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If your salespeople are informally operating within teams, take steps to formalise team structures, promote those salespeople to managers, give them the tools and training they need to operate effectively as leaders and watch you sales skyrocket!
Many companies believe their salespeople operate as individuals, lone rangers on a mission to meet targets without help or assistance. The reality however is that if salespeople rely on the expertise of even one other person to make a sale they are selling as part of a team. All that has to happen is that the company and the salesperson has to realise that they are in a team…
- For starters, salespeople must understand that their role in a team is that of leader and coordinator, not lone-ranger / superstar. It’s an informal management position. Salespeople typically see themselves as individuals because they have individual targets to meet, are measured as individuals and tend to forget about the people who they need as part of the sale. So make them aware of this
- Identifying those people is the first step in successful team selling. At the outset of a sale, sales executives should be taught to identify who they’ll need on their team throughout the selling process, regardless of whether individual team members participate for an hour, a day or the majority of the time on the sale
- Next plan how salespeople are going to communicate with their team members. This includes regular updates on the sale, running meetings, coordinating customer presentations and meetings and marshalling the company resources required to address the customer’s needs. It also includes briefing those accompanying the sales executive to see the customer, prior to the meeting.
Managing a team is a tough, complex job that not right for every salesperson. Add multiple sales with multiple team members, in multiple stages of progress, and it’s easy to see why companies need to carefully choose the executives who take on a role in team selling. Look for those salespeople who are willing to collaborate. Since salespeople naturally operate as individuals, they have a tendency not to reach out, for help, believing that it might show weak to rely on someone else.
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