How to Build and Grow a Successful Sales Team

In this guide, we’ll show you how to build a sales team that doesn’t just chase leads, but closes them.

You’ll learn how to design smart processes, use technology the right way, hire and train top talent, and measure success without drowning in meaningless metrics.

Building a Sales Team

To build a strong sales team, you need to start with a clear view of your business strategy, your people, your processes, and your technology. This helps you identify any gaps that could affect growth.

You’ll need to know your company’s vision, mission, goals, and values, and make sure your team is aligned with them. From there, create a realistic growth plan that looks two to five years ahead.

Understand who your customers are, what they expect, and how they move through your sales journey. You should also study your competitors and where your business sits in the market.

Team size will vary depending on your industry—construction companies may only need one or two well-connected salespeople, while tech businesses may need a full outbound team to manage high volumes of leads.

Establish Your Sales Processes First

Before hiring more people or investing in tools, define how your sales process works from start to finish.

Break down each stage and assess what’s working and what’s not. Sit down with your team and map the entire process, then compare your current state to the ideal future state—this is your gap analysis.

A well-documented process helps reduce confusion, allows for better training, and gives your team a repeatable method for success. It should align with how your customers actually make buying decisions, not how you want to sell to them.

Make sure your process gives clear guidance on how to handle leads, what qualifies as a sales opportunity, and how to move deals forward.

As you refine your process, use data from prospecting calls and CRM systems to identify where leads drop off or get stuck.

Set Up a Playbook as a Common Source of Knowledge

A sales playbook gives your team one source of truth for how things are done and what good performance looks like. It includes details on your sales stages, tactics, ideal customer profiles, and meeting agendas.

Involve your team in building it, so it reflects both your goals and their day-to-day experiences. Change Connect often helps companies structure playbooks by pulling together data from workshops, breakout sessions, and real sales conversations. Use the playbook for onboarding, with a clear 30, 60, and 90-day plan to get new hires up to speed.

Assign someone—usually a manager or team lead—to maintain and update it over time. The playbook also supports ongoing coaching by offering a consistent reference point during call reviews or performance check-ins.

Figure Out the Pipeline

You need a well-defined pipeline to manage your sales efforts effectively. Each stage should be clearly outlined, with specific actions and expectations tied to them.

This helps your team understand how to move a deal forward and where to focus their time. Without a clear pipeline, it’s easy to misjudge forecast accuracy, chase weak leads, or let strong ones fall through the cracks.

During our sessions, we usually encourage businesses to assess how sales activities shift from one stage to the next and whether those transitions reflect actual buying behaviours.

Understand Information Given and Information Taken

Sales teams often miss out on good opportunities because they don’t manage the exchange of information well.

At each stage of your sales process, define what your team needs to learn from the customer and what the customer should learn about your product or service. This gives your salespeople a consistent way to qualify leads and address concerns early.

You can also use tools like call recordings and internal notes to assess how effectively your team gathers and shares information.

Better internal communication and clear documentation improve handoffs between marketing and sales, and between sales and customer service. This makes the overall customer experience smoother and more predictable.

Set KPIs and Measure Them

Tracking the right sales metrics helps you measure progress and make informed decisions. Focus on performance-based KPIs that reflect actual results, like conversion rates, deal size, or lead quality—not just activity counts.

Avoid putting too much weight on volume metrics like call numbers, unless they tie directly to closed deals. Some businesses use Net Promoter Scores, but unless you’re focused on customer service, this may not be useful for your sales team.

Instead, look at how your team moves prospects through the pipeline and how efficiently they close deals. Build a system that connects those KPIs to individual and team goals, and review them often to keep everyone on track.

Establish Your Technology Infrastructure

Your sales technology must support your process, not the other way around. Before you commit to new tools, define how your team sells and what systems can help move deals forward.

Many companies try to force-fit software into a broken process, which only adds confusion and extra work. Build a clear roadmap that lays out which technologies you’ll use, when you’ll implement them, and how they’ll integrate with each other.

Include CRM, communication platforms, project management tools, and tracking systems that help you monitor sales conversations and activity.

You’ll also want to plan how your technology evolves over time. It’s not practical to roll everything out at once. Instead, introduce tools in stages—starting with the ones that give you the clearest benefit.

Make sure your tech stack supports collaboration between teams. For example, communication platforms like Microsoft Teams or Google Workspace can help bridge the gap between sales, marketing, and operations.

Use these tools to maintain shared visibility on tasks, performance, and customer touchpoints.

Implement Your CRM

A CRM helps your team stay organized and focused, but only if it’s set up and used properly. Many companies fail with CRM because they rush implementation or treat it as a simple tracking tool.

A CRM should work as a planning and enablement system that helps your team manage their pipelines and stay aligned. Don’t roll it out without a clear strategy or proper training. Your team needs to understand how it works, why it matters, and how it helps them succeed.

Start by choosing a CRM that fits your process—HubSpot, for example, offers tracking for emails, clicks, and behaviours, which can guide follow-ups and identify buyer interest.

Train your team to use it consistently by the 60-day mark and check in to see how well it’s supporting their work. Use follow-ups to reinforce good habits, answer questions, and show your team how to get value from the tool.

If used well, your CRM becomes a shared space for sales planning, coaching, and performance evaluation.

Make Use of Automations

Sales automation saves time and helps your team focus on conversations that matter. You can use automation to handle repetitive tasks like follow-up reminders, lead assignments, and email outreach.

This reduces manual errors and frees your team to spend more time selling. We often see businesses miss these opportunities because they haven’t mapped where automation fits into the sales process.

To use automation well, start by identifying which steps slow your team down. Automate tasks that don’t require human input but are necessary to keep deals moving. Use lead scoring to track buyer engagement and alert reps when a lead becomes more active.

You can also analyse email performance to understand which messages drive clicks and replies.

With the right setup, automation helps you respond faster, qualify leads sooner, and shorten your sales cycle.

Implement AI

AI can help your team improve how they sell, diagnose weak spots, and practice better interactions. You don’t need to overhaul your entire tech stack to start using it. Instead, look for tools that support specific parts of your process.

For example, AI can simulate customer conversations so your team can practise sales scenarios in a low-risk environment. This builds confidence and sharpens messaging.

AI also helps with performance coaching. Some tools analyse talk ratios, sentiment, and responses to pinpoint what’s working on calls and what’s not. Others flag patterns in lead behaviour so you can adjust your follow-ups.

You can use AI to identify gaps in lead quality or conversion without waiting weeks for reports.

Start small, measure results, and expand based on what brings value. Done right, AI becomes a practical extension of your sales strategy—not a gimmick or a distraction.

Building and Managing Your Team

Once your sales process is clear and supported by the right tools, you can begin to grow your team with purpose. Don’t scale just because you want faster results—hire when your process works and your systems can support new people.

Start by aligning every new hire with how your team sells. Train them on your process, your tools, and your customer expectations so they’re not guessing.

This approach builds a consistent, reliable sales culture, which becomes more valuable than short bursts of activity from individual reps.

Your team should grow alongside your ability to support them. If your current group can increase their output through better focus or stronger tools, you may not need more people right away. Invest in training, structure, and coaching before expanding headcount.

When you do hire, plan the onboarding period carefully. Give each new salesperson a clear path for their first 30, 60, and 90 days, and track their progress closely.

Hiring People

A structured hiring process helps you find the right people for your team—not just good talkers or quick closers. Start by defining the skills and behaviours the role needs.

Use a set of behavioural and situational questions in every interview, and score each answer using a clear rubric. When Change Connect hires, we build scorecards for this purpose, helping teams shortlist only the best candidates based on cultural fit and core strengths.

Cast a wide net during the early stages of recruitment, then narrow your focus as you move through interviews. Look for people who match your values and approach—not just their resume.

By the final round, you should have a clear picture of how the candidate will work with your team, handle pressure, and contribute to long-term growth.

Managing Your Team

Sales managers need to focus on enablement, not just oversight. Hold regular team meetings and one-on-ones, but keep agendas tight and relevant.

Avoid the trap of long meetings with no clear outcome. Make each touchpoint useful for both the rep and the manager. Spend time reviewing specific pipeline stages, helping reps overcome barriers, and checking in on morale.

The best managers understand both their product and their people. If you don’t know what your reps are facing in the field, you’ll miss the signals that something isn’t working. Create a feedback loop where reps share what they’re hearing from customers, and use that insight to improve your sales approach.

To lead effectively, you need time. Either reduce your own load or find ways to be more efficient so your reps get the support they need.

Motivating Salespeople

Strong salespeople don’t always respond to the same incentives. Some want to be at the top of the leaderboard. Others value purpose, autonomy, or solving a problem they care about.

Motivation comes from different places, so you need to understand what drives each person on your team. Avoid relying only on commissions or gift cards—these may work short term, but they lose impact quickly.

Ask direct questions about what matters to your reps. Some may want professional growth, others may value flexibility, and others may thrive on recognition. Pay attention to body language and energy levels during meetings.

If someone withdraws, check in. Regular communication builds trust and gives you early warning signs when something is off. Use that trust to help your team reset their goals or workload before performance slips.

Coaching Your Team

Coaching works best when it’s specific and consistent. Set time aside each week to focus on pipeline stages, skill gaps, or call reviews. New hires should spend their first month shadowing experienced reps and their second month working under supervision.

By the third month, they should handle calls on their own, with you still listening in regularly. Each rep needs their own growth plan. Some may struggle with closing, others with discovery or follow-up.

Don’t assume one training session will fix the problem. Build a plan, review progress, and adapt as they improve. The playbook helps here—it gives you and your team a shared reference point during coaching. Use it to diagnose issues, set expectations, and track wins.

Assessing Performance

You can’t improve what you don’t track. Use your CRM and sales data to monitor each rep’s activity and results.

Look beyond volume metrics. Track conversion ratios, deal sizes, and how many qualified opportunities each rep creates. Within 90 days, a new hire should begin creating real opportunities and moving them through the pipeline.

Good performance isn’t just about the number of deals closed—it’s about how those deals move and how consistent the process is. Use check-ins to compare individual results with team benchmarks.

If someone lags behind, look for root causes: poor lead quality, unclear process, or skill gaps.

Accountability comes from shared visibility, not just top-down pressure. When your team knows what’s expected and how they’re doing, they can take ownership of their success.

Mistakes to Avoid

You can prevent most sales issues by avoiding a few common missteps early.

Hiring before building a process - Adding people without a clear process leads to confusion, inconsistency, and wasted time. Set the foundation first—define how your team sells, qualifies leads, and tracks progress.
Letting reps work in silos - When each salesperson uses their own method, your results become unpredictable. Without a shared process, there’s no clear way to coach, measure, or scale performance.
Implementing CRM without training - A CRM is only useful when your team knows how to use it. Poor rollout often leads to inconsistent data, missed follow-ups, and low adoption. Train early and reinforce often.
Running unproductive meetings - Meetings that don’t lead to decisions or actions drain time and morale. Use structured agendas and only include people who need to be there.

Pushing too many leads without improving conversion - Driving more leads into a broken system wastes effort. Focus on understanding why leads don’t convert and fix those issues before scaling up volume.

How to Improve Your Team's Performance

You can raise performance by focusing on what matters and involving your team in the process.

Start with a focused needs assessment - Identify where your team is falling short based on customer expectations, not just internal goals. Look at gaps in skills, tools, or handoffs between teams.
Ask your team what’s not working - The people doing the work usually know where the friction is. Gather feedback through one-on-ones or coaching sessions, then act on what you hear.
Listen to real calls and review activity data - Go beyond reports. Call recordings, CRM notes, and actual conversations reveal where deals go sideways and which behaviours lead to wins.
Use checklists and track goals - Help your team build habits by using simple checklists tied to your process. Track progress weekly and review it together.
Coach to improve conversion, not just activity - If someone is making 100 calls but closing nothing, more calls won’t fix the issue. Focus on what helps them move a lead from interest to action.
Free up time for managers to lead - If your managers are too busy with reports or admin, they can’t support their team. Make their time count by reducing non-essential tasks or redistributing workload.

How to Scale and Grow Your Team

To grow your sales team successfully, you need a clear understanding of who’s already on your team and how they work.

Before adding more people, look at individual skills, motivation levels, and sales performance. Some reps thrive because they connect with your product or mission, while others push themselves to meet internal goals.

Growth becomes sustainable when you build around what drives your team and match those strengths to your sales approach.

Scaling doesn’t mean cloning your top rep or hiring in bulk. It means knowing which roles you need to fill, what gaps exist, and what support structures are already in place. Assess how much research your reps do before outreach, how well they plan calls, and whether they adjust based on the buyer’s needs.

Use that information to build a plan that improves performance and prepares for expansion. When you see steady conversion from your current team and a clear onboarding system in place, that’s the right time to scale.

Is Sales Training Worth It?

Sales training is one of the most direct ways to improve team performance—when done right, it pays for itself. A 5% increase in individual conversion can raise total sales by 50% in a team of ten.

These results won’t come from theory. They come from focused sessions, consistent follow-ups, and practical exercises that reflect your actual sales process.

Training helps reps understand not just the process but how to apply it in live situations. When your team knows how to diagnose a buyer’s needs, handle objections, or qualify leads faster, every part of the sales cycle improves.

It also helps managers spot gaps early and coach more effectively. You’ll see better use of CRM, stronger call execution, and more predictable pipelines.

Invest in training when you’re ready to commit to growth—not just once, but as a consistent part of your team’s development.

Change Connect Can Help You Grow Your Sales Team

Working with Change Connect gives you a practical path to build, fix, or scale your sales team based on real business needs.

We start by assessing your strategy, people, process, and technology to find gaps and missed opportunities. This gives you a clear view of where your sales effort is strong, where it's slowing you down, and what steps to take next.

We don’t offer generic advice—we help you build custom sales playbooks, run training sessions, and improve the systems your team relies on.

If you want a sales team that runs on a clear process, shares the same goals, and delivers consistent results, we can help you build it.