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You are here: Home / Collaboration And Convergence / Marginalizing Your Internal Sales Team?

Marginalizing Your Internal Sales Team?

February 20, 2014 by Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

There are individuals within your company you have overlooked. They are your hidden, internal sales team. That’s not their job title, though.

They have different job titles: receptionist, assembler, operations, you get the picture.

Don’t worry. The last thing these individuals want to do is SELL. That’s a loaded word for them, and it isn’t positive. Selling certainly wasn’t part of their job description. To them, sales people are sleazy and cheesy. Yup, just like your customers, your internal resources have negative biases and baggage towards the fine art of selling.

These individuals, key to your own selling success, are marginalized when you sell. In fact, you probably walk right by them every day when you enter your workplace.  Yet these individuals often are the voice of your company for your customers.

Did you ever thing about them in this manner? I didn’t think so either.

These behind-the-scenes folks – who make your company run and deliver on what you sell – fly underneath your own radar. Yet these are the very folks that your customers call on once things go wrong or when a special circumstance arises and needs to be expedited.

The ability of these behind-the-scenes folks to continue to deliver on your own selling promises is critical in building customer loyalty and retention.

When considered in this manner, these support folks don’t seem so unimportant, do they?

These non-traditional, unintentional sellers are your internal sales team. I didn’t call them your inside sales team – a different function. Your internal sales team identifies, processes and throughputs all of the offline factors that can derail or stall a sale. Your internal sales team personifies service quality delivery.

Your internal sales team makes you look good – even when you aren’t.

The problem is that you only apply-them-as-needed, when there’s a problem. Your internal sales team, your support/loyalty/retention staff works with customers even when there isn’t a problem. In fact, they work to avoid problems.

Your internal sales team may know your customers better than you do. They may offer perception and insights that confer a competitive advantage for you and your company.

How many of you actually take time to speak to these people on a regular basis? How many of you make time to incorporate these individuals into your selling strategy and process?

Your internal sales team can make a big difference, over the long haul, in your success as a salesperson of worth.

This week:

  1. Identify individuals within your organization who can serve a larger function in your sales strategy than their job titles seem to limit them to.
  2. Integrate them into your sales strategy for one or two key prospects you are having difficulty cracking. Your internal selling team may already know more about these prospects than you do.
  3. Determine how you, and your internal selling team, can uncover answers to what you don’t know.

Babette N. Ten Haken, is President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers®, LLC and author of its award-winning blog. She catalyzes business transition, startup growth, and professional development for non-traditional sellers, engineers, manufacturers, and technical startups. Her book on collaboration strategies, Do YOU Mean Business?  is available on Amazon.com.

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Filed Under: Collaboration And Convergence, Human Capital & Industrial IoT Workforce Tagged With: internal sales team, non-traditional sellers, selling, selling strategy

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