Team Selling Requires Team Building Exercises

Conventional wisdom says great sales people are eagles. They don’t flock. They’re not good collaborators. Instead they’re hunters; they work on their own, searching out and landing their prey-and being handsomely rewarded for their skills. While sales workers may appear solitary, experienced sales people learn the value of team selling.  This makes team building exercises more relevant than it appears at first glance.

Salesforce suggests that the day of the lone wolf salesperson may be numbered. Citing research from CEB, they note that “network performance,” or effectiveness working in teams, is just as important to corporate profitability as “individual performance.”  In sales functions, according to CEB, “network performance” now accounts for about 44% of the impact on profitability. As Salesforce sums up, “The sales process no longer starts and ends with a sales pitch. To view sales as an isolated department does a disservice not just to your sales team, but to your customers.”

Sales consultancy Lewis Associates, defines the changing role of the sales professional as part of a team selling environment: “The team selling strategy requires the sales rep to perform in a non-traditional sales mode. To be successful in this new arena, the sales rep needs to do more than present the company’s offering and follow-up… the sales rep is responsible for assembling the appropriate personnel to gain access to, present, deliver and maintain your company’s offering in a profitable fashion.”

Mark McCary, president of Houston-based  GTM B2B Consulting, helps his clients implement team selling strategies. “For organizations who are team-selling, it’s vital that team members know and trust one another,” he noted.

Team Building Exercises Builds Sales Team Value

Smart companies are adopting communication-based team building exercises for sales teams built around listening, collaborating and connecting with peers and influencers.  They understand that a sales team is not a group of people who work together.  A sales team is a group of people who trust each other.

McCrary agrees: “I find that team building activities for sales that encourage interaction in a fun, engaging setting work best. The culinary format that Team Building with Taste uses is well thought out and more than meets my criteria for a fun but effective team building activity.”

Cars.com, Cisco, Paychex, SunTrust, U.S. Foods and others are just a few examples of companies that have used TBWT for sales team building activities.  Here’s a video of the Paychex sales team at Team Building with Taste.

What’s so great about Culinary Team Building for Sales?

Unlike more contrived forms of team building exercises, there is nothing like a kitchen to break down barriers and increase interaction and collaboration. Throughout time, kitchens have come to represent home, hearth and communion with others. Kitchens (and dining) have a way of bringing out the best in people. At the same time, Team Building with Taste’s competitive, Chopped-like competitions are perfect for sales people. With the clock running, Chef’s goading and other teams trash talking, sales people are in their element.

Put these two things together, communion and competition, and it’s the perfect recipe for a sales team to let down their hair and enjoy themselves. At the end of the event, our facilitators go the extra mile by holding a team discussion about:

• Trust: Nobody can cook a multi course meal by themselves in one hour. Building interdependence and reliance among work teams helps overcome trust issues.
• Strategy: Not unlike figuring out how pitch a service or product to a new, sometimes unknown client, cooking teams must apply their resources to  single goal :  Impressing the judges
• Problem solving: Deciding what to cook using some miscellaneous ingredients is synonymous to coming up with a creative solution to a limited budget.
• Presentation: Nobody wants to eat an ugly duckling.  Making sure the plate looks good is not unlike making an appealing pitch and selling the sizzle, as well as the steak.

It’s Time to Get Your Sales Team in the Kitchen!

In this day of team selling and social media, if your sales people don’t collaborate, they don’t sell. Your team will under perform and so will your business. It’s time to get your sales team into one of our Atlanta or Dallas team building kitchens.