3 Ways To Develop A Positive Relationship Between Sales and “Everyone Else” Inside Your Organization

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Sales reps are typically not the most popular people in the world.

It’s not their fault, but is rather the result of years of built up social stigma in society. Nobody likes to be sold to, so people tend to be on their guard around salespeople. They’re naturally distrustful, if not openly hostile.

This makes it difficult enough for your team to do their jobs successfully, but their job is to overcome such adversity, so they soldier on.

However, often, that stigma often extends to your own organization. Your sales team tends to be considered as outsiders to the rest of the company: a necessary evil that does their own thing and sells things that create more work for everyone else. This is an unhealthy attitude for any business to have. Your productivity and the success of your company depend on building strong relationships between departments.

3 Ways To Develop A Positive Relationship Between The Sales Team and “Everyone Else”

All three of these strategies involve some sort of regular internal company memo, newsletter, etc. If you don’t have one, implement one.

1. Client Testimonials

In order to develop a good relationship between sales and your other departments, it’s important to establish the significance of the role that sales plays in your organization.

The best place for them to hear that is not from your organization, but from your clients. If your company has a monthly newsletter or sends out regular memos about progress you’ve made, include a testimonial each month from one of your clients, talking about how the people on your sales team worked with customer fulfillment to help them solve a crucial problem inside of their organization.

This will highlight the contribution that your sales reps make to the running of your company.

2. Client Spotlight

Similar to testimonials, but a bit more in-depth. This can be a short story demonstrating how a salesperson worked collaboratively with customer fulfillment to keep a client happy after the sale is made.

Another idea would be to highlight a circumstance in which the rep had to pull customer fulfillment in as part of the sales process. The key with this strategy is to illustrate how sales and customer fulfillment aligned in a positive way to make a sale – and a difference – for a new customer.

3. Internal Interview

In addition to hearing success stories from clients, you can also interview a sales rep and get him or her talking about a situation in which a non-salesperson was vital in winning a piece of business or solving a particularly challenging customer problem.

The goal here is to demonstrate the value of a strong relationship between the front end and the back end of your business and to get everyone else thinking about how they can contribute.

In order to build a successful relationship between sales and the rest of your company, the rest of your company needs to know who they are and what they’re about. Feature an interview with a sales rep who makes a good example of what the team is and what they are doing to help your organization. Illustrate how your organization has been able to help change the way your clients do business, and how the sales team was able to facilitate that change through operations and fulfillment.

Doing a couple of interviews like this will help the rest of your company put a face to the sales team – and make it a face of success.

Conclusion

Developing a relationship between your sales team and other employees is something that doesn’t always happen naturally, but such a relationship is important to the success of your business.

With a little effort, you can show your whole company why your sales reps are a vital cog in your organization’s machinery.

 

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How to Align Sales & the Rest of the Organization to Drive More Revenue

We just finished an eye-opening research study which revealed that 47% of salespeople do not have confidence that the sales department is respected by other departments inside of the company. The fundamental truth is this: sales believes that the rest of the company wouldn’t have jobs if not for them… and the rest of the company feels sales wouldn’t have a job without them.

Written By

Michelle Richardson

Michelle Richardson is the Vice President of Sales Performance Research. In her role, she is responsible for spearheading industry research initiatives, overseeing consulting and diagnostic services, and facilitating ROI measurement processes with partnering organizations. Michelle brings over 25 years of experience in sales and sales effectiveness functions through previously held roles in curriculum design, training implementation, and product development to the Sales Performance Research Center.
Michelle Richardson is the Vice President of Sales Performance Research. In her role, she is responsible for spearheading industry research initiatives, overseeing consulting and diagnostic services, and facilitating ROI measurement processes with partnering organizations. Michelle brings over 25 years of experience in sales and sales effectiveness functions through previously held roles in curriculum design, training implementation, and product development to the Sales Performance Research Center.

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