How Selling Can be Collaborative

Source: Rainmaker Report

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from an article by Erica Stritch, general manager of RainToday.com.

A consulting company administrative staffer noticed an interesting article about hospitals in a quarterly magazine (she voluntarily subscribes to keep current). She forwarded it to a consultant in the firm who had a prospect that works with hospitals, and he in turn sent it to the prospect. He got an overwhelmingly positive response, which moved the sale forward.

Three things need to come together to get everyone at your firm involved in sales:

1. Knowledge Sharing: Everyone needs to know your firm’s key clients and prospects.

Consider weekly or bi-weekly internal emails that tell about key clients and prospects. Include an overview of the prospect company and how the firm would like to work with it.

2. Always Look for Opportunities: Subscribe to industry publications or general business publications (and encourage others on your staff to do so) and scan these regularly for relevant topics. If you find a particular article, website, or conference interesting, it is likely your clients and prospects will too.
   
3. Reinforce and Recognize: It takes continuous reinforcement to remind everyone in your firm to be looking for these opportunities.

You can’t expect employees to embrace marketing and selling and participate in the process by sending around an email just once.

Recognize those who do it. This will spark ideas from others in your firm and provide them an incentive to think about ways they can contribute too. (Who doesn’t like being recognized for going above and beyond?)

To read the complete article, click here and see “3 Steps for Involving Everyone at Your Firm in the Sales Process.”

From Rainmaker Report, November 19, 2008, RainToday.com.

Erica Stritch is the general manager of RainToday, http://www.raintoday.com/, the premier online source for insight, advice, and tools for service business rainmakers, marketers, and leaders. She is also a consultant at the Wellesley Hills Group, http://www.whillsgroup.com/, a management consulting, marketing, and lead generation firm focused on helping professional services firms grow. Erica can be reached at [email protected].