CEOs and Presidents of small and mid-size companies are continuously trying to grow sales and build the ultimate sales team. CEO Advisor, Inc. specializes in sales, sales strategy, sales management and building effective sales teams.

A primary goal of every company should be to increase sales and to grow at or above your industry's growth rate. This will result in both increased profit and value in your business.

Here are five key factors and best practices in sales for achieving sales growth in 2014:

Set Goals to Increase Your Sales
Most CEOs insist on sales goals in numbers of deals and dollars, but few hold salespeople accountable for 1) Dials and live contacts per day, 2) Sales appointments per week and month, 3) Opportunities created in your CRM software per week and month, as well as, 4) Sales in dollars per month, quarter and year and other critical sales metrics. Put your sales goals in writing and review them with your sales team monthly. Consistently conduct weekly sales meetings and make your sales goals a healthy competition tied directly to sales compensation. By creating urgency and clearly articulating all of your sales goals, your sales productivity will increase and sales cycles will be reduced resulting in higher sales and met sales goals.

Effective Sales Compensation Plan
Incentivizing your salespeople properly with the right balance of base salary or draw, commissions and bonuses to create added urgency is key to a hungry, productive sales team. Provide the right training, leadership, recognition for achieving goals coupled with the right sales compensation plan, and your sales activity, opportunities and closed deals will multiply.

Hire Closers
Hiring the right salespeople who are hunters, self-motivated, hungry, trainable, professional and most of all closers is critical to your company's success. You will meet your sales goals with a strong sales strategy and sales team that is focused on closing sales timely. Deal killers rarely close and insist on addressing every want and need of the prospects until their deals eventually die out. Hire effectively and achieve your sales growth targets. CEO Advisor has a 10-step process to hire salespeople that generates a high return on your investment. Gaining specialized expertise in the hiring of salespeople is critical to your success.

Get Involved to Generate Results
Motivating your sales team can be your secret sauce. Leadership is a powerful motivator to your sales team. Get involved by attending a discovery sales meeting and a proposal presentation/closing meeting with each salesperson this quarter. Visit your three largest customers this quarter and bring your newest salesperson along to demonstrate the ability to generate new sales opportunities. Sales management and leadership instills loyalty and hard work, and ensures that your sales team is running optimally to achieve your goals.

Provide One-to-One or Sales Team Training
Engage with a professional business advisor to assess your sales strategy and sales process and implement best practices with you and your salespeople. Have the advisor review and document the sales process, evaluate the prospects and sales pipeline in your CRM, review your sales goals, compensation plan, lead generation, reseller channels, sales management, sales meetings and sales productivity. This will generate a tremendous return on your investment - more than most anything you can do at your own company - and then implement sales training for the sales team to refine and improve their sales techniques, productivity, focus, closing ratio and results.

CEO Advisor, Inc. provides sales consulting and training that can forever improve the results of your sales team, positively impacting sales, margins and profits for you and your company. Contact Mark Hartsell, MBA, CEO of CEO Advisor, Inc. today for a free consultation at (949) 629-2520, by email at MHartsell@CEOAdvisor.com or visit www.CEOAdvisor.com for more information.