Sales-based teamwork

When sales leads are handled individually and ‘sharing’ goes out of the window, thanks to a super competitive sales environment, opportunities are missed.

Let’s create a little story here to see how the importance of teamwork works in a real office.

Bob and Tommy are the oldest members of a sales team for a company offering bottled water services to local businesses. Bob recently struck a landmine of leads through a creative idea that he employed online. He knows that Tommy hasn’t had so many leads of value lately and is spending a lot of time trying desperately to track new ones down, yet he keeps the landmine of leads to himself. He does not share his creative strategy with anyone else.

Unfortunately, it takes Bob too much time to effectively work through the leads. At first he makes lots of sales and bottled water is flying out the door to new customers. His boss is happy. It looks like Bob will win the big bonus at the end of the month for his sales.

Then the problems start to come into play. Suddenly, none of those leads are going anywhere for Bob. Since it has taken him so long to get to these leads, the customers have already contracted with their local competitor before Bob get around to contacting them. Now he has far more leads than Tommy, but they are old leads that don’t convert. Tommy is still struggling, but his sales are overtaking Bob’s quickly.

A totally different outcome would have been possible if this company had put Bob and Tommy on a team rather than positioning them against one another. If they were a team, Bob would have shared his creative strategy and then shared the resulting leads with Tommy. Those lost deals would have been converted to sales since two people could go through the leads faster than one person.