Page 192 - Social Media Marketing

178 Walk Like a Giant, Sell Like a Madman

Note: Some sales positions are more conducive to teams than
are others. More and more real estate agents, for example, are
implementing a team-based approach, but if you sell appli-
ances or pharmaceuticals, a team-based approach may not be
feasible. For details about building and managing a real estate
agent team, check out Power Teams: The Complete Guide to Build-
ing and Managing a Winning Real Estate Agent Team, by yours
truly and John Featherston, founder and CEO of RISMedia
(for sale zt www.rismedia.com). If a team-based approach is
not right for the products or services you sell, at least take on
an assistant, as recommended in Chapter 6, "Hiring Your First
Assistant."

What Is a Sales Team?

By definition, a team is a group of people working together for a
common purpose, but it's really much more than that. A team is
an entity with diverse skills, talents, and personalities. It is a whole
that is greater than the sum of its parts. It enables each individual to
accomplish more than he or she would be able to do alone. A team's
diversity makes it more capable of meeting challenges, and its flex-
ibility enables the team to quickly adapt to changing conditions.

Although every sales team is unique, most start out as a sim-
ple two-person team: the salesperson and his or her assistant. The
salesperson does what he or she is best at and performs the most
dollar-productive activities-activities that drive business and gen-
erate revenue. The assistant plays a supporting role: scheduling,
processing paperwork, and performing other tasks to free up the
salesperson's time and resources so the salesperson can focus on
dollar-productive activities. This two-person team arrangement is
covered in Chapter 6.

Sales teams can become much more complex. For example, you
can add salespeople who focus on particular markets, such as
minority markets, or specialize in selling only a subset of your