Is everyone in your Sales Team pulling in the same direction?

June 2, 2011 - PRLog -- Traditionally the active pursuit of teamwork in the sales force has not been considered a primary concern of sales managers, and as such teamwork is not a subject given much coverage on sales management training programmes. Rather the development of the “lone wolf” sales person has been encouraged. However, things are changing. Products are too complex and customer expectations too high for a single sales person to be able to present solutions to all the problems. Thus, the encouragement of teamwork in the sales team is becoming a hot topic in sales management.

In the future it will only be through teams that successful sales strategies can become reality. Especially when looking after large customers, anything other than team selling is almost unthinkable. Key Account Managers have to deal with different contact partners in a variety of roles – such as Buying, Planning, Control – and they have to think their way into these people’s subject areas. Only the specialisations of individual team members mean that these contact partners have the opportunity to exchange ideas with colleagues who have specific knowledge and experience.

The trend towards team selling is backed up by the results of a study in which 120 managers from sales, marketing and personnel were surveyed. 78% of the businesses surveyed are beginning to work in permanent teams, 68% are introducing (in addition) project teams of limited duration. According to the businesses surveyed, the arguments in support of introduction of sales teams are closer customer relations, increased efficiency and increasingly sophisticated project organisation.

In the opinions of those surveyed, the most important indicators of success were close co-operation / intensive exchange of ideas in teams, high team goals and collective responsibility. However, what was decisive is for the team to be actively involved in the definition of its goal and to formulate its own goals as precisely as possible. It is only in doing this that a definite team function that has a motivating effect was achieved.

It was also considered very important that team members should have skills which complement each other. Furthermore, it was absolutely essential that these skills should refer to both technical and social competence skills.

Another significant factor the survey revealed was that teams should be of a manageable size. Among the companies surveyed the average number of people in permanent teams was 6.6 employees. And the sales project team, at an average of 6.1 members, was not significantly smaller.

It should be obvious to everyone who has ever worked as part of a team that problems go hand in hand with team work. “Anyone who puts together a team without ensuring that it has a clear function and a set goal to achieve, will not succeed”, warns the manager of a pharmaceutical products manufacturer.

Nonetheless, around 30% of those surveyed bemoaned a lack of team management by their managers. Points such as time wasted in the consultation process, tendency to compromise and lack of competence in realising sales strategies were also criticised. The criticism shows how important it is to provide team work training not only for the team members but also management training in relevant team building skills for the managers before the team is put into place.

Despite the problems associated with introducing teamwork in to the sales process the positive experiences with sales teams generally outweigh the negative ones. An average of 66% of those surveyed had good to very good experiences with permanent teams and the verdict on project teams was even better, being some 5% above this. These positive experiences reported by sales teams show that both the company and the individual team members really benefit from good teamwork and all sales managers should review their own management training to ensure they have the necessary team building skills in place.

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