tabs or commas for easy spreadsheet pasting

Let's take a look at our generated schedule:

What's next?

1. Observers take notes from the call
2. Observers share feedback with the rep and discuss key moments, brainstorming next steps
3. Post insights in your team channel (if comfortable with public feedback)
4. Repeat!

Random matchmaking makes it fun, and regular sessions improve sales performance.

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Deal Roundtables

Actually, business clubs do this brilliantly - entrepreneurs share tough cases while others brainstorm solutions. No objections, just note-taking and fresh perspectives.

‍

Why not bring this to the sales team? Here's how:

• Run weekly 45-minute sessions
• 1-2 reps present deals

Presenters share:

• Quick account overview
• Current challenges
• Next steps and why they matter

Let everyone think for 5 minutes before sharing their suggestions. These collective sessions can transform how you handle big accounts and tricky closes.

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Competitor Watch

What keeps salespeople up at night? Competitors.

Each rep knows some bits about competitors - their product updates, pricing changes, and marketing moves that steal our deals.

How to effectively share this knowledge and quickly update battlecards?

Try these roundtables:

1. Collect competitor moves from all reps
2. Group by product/service, marketing, and pricing updates
3. Brainstorm responses
4. If you do it online, record and transcribe the session with a notetaker (like Noty.ai or Otter.ai mentioned earlier)
5. Copy the transcription and let AI structure your notes
6. Update playbooks, battlecards and share with marketing and product teams.

Run these every two weeks or monthly for 60 minutes.

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Bonus: 5-Minute Huddles

When I started my sales career, our leader had this brilliant practice: 5-minute huddles. The rules were simple:

Twice a week (we did them on Tuesdays and Thursdays), before call time started, one rep would share a quick hack with the team.

These could be anything: subject lines, upsell tactics, discovery questions - you name it.

Way more valuable than doom-scrolling LinkedIn for random tips. I learned many practical hacks that worked for my sales performance.

In conclusion: with minimal effort from sales leaders, you've now got a continuous coaching machine generating insights and materials.

Next up, the closing piece of this article: let's talk about building a high-performing company culture.

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How to Build a High-Performing Culture in Sales Teams?

Culture isn't something you can easily install like a new tool. It takes time. And it's built from everything you do.

Most sales managers would choose a team with a great culture over one that's already hitting numbers.

Why?

Because a strong culture drives better sales performance in the long run. And it helps reps win consistently.

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Motivation and Gamification

Crack the code of motivation = you've cracked the code to sales performance.

You'll find tons of motivation tips online, but let's be honest about two undeniable truths in sales incentives:

1. We're driven by cash
2. We're competitive by nature

So how to address these?

Making competition fun:
Some old-school sales leaders say reps should only care about key performance indicators. Yeah, yeah we know...

But what can gamifying sales KPIs bring to a sales plan?

Here's a real case I heard at a sales conference from Ilya, the Head of Sales at Laba. He found a creative way to motivate his team and ended up dominating their crowded EdTech market.

Ilya added some exciting prizes to their regular compensation plan, running contests over several quarters. The team could win:

• A new iPhone
• PlayStation
• High-end office chair
• Training trip to Toronto
• MacBook
• Vacation for two

To win these prizes, reps earned points by hitting sales targets and outperforming their teammates. Here's how the points worked:

• 3 points for hitting your calls target
• 5 points for reaching your invoice goals
• 20 points for meeting revenue targets
• 30 points for being the month's top performer

They tracked everyone's progress on a team scoreboard:

Revenue jumped 26% during this time. Not a bad experiment, right?

Now, let's look at how to structure your compensation plan.

Compensation structure:
Sales compensation is tricky - it's too big a topic to cover in a few paragraphs since it depends on so many things: sales team structure, your business model, and the size of your deals.

Salesforce makes a good point about this:

Want to learn more? Check out Salesforce's article - they walk you through how to build a compensation plan that works, with some real examples you can use as inspiration.

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One-on-One Meetings with Each Team Member

One-on-ones can reveal so much: reasons for underperformance, personal challenges, areas for growth, hidden talents, and fresh insights.

Plus, reps tend to open up more in these sessions when they see their sales manager as a safe space.

Try this framework for your next session:

1. First 20 minutes: Personal check-in and progress review
2. Next 20 minutes: Deal brainstorming
3. Following 10 minutes: Get genuine feedback about team and company needs
4. Wrap-up: Set action items and next steps
5. Record online sessions with notetakers like Otter.ai
6. Copy the transcription and let AI structure your notes
7. Share them with the rep and track their progress
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Building Team Values

Your values show up in everything: decision-making, work ethic, team relationships. It's the core of company culture. If you haven't defined your values yet, here's a simple team exercise:

1. Research this list with 190 examples of company values
2. Book a distraction-free hour with your sales team
3. Have each rep pick 6 core values that guide their daily decisions and actions
4. Create a final list together
5. Make it visible - display it in your office or feature it in review slides with team photos

Here is an example of the wall with values from one of the UK-based e-learning companies, Sponge

That's it. The main part is done for today. Let's move to the quick FAQ part and conclusion.

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FAQ

There are some uncovered questions on sales performance we will put in the nominal FAQ zone in blitz format.

How to Deal with Burnout Among Reps?

Watch for early signs like decreased energy and missed sales targets. Most importantly, talk to them – a one-on-one meeting with your sales reps is your best option.

How to Fix Slow Sales?

Look back at the sales performance metrics we defined earlier and identify what's causing the slow sales. Then, analyse factors that affect sales performance. Sometimes, it's people, sometimes it's sales training, sometimes it's tools, and sometimes it's just unclear sales goals. Start fixing one thing at a time.

What Is the Key to a Successful Sales Team?

Today we've learned it's a mix of things: good training, the right tools, and culture. But the main thing is hiring the right people.

How to Handle a Struggling Sales Rep?

They might need more practice with role-plays or just a confidence boost. But sometimes... you might not be the right fit for them, and they might not be the right fit for you.

Are Top-Performing Sales Reps Born or Made?

Made, definitely made. Especially when it comes to showing consistent long-term results.

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Conclusion

If you've made it this far, you're on your way to the sales hall of fame. I truly appreciate you taking the time to read through this material.

Remember, improving sales performance doesn't happen overnight - it takes bold moves to see those numbers climb on your dashboard.

Today we covered some powerful strategies: enablement, role-playing, hiring practices, and AI tools that can make your job easier.

The rest is up to you...

Check out our other articles, and I'll catch you next time!