subject: Sales Management Team Building Exercises [print this page] Part of a good sales strategy is making sure that your team is functioning well at all levels. How is the atmosphere at your sales management meetings? Are employees eager to attend your in-house sales training sessions? Or have they become wary? If so, it is important to act before a dark cloud of employee discontent settles over your organization.
Team Building Exercise #1: Go back to the land for a day
If the members of your sales management team are no longer seeing eye to eye, they may be digging in their heels, and becoming entrenched in their individual positions. As you probably learned in your own sales training, sometimes a change of scene is all it takes to change ones perspective.
Arrange for your team to spend a day working in the fields at a local farm. Have them plant garlic or pick strawberries, anything that takes them away from their normal duties of planning and implementing sales strategy.
As the members of your team distance themselves from their sales management roles, they may regain their normal senses of humour, and see new solutions to old problems.
Bonus: In addition to helping your sales management team regain its team spirit, volunteering on a local farm can help your organization fulfill its corporate responsibility policy. Knowing that their organization is giving back to the community may revive your employees commitment to the organization. And remember, a strong team can lead to a strong sales strategy.
Team Building Exercise #2: Work in a soup kitchen
Your team may already be involved in volunteer activities that make use of their sales training (e.g., organizing fundraising events). But sometimes it can be helpful to work together as a team using skills less likely to be used in sales strategy sessions.
Encourage your team to get out of their heads, to break from their normal routine, by volunteering for a shift in a soup kitchen. The next time you meet to plot sales strategy, you may find that positions have softened.
Team Building Exercise #3: Organize a noon-hour talent show
Give the members of your sales management team a chance to lighten the mood themselves. Assign them the task of planning a lunchtime talent show. Tell them that they absolutely must make you laugh. Giving your team a silly goal to rally behind can give them the strength to find common ground when it comes to crafting your sales strategy.
There are lots of ways to put a broken sales management team back together again. But the important thing is to take action.
Visit Fusion Learning for more information on sales training.
