Team Selling: A New Look at “Survival of the Fittest”

John Headstrong considered himself a “man’s man.” He was competitive at everything he did. He was always sizing up other people, and then finding a way to get the better of them at something—whether it was a friendly game of racquetball at the gym, a guy fishing next to him on the pier, or a rush hour commuter in the next lane waiting for the red light to turn green.

As good fortune would have it, John Headstrong met and married a beautiful woman. When the honeymoon was over, he found himself competing with her at everything they did—their work, the money they each earned, their job titles, their intelligence, even who made the best spaghetti sauce. As time went by, John proved his superiority at most of these things. Then one morning he woke up, looked over at his wife and realized he was married to a “loser.”

Winners and losers
Does your company’s sales culture promote winner and losers within your own organization? Are you pitting your people against each other to light a fire under them? Have you decided to let “survival of the fittest” be the guiding principle for your sales people? Does each of your reps have to compete not only externally but internally to survive?

If that is happening, you can count on two consequences. First, your energies are not focused on your true
competitors, the ones who are going after the same business you want, or already have it. Second, you are working with a bunch of losers every day. Neither outcome is desirable.

The “competitive sales culture” has been around a long time. If you are older than 25, you probably cut your selling teeth on it. As a sales manager or company owner, you may still think, “Hey, it worked for me then. It will work for me now.” If so, let me give you a wake up call. Those days are gone.

A losing cycle
As a management consultant, I have worked with many selling organizations in many different industries. The industries differ, but the challenges are the same.

Management complains, “It’s just hard to find good people any more.” They hire a few sales people, give them each a list of accounts, maybe a territory, assign them a desk and a phone, impart to them some product knowledge, spend money on sales training, and then send their reps out to sell—may the best man or woman win.

While the sales reps are out there beating the bushes, management puts up a chart to track everybody’s progress, one person against another. The problem, of course, is that no matter how successful the team is, the perception of the individual members of that team will be that there is a top 20 percent and a bottom 80 percent. After 90 to 180 days the sales manager, who has spent very little time with the new people, decides they can’t sell and fires them. The other sales people shake their heads, and start waiting for the new sacrificial lambs to come aboard. They hope that one of the next batch is not a winner, otherwise one of their own jobs might be lost.

Meantime, clients are going under-served, new business opportunities are being missed, and the company has paid through the nose in hard and soft costs, a significant charge against its bottom line. Can any business really afford this cycle?

Some winning steps
If you are relying on internal competition for sales performance rather than focusing on external competition, it is time to screw your head around by 180 degrees. The old model no longer works. Selling may be energized by competition externally, but it thrives on cooperation internally. So how do you create a sales culture that puts this idea into practice? How do you get your folks truly working as a team, where no wounded soldier is left on the battlefield? Let me suggest the steps to get you started:

#1: Create a vision: No sales person in your organization is an island. You may have a superstar, and you may be nurturing a neophyte, but they both are members of YOUR team. They need to understand why you exist, what you are, and your guiding principles. They need to feel they have a stake in things. This is where it all begins. It’s not the number seven on the back of the jersey that ultimately counts; it’s the team logo sewn at the heart.

#2: Develop the strategies: To make this vision a reality, you need a playbook. Take your strategies and translate them into assigned responsibilities. Instead of pitting people against each other, give them tasks based on their strengths that complement each other. Focus on alignment, interdependence and teamwork, consistent with everybody’s talents and aptitudes that they can use to benefit the whole team.

#3: Develop routines and habits: No business runs on automatic pilot for very long without veering off course and crashing. Break the necessary duties down into specific habits and routines that, if followed every day, lead cumulatively to success.

When your sales people are focused on doing a good day’s work, rather than just on monthly goals with up days and down days, the probability of productivity is markedly greater. Plus, since every team member is working in earnest at the same time, individual rivalries will lack the inconsistent workplace environment they need to flourish.

#4: Celebrate Success: When Hank Aaron knocked his 715th home run out of the park, a supporting cast of managers, coaches, players, bat boys and fans could each rightfully claim a share of the honor. But for the roles of each of these people, Hank Aaron might have missed a homer here or there. There’s an old proverb that victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan. It’s a wise saying to keep in mind each time your company wins.

#5: Focus on culture: Finally, place your sales people—and really all of your people—where they will give you the biggest chance for success based on their talents. This may well mean changing some traditional roles and processes. But so what! Weren’t those roles and processes the problem to begin with? If a person is a great door opener but a poor closer, why not let them team up to do what they do best?

Team selling has become a trend because it has been successful. It utilizes people’s strengths, enhances each person’s contribution, improves productivity, and reduces turnover. It puts into practice the common sense metaphor of author and consultant Jim Collins that your job as a company leader, once you have gotten the right people on the bus and the wrong people off, is to put the right people in the right seats, and then drive it somewhere.

Survival of the fittest?
Darwin’s famous phrase has taken on a meaning that is very different from what he literally meant. Darwin, of course, was a biologist. In that field, the idea of “fitness” is how well an organism “fits” into its environment. That ability to adapt is what will determine the organism’s ability to survive, not its ability to kill off those who share its environment.

Your company’s environment will most likely thrive when your people are cooperating, adapting, pulling together and focused on your common mission. From that setting, your lions and tigers can go out and bring home dinner for everyone, stronger as team members than they would be if they were fighting each other over the same prey.

Larry Kangas is executive director of The Wedge Performance Institute, the research and development affiliate of The Wedge Group, a sales performance and management consulting firm headquartered near Dallas. For additional information, visit www.thewedge.net.