THE OUTSIDE

SALES PLAYBOOK:

Building a Successful
Outside Sales Team
 Table of contents

03
Intro
About This Guide

05
Chapter 1
A Guide to Onboarding

10
Chapter 2
A Guide to Team Management &
Rep Accountability

18
Chapter 3
A Guide to Sales Territory Mapping
 03

About This Guide

Every leader knows the key to long term success is to turn
their sales team into a well-oiled machine, but only 20% of
companies invest the proper time into and training and
onboarding.

That is why we created this guide as your go - to resource

on how to set up, scale and supercharge your field team.

Who This Guide is For

Managers looking to quickly and efficiently onboard, and
optimize their sales team. Plus some extra tips on how to
streamline the process with automation.

What’s Inside
The guide is broken up into three main chapters that are
crucial for building and maintaining a successful sales
team:

- How to Streamline Your Onboarding

- How to Effectively Motivate Your Team
- How to Map our Your Team’s Territories

Along with some advice from top sales leaders and

recommendations for the best sales tools and tech
currently on the market.
Building a Successful
Outside Sales Team

Ch1: A Guide to Onboarding

 05

Streamline Your
Onboarding
Onboarding a new rep can be awkward.
Transferring customer accounts, adjusting
to a new work environment, and saying
goodbye to old reps are never easy
moments.

We’ve thought of a few ways that improve

the efficiency and ease of onboarding with
some tools and steps to automate the
processes (the same ones we use here at
Map My Customers!)
 06

Step 1
Create a Team-Focused Culture

Be intentional about presenting a complete sales team

to leads and clients in each territory from the very
beginning. It can be as simple as shifting from first-
person singular language to first-person plural: “We
are so happy to speak in person” vs “ I am so happy to
finally speak in person”

Make sure to have one your previous rep introduce the

new salesperson to the established clients in the
territory. With a little luck, your clients will welcome
your new salesperson with open arms.
 07

Step 2
Centralize Your Data

First, make sure all of your client information is in one

centralized database with controlled permissions.

We recommend investing in software that allows

your sales manager to toggle on and off access to
information, so when an employee no longer needs
data they will no longer have access to it.

Sharable data will also allow you to easily pass on

any data collected about the work your company
has done with the client to the new hire. If
possible, it’s always great to have your previous rep
for this territory walk them through the data.

On average, firms that use technology

effectively were 57% more effective at sales
training and development than
ineffective technology users.
 08

Step 3
Write a Strong Mission Statement

When transferring a client to a new rep, you want the

interactions with the customer to feel relatively
consistent across the board.

To ensure a consistent and reliable sales culture, take

some time to write up a solid mission statement.
Then, find opportunities to remind your sales team of
it every single day.

The next time you hire, also make sure you find
people who can understand and fit into the work
culture you’re promoting. You want to be confident
that every single salesperson and employee is an
extension of your business’ brand and culture.
 09

Automate Your
Onboarding

Use e-signature platforms like

to keep track and secure contracts and
documents

Here at MMC, we use a playlist

(found on our website) and our founder gives a
product demo to acclimatize our new hires to the
software.

Make onboarding fun by creating quizzes

with tools like . Our sales team
preps new hires with mock phone calls
throughout the whole onboarding process.

Track productivity and progress with check-ins and

interval deadlines, tools like and sharing
help automate the process.
Building a Successful
Outside Sales Team

Ch 2: A Guide to Team
Management & Rep Accountability
 11

Motivate Your Team

Sales teams experience valleys and peaks

throughout the sales cycle. As a leader, it
is crucial to know how to properly
motivate your team through the slumps
and ensure that they are taking
advantage of the peaks.

The first step in coaching and motivating

your sales team is to set and maintain
transparent goals and expectations across
the team.

Consistency will give your team focus

during the peaks and can help keep up
motivation when they fall into a slump.
 12

Step 1
Align Expectations and Goals

Establish your expectations to both individual reps and

as a team to get a clear alignment across the
department. Set goals as a team to get buy-in and
create a healthy sense of competition and camaraderie.

There might be a few growing pains as you implement

growth and accountability processes. These pains are
demonstrated in Peter Stark’s “J-Curve of Accountability”.

As the curve shows,

the benefits are well-
worth getting
alignment and
understanding up-
front.
 13

Step 2
Enable Your Team With the Proper Tech

To ensure accountability, utilize technology that

automatically tracks your reps’ everyday activities.
Get higher visibility into your reps’ actions in the field
while removing multiple unnecessary steps for
salespeople.

You can also implement cadence management tools

to power your rep to quickly and effectively follow up
with customers after calls or meetings.

Consider a tool that can automate follow-ups with

customers via email after a meeting or remind your
sales team to make contact with a prospect that they
haven’t heard from in a specified time.
 14

Step 3
Hold Yourself Accountable

For sales teams to feel accountable for their actions,

it’s important for the sales manager to, in turn, publicly
answers for his or her team.

Show your salespeople that you’re a part of the team

and willing to take responsibility when things go awry.
Lend yourself as a resource and let them know you’re
part of the team — sink or swim.

Companies with high employee engagement were

21% more productive than those with lower
engagement. When your salespeople feel listened to,
they’re more likely to feel valued and accountable for
their successes.
 15

Integrating Sales
Team Tools

Make sales activity transparent using leaderboard

platforms like . 55% of the salespeople
actually prefer competition, incentives or clear
consequences and rewards to motivate the team

Inspire your teams with stories, music playlists (you

can share playlists with your team on ) and
movies.

Visualize your entire team's sales funnel and automate

everyday rep activities, such as routing and lead
generation, with . Streamline your reps’
workflow while increasing accountability as a
manager.
Best Team Management Tips
& Tricks

“This [One on Ones] is valuable time

that can be used to get to know your
team members, understand their
individual strengths and weaknesses,
and give them guidance on how to
advance their careers.”

Colin Nanka,
Senior Director at SalesForce

“A good leader is a person who takes a

little more than his share of the blame
and a little less than his share of the
credit.”

John Maxwell,
Author/ Speaker
Building a Successful
Outside Sales Team

Ch 3: A Guide to Sales Territory

Mapping
 18

Map Out Your

Territories
An effective sales territory plan means
greater productivity and motivation for your
sales team and more profit for your business.

As a manager, create a strategic sales

territory is far from a one-size-fits-all
template. It requires a deep insight into
your customer and sales team.

However, the work required to create the right

sales territory is well worth the effort.
Organizations with an effective territory design
can have a 14% higher sales objective
achievement on average.
 19

Step 1
Analyze Your Customer Data

First, segment your customer data into three tiers:

1. Top-tier customers, who require the least amount

of effort to get a sale.
2. Second-tier customers, who require some work
but are worth the effort.
3. Third-tier customers, who require a lot of work,
maybe more than they are worth.

Analyze what the tier A clients have in common. Once you

identify underlying themes, you can start to create a better
sales territory that can serve their needs.

After proper analysis of your accounts and sales territories,

you can effectively assign the right sales reps and help
them be successful.

Reps that exceed their sales goals clearly have the ability to
land new accounts and keep existing ones. Those that miss
their goals may need additional coaching or to be
reassigned to another territory that may better suit their
skill set.
 20

Step 2
Create a 30-60-90 Plan

A 30-60-90 plan is a strategic plan for how to accomplish

your goals within in the first 30, 60, and 90 days of
acquiring your new sales territory.

30: Create a strategic sales plan with your customer analysis

After analyzing your reps and teams, explicitly and concisely

write out exactly what success would look like in this
territory? What is your most important KPI?

To find specific actions you should take in the first 30 days,

return back to your territory segmentation and ask yourself:

- Is there an untapped market you

can reach?

- How can you leverage each of

your team members?

- Who is your biggest

competitor here?

- Why is your company

the better choice?

- How will you convey this

to your prospects?
 21

Step 2 : Continued
Create a 30-60-90 Plan

60: Put your strategic sales territory plan into action.

Test our your territory plan with as many customers as

possible. Here are some tips on how to efficiently generate
feedback:

- Search for new customers with a mobile lead generator

- Visit more customers with route optimization software

- Take detailed notes for all of your visits. Use surveys,

questionnaires, and interviews to gather feedback.

90: Use sales analytics to optimize your strategy.

Reference your CRM and the customer data you just

collected. Layout and analyze this data in a way that helps
you to make sense of it all, such as graphs.

Be sure to look not just as your main KPI but at all relevant
data points. Review the results with your entire team in
order to see where you did well, where you can improve,
and what was successful.

Then, go beyond what’s currently happening with your

customers and discern what is likely to happen down the
road with predictive analytics and sales forecasting.
 22

Step 3
Track and Manage Sales Territory Performance

To best automate your territory management review,

first, take a day or two to organize your CRM.

When you are adjusting to a new territory, it’s normal

to be overwhelmed and make silly mistakes with your
CRM. Go back through and make sure that you’ve
logged all the relevant information completely and
correctly.

Consider adopting a territory

sales management software
that can integrate with your
CRM and is mobile-compatible.

Ideally, this software should

also provide your reps with
visual tools for mapping
accounts within territories
and optimizing sales routes.
 23

Use Data to Enhance

Your Territories
Over served and underserved territories lead to trouble.
Use KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), qualitative
measures, and the software TerrAlign, a territory
optimization tool, to ensure your territories are balanced.

Pay attention to the cost of managing a particular

account and it's net profit. This will help prioritize which
accounts to visit.

Calculate future sales to determine the efficacy of

territory with quantitative forecasting.

The simplest method is Straight-lined forecasting:

(x) month’s sales x (1 + % rate of sales growth) = next
month’s sales.
Additional Resources

Guides & Ebooks

Step by Step Guide to becoming an
Effective Sales Person

How to Make your Sales team up to

5x more Effective

Calculate Your Sales Team Commission

with our Free Calendar

Why You Need Mapping

A Salesperson’s Guide to Effective

Sales Hunting

A Salesperson’s Guide to Effective

Sales Farming

Sources
Map My Customers Brainshark
Forbes Xactly
Greenhouse Peter Stark