Team Building to Create a Powerful Sales Force

Team Building to Create a Powerful Sales Force

Underscoring the importance of working together, shared values, and group development leads to a powerful sales force. Allow me to explain with the following real-life experiences.

When I was first promoted from a sales rep to a leadership role, I already knew that we had some skilled salespeople. I also knew we all worked independently of each other. Some were technically superior. Others had better hunting skills. And some were better at growing existing businesses. As we hired to support extremely aggressive growth plans, I knew the missing component was to have a sales force that was a team.

I started on that goal by having a sales meeting for the West Coast reps in Moab. We were on a shoestring budget. With only six of us at the time, we rented an RV and headed for the outdoors. We had great enterprise conversations on the four-hour drive from Salt Lake City to Moab. During our three-day retreat, we had agenda items that we went into with great detail, including how to tackle the sales goals, what was working best for each rep, and a training session so we were armed when we came back to civilization. This was offset with extracurriculars designed to encourage working together.

On a whitewater rafting excursion, I wanted to illustrate the difference between working as a team and working as individuals. I entered the raft with one of the reps in a calm part of the Colorado River and we sat with our backs toward each other. We tried to paddle for five minutes but went nowhere. It was actually hysterical, two grown men paddling frantically yet going nowhere, and the lesson was not lost on the reps. We had a great time from there on out. More important, we all worked as a team, leveraging each other’s strengths and helping each other achieve goals to become the dominant region.

When I became VP of Sales, the regions (East, West, and Canada) had their own teams and subculture. We were also growing from a small company in North America to a midsized company; things were becoming more formalized and many of the early hires were starting to feel disconnected. My objective was to have one team regardless of Sales Director or region.

The entire field sales team met outside of Phoenix at a large property that would serve as our retreat. There were only a third of the beds we needed, and nobody was permitted to share a bed due to company rules. The alternative were barracks-style cots squeezed in throughout the property. I created a series of competitions based on policy and product knowledge where those who finished at the top of the list were able to pick their sleeping arrangements. It became much more about pride than rest, and immediately it set the tone for our culture discussions.

Although we did cover new product launches, best practices, and sales objectives, we primarily focused on the foundations of building a solid team for the future. I acted as a moderator as the reps debated and eventually agreed on our core values, minimum standards that each sales rep should meet, and a detailed list of sales rep responsibilities broken down to time allocation requirements. Having these in place after the retreat forced other reps to become custodians of their own team. It made it clear what they had to be accountable to and that this was something they came up with rather than top down mandates. It also meant the onus was on veteran sales reps to help new hires meet standard. In the end everyone seemed to take ownership and those few that were struggling stepped up with their performance and commitment to the team.

We ended up doing a few team building activities, the most formal of which was close-quarter battle training at an indoor facility with acclaimed instructors. We used actual handguns that discharged paint cartridges, and the walls were on pulleys so they were constantly being changed.

After learning the fundamentals of the shooting platform and how to work together to clear a room, the reps were put into teams where they had to compete against the instructors. At first, they were getting decimated. As they worked more effectively as a team, they ended up beating the instructors and successfully clearing the rooms. The lesson went much further than the range since that activity alone created an unbreakable bond that lasted several years between the reps who were there.

With values and standards established, there was a sense of purpose that could be built upon by incorporating technical product knowledge with sales skills development and marketing initiatives. That would require a minimum of five full days of training and help from the Marketing department. After creating our first curriculum and sharing it with our VP of Marketing, he dubbed it the name that we would use going forward—Monster Training!

Our sales staff was growing as was our product offering, so for Monster Training we would have everyone meet outside of Las Vegas at our training facility. The gathering would take place about halfway through the year, so we would include sales performance into the overall tally along with team games and individual games to test product and policy knowledge.

After those first few fierce competitive hours, an atmosphere of camaraderie emerged. With a limited budget, I was in charge of getting provisions, cooking, doing most of the cleaning, and ensuring everyone was acting appropriately. We spent all hours together either at the house or at the training center. Eventually our sales force got so large we had to rent side by side mansions to support the size of Monster Training.

Monster Training was a highly anticipated event that differentiated us, though it was the team we established as a result that was what our customers and even our competition most often praised. It actually helped retain talent and draw in new talent. There is no doubt that we became the most highly trained, most motivated, and highest-performing sales force in the industry during that period. Putting in the time, effort, and resources to build a true team pays dividends for many years into the future.