13 Tips For Improving Your Sales Team
Your sales team may lack confidence or skills, and that can hinder each interaction. If you are seeking a sales team that consistently delivers business results without requiring you to make every sale, you need to dedicate time, energy, and resources to help your sales become a well-oiled machine.
If you’ve ever hired a salesperson and been disappointed with the results…
You’re not alone.
Many business owners assume that if someone has “sales” on their resume, they should know what to do. But the truth is, sales training starts with you, the business owner.
At Business Builder Camp, we’ve helped hundreds of owners move from solo closers to leaders of effective, self-driven sales teams. Here’s how to train your sales team for long-term success.
1. Dedicate Time to One-on-One Sales Training
There’s no shortcut to training your sales team. Think about how long it took you to develop your sales edge; now consider it will take them twice as much practice since they aren’t the owner of the business. If you’re serious about building a strong sales team, you must invest real time into each new hire, especially from day one.
We recommend planning at least 10 hours per week during onboarding to coach, observe, and debrief. Sit in on sales calls. Role-play scenarios regularly. Provide feedback and clear insight into their sales style, not just direction. This hands-on time sets the foundation for everything else.
“You can’t just throw your sales team into the wild and hope they sell. You have to lead them.”
2. Set Clear, Tangible Goals and Agreements
Salespeople thrive when expectations are clear. Without clarity, their sales with suffer because they lack a goal and vision. Don’t just say, “Get more leads” or “Close more deals.” Set specific, measurable goals, like the number of calls made, meetings booked, or proposals sent. Pair these goals with agreed-upon habits and actions to increase sales.
Once your sales team develops, pull them in to co-create their goals. Your team members will take more ownership of their position and career trajectory when they are involved with defining it. When salespeople help define the targets, they take more initiative in reaching them.
3. Build a Repeatable Sales Process
You may have built your business by “winging it”; that is how most business owners start. That worked for a time because you were hungry and needed each sale. Your sales team does not have the same hunger because it isn’t their business. They need a clear process.
A great salesperson might be able to improvise. A great sales team needs a process. Your process doesn’t need to be rigid, but it does need to be clear. Map out the major stages: lead generation, qualification, proposal, close, and follow-up. Give your team a framework they can operate in so they’re not guessing at every step. Think of it as giving them a playbook, not a script. Scripts are overdone and lack personality. Just as each of your sales team members is different, so are your potential customers; a script falls flat on a majority of quality leads.
4. Teach Mindset as Much as Mechanics
Great salespeople don’t just learn “what to say,” they learn how to think. Talk about rejection, confidence, fear, motivation, and resilience. These are the hidden skills of selling well, and they don’t come naturally to everyone. As a leader, your role is to coach your team’s internal game, not just their external performance.
5. Role-Play With Your Sales Team Regularly
Want to know what your team is saying in real conversations? Don’t wait for the report, don’t wait for a customer to finally tell you, practice with them.
Role-playing sales calls, rejections, or proposal conversations will help you coach more effectively and strengthen your team’s confidence in their selling capabilities. It will definitely feel awkward, but the first time most people start in sales is awkward. You know that experience is the best teacher. If your team gains experience with you rather than with failed sales and lost potential clients, your business will grow effectively.
6. Share The Why Behind Your Business
Your team can’t sell what you can’t explain. Many owners say, “Just do it this way,” but forget to explain why. Your team needs to understand how your values, priorities, and client experience tie into the sales process. If your sales team believes in the work you are doing their sales will increase because they believe in what they are selling.
If you want them to sell with integrity, clarity, and empathy, you need to model it, document it, explain it, train it, and develop it.
7. Don’t Just “Train” Your Sales Team, Develop Their Sales Abilities
Training is an event. Development is a process. Hold weekly coaching check-ins. Review wins and losses. Talk about their sales conversations, not just their numbers. Ask what they’re learning and where they feel stuck.
The goal is not just to teach them what to do. The goal in sales team training is to help them grow into problem-solvers who can adapt and improve.
8. Use Tools That Help Them Track & Reflect
CRMs, call logs, debrief forms, and KPI dashboards aren’t just for you; they’re for your sales team. Give your team simple, effective tools to track their progress, reflect on their performance, and stay accountable. Then review the data together to coach around the trends, not just the results.
9. Block Time on Your Calendar With Your Sales Team
The #1 training mistake owners make? Saying they’ll “check in later” and never do. Be sure to learn about the common mistakes sales team leads or business owners make when training their sales team. Training your sales team won’t happen in the cracks between meetings. Put it on your calendar. Treat it like a client commitment. That’s how you move from hoping they succeed to actually equipping them to.
10. Develop Internal Sales Mentorship
As your sales team grows and becomes more and more effective, you may not have time to lead them anymore as you manage a multi-million dollar business. Not all learning should come from the top down.
Encourage peer mentorship among your team. Pair seasoned reps with newer hires. Let them review each other’s calls or debrief wins and losses together. This builds camaraderie and accountability, without bottlenecking everything through you. This will also help you to know who the best fit for your sales team lead is. Remember, just because someone is good at sales does not mean they are good at training sales team members.
11. Hire Sales Team Members On Character, Not Just Experience
You don’t need someone who looks or sells exactly like you. Hire people with curiosity, empathy, resilience, and communication skills. Look for candidates who ask good questions, handle rejection with grace, and are coachable, not just impressive on paper.
12. Give Sales Feedback Early & Often
Don’t wait for the quarterly review. Give quick, specific, and actionable feedback after calls, meetings, or pitch attempts. Celebrate what’s working. Tweak what isn’t. Make coaching part of your daily rhythm, not just an annual event.
13. You Don’t Have to Train Your Sales Team Alone
You’re not a sales trainer by trade, and that’s okay. That’s why sales coaching exists and our mastermind groups exist: to give you guidance, feedback, and proven frameworks to train your team and grow your company’s sales engine.
At Business Builder Camp, we help owners build confident sales leaders, not just reps. If you’re ready to get the weight of sales off your shoulders, let’s talk. We offer sales coaching services for business owners who want to grow their sales team and start scaling their business, and business mastermind groups for sales to learn from other business owners who have been in your shoes. Contact Wayne today to get the coaching and resources you need to grow your sales team.