Team Selling: Land Bigger Clients With A Bit of Teamwork

As a salesperson, you’re used to being a lone wolf. From digging up new clients and qualifying leads to deliver the perfect pitch and managing accounts, you do it all. And you’re used to flying solo. But as modern businesses continue to scale and tighten up their processes, team selling often becomes the sales method of choice. It’s better at landing bigger deals. And it leverages the unique expertise of the many, not just the one. So, what is team selling? And what do you need to know to start to use team selling today? This guide dives into team selling and the pros and cons of this style of sales. It also outlines our four-point framework for successfully implementing team selling into your processes. What Is Team Selling? As the name implies, team selling is simply using two or more members of your organization to close on a deal. These team members could be from the same department (e.g., two salespeople). Or they could be from different departments (e.g., a salesperson, a developer, and a customer success specialist). The exact makeup of your team will depend on your buyer’s problem, their use case, and much more. For instance, if your prospective buyer will be custom coding your product to integrate with their enterprise systems, including a developer on your team would make sense. On the other hand, if they’re concerned about the onboarding and implementation, a customer success specialist can help outline the process and put those fears to rest. Team selling is excellent for handling accounts that are especially high value, have many moving parts, or are of other strategic importance. The Ups & Downs of Team Selling While many sales situations can benefit from a team selling approach, there are pros and cons here. Therefore, it’s essential to be informed about each to decide when team selling is a good fit. Pros of Team Selling * Better Understand Your Buyer’s Pain Points – With a more diverse team onboard, you’re in a better position to get at the heart of the buyer’s underlying problem. That’s because each brings their expertise to the table. A more informed team member will know which questions to ask to learn more about their needs. * Demonstrate Benefits – Piggybacking on that last point; those experts can also communicate and demonstrate the benefits of your solution and how it solves the buyer’s problem. For example, a salesperson may be able to recite product specs. But only an engineer can handle getting deep into the weeds about technical details (which may be precisely what the buyer’s looking for). * Greater Meeting Fluidity – Having more team members backing you up also means they can actively track down information while you’re presenting. No one has all the answers all of the time. But with a team at your back, they can search for unanswered questions, feature breakdowns, or other supplementary sales collateral. And having that information on-hand now rather than after the call can make a world of difference. * Increases Buyer Engagement – Team selling also helps hold your buyer’s attention. Even the most charismatic salesperson is constantly battling against a lack of buyer focus. Gong found that switching things up every nine minutes or less is associated with higher close rates. Bringing in a subject matter expert resets that focus clock. And it keeps your buyers from fading out. Cons of Team Selling * Resource Intensive – The biggest downside to team selling is its most obvious flaw—it takes up more resources. Time spent supporting your sales pitch is time that your team members could be spending on other tasks. There’s also the time it takes to get team members up to speed on the buyer and the proposed product.