This article – Sell Your Team on Team Selling – from Selling Power’s Pharmaceuticals Newsletter approaches a trend we are seeing in spades these days.
“The greatest benefits from a team selling approach are what I call just-in-time factors,” he says. “That includes just-in-time technical expertise to address complex and/or outside the box inquiries, decision making to solidify the deal without self-imposed company decision making delays, and the confidence gained by being a team, especially from internal support from the potential purchaser or user.”
The “team” typically is composed of a single sales rep along with members from other departments (i.e. engineering, financial, operations, production, etc.). In today’s world, this approach makes sense. The team acts like a mini-extension of the company and places the right people in the midst of the prospect’s decision process.
A critical topic to observe in a team-selling environment:
The person responsible for closing the deal, typically the sales rep, should be the team leader.
I’ve sold in a team sale before and it is key to establish the sales rep as the point person on the call. Think of them as a point guard in basketball – they will distribute the ball to the right person at the right time.
I bring this topic up because part of my experience was selling with an engineer. This is no small feat. Engineers like to solve problems while displaying their knowledge. This approach is death to qualifying an opportunity. The salesperson needs to qualify the needs, budget, decision process and so forth before the solution gets formulated. That process seems to be a difficult delay for many engineers. I learned that you need to do a pre-call strategy meeting and stick to your plan in front of the prospect.