Achieve extraordinary performance through sales team building, teamwork, and motivation.
Salespeople are often not natural team players yet business increasingly demands sales team behaviour. Sales teams that can come together and collaborate when needed can out-sell the big hitters of larger organisations so sales team building remains a vital aspect of development.
Winning high-value business opportunities that have a significant overall impact on customer and supplier success depends on team selling.
Success with prominent opportunities usually depends on a high degree of collaboration amongst the sellers customer-facing staff including board-level executives, salespeople, managers, marketing, and technical people.
Teams of people must come together on a project-by-project basis and quickly establish an efficient and effective collaboration. Teamwork is essential for success with complex sales.
On a smaller scale, in complex selling situations involving technology, software, and know-how-based business solutions, success depends on the cooperation and teamwork of small, self-led teams that form on a deal-by-deal basis.
Team building has never been more important. Customers no longer rely on salespeople for information, early in their buying cycle. Instead, they complete their research online. Engaging with customers before there is any dialogue requires a new set of skills and resources. Sales, marketing, and technical staff must work closer together. Teamwork depends on several independent contributors with different expertise, learning to complement each other in challenging situations.
Important Aspects of Team Building and Team Selling:
Collaboration: Team selling requires a high level of collaboration among team members. Each member should understand their role and how it contributes to the overall goal. They should work together to develop strategies, share information, and support each other throughout the sales process.
Communication: Clear and effective communication is crucial in team selling. Team members need to keep each other updated on their progress, share insights they've gained from interactions with the client, and coordinate their efforts to ensure a consistent message is being delivered.
Diverse Skills and Expertise: One of the main advantages of team selling is the ability to bring together individuals with different skills and areas of expertise. In addition to addressing a wide range of customer needs and questions, it increases the perceived value of the supplier.
Customer Relationships: In team selling, building strong relationships with the customer is a shared responsibility. Each team member must contribute to this by understanding the customer's needs, providing valuable insights, and delivering excellent service.
Leadership: Effective leadership is crucial in team selling. The team leader should be able to coordinate the team's efforts, resolve conflicts, and ensure that the team is working towards its sales goals.
Planning and Strategy: Team selling requires careful planning and strategy. The team needs to develop a strategy for how they will approach the sale. Strategy informs actions. A good strategy makes the right actions obvious and thus helps coordinate the efforts of the team.
Accountability: Each team member should be accountable for their part in the sales process. This can help to ensure that everyone is contributing effectively to the team's efforts.
Training and Development: Ongoing training and development can help to ensure that all team members have the skills and knowledge they need to contribute effectively to the sales process.
Performance Measurement: It's important to have systems in place to measure the performance of the team and its individual members. This can help to identify areas for improvement and ensure that the team is meeting its sales goals.
In the traditional Tuckman model, teams undergo a series of phases labelled 'forming', 'storming', norming, and performing. Awareness training, exercises, and simulations offer effective solutions for accelerating sales team building while avoiding any negative business impact.
If you are looking for sales team building ideas or need to improve sales team collaboration, we can help. Telephone +44 (0)1392 851500. We will be pleased to learn about your needs and talk through the options. Send an email to custserv@salessense.co.uk for a prompt reply or use the contact form here.
