Team Work And The Sales Force

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. Particularly where large clients are involved, any approach rather than a team work selling approach is unthinkable. Sales people who manage key accounts have to interact with different client contacts in a number 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 organisations surveyed are starting to work in permanent teams with 68% also introducing project teams working for a limited duration on a project. The organisations surveyed described closer client relations, higher efficiency and more sophisticated project management as arguments to support the introduction of a sales team approach.

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.

Having complimentary skill sets within the team was also considered as very important. Furthermore, it was absolutely essential that these skills should refer to both technical and social competence skills.

The survey also demonstrated that teams must be of manageable size for team work effectiveness. In the organisations surveyed the average number of people in a permanent team 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. The sales manager of a pharmaceutical products manufacturer says "Any manager who puts togehter a team without ensuring that it has a clear function and a set goal to achieve will not succeed".

Despite this fact, about 30% of those surveyed complained of a lack of active team management by their line management. 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.

In spite of the problems that are associated with introducing team work to the sales force, the positive experiences with sales teams usually are greater than 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.

by: Richard Stone

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