Winning the Team Sale: Chapter 5 - The Reorganizer

The sales meeting ends.  Now what?  Fist bumps in the parking lot, of course!  You and your team crushed it.  Or did you?

During the Regroup stage of the team selling process, you have an opportunity to play yet another role, what I call the Reorganizer.  This involves getting your team realigned after the sales meeting and setting the stage for more and even better work together in the future.

See if you recognize any of these common occurrences after a meeting or pitch:

• Your team members scatter to the winds for other commitments.
• You talk it through in the car on the way to the airport or your next appointment.
• You assume your team members are clear on their roles in the follow-through plan.
• You have no opportunity to give or receive feedback about how the team performed.

Reorganize for Next Steps and Continuous Improvement

Reconvening the team following a sales meeting or pitch accomplishes several things:  a) it facilitates follow-through on client expectations, reinforcing commitments made during the meeting; b) it creates a feedback loop that allows team members to share with one another how to improve individual and team performance in future sales outings; c) it avoids repetition of the same mistakes and gives the team the chance to replicate high points that were hit; and d) it sets the stage to re-recruit colleagues for future team sales opportunities.

Regroup meetings — a.k.a. debriefs, post-mortems, etc. — are tough to pull off for a variety of reasons:  your colleagues are busy — they committed to help you on this meeting, but they’re ready to move on to other things; it can feel repetitive and like a waste of time to re-hash the details of what happened in the meeting; and it can feel awkward exchanging feedback with colleagues about individual and group performance.

So, what actions can you take as a salesperson to play the role of Reorganizer effectively?

1. Schedule: Advance planning (when you’re playing the Organizer role) ensures your regroup meeting will happen.
2. Run: Make sure your selling squad’s regroup meeting checks each of the “TLC” boxes:  timely, live (in-person), and collective (everyone is present and focused).
3. Lead: Facilitate a conversation that captures each member’s observations on what happened, deliverables owed, and individual accountabilities.
4. Share: Create a safe feedback loop, as you did previously as the Director.  Enable individual team members to grow professionally and the team to strengthen future performance.
5. Thank: Your team committed time and energy to this pursuit.  Be sure to acknowledge their contributions.

The Bottom Line

Client follow-through and stronger performance are at stake during the Regroup stage of the team selling process.  While often overlooked, the most effective selling squads commit the time — before moving on to other things — to ensure clear accountabilities for follow-up and to exchange feedback so that team members and the team can grow and win again in subsequent sales meetings.  Successfully playing the Reorganizer role enables all of this to happen and sets the stage for you to recruit members again for future team sales meetings.

Leading a team in an effective sales call is straightforward when you approach it methodically. This eBook will show you how playing each of these five roles effectively can help you win more deals when teams are required.