Best Practices in Sales: Get Everyone Selling

Best Practices In Sales: Get Everyone Selling

 

All too often I step into sales departments that feel “misunderstood” by the rest of the company. In a situation recently, there was an unusual amount of animosity towards the sales function in general.

 

• “They’re just sales people.”
• “I can do what they do, why don’t they pay me the commission.”
• “The product sells itself, what do we need sales people for?” This one is my personal favorite.      

 

The truth of the matter is, everyone is in sales whether they like it or not. And successful companies understand that they need every department within an organization working together “delighting” customers if they want to truly succeed. 

 

My challenge with this company, as well as with other clients, is that typically I am only working with the sales (and sometimes marketing) departments. And I have no authority to implement programs in finance, accounting, support, administration, engineering, etc. 

 

And yet I know that if I can get these other departments “selling” with us, then our sales will increase.

 

So with this particular client, here’s what I did. I told the sales team that every time they closed a deal, they needed to thank and recognize someone from another department for their role in making that particular sale happen. And we posted these on a huge, highly visible board in the center of the office. We didn’t tell anyone what we were doing. We just started doing it.

 

Within a matter of days, we noticed people from various departments stopping by the board to read who had influenced a particular sale. The company started talking about it. And silos started disappearing.

 

• Support asked for a meeting with the sales team to see how they could be more helpful.
• Finance asked if there were customer billing problems that hadn’t been resolved that might be affecting customer satisfaction.
• Marketing asked for input on what the most commonly asked questions were so that they could be answered on the website, freeing up valuable sales people’s time.
• Administration asked if we needed more space to post the growing number of sales that were being closed.

 

And most importantly, the number of sales increased by 30% within 60 days, and the average deal size doubled!

 

When the entire company is involved in selling. Everyone wins.

 

Successful sales strategy, best practices in sales, b2b sales strategy, business to business sales training, proven sales techniques, sales management tips.

 

When the entire company is involved in selling. Everyone wins.