According to Sales Insights Lab, 41.2% of sales reps said their phone is the most effective sales tool at their disposal. But, there is no ‘I’ in sales, right? Yes, being a solo seller is more challenging, especially when competitors around look the same.
The ideal solution is to bring specific people with relevant skills and expertise for maintaining momentum into the not-so-smooth sales cycle. For a salesperson to be fully independent is near to impossible in SaaS-based businesses.
What is Team Selling
Team selling refers to the sales practice that involves more than 2 members of a company working with each other to get more business. For instance, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Support can come together to close a big deal. Indeed, team selling is a primary aspect of account-based sales.
According to Copper Chronicles, “Team selling has been shown to increase the likelihood of closing a deal by 258% and is particularly effective for enterprise-level sales.”
This is how a team works together in the sales cycle to achieve the common goal:
- A leading sales rep to handle all major yet difficult calls
- An engineer to work on a custom demo
- A manager to setup late-stage meetings with decision-makers of the company
Therefore, whenever a sales cycle seems a little out of place, team selling is a great way to make things easier and smoother again.
The Importance Of Team Selling
Any company that comes with a tactical sales strategy must have its own reasons. So, let’s discuss those so you employ the culture of team-based selling:
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Effective Problem Solving
Running sales becomes much more convenient when you have proactive problem solvers on board. Certainly, every team member’s efforts are combined, it is easier to solve the riddle quickly and achieve team goals more efficiently.
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Improve your Sales Reach
Each and every team member comes with their own skill set and has the right potential to contribute to any issue that may crop up during the sales process. These sales reps will contribute to providing the ideal solution.
As the team selling approach multiplies the attention given to a particular problem, it accelerates the sales process.
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Add to your Organization’s Strength
Since the client’s pain points are addressed properly, the combined efforts of team members hit the sales targets on time. As clients get the supreme level of service from sales reps, they will eventually be pleased which contributes to the credibility of the organization.
How To Implement Team Selling?
There are two ways through which you can execute the team selling model. Let’s discuss them in detail:
- As an Individual Contributor: You can start by building a good rapport with co-workers of other departments. Request them to join calls that fall into their expertise and skills. However, before the call, give them a context on the scenario and the particular aspects you’d like them to cover during the call.
Here is a handy checklist to get started:
- What topics are to be covered during the call?
- In which areas, you’d like your teammate to contribute?
- Who are our clients and what is their company name and roles?
- In which stage are they in the decision-making process?
- As a Sales Leader: You know your business better so you can analyze this as per the case. Be sure to pay everyone involved in completing the sales process via incentive mode. Also, there are a few important things that every member need to be aware of:
- Set your expectations as to what is required from both the parties – customer and teammate. Also, the sales rep needs to explain the customer onboarding process as well.
- Take the prospect through the platform with the goal of showing the UI interface and its intuitiveness.
Last but not the least, always remember to document the entire sales process in an excel sheet so it can be easily tracked and scaled in the future.
7 Tips For Team Selling to Close The Hardest Deals
Finally, here comes the moment when we will be revealing some of the untold and unshared tips that help you bag big wins:
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Qualify your Leads
First, it is essential to qualify your leads and identify where a team-based selling approach would likely be effective. Usually, team selling works most effectively for deals that range between 5x-10x your average deal size. Here, the burden-sharing works great and so, team selling becomes a wonderful option.
For deals between $5k-$20K, you may not require a team selling approach as a solo rep would easily be able to handle the prospect and its peculiar requirements. But, for deals up to $50k you may add a few more resources that help to close the deals right.
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Race to the Bottom
No doubt, personal network connections act as a stepping stone to build a solid rapport. For example; You loop in a teach lead on a call with your prospect’s tech lead. Of course, they share like-minded interests and share information at ease with each other which further solidifies the professional relationship.
The same approach you’d need within your sales team members. When responsibilities are shared mutually between the teammates instead of one rep handling it all, it sort of defines your team personality. So, once the skills are matched between team members, have them work with each other. Such harmonious bonding would help them survive through the competitive sales environment.
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Deploy Strategically
Managers, sales reps, and executives can take center stage at different stages of the sales cycle. So, deploying strategically always works.
The team member with the biggest impact would be your primary sales rep who would be able to determine which decision-maker from the prospect side would join the call. Based on that, you would plan your next move.
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Establish Clear Goals
Team selling may backfire your efforts if team members don’t know how to make an impact. So, be sure to rehearse the sale script properly and also that each team member is familiar with the demo technology to be used during the call.
Certainly, knowledge sharing is of vital importance in order to crack the deal and win some brownie points in the presence of a sales leader.
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Understand Your Target
Let your marketing team identify the decision-makers at your target firm. Team selling enables you to engage tech executives as well as managers.
The more people you can persuade of your product worth, the better chance you’ll have on your way to close the deal right.
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Leverage Your Tech Stack
How well your sales process works depends on how well put together your team is. So, to stay on the top, leverage the proficiency of your tech stack.
For instance, a conversational intelligence platform will keep track of your calls and optimize your team’s sales performance as well. Certainly, the right use of stack can make organizational level sales easier on the entire team.
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Fair Rewards
One of the foremost challenges of a team-based sales structure is determining the compensation system. Because, in team selling, the contribution of members is a little less clear so it requires a lot of calculation to get the reward system right to motivate the team effectively.
Without an ideal compensation system in place, your team won’t have any motivating force to work against.
When Should you Use Team Selling?
It is pretty simple. When it seems your account is too big or complex for a sales rep to manage it on its own, then it’s time for other teammates to involve tech professionals, support, etc.
Such account-based sales not just increase the chances of you winning the deal but also build good relationships with the customer. Especially in SaaS-based enterprises, they require more decision-makers to engage and share that burden with other teammates.
Conclusion
Indeed, coming up with team-selling approaches is a fundamental way to react to sales cycle challenges which not just improve the company revenue but you will see your sales team become less isolated and more grouped together.
Although team-selling is still in its nascent stage, slowly and steadily it’s making the necessary impact over B2B businesses. And, as we see enterprises switching to AI-based tools, this great amalgamation of the human mind and automated intelligence is going to be really fruitful in the near future. No wonder, if software like Salesken would disrupt the sales teams with its powerful features.
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