Team Selling

Team selling is a strategy that includes two or more representatives from different company departments that collaborate to close more deals. It helps meet better exchange of business information and agree on price, terms, and conditions.

Why do companies use team selling?

Ensuring an easy buying process for your customers can distinguish your company from the increasing number of competitors. Team selling is one of the ways to do it. The method includes using the necessary skills of a cross-functional sales team to accurately address clients’ concerns and pain points.

This sales strategy allows you to obtain better insight into your customers’ unique needs and expectations since you have experts in sales and marketing who possess the necessary skills. Besides, your team can see the selling process from multiple perspectives.

It helps improve buyer experience and sales performance of your company, speed up problem-solving, etc. These are not all the benefits of this sales strategy. Let’s walk you through the advantages and disadvantages of team selling in more detail.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Team Selling

Team selling has the following pros:

• helps strengthen the relationships between your company’s members;
• increases customer engagement;
• ensures that your company understands your buyers’ concerns and expectations;
• provides answers to customers’ questions from specialists in different fields;
• distinguishes your firm among competitors;
• allows reps from different company departments to cooperate to improve sales performance;
• ensures that buyers’ needs are met;
• improves buying experience;
• helps increase conversions.

However, this sales strategy also has some cons:

• since every department has its terminology and a way of conducting business, their communication can sometimes be difficult;
• you can miss some of your customers’ requirements.

This sales strategy brings a lot of benefits to your business, but some entrepreneurs still wonder whether individual selling is better. We’ve prepared several distinctive features that help differentiate the two strategies.

Team Selling vs. Individual Selling

Team selling is a comprehensive strategy that helps companies handle and close more complex deals. It requires a cross-functional team that involves reps from different departments such as marketing, sales, and customer service that cooperate throughout the sales cycle.

This sales approach helps your company unleash your team’s knowledge, improve the buying experience, solve problems quickly, and increase conversions. It brings many advantages for the company, including key insights on the performance your team can give. This information allows you to improve the experience for your prospects.

Individual selling is a sales strategy that entails one salesperson using special skills and abilities to warm up a lead and close a deal. This strategy is considered traditional since a seller has to meet customers face-to-face, which requires a lot of time and investments.

A salesperson needs to highlight all the features and advantages of their product to make a customer believe that it can add value and make this person purchase. Some companies use individual selling to spread brand awareness and do it in two ways: retail and direct-to-consumer channels.

Now that you know the difference between the two strategies, it’s time to learn how to improve your team selling.

Several specialists involved in the selling process can significantly improve your sales performance. We’ve prepared some essential tips for you to consider.

1. Select people with the necessary skills and knowledge. As you build a sales team for your company, ensure that the people you choose are a good fit in terms of skills, experience, and personality.
2. Divide tasks among your team members. If you want your business to be effective, you should have a deliberate sales structure. Therefore, before collaborating on a deal, carefully delegate the responsibilities to ensure a smoother sales process.
3. Set a clear reward system. In team selling, the contribution of each member of a team is less clear than in individual selling, and it can be challenging to create a reward system to appreciate those who show excellent results in sales. However, this plan will perform excellently if you want to motivate your sales reps.
4. Consider account maps. As we’ve mentioned before, this sales strategy is mainly used to handle and close complex deals that involve many moving parts and players, which is usually challenging. Creating account maps allows you to visualize your accounts for each customer and avoid complications. With the help of this method, you can identify gaps, obtain a clearer picture of each account, and avoid duplicating.
5. Conduct meetings with your sales team. Regular meetings are an effective way to establish contact between your reps. They should also understand how important they are to your company.
6. Stay a step ahead. Control the performance of your sales team to avoid unpleasant surprises in metrics and your business in general. Set bigger goals for your high-performers to keep improving their professional skills. Let your team know that you believe in their success.

To conclude, team selling is especially effective in complex deals. With a team of professionals, your company can easily manage and close a lot of deals. Many businesses have already implemented this strategy and reap the benefits it brings.

Resources:

1. This article covers the term, reasons to try team selling, and how to implement team selling.
2. This article covers the term and provides six secrets about the art of team selling.

Last Updated: 02.07.2024