Why Sales Leaders need to Create a Culture of Collaboration

If you're a sales leader, your job is to continually improve your team's performance. One way to do this is by creating an environment where all members can collaborate and share ideas, lessons learned, and best practices freely with each other. Having a culture of collaboration means your team members can learn from each other, providing an opportunity for team members to step up as mentors for each other. 

Let's take a quick look at three benefits of sales team collaboration:  

1) Ideas and best practices are generated quicker 

2) A sense of belonging is created among teammates  

3) Collaborative environments tend to lead to higher levels of creativity and productivity 

These three benefits give you some insight into how important it is for sales leaders and management to create cultures that are collaborative rather than competitive. For more information on what else contributes to a thriving sales culture, read on! 

The sales team is the lifeblood of any company. They are the face of your company, the ones who promote and sell your products directly to potential clients —they must be well-supported in their efforts to succeed. Leaders can lend support in this effort by creating a culture where collaboration with other departments in the company is encouraged. Cross-functional communication creates a win-win situation for all parties involved. When everyone works together, there are more opportunities to collaborate on upcoming client launches, identify process and product enhancements, and ultimately turn prospects into happy customers.  Furthermore, when your sales team is empowered to work at their best to bring on new clients, your company also wins, and you will achieve and exceed your revenue goals faster.  

Why Strive for Sales Collaboration? 

Collaboration on the sales team often gets pushed to the back burner. It's easy to forget to share sales experiences and best practices while your team focuses on other goals like hitting quota or retaining your most prominent clients. However, the benefits of team collaboration are ones you cannot afford to miss or do half-heartedly. Effective sales collaboration starts a domino effect of other positive changes and benefits for your team and organization. For example, if you create an environment where teamwork is key, your sales team will get to know each other faster, develop friendships, and learn from each other's experiences. These internal relationships will increase job satisfaction and, in turn, decrease employee turnover. When your team comes together to share sales strategies that have been successful, it helps them build a playbook of effective strategies they can use when obstacles arise, ultimately improving your teams' overall sales capabilities. If you want to increase your sales conversion rates and close more deals, investing in team collaboration is key!  

What About Too Much Collaboration? 

That said, when collaboration becomes your only sales strategy, it doesn't leave much room for other important initiatives. Too much collaboration could lead to your team being overwhelmed or burnt out— they don't want to spend hours a day in meetings discussing sales strategies; they want to get out there and start selling! Don't let your sales reps suffer because of excessive stand-ups, recaps, and training. When it comes to collaboration, it's essential to create a system where your team can get together, learn from each other's prospect and customer interactions, and test out these strategies themselves in the field. 

Your Collaboration Toolbelt  

As a sales leader, it's your job to make sure you are the expert on your team. That means creating a communication and collaboration program tailored to your team's needs. Keeping your team up to date with current information and trends can happen in several ways. Here are some tools that can help your team stay connected:  

1. Send out announcements with collaboration software. verbTEAMS is a great way to touch base with your team when an in-person call or meeting isn't necessary. It's easy to send quick interactive videos to one or all of your sales reps, providing updates, new marketing materials, sales tactics, etc.  It's a more personal way to communicate than boring texts or emails. Remember, relationships are important!  
    
2. Regular weekly calls or meetings are a great way to update your team with new product information, updates on revenue goals, or anything else you need to communicate. However, don't forget that one of the main reasons you are getting together is collaborating, building comradery, and strengthening relationships. Simply put, these meetings can shrink geographical divides to bring your team together through meaningful communication. Like we said before, touching base in person or over a video call may be the most important thing you can do to grow and mentor your team. 
   
3. Another key to collaboration is shared best practices. Did you know that some sales reps spend up to 43 hours every month searching for product or marketing information (Aberdeen, 2015)? In verbTEAMS, sales reps can easily and quickly see trending content, including the most shared and opened resources. verbTEAMS empowers your sales team to quickly find and share content that has been successful for the rest of your team, allowing them to spend more time focusing on prospect outreach and winning deals! It's never been easier to share best practices with your reps.  

Creating an Environment Where Collaboration is King 

At the heart of collaboration is a culture where curiosity is welcome. Where asking for feedback and advice is rewarded with information and encouragement. It should be a space where answers and motivation can be found, whether through conversation or a knowledge base of relevant FAQs and resources for your team.  

Now you know how important collaboration is and how to obtain it. However, don't get carried away. Too much of a good thing can be just as damaging as not enough. You must find the right balance of communication and initiative between you and your teams. That's why we created verbTEAMS – a sales platform designed specifically for sales teams who want both individual responsibility and collaborative knowledge sharing with their peers. Not to mention they can also use the software to collaborate with their prospects.  Create an environment where collaboration can flourish and where information flows freely from customer insights to industry trends.  

Interested in learning more about team collaboration?  

Click here to learn more about verbTEAMS and schedule a demo! 

Sources:  

https://www.aberdeen.com/techpro-essentials/collaboration-is-transforming-the-sales-process/