The pursuit of a sale through to success is a mix of people, processes, and the product itself. Without a good product, great success cannot be achieved, though many have tried. Without good salespeople, products can sell but not as well, not as efficiently, and not for the margins one would like. Without a process, there is no control over the sale and no insight to give the company the confidence to build more, develop new, and continue with the current.
Of all these, however, people are the single greatest asset to sales success and the area that requires more focus than any other. According to American Major League Baseball player George Herman “Babe” Ruth:
The way a team plays determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.
All sales begin with marketing, whether it is marketing the brand or marketing the product. All successful sales end with happy customers offering referrals and upsell or cross-sell opportunities. All sales losses lead to new opportunities, win backs, and even referrals! Whether you win and they become your customer, or someone else’s is down to the sales team, the leaders, the coaches, and the players. To achieve success takes time, effort, practice, failure, and experimentation.
All sports are played with a set of rules. Selling is no different. But, like all sports teams, they interpret the rules differently and the ones that often have the winning edge play right to the limit of the rules but do so efficiently and consistently. Former Performance Director of British Cycling (1997–2014) Sir David Brailsford implemented a regime of using tiny, marginal gains to improve the success of UK cycling. According to Brailsford:
The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.
Brailsford’s theory was applied to everything UK cycling did; diet, exercise (on and off the bike), the bicycle itself, aerodynamics, wheels and tires, even the kit the team wore, the course for outdoor cycling and for indoor nature of the track itself. He applied 1 percent not just to the cyclist but to every element of what it took to win. Brailsford focused on every element and every person involved in British cycling, not just the cyclists.
Merely playing as a team is where to start, but it is also only the beginning. In the pursuit of sales, every member of the team has to strive to be better, work harder, work smarter, achieve more, and add more value every day. Whether it is through cold calling, marketing and promotion, product enhancements. or a presentation to a client, a 1 percent improvement in any one of these will make a difference. A 1 percent improvement in all of these consistently will make a huge difference to the eventual winning margin.
Brailsford used the Theory of Marginal Gains to find every advantage possible. Marginal Gains are to be found not just with the people undertaking parts of the process, but with every element that delivers improved sales performance whether that is the technology, systems, and processes involved in and supporting the sales pursuit whether they carry a sales role or not.
In 2004, the UK won two Olympic cycling medals. In 2008 and 2012, the medal tally was 14 medals and 12 medals, respectively. Marginal gains at every level deliver results.
In building a winning sales team, there are no right or wrong answers, there are only ways that work and ways that do not. Ways that work for some customers and for some salespeople. Ways that work now but not in the future and ways that will not work today but may in the future. Ways that will win some games but not others. Every failure is an opportunity to learn. Whether it’s failing at recruiting the right people to get the best team or whether it’s the process not delivering the right decisions to improve the win rate. A winning team is not just the people; it is the process, the systems, the products and services, the markets, and customers.
Sales, as with products, as with clients, as with the salespeople themselves, is an evolving and changing practice. The teams change, the opposition changes, the rules may even change. The umpire or referee will be different, even the location, the weather and, off the back of a recent win or loss, things will change. Therefore, Sales is perhaps the most exciting place to be in any organization.
Professional sports people relish competition. It teaches them to work harder, train harder, and be more acutely aware of every opportunity. So it is with great salespeople, raising their game to beat the competition.
World and European Champion, World record holder, and Paralympic gold medalist Danny Crates sums it up perfectly:
There is no greater feeling than being successful, knowing that all that hard work paid off, and you’ve nailed it when it’s mattered most. Be warned though, there is no worse feeling than knowing you’ve not nailed it when you could have. Knowing that if you had just given that little bit extra in your preparation, maybe, just maybe the outcome could have been different.
To put together a winning sales team in any company requires an understanding of the process the company wants to follow that is both efficient and effective. That allows the salespeople freedom to pursue but the controls to limit waste. It matches their enthusiasm and excellence with structure and discipline. Aligning all that with the sales process that most customers will ask of and be flexible enough to adapt to different client needs.
Managing each opportunity requires agility on the part of the salesperson, coaching, and guidance from sales management and discipline from the company selling. Remembering too that sometimes the customer is on your side, sometimes not. How often have we accused referees of being impartial or interpreting a rule in a way that advantages one team more than another?
Sales must work with marketing. The influence of marketing, whether online, social media, influencers, opinions and views, customer feedback, or direct advertising all now play a much more significant part in influencing the customer to consider your product. The line between sales and marketing has moved in the direction of marketing. Sales and marketing are two parts of one company objective.
Systems and processes are key to sales efficiency and giving performance insight. Efficiency is the responsibility of all, from the individual salesperson through to the top of the organization. Insight allows better targeting and focus and improves the success outcome ratio. It even points the way to future product development and future marketing strategies.
Building a sales team is an easy thing to do. All the ingredients are well understood and used in countless millions of organizations worldwide. Building an efficient and winning sales team takes a little more effort, and it never stops. Every team is different and none of them stay as they are for long, such are the dynamic levers constantly pulling at the process, the product, the clients, the seller, and the technology.
If you want to build a successful sales team, it requires several building blocks and the will of the team, and the support of the organization. Above all, it requires people with passion and belief, willing to fail, willing to try, and not afraid of the challenges success may bring.
Willingness to fail is a key ingredient in any success. The number of light bulbs Edison tried before he succeeded is apocryphal. Oprah Winfrey got fired for being a poor reporter, the Dyson vacuum cleaner went through over 1,500 prototypes, and so the list goes on. Every great salesperson has deals they lost that they should not have lost, deals they won that they had no right to (somebody else failed). Failure is a path to success; we learn more from failure than we do if we land on the money every time.
Building a winning team to propel a business forward begins with a strategy and then a plan. A strategy of what you need to achieve and then a timeline of steps and tasks to get there. The goal is clear, to build a solution that works and grows the business through ever better sales success. The plan requires the right people, process, systems, coaches and the right marketing and product or service elements. Failure is not an option for the outcome but failing as you progress is okay.
The Japanese proverb Nana korobi ya oki should be part of every sales team mantra. Translated it literally means: “seven falls, eight getting up.”
Great salespeople and great Sales Manager do not happen by accident. They invest in their learning and hone their skills. Great sales organizations do not happen by accident, all the right ingredients are brought together to make the whole by the best leaders. All great teams have great players, but players willing to work for the team not for personal glory—that will come anyway. As a team sport, sales also means the Sales Manager must play a role as a leader, as a coach, and even come off the bench to play the game too.
Building a winning sales team requires an efficient sales process that drives effective outcomes; a well-defined product or service offering in the marketplace; a system to manage the process and identify the best pursuits and give insight into winning success; loyal and repeatable customers and advocates; and, above all, the willingness at every level to make it work and have the passion to succeed.
Throughout this book, we have looked at the sales process and how the various components come together from marketing through support. The tools and systems required and the key elements that make up the sinning team. Understanding what each component brings to the team and how it can be turned to advantage is what turns a successful sales team into a great sales performance. Sales do not happen by accident. Excellence does not happen by chance.
To build a winning sales team and go from good to great to exceptional requires an understanding of the team and all the elements and a will to make it happen. A team that has a single dedicated focus: success. To make it happen, everyone must be committed, every day. Failure can come in the smallest corners, and you may not notice until it is too late. Nothing should be left to chance, and no-one should commit less than 100 percent of their ability. Do that, develop a team that wants to win for each other and never stop improving.
Sales really is a team sport more than anything else in business. Play to win and get the best on field and off-field team you can, with the best coaches, the best equipment, and the best gameplan. Be sure to practice, train hard, and remember, after every game there is another game to be played. Great sportspeople can win games, but only great sales teams can win a season and lift the trophy at the end of the year.