The most successful sports teams rely heavily on their key players. But it takes more than that to reach the top. The right training, equipment, and mindset make a world of difference.

The same applies to sales teams. While having great reps matters to improve sales performance, you also need to be equipped with the right strategies and tools.

In this article, we’ll break down eight tactics to elevate your results. From setting specific goals to focusing on the buyer, these strategies will help your team close more deals and exceed expectations.

1. Set and Align on Clear Goals

While improving sales team performance is important, it’s too vague a goal to be useful to your team. Instead, implement SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based) goals that leave no room for confusion.

For example, a goal such as "increase new customer sign-ups by 15% over the next quarter" is concrete, has a deadline, and is within reach. Reps know exactly what needs to be accomplished and when.

There are different types of sales goals, with the five most common ones being:

• Annual: High-level targets for the year that shape long-term strategy.
• Individual: Goals tailored to each rep’s role and growth objectives that encourage personal accountability.
• Team: Goals that rally the team around a shared sales target.
• Activity: Goals that focus on specific actions, such as the number of calls, emails, or appointments set.
• Stretch goals: Ambitious targets set above standard expectations to push sellers to exceed typical performance levels.

Once you communicate these goals to your team, input them into a tracking system to improve accountability and motivation.

2. Use Data to Improve Sales Coaching

Using data to boost sales is a known and effective strategy.  But does applying data to coach reps yield similar positive results? Yes.

The best sellers get coaching four times more often than the average rep. And the most effective coaching programs are data-driven and tailored to the rep’s strengths and weaknesses instead of offering a generic approach.

Here are some ways sales data can inform coaching:

• Evaluating the rep’s product or service knowledge: An example would be using a quiz or another test to determine each rep’s familiarity with the product. It helps you spot reps who need more product knowledge and sales training to sell your product confidently.
• Glean insights from sales calls: Many sales tools (such as Gong) analyze call recordings and pinpoint key moments, such as pricing objections. This lets you see how different team members negotiate in these situations. Then, you can create targeted roleplay exercises to hone their negotiation skills.
• Use the skills of top-performing reps to improve coaching: Sales call recordings help you compare reps’ selling approaches and identify which ones work well with your customer base. Incorporate the best approaches into your coaching plans so more reps can adopt them.

When data informs sales coaching, it also creates a culture of continuous improvement. 

As reps begin to see tangible evidence of their progress — like higher conversion rates after adjusting their approach based on call analysis — they’re more likely to embrace feedback and actively seek more growth opportunities. 

3. Design a Stellar Incentive Compensation Program

Vague promises of bonuses for good performance aren’t enough to motivate sellers to excel. You need an incentive compensation plan that is as strategic as your sales goals.

Many sales leaders default to building their incentive compensation program around new business. But only 17% of commission leaders reward reps on account renewals and 25% do so on upsells, according to our 2024 State of Incentive Compensation Management Report.

The key is to align incentives with the behaviors that support your broader business objectives.

For instance, if you want reps to focus on upselling to existing customers, tie a higher commission rate to those deals. If breaking into new territories is the goal, offer additional bonuses for landing accounts in those areas.

A winning incentive compensation program also automates commissions and provides full transparency into each rep’s earnings. Manually calculating commissions using spreadsheets might work when managing a small team, but it becomes a bottleneck as your sales org scales.

Plus, it keeps reps in the dark regarding their earnings since they often don’t have easy or on-demand access to the calculations.

This makes sellers less confident in the accuracy of their earnings, which directly impacts their performance and leads to shadow accounting.

FYI, CaptivateIQ’s platform makes incentive compensation management a breeze. You can automate commissions no matter the complexity of your compensation plan. And sellers get real-time insights into their earnings, increasing their productivity by an average of 10%.

4. Revise Hiring Practices

If you’re aiming to improve sales performance, it might be time to rethink how you build your team. Even the most comprehensive sales strategies can fall flat without the right people to execute them. 

Start by defining what “good performance” looks like for your sales team. Are you targeting new business or growing existing accounts? Once you know what you're looking for, tailor your job descriptions and interview processes to focus on the skills and traits that align with these goals.

Here’s a real-life example by TalentBin co-founder Peter Kazanjy: When the startup began gaining traction, Kazanjy was faced with the challenging task of quickly building out the sales team to acquire customers. Instead of targeting experienced reps, TalentBin focused on recruiting “new, hungry grads out of high-caliber universities” who were preferably athletes or otherwise successful in teamwork.

The result was a hungry sales team motivated to get new customers.

When hiring reps, it helps to think beyond traditional metrics such as experience. Coachability, resilience, and adaptability are also great markers of long-term success.

But don’t just stop at screening — refine your onboarding process too. The quicker a new hire feels equipped to hit the ground running, the sooner they’ll start performing. Structured onboarding that includes shadowing top performers and clear role expectations makes all the difference.

5. Focus on the Buyer

When reps focus equally on the sale and the buyer, their performance increases.

According to sales expert Carole Mahoney, the biggest mistake sales reps make is putting too much emphasis on what they’re selling. This makes them forget the customer needs, which makes it harder to close a deal.

To focus on the buyer, Mahoney recommends sellers write down the top five questions they ask during calls. Then, they should figure out if the aim of these questions is to:

1. Get reps the information they need to figure out the buyer’s budget, decision-maker, etc.
2. Help the buyer get enough information to feel comfortable making a decision.

Option B will help reps focus on the customer and not just their pitch.

For example, asking the buyer about their existing solution allows the rep to better understand the current issues they’re facing and position the product in a personalized way.

6. Improve Pipeline Management and Forecast Accuracy

To boost sales performance, tighten up your pipeline and forecast management. This helps you direct resources where they matter most and ground revenue projections in reality.

First, define the stages of your pipeline and input them into your CRM tool. The typical pipeline covers stages spanning awareness, consideration, and decision. Companies with longer sales cycles will have longer pipelines, so be sure to personalize it to your business.

Then, analyze the pipeline by asking questions such as:

• Does one stage have too many deals stuck in limbo? 
• Are deals progressing at different speeds depending on the territory, product, or rep?
• What is the conversion rate per stage?
• At which stages are prospects most likely to drop off?

Improving sales forecast accuracy starts with understanding your data. Your CRM holds a wealth of information about past deals, including win rates, average sales cycles, and rep performance. Use it to create forecasts based on historical performance.

Be careful not to use incomplete, duplicate, or otherwise incorrect data to build sales forecasts. This leads to a “garbage in, garbage out” scenario that will mess up your sales planning. Centralizing your data in a CRM and reducing the need for manual data entry will improve the quality of your data. 

Make sure to also incorporate feedback from your reps, such as changes in buyer behavior or unexpected hurdles in a particular market.

7. Rework Your Sales Territory Strategy

When your sales performance is lagging, take a look at how you’ve mapped your sales territories. You might have picked the wrong sales territory plan for your business model or goals.

Perhaps you’ve divided territories by geography when you’d get better results by industry or customer segment. Or perhaps your territories are unbalanced — some reps are stretched thin, covering massive regions, while others barely break a sweat managing a handful of accounts.

When working on territory mapping, take into account factors such as:

• Total market potential
• Number of leads
• The average length of sales cycles in each territory segment

For more tips, watch our webinar about the best practices for sales territory planning and get insights from experts at Simon-Kucher & Partners, Facebook, and CaptivateIQ.

If building a sales territory strategy proves to be a huge headache, you can make it much easier with a tool like CaptivateIQ Planning. Its modeling engine helps you determine the best account balance so you’re able to assign territories fairly.

The CaptivateIQ platform connects to all of your data sources via APIs and native connectors, allowing you to plan territories using historical, account, and other important data.

If you already have territories in place, upload them to the Planning tool and optimize them further. The tool also calculates a territory balance score to help you know where you stand at a glance.

For an in-depth breakdown of CaptivateIQ Planning features, get a free tour of the platform — no need to book a meeting!

8. Use Sales Performance Metrics for Continuous Improvement

Improving sales performance is an ongoing process. Tracking different sales performance KPIs lets you fine-tune your sales process, spot issues early, and get the best results possible.

Win rate, for example, measures the percentage of closed deals compared to opportunities created. A low win rate could signal ineffective messaging, lack of negotiation skills, or poor lead qualification.

The sales pipeline coverage ratio compares the value of your current pipeline to your revenue targets. If your ratio is too low, it’s a sign your team needs to generate more opportunities or increase deal sizes.

Average deal size is a KPI that measures the value of your sales transactions or deals. For example, a sudden drop could point to a shift in customer behavior or pricing issues.

Sales cycle length tracks the time it takes to close a deal. A longer-than-average cycle might indicate bottlenecks or a need for more effective sales outreach strategies and rep coaching.

Monitoring quota attainment for individual reps makes it easy to check if they’re on track to achieve their sales targets and offer support.

CaptivateIQ Boosts Sales Performance With Smart Automation

Motivated reps sell more. And commissions play a big role in kicking their motivation up a notch. With CaptivateIQ’s Incentives, reps have real-time access to their earnings and gamified tools to inspire them to get even better results.

‍Book a meeting with our team to learn more about our platform and how you can benefit from automating commission plans and simplifying sales planning.