Innovative Team Selling

How to Leverage Your Resources and Make Team Selling Work

Eric Baron

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781118502259
• eBook ISBN: 9781118646366
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

Sales teams have the potential to do great work.

Most sales teams do not devote enough energy to meeting dynamics and process awareness. The skills related to this are critical components of effective teamwork, collaboration and innovation, both internally and externally. Innovative Team Selling places the focus squarely on what will actually make team selling work within organizations large and small. It outlines how to help your teams master new skills in five specific categories: interpersonal, communication, presentation, problem solving, and facilitation. Author Eric Baron also explores the challenging issue of leveraging resources to develop innovative solutions for clients in order to compete effectively in a globalized economy.

• Offers actionable strategies and techniques to improve collaboration, innovation and team processes
• Demonstrates how to put the right members on the sales call, and how to leverage their expertise before, during and after the call
• Explores in depth how teams can work effectively on a day-day-day basis to outperform their competition
• Author Eric Baron is founder of The Baron Group and is a highly acclaimed public speaker and has spoken to hundreds of organizations, trade associations and industry groups throughout his career; he is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School where he teaches his very popular course, Entrepreneurial Selling Skills to second year MBAs

Innovative Team Selling shows you how to lead and participate in teams that work together effectively; strategize prior to the client meetings; make successful team sales calls; and debrief honestly to determine how to learn and grow from the experience.

1

The Celebration, or Why We Need Sales Teams

It was not your typical business dinner. The group was a bit more jubilant, bordering on being rowdy. They had just arrived and you could immediately sense that unlike similar events, the evening was getting off to a fast start. Usually the excitement builds at these kinds of dinners, but not tonight. The high-fives and fist pumps were flying around the room before people took off their coats.

Sam Jamison, the sales professional and team leader who had arranged for the team to celebrate their recent success, was glad he had requested a private room. He had a feeling that things could get noisy as the evening moved on. And why not? This was their evening. They earned it.

The group looked pretty much like any group of business people that you'd see in a restaurant on a weekday night. Whether it's an off-site, a national meeting, or just a group traveling together, dinner is usually part of the agenda. And like any team, there were those who were thrilled to be there, those who attended a bit reluctantly, and the majority who accepted these kinds of events for what they were and did what they could to make it a fun evening. But again, this particular group seemed different.

Like any of these dinners, it was another night away from home for those who attended. Sam knew that. So when he sent out the invitations, he was very careful to position this as a celebration. Because that is precisely what it was.

Dinner had just been ordered when Sam tapped his wine glass a few times with his spoon in an effort to quiet the group down so he could make a few opening remarks. He had been thinking about this moment from the day he received that memorable phone call informing him that they had won the contract. He usually liked to speak extemporaneously at times like these, but from the minute he heard the good news, he knew that this deserved a bit more thought. After all, how often do you hear a client say “Congratulations, Sam! You won the business. And it wasn't even close!”?

As he tapped on his glass for the third time, he was amused at the difficulty he was encountering in trying to get this group to give him attention. They were downright giddy. And it was still quite early in the evening. “Okay, here we go,” chortled Frank Prince, the always-upbeat R&D manager. “I learned a long time ago that there is no such thing as a free lunch, so I guess we'll have to listen to Sam.” The group gave Frank a polite chuckle, and a few people raised their eyebrows, but it did quiet them down. And finally Sam was able to share his prepared remarks.

Surprisingly, in light of the time he put into preparing what he would say, he started with one of those terribly overused clichés: “I could not have possibly accomplished this without you.” Nobody said anything, but you could see that in spite of those somewhat patronizing words, he had finally gotten the group to listen. But then he immediately corrected himself. “Let me say that a bit differently. We never could have done this without each other.” That got everyone's attention.

He continued, “Everyone in this room, and I mean everybody, as well as the few members of our team who couldn't make it tonight, played a significant role in our winning this business. That's what makes this so special. It's not just the size of the contract we won, it's what we did together to win it.” That's when even the more skeptical members of the team finally tuned in.

But Sam was far from being through. “You know as well as I do that the odds were stacked against us. But we worked together and developed not only what proved to be an incredible proposal, but a presentation that blew the clients out of the water. We won the business hands down. And that's why we are here tonight celebrating this mind-boggling accomplishment.” The group spontaneously gave him an enthusiastic round of applause.

He then did something quite unusual. He asked each person to look around the room and acknowledge the other members of the team. “Just take a minute and look at your colleagues,” he said a bit sheepishly. “Don't say anything. Just look around and see who we are.” So they did. It felt a bit awkward, even contrived, and a few people found themselves looking at their shoes as opposed to their colleagues, but most of them appreciated what Sam was trying to do.

He wanted everyone to realize what an incredible team effort this was, and he wanted each of them to enjoy every minute of this very special evening. “I'm sure as you looked at each other you realized once again how talented a group we are,” he said. He wasn't worried about overdoing it as he praised the team. He just wanted them to know how much he appreciated each and every one of them.

He then said a few words about each member of the team. He kept his comments brief, but was careful to include each person, even those who could not attend. He talked about how Francine from Marketing provided the team with incredible data about the competitive landscape. He credited Tony from Distribution for his thoughtful comments at the presentation about “just-in-time inventory.” He recognized how articulately Helen from IT explained how the transition would be seamless if we were to win the business.

When he sensed the group was getting a bit antsy, he kidded Joe from Contracts about his tolerance and self-restraint when he had to deal with the prospective client's Procurement Group. He told a funny anecdote about how Jerry from Manufacturing reworked his slides six times before he felt comfortable talking about his quality standards. He enthusiastically recalled how Lesley from Customer Service triggered the big idea that he truly believed made the difference in their winning the business. The team applauded enthusiastically at that particular remark, and Joe said, “Let's drink to that.” Which they did, and after lots of clinking of glasses, Frank, who would be the first to admit that he was incorrigible, said, “What is this, a wedding or a business dinner?” He just couldn't help himself and the group appreciated it.

Sam realized it was time to wind down, but he quickly referenced the brilliant benchmarking work that Valerie from Market Research had done to help them price their recommendation. And he poked fun at Charlie from Operations about how he had never seen him in a suit and tie prior to the Finalist Presentation. That got the best laugh of the night.

He mentioned every member of the team, including his Sales Manager and his Sales Assistant, and concluded his remarks with the same message that he used to begin: “We could never have done this alone. Without everyone's contribution this never would have happened.” And then it was time to stop, particularly since Frank said, “Enough already, let's eat.”

It was a great moment. Some of our best days in business are when we win big jobs. This was the third biggest contract that Sam's company was ever awarded. To win it required many players and many points of view. Many functions were involved. The entire team contributed to the research, the planning, the strategy sessions, the development of the proposal, and of course the Finalist Presentation. They did a fabulous job and tonight they were celebrating what they had accomplished. It was the final chapter of a wonderful story.

They met as an entire team regularly, but sometimes they worked in sub- groups. They communicated day in and day out. Each team member submitted status reports on a regular basis. They diligently reviewed and revised their proposal over and over. They rehearsed their presentation several times. As a result, they won the business. And as the client said when he told Sam that they had been selected, “It wasn't even close.”

That is what team selling is all about. When teams understand and leverage their expertise, they can do extraordinary things. When they allow themselves to tap into their creative potential across functions, and develop innovative solutions for their customers, they can differentiate themselves in ways that are hard to match. Innovative Team Selling presents an approach that every organization, regardless of its size, structure, and offerings, can adapt to and apply every day. And it is something every company must take seriously.

Teams have the ability to get things done efficiently, quickly, and collaboratively. And they can do this extremely well. They just need to learn how to apply these basic, but critically important and surprisingly sophisticated, concepts:

• How to conduct productive internal meetings.
• How to make outstanding team presentations.
• How to plan and coordinate the process on a day-to-day basis.

This is the three-legged stool upon which team selling sits. If sales teams effectively perform these critical activities, they will outperform their competition every time.

Why Sales Teams?

There are many questions you may be asking, the first of which is why? Why do we need sales teams? Can't salespeople just get the help they need and use their resources without having to involve so many people in the process? Isn't this in some ways counterproductive? Do we really want to risk complicating the process with so many personalities and so many conflicting points of view? In today's fast moving high tech world, can't we do all this stuff electronically? Don't other functions have enough to do? Since most meetings are a waste of time anyway, will this really help?

These are certainly reasonable questions to ask, even if they are somewhat challenging. We look forward to answering them. And our answers might come across as somewhat steadfast. That's because we are convinced that teams outperform individuals. Many studies, including what the Boston Globe described in 2010 as “a striking study by the MIT Sloan School of Management professor shows that teams of people display a collective intelligence that has surprisingly little to do with the intelligence of the team's individual members.”¹ The article further states, “Intuitively we still attribute too much to individuals and not enough to groups.” This is interesting stuff. In today's complex world, nobody has the ability to do it all by him or herself. The generalist, that talented individual who could do it all, is history.

Leveraging Sales Teams

The sales organization has a very specific role in any business. They are charged with bringing in new business, while maintaining and building existing relationships. If that oversimplifies the role of this critical function, we apologize. But that's what they do. They know that it's all about the customer. Sales has the responsibility of constantly determining and demonstrating their understanding of the customer's situation, and explaining what they can do to satisfy their requirements and add value. But to compete today, Sales must know how to take advantage of the depth of their organizations. They simply have no choice.

Virtually any sales organization will be more successful if they learn how to leverage their resources and tap into their collective expertise. To do this, they must conduct effective meetings that address business opportunities. When team members have the opportunity to get together to collaborate, speculate, and innovate, they can accomplish great things. If they can figure out how to corral those resources, they'll inevitably derive innovative solutions that will help differentiate themselves from virtually everyone else.

At the same time, they need to explain articulately to clients and prospects how well they understand their needs and objectives. This is perhaps the single most important thing that any sales professional or any sales team must do. Few actually know how to do this. And finally, they must clearly demonstrate how their products, services, and ideas can help their customers accomplish their objectives, satisfy their needs, and take advantage of their opportunities.

These are the keys to success in sales, more so today than ever before. You need to understand the clients' needs, use your resources to derive innovative solutions, and demonstrate to those clients how you are different from your competitors. It all comes down to these three challenges. Addressing them is mandatory in today's extremely competitive global environment. Anything less will fall short. And sales teams can play a major role in making this happen.

Now, much of what appears above is pretty basic stuff that you probably heard the first time you attended a basic sales training program. Most salespeople know that they need to figure out their customer's needs, come up with good solutions, and explain the solutions in ways that the customer can understand. No big deal. What you might not know, however, is how much better you can do this if you leverage your resources, particularly when you tap into different functions throughout the organization. And though it may seem obvious, this rarely happens.

Most organizations simply do not take advantage of their collective expertise. Whether it's because of the silo mentality conundrum, the structure of the organization, the way salespeople go about their business, the lack of leadership, or even compensation structures, team selling still hasn't become totally embraced by most sales organizations. They talk about it often; they just don't do it. The reality is that innovative team selling is the exception, not the rule. That is nothing short of a missed opportunity—a huge missed opportunity.

Let's go back to that celebration for a minute. Sam wasn't just blowing smoke. He didn't plan this celebration so that he could shine in front of his colleagues and managers. He was recognizing the team for what they had done. He knew better than anyone else how critical each of them was in winning the business.

From the time the RFP was received he knew he could not do this alone. In fact, his immediate instinct was to decline the opportunity because it appeared to be too big for his company. He came very close to not responding. A few of the people he discussed it with, including his manager, were quite skeptical about their ability to compete. When he first read that 32-page document, he was surprised at the anxiety he experienced. He usually embraced these kinds of opportunities with heartfelt enthusiasm. But not this time. His initial reaction was that he couldn't see how they could pull this off.

But Sam was not one to walk away from a big deal. So, consistent with his company's policy, he put together an internal proposal requesting approval to move forward and invest the time and money required. Once he received the go-ahead, he formed what Steve Waterhouse would call a “vertical team” in his thoughtful book, The Team Selling Solution.² The team would work together for this one particular project. It was Sam's responsibility to sign them up, get their commitment, and utilize them throughout the process.

The ball was in his court and he knew he would do everything he could to make it to the finals. He kept telling everybody, “It's just like the playoffs in any sport. Once you get there you have a chance.” He knew that if they could put together a proposal that demonstrated to the prospective customer their creativity, their innovative approach, and the things they could do that were unique, they would have a shot at winning the business.

And that's precisely what he did. As soon as he received approval, he sat down with selected resources and scoped out their response to the RFP. They spent significant time doing this and found themselves doing some thoughtful problem solving. He assigned different people to contribute to specific sections. He clarified everyone's role and got the buy-in he needed. He verbalized his expectations and gave others the opportunity to do the same.

As the proposal was developed, he managed the process diligently, and w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for Innovative Team Selling
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Celebration, or Why We Need Sales Teams
• Chapter 2: Meetings, Bloody Meetings
• Chapter 3: Easy to Say; Hard to Do . . . Very Hard
• Chapter 4: So Who Does What and When?
• Chapter 5: Now, Let's Get Creative
• Chapter 6: Adding Structure to the Process
• Chapter 7: Getting Our Acts Together
• Chapter 8: It's All About Connecting
• Chapter 9: You Mean We Have to Sell, Too?
• Chapter 10: Positioning . . . A Key Ingredient in Understanding Needs
• Chapter 11: Just One More Question (or Ten), If You Will, Please
• Chapter 12: Are They Sales Teams or Needs Development Teams?
• Chapter 13: Is Anybody Listening?
• Chapter 14: The Big Day
• Chapter 15: Okay, So How Do We Do All That?
• Chapter 16: What Do You Mean You Don't Like It?
• Chapter 17: Bringing Home the Bacon
• Chapter 18: One Last Time: It's All About Differentiation
• About the Author
• About the Baron Group
• Acknowledgments
• Index