Why Team Selling Works | Sales Strategies

Why does team selling work? 

A client recently reported interesting results to me. They are a manufacturer and they sell through distributors. They have a core sales team of experts that are assigned to all of these distributors. Many of you work in industries like this who help manage the sale, answer technical questions, and act as the industry experts. And of course, the distributors have their own sales team as well.

In particular, they discovered that when the distributor salesperson goes out to sell their product alone, they have a 40 percent closing rate. That’s a pretty good closing rate, but when the distributor sales rep uses the manufacturer sales rep to help them and they sell as a team, they have a 61 percent closing ratio. I was floored. It’s not often that I’m speechless, but that is a huge result/improvement. Who wouldn’t want to move their closing ratio to 61 percent?

3 Reasons Why Team Selling Works 

Here are three reasons why team selling works. One, you’re bringing that industry knowledge—two sets of eyes inside that client site allows you to have a broader conversation. Each of you are seeing different things and able to add more context and value to the conversation.

Two, the client loves it when you bring others with you. They think, for example, “Wow! Colleen thought that I was important enough that they brought the manufacturer with them. This feels good. I want more of this!”

And three, it attracts more people to the meeting. Your buyer doesn’t want to meet with you by themselves. That’s overwhelming. Imagine one person being in the room with four or five salespeople? They want to bring others and when they bring others, you create a more well-rounded conversation, get the buyers in the room, build a critical mass of stakeholders, and close the business faster.