When team selling works well, some say it produces selling opportunities that otherwise would not have been realized. But
when it does not go according to plan, it can lead to dissension and feelings of resentment. Commonly referred to as pods
or clusters, sales teams consist of multiple reps from the same or even different companies promoting a common product to
a shared group of target customers. We asked reps and managers what they had to say about sales teams. The representative's view
While several issues quickly come out when representatives talk about team selling – counterparts not contributing enough,
unfair bonus payouts, no one doing anything about a low-performing counterpart, another rep jeopardizing relationships in
doctors' offices – the main issue we found can be summed up with the saying "Too many cooks spoil the broth." If you aren't
a wiz in the kitchen or if you've just never heard this saying before, it basically means that the more people that are involved
in making something, the more chances there are for problems to arise.
It seems that when problems occur in a sales team, they are commonly due to conflict that involves one particular member of
the team. Whether it is the personal style of this bad apple, conflicting career ambitions or a differing work ethic, when
teams don't get along it seems that something personal often stands in the way. One representative we interviewed told us
about her experiences: "Even though my counterpart had been responsible for the geography for a longer period of time, she
constantly wanted to come along on my lunches. It turned out that she just wanted to meet doctors she had supposedly been
calling on for six months." In this instance, the two reps were from different companies and the situation began to smooth
out once the first rep informed her manager and conversations between the two district managers took place.
Another representative told us that conflict developed with a teammate when it became apparent that they were both competing
for a promotion. The teammate's efforts to make a name for himself resulted in the execution of a decidedly short-term strategy
with their shared target. As the rep we spoke with explained, "The other rep was employing a very hard sell that was short
on value. This approach brought about a quick spike in prescriptions, but I had found over the years that bringing value to
the customer through knowledge and assistance to the office was important to the long-term success of my products. His high-pressure
approach caused a real issue in some of the offices we called on." Over time, both representatives acknowledged the problem
and were able to resolve the issue through a series of candid discussions about their mutual goals and how they could achieve
them without interfering with one another.
The manager's view
One manager summed up team selling this way: "It's like doing a complicated home repair yourself. If you do it right, you
can sit back and marvel at how well it works, but if something goes wrong, you end up really paying for it."
Home-repair projects aside, the issues managers commonly raised when talking about team selling were:
- Reps being too focused on personal issues with counterparts.
- The need for more awareness of the big-picture issues, such as positively impacting the business.
- Culture clashes during copromotions.
- Effectively working with everyone involved in the team-selling concept.
