Being self-motivated like a leader it's one thing, but how do you get yours sales teams to work just as hard to keep customers happy and growing business?

There's no doubt about it – to be a salesperson, you have to be a people person. Some of the world's most popular businesses achieve such high success simply because they put their customers first.

How salespeople interact with a customer, from the buying stage to the final transaction, is the difference between making a sale and missing an opportunity to control the narrative and build the reputation.

Customer experience, teaching your sales teams to understand context and price, and reinforcing your point of difference will arm your team with everything they need to drive your business to the top.

Related: 5 Actionable Ways to Improve Your Customer Experience

Sales and marketing strategies

Reinforce to your sales team that they are a welcome guest, not an annoying pest.

Sales representatives they often get a bad rap for being too pushy or insincere. People's time is valuable, and the last thing your teams want to do is make potential buyers feel like they're being duped or coerced into buying something.

If you don't have customers, your business has nothing. Treating them as people and not as a source of profit is the only way to go authentic customer connections that offer mutual benefit.

It's a leader's job to inspire their sales teams to want to know their prospects—to really care about offering them something that can change the quality of their lives.

Leaning on your marketing to inform your audience about your brand is also essential. Tell them who you are, what you're about, and what you can do to solve their problem.

By having a strong marketing strategy that sends a clear message about your business to potential customers, half of the convincing will already be done before they reach the sales floor.

Related: How to define your product and set your prices

Context and price

When you talk to your team about pricing your product or service, context is everything.

Managers and their sales teams must always be aware of how people consume their goods based on factors such as market, business climate, price and demand.

This is where price elasticity comes in. If the demand for a product or service increases based on a change in its price, it is considered elastic. If there is little or no change in demand with an increase or decrease in price, it is considered inelastic.

Let's take fuel, for example. This resource is widely considered a necessity, making it inelastic. Without it, drivers cannot get from A to B using a fuel-powered vehicle. While consumers may choose to go to one gas station over another, say, based on cost per gallon, they still seek fuel.

The same goes for things like bottled water in areas with limited access to clean water, electricity, housing, etc. Price elasticity can work in your business's favor when the price is presented in the right context.

Like price, so many things can influence a person's decision and ability to consume certain goods, so emphasizing the importance of context to your sales teams is essential.

By encouraging confidence in secure pricing and fee strategies among your teams, the sale is much more likely to come through.

Connected: How not to be a 'me-too' brand: Brand differentiation in a crowded market

Differentiation

There are billions of brands of dining furniture out there, just as there are billions of different brands of toothpaste, brands of formal wear, and even brands of gardening tools.

If your sales team spends their days prospecting for leads, whether through cold calling, email or door knocking, they need to know how to market your brand well.

Telling a potential customer about your product or service is one thing, but convincing them that your product is better than the other requires sales representatives to understand the differentiating points of your business.

If a customer asks, “Why should I buy your product over this product?” that the sales representative better have a convincing answer. In fact, they should have a list of 10 reasons why your product is superior to your competitors' products. If they can't do that, frankly, they're wasting their time.

Arming your sales team with the knowledge they need to make customers understand that your business offering is the only choice out of a sea of ​​options is the way to go from a few sales a week to thousands a day.

Hosting brainstorming sessions with your teams, workshops and welcome feedback are transformative ways to encourage creative thinking about your sales model and create a set of unique value propositions and market positions.

Taking the sale

No matter what industry you're in, it's not easy to get 15 minutes of fame as a brand, let alone be a market leader.

There will always be competition, but with a well-prepared, motivated and tactful sales team supporting your business, the rewards will always be there to reap.

As a leader, reinforcing the values ​​of customer care, understanding the relationship between context and price, and what makes your product or service the best of the best is the surest way to make your sales team impenetrable.

Educate your sales teams at all costs – your future business will thank you for it.