I’ve been working with organizations to help them understand what their internal best practices are for selling and what behaviours are really driving top performance. And one of the central themes being noted by top performers across multiple organizations is team selling.
Top Performers Are Team Sellers
Top performers trust other people in the organization to help them manage and sell to customers. Bottom performers, on the other hand, tend to hold on to all of their contacts and typically say, “No one can contact this customer,” “I’m the only one who can go in there,” or “I’m the only one they can talk to.” The best sellers understand that their role is centered around relationship management. While they own responsibility for the customer, they require expertise other than their own to help bring customers onboard and to keep the customers happy. Those team members might be engineers, implementation specialists, outsiders, accounts payable coordinators, customer service reps, delivery people, or it could be the president of the company. Whoever it is, they form these teams to help bring customers onboard.
Why Team Selling Works
Team selling works and is incredibly effective for a number reasons. The customer will feel special because of all the attention given to him or her; the organization will be able to dig deeper into the true needs and wants of that customer because they have multiple sets of eyes; and it will allow that salesperson, who owns the relationship, to sit back and watch the relationship from a multitude of angles, ensuring they can insert themselves quickly if something goes wrong.
Be An “Insider Seller”
Team selling embraces what I call, “insider selling.” These days, we don’t want to be a partner because it presupposes that you are on the outside. When you have multiple relationships that you trust inside your organization when it comes to selling, you are now truly an “insider.” You have so many eyes and ears on the ground that it’s impossible for you to miss something. It also makes customer retention and growth even more likely.
this is so True!! Came at a time when one of our suppliers has went around us to sell direct thinking we aren’t getting “Enough” of the sales dollars out of a customer.
I shared this with him.
[…] one thing I’ve noticed with organizations and people who are really good at bringing new business: they are good at operationalizing value. […]