Second in a series on Sales & Marketing Integration…

Whether your organization operates in a B2C or B2B environment, whether your company is large or small, or whether you sell products or services, your salespeople are facing exponential change in today’s competitive marketplace.

Salespeople have traditionally had a more tactical focus. However, the pace of change has ratcheted up sales responsibilities. Industry consolidation and globalization have provided customers with greater leverage. This has changed our once straight-forward local relationships to national or international ones, cost us margin points by impacting our pricing strategies, and caused us to continuously seek clarity on evolving customer needs. The sales role has definitely become more challenging … balancing the art of relationship management across far more complex customers.

JOB 1 TODAY IS MANAGING CHANGE!

Are you and your management team helping sales deal with that changing customer?

Let’s talk about TEAM SELLING.

Team Selling is the strategy of using teams of people from various departments to engage the customer. There are several advantages to Team Selling…

  • Strengthens relationships and builds partnerships, particularly at the senior level, through multiple points of collaboration;
  • Engages your customer along a range of dimensions, rather than just on price and terms alone;
  • Provides expert answers to customer questions from your specialists in marketing, technical, finance, etc.;
  • Builds customer satisfaction through speed of response;
  • Differentiates your company from competition, and provides the customer with a greater comfort level; and
  • Ensures you have a thorough understanding of customer expectations.

 

The Top 5 considerations before deploying Team Selling include:

1.  Have a plan – Know how Team Selling will help you deliver your company’s future, and what your objectives and KPI’s are;

2.  Ensure your targeted customers are open to the idea;

3.  Choose team members carefully, looking for fit and complementary skills;

4.  Support the salesperson in their new role as (cross-functional) Team Leader;

5.  Have an engagement plan and process – Ensure everyone on the team is briefed about the customer, that they understand the objectives by customer, their individual roles and responsibilities, any issues to be aware of, and that pre meeting briefings and post meeting analyses take place.

Team Selling unquestionably delivers benefits to both buyer and seller.  However, it is usually an approach best suited to strategic or investment customers.

In summary, our salespeople are managing massive change at customer level. Let’s ensure we have strategies, like Team Selling, in place to drive results including increased customer satisfaction.

By the way, if you have an extra 5 minutes, watch this video on the pace of change….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmwwrGV_aiE

If you are interested in discussing how these issues may be challenging your organization, please contact Boardroom Metrics, Email: [email protected]