Teaming Essentials for Presales Teams
Presales teams interact with a wide variety of functions, personality types and working styles. The success of most sales efforts will greatly depend on how well the presales team can coordinate and communicate within the team.
Few teams develop to their full effectiveness without conscious and structured efforts being devoted to improving team processes. Effective teamwork takes time and effort, whether the team is focused on a finite number of local accounts or working virtually in a more volume-driven or transactional market.
The focus in this session will be to enhance team awareness, while developing and improving team spirit, trust and open communication. The day is divided into two distinct sections. They are:
1. Teaming principles and behaviors
2. Succeeding with diverse communication styles
Teaming principles and behaviors
During this section participants will learn how to:
- Maximize the flow of information within the presales team and cross departmentally
- Define the characteristics of effective teams
- Probe to best understand diverse views, personal needs and how those are impacting team effectiveness
- Welcome dissenting viewpoints and manage conflict productively
Participants will spend significant time analyzing current team behaviors that are leading to productive and less productive results. They will strategize appropriate next steps for what they personally can do to reinforce the positive and professionally address less productive behaviors.
Succeeding with diverse communication styles
Based on Drake-Beam’s “I-Speak” survey instrument, participants will have the opportunity to learn about their own communication style and the styles of others with whom they frequently interact. Different than many other styles instruments, this instrument was chosen because it measures how styles change under normal vs. stressful conditions.
During this section participants will learn:
- How others perceive them
- Why some relationships are more successful than others
- How to create new communication strategies when a current approach is not working
- How to interact more successfully by job function (account managers, technical customers, professional services, etc.)
Summary
The better the teaming skills, the better the team results. In this program, participants will learn exactly what it takes for a team to perform at its highest level, plus how to adjust communication styles to increase effectiveness with internal team members and customers. Participants will spend much of the day focused on analyzing their own team’s needs and crafting personal action items to help the team evolve to the next level.