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How to Make a Sales Rep More Effective and Increase Job Satisfaction

February 13, 2020 | 6 minute read

A 2018 report by the Bridge Group showed that on average, sales reps quit after 18 months. Subtract 2 to 3 months of onboarding time, and you're at a little over a year. In 2021, HubSpot reported that the average sales turnover rate was 35%, compared to an average turnover rate of 13% for all industries (DecisionLink).

That's a huge amount of money lost to hiring, onboarding, training, and then losing an employee and starting all over again. But why are you losing sales reps, and how can you make their jobs more satisfying and more effective?

The role of a sales rep is a mixed bag — if they're not pursuing potential leads, they're making sure that existing customers are satisfied. To keep customers satisfied, your sales reps need a strong team, the right tools, and automated inbound marketing processes.

How to Build a Team Approach

Happy, productive and satisfied sales reps always have a strong team behind them. It's crucial – both for your company and for your sales reps – that your sales team works cohesively. Here are 5 tips for creating a strong, connected and effective sales team:

Take time to build company culture: It takes time for a team to work cohesively, and forcing it will not help the connection.
Each team member can contribute: create an environment where everyone can bring their unique strengths. Knowing and embracing those strengths will build a stronger unit.
Know what you're good at and what you can improve. Let’s face it: some campaigns flop. Acknowledge that and move on. Reflect on the strengths of your team and focus on improvement.
Be realistic about goal setting: done well, goal setting provides structure to your team. It gives a clear path and destination so that everyone is moving towards the same result. After setting goals as a team, encourage individual team members to come up with their own goals.
Identify gaps before they become a problem: even the best team can let tasks fall through the cracks. Be aware of these before working on a large project where a gap could result in a big problem.

Providing Your Sales Reps With the Tools They Need to Succeed

Most companies don't give their reps enough day-to-day tools, and the ones that reps do have access to need editing or are too hard to use (e.g., an outdated CRM).

A modern CRM like HubSpot has hundreds of automation features, including the ability to skip manual data entry. Sales is a tough job, and giving your sales team up-to-date enablement tools will really help them save time and feel like they can achieve more. Learn more about building a strong sales team here.

There are far too many HubSpot sales tools to name in one blog post, but a few of them include lead scoring, sales pipeline tracking, chatbots, and a multitude of data tracking possibilities. First and foremost, however, HubSpot's CRM enables sales and marketing cohesion with inbound marketing tools.

How to Help a Sales Rep With Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing doesn’t replace reps, it makes them more productive and efficient, and allows them to share information and work with your marketing team. Here are some inbound marketing strategies and tools that are made possible with HubSpot.

Leads: Inbound marketing provides tools to help nurture leads. There are lots of different ways to bring in potential customers, but sales reps might be skeptical about updating the way that they reach out. If so, share with them that social media is the way of the future for obtaining leads: 72% of adult internet users use Facebook, and 45% of people watch more than an hour of videos on Facebook or YouTube per week. Nurtured leads produce an average of 20% of increased sales versus non-nurtured leads. Those numbers cannot be ignored!
Touchpoints: Once those customers have been reached, inbound marketing will allow the customer’s journey to be tracked every step of the way. It has been said that it takes 28-62 touchpoints (or points of contact) to make a sale; inbound marketing keeps track of all that for the sales rep. Interested in tracking your leads' touchpoints? Try lead scoring.
Content Creation: One of the most valuable pieces that inbound marketing brings to the table is content creation. Content, like blogs posts, needs to be created often (12-16 posts per month). What a relief for a sales rep when they discover they don’t have to do the creating anymore! Content speaks to customer needs, and once customers feel heard and their problems listened to, they’re more likely to be return customers.

Don't have a solid marketing team yet? Inbound marketing support is what we do. We can create systems that alleviate your stress and facilitate sales, without interrupting your team's flow.

How to Succeed With Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing builds a solid infrastructure so that created content will start to help close every lead in the future. As an inbound marketing growth agency, Tangible Words will help with every deal and allow your reps the opportunities to make more deals. After 5 months we helped a client close $600,000 in new business, and they spent $200,000 for the entire year with us. Even after the project ended, the campaigns continue to earn money: one campaign we created earned them $1,000,000 seven months after we stopped writing for them.

Help your sales reps work more effectively with higher job satisfaction. Try combining sales and inbound for better sales results and happier employees!