Many sales leaders share similar attributes and skill sets but good sales leaders have a few differentiated traits. The best sales leaders are number-oriented and actively keep their teams focused and moving toward the goal. Using historical performance or industry research, they align targets and quotas to data. Additionally, a good sales leader holds their team accountable while owning accountability when applicable. The strongest sales leaders also have a knack for recruiting solid hires and often have a following of former coworkers who would love the opportunity to work with them again. They are great coaches and empathetic mentors who make everyone around them better.

There are a number of ways to motivate your sales team. It’s important to recognize that each sales rep is motivated differently. Money is often the biggest motivating factor for reps. So, pay reps an appropriate amount of money with a good commission rate, and they will feel motivated to sell. By providing visibility into sales commissions, sales leaders unlock another way to motivate reps. When reps can easily see how much they are going to get paid on a deal and where to focus their efforts, they’ll work harder to close those deals.

Sales metrics are used to measure performance and track progress. Hundreds of them exist, but RevOps and sales leaders usually have a handful of metrics that they favor most, like average contract value, demo to close, and qualification rates. When looked at individually and collectively, sales metrics help tell the go-to-market story and shape it moving forward. Leaders will also leverage sales metrics to design their sales compensation plans.

Sales prospecting techniques evolve with technology, but the act itself involves finding and pursuing future customers. Some best practices in sales prospecting include defining an ideal customer profile to go after, establishing contact lists based on those profiles, personalizing outbound efforts (LinkedIn messages, emails), and sending helpful resources and content relevant to the conversation you plan to have next.

The practice of sales enablement involves continuously providing your sales team with resources, training, content, data, and coaching to help them close more deals. RevOps and/or SalesOps, for example, provide sales enablement to their teams to increase productivity, connect with the right buyers, and run the sales cycle more efficiently and effectively.

RevOps connects sales, marketing, and customer teams using data to increase revenue and productivity. They are often tasked with researching new technology platforms to eliminate communication barriers between departments tied to sales, establish feedback loops, and create efficiencies across all stages of the sales cycle. They’re also responsible for researching and identifying trends and triggers in the sales data, hypothesizing and testing the causes, and communicating them clearly to all stakeholders.

A sales commission is an important part of sales compensation. It’s a form of variable pay and is the additional amount of money a sales representative can make on top of their base salary. It’s typically a percentage of a deal amount that a rep earns for closing that deal.

A typical sales commission structure contains three major parts. The first: on-target earnings (OTE), which consists of the total amount of money a rep can expect to earn if they hit 100% of their quota. Next up? Quota. A quota is the pre-determined amount of revenue a sales rep is expected to sell during a given period of time. Teams usually follow a monthly, quarterly, or annual quota frequency. Last is the commission and/or a bonus. This is the percentage or set amount of money paid for closing deals.

A sales funnel framework represents the various stages customers pass through during their buying journey. This journey breaks down into the following four stages: awareness, interest, decision, and action. To meet potential buyers every step of the way, sales and marketing teams create outreach cadences, resources, events, and more, in an effort to move the buyer further down the funnel. 

QuotaPath created the Sales Funnel calculator to provide individual contributors and sales leaders with the ability to calculate how many meetings a team should hold in order to hit their attainment goal based on historical data.