In this series of blogs, we’re discussing how four major core values can help you increase your sales — the right way. Each article focuses on one core value, and this week, we’re discussing collaboration.
When you work alone, you’re only as strong as your limitations. When you work with your team and clients collaboratively, on the other hand, the possibilities are endless. Sales collaboration equips you with the strengths of your colleagues, gives you the knowledge and compassion of your clients, and helps build relationships both inside and outside of your company. In this article, we’ll review the benefits of collaboration and implementation strategies to improve your sales foundation and close more deals.
Benefits of Collaboration in Sales
Collaborating in sales might not show immediate dividends, but in the long term, growth could be astronomical. Here are two of the biggest benefits of using collaboration in sales:
Cross-Departmental Growth
Marketing and sales departments often suffer from being siloed from their counterparts, but collaboration can make that a thing of the past. While you’d think that involving other departments would be counterintuitive, it can help both departments perform their jobs better. For example, collaboration can help marketing teams better understand the intention of their marketing materials, and sales teams gain a better idea of the core selling points behind the products being sold.
Better Decision-Making
By touching base with other people, sales reps keep themselves from making rash decisions. This might mean touching base with a colleague at another company who’s been in a similar situation, consulting another department internally to verify all of their facts, or checking with a client rep about a small detail before sending over terms that will be passed across their whole company.
Strategies for Collaboration in Sales
Implementing collaboration into your team’s daily workflow sounds great. But how do you do it? Here are three strategies for improving your team’s collaboration in sales:
Share data and insights.
Data drives smart decisions, and sometimes the most useful data comes from outside the office walls. By making friends in your industry, you can compare your data with even more data from other companies to get a better idea of the sales landscape you’re dealing with. If you’re not obtaining data from outside of the company, touch base with your other departments to get up-to-date data that can better inform your deal-making decisions.
Use the right tools.
Proper collaboration starts with using the right tools. Internal communication tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Monday.com are popular options. By supplying your team with the best possible communication tools, you’re setting them up for successful collaboration.
Establish a collaborative culture.
Tools help, but what cements collaboration within your team is establishing a collaboration culture. Host weekly events like meet-and-greets, encourage your team members to go out for paid-for lunches or coffees with specifically assigned team members to grow relationships and set up lunch-ins where C-level executives share their knowledge with the rest of the team to promote high-level learning.
Collaboration is one of the keys to growing sales, as it gives us insight into knowledge that can help us make better sales decisions. Promote it internally, and check out CM Batteries‘ next core value sales article about quality for more information on how to grow your sales department.
