There is No I in Team

We are in Cleveland holding our quarterly sales meeting. It's an exciting week as we celebrate nearly 40% growth year over year and a record number of turn ups. However, the question that I wanted to address this week was whether building a sales team was important. Selling is an individual sport more similar to golf than football. A sales person faces each prospect alone and in our case they face the VAR, agent or distributor alone representing Broadvox. Therefore, why build a sales team?

I searched the internet for other's thoughts on "sales person versus sales team" but I found nothing of value. Yesterday, as the group worked on a team exercise, I developed my answer.  Yes, they are individuals fighting the good fight of marketing and selling each day, but they are an organization of people within Broadvox. They are the channel managers. Their individual names mean less to others within Broadvox, than that they are the source of our retail sales success. Additionally, as a team, they maintain a support mechanism that strengthens the individual member. The sharing of competitive information, success stories and even failures, positions the others to manage their channels better and avoid pitfalls.

I am continually expanding the channel organization. The newbies will not reach their potential as quickly as desired if they do not leverage the other members of the group. I am pleased when I hear that some one has supported the another in a training session, webinar, or proposal response. I relish knowing they have met to discuss issues without me. While most of the time the channel managers are focused on their individual success, it's nice to know they also view the success of Broadvox as important. It isn't always just about them, sometimes it is about assisting one who knows the challenges they face each day.

Broadvox has a great group of channel managers and one heck of a sales team.