August 30, 2021
At PacLease, It Takes a Team
David Rhodes, Area Operations Manager – East
“The Team, The Team, The Team”
Bo Schembechler said it best in his legendary “The Team” speech back in 1983, “No man is more important than the Team.” This holds true today in our world of sales. You may have the greatest group of individual employees, but the organization won’t succeed if they don’t work together. If you don’t know “Bo,” he was the head football coach at the University of Michigan from 1969 to 1989 – compiling a career record of 234-65-8. While sports analogies can be overused in the field of sales, this sentiment seems to fit perfectly with Team Selling. Implementing Team Selling in your organization can increase your chances of closing a deal up to 258% compared to selling solo[1]. So why don’t sales organizations promote the idea of collaboration and “The Team”? Well, at PacLease, problem solving is a team sport and “Team Selling” is at our core.
The Dinosaur Approach
Most organizations set up their sales team into individual silos. The thought is to create competition and increase sales production. However, this method isolates your team members, pitting them against one another, and hinders their ability to collaborate as a team. Too many times a sales representative is on an island trying to create value for the customer. This is hard to do when there are so many items they must know when going to market in the transportation industry. For example, one deal can require a rep to know IFTA (Fuel Tax), insurance, maintenance procedures, DOT regulations, safety, and spec optimization just to start. The goal of the organization should not be to hire the perfect sales representative (which can take time and be costly), but to work together as a team and create a work environment in which employees can come together and collaborate. A teamwork approach allows each employee to utilize their specific skills and knowledge, aiding each other to achieve their common goals (i.e. retaining and adding new customers for the organization) and provide proactive customer support.
Team Selling
Through implementing Team Selling, an organization can build internal lines of communication, bringing the group together. Trust and mentoring can be created by working together on various sales opportunities. This increases overall workplace knowledge and productivity. Information and data sharing is key to this approach. There needs to be a common place where employees go for information. Moreover, each employee looks at problems differently. Creating cross-functional sales teams to review/discuss the pre-call plan, perform a deep dive into the sales process, and customize the customer presentation to identify their pain points can help develop and create value-based relationships with the customer. Team Selling is critical for long sales cycles and complex selling situations like full service truck leasing. By splitting up the workload and sharing your knowledge within the group, you are working smarter (not harder) and ultimately providing your customer a better experience.
Implementing Team Selling
Implementing Team Selling takes time, effort, commitment and people for it to be successful. Most of the time, sales reps go into a meeting blind – without a pre-call plan or discussion with the manager of how they want to approach the meeting. In Team Selling, you have to identify who should be on the team and what role they are going to play in the deal process. You need to consider everyone’s expertise and qualifications – who is going to lead the meeting and what point in the presentation will the team members speak up and add value. Team Selling works best when members have skills and personalities that complement one another. The team’s goals and roles must be clear so there are no interruptions or team members speaking over each other. Additionally, mistakes can happen when there are a lot of moving parts and complexity to the deal. In the full service lease field, an opportunity or sale cycle can take three to nine months. Teams can utilize process maps to aid the team in such a long selling process. Account mapping can paint a clear picture for your team, help them understand the customer, and make the process more efficient.
At PacLease we promote “The Team.” We have Area Operation Managers and National Account Sales Executives that work daily with each of our franchises on local and national opportunities. Due to our affiliation with Kenworth and Peterbilt, the team can also include product engineering or plant manufacturing. Moreover, PacLease utilizes CRM (Customer Relationship Management) technology to ensure that it can streamline its communication and the “Team Sell.”
Break down silos and create a complementary team, with skills that can create value for the customer. Selling is a team sport. When it comes to success, remember that it’s all about “The Team, The Team, The Team,”…and tell them Bo sent you.
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[1] See Gong.io data science research study dated November 30, 2017.