For professional firms there are a myriad of potential collaborations which can help deliver greater sales.

Lawyers, for example, can collaborate with accountants, financial advisors, bankers, consultants and other advisors to do joint seminars, create joint service offers or simply cross refer business.

Consultants collaborate extensively with technology and software providers to provide joined-up implementation solutions for clients.

But of all the choices, the one area where almost all firms must excel at collaboration is with their clients.

Gone are the days where professionals carried out their trade in ivory towers and clients gratefully lapped up their advice without challenge. Nowadays almost all clients want to be significantly involved in the process of how the professional does their work. They want to be kept up to date with progress and consulted at key decision-making points – not just presented with the results at the end.

For many professional firms, this requires a new skill-set from their professionals. They need to be able to work effectively in teams with their clients, be comfortable getting “up close and personal” with people from different backgrounds and experience bases to them, and to be able to get results without having direct line authority over all team members.

Of course, not all clients want this. Some still want to outsource responsibility and get a great end product. But more and more are realising that the only way to ensure a great end product is to be involved in the process of producing it yourself. The consulting, law, accounting or other professional firm who is able to demonstrate that they can collaborate effectively with their clients in this sort of environment has a great advantage when it comes to winning business.

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Selling to consumers in a retail setting can be challenging (I know, all selling can be challenging). In retail, we have little control over our prospects. They can exit our store at any time. We don’t have offices or desks or conference rooms to anchor our interaction. We typically don’t have any privacy with our prospect as we might in their office or in our office. They often have children or other family members with them when they need individual attention, or don’t have a family member with them in order to move ahead with a purchase.

But we have several collaborative selling devices available to us in retail that can aid our selling in the retail sector. Use of these devices can increase customer engagement and increase our sales effectiveness. Here are three of my favorite retail selling techniques that use collaboration to its best advantage.

1. The Turn-Over.

Sellers of big ticket retail items can benefit from having a system in place so you can turn-over your prospect to another sales representative (or sales manager) if things are not progressing appropriately. A turn over can be particularly helpful in one call close sales situations.

Let’s imagine you sell boats and watercraft, and a couple comes to your store. You spend an hour with them discussing their needs and desires and looking at a product that interests them, but then progress seems to stall. You haven’t been able to develop the rapport that you want, and the relationship between you and your shoppers seems to lack energy.

It’s time to bring someone new into the relationship! Prospects with different personalities sometimes have preferences for salespeople with certain personalities, and your personality may not be the right one for this couple on this day. So bring on “the turn-over!” Here’s how to execute one.

Excuse yourself from your couple and fetch another sales representative or your sales manager. Quickly tell them you want to do a turn-over. Bring him or her back to your prospects and introduce everyone. Then, summarize the action so far: “Megan, this is Linda and Tony, and they’ve been looking at the XRT-100. They really like its [insert feature or specification here], and they have some good friends who have an XRT-90 which they purchased about five years ago. We’ve talked about the [insert feature here] and the [insert feature here] and aren’t sure they would use them.”

Continue the summary until Megan has a very clear picture of what’s going on, and then be quiet. Megan should now take the lead and start asking questions of the couple to either clarify or confirm the information you just shared with Megan and then move ahead with the selling process. You hang out with Megan and the couple for a few minutes while quietly observing. Then, you quietly slip out of the picture. Megan is now the primary sales representative for Linda and Tony and you are free to move on.

Turn-overs need to be a part of the company culture and guidelines in place so everyone knows how to initiate one and how to step into one. It needs to be practiced like any element of selling.

When Linda and Tony buy, you split the commission. Since half commission from a buying customer is better than full commission from a non-buying customer, everyone comes out a winner when a successful turn over is executed.

2. Team Selling

In police work they have “good cop / bad cop.” In selling, we have “team selling.”

“Good cop / bad cop” is used to manipulate a suspect through intimidation and fear, and then removal of that intimidation and fear to achieve the desired result. Although some companies use team selling in a similar manner (to intimidate), team selling can be used in a more comfortable and ethical manner to help move the sales process forward.

Team selling is most effective not when you use it to gang up against your prospect and close the sale through intimidation, but when two salespeople bring different strengths to the table. These strengths might be contrasting personality types, contrasting knowledge, contrasting experience, or something else.

Although the team selling concept can be introduced to your shoppers at the outset of the sales interaction, it’s usually more effective if you wait until some level of trust and rapport exists between an initial salesperson and the prospect. It’s even better to wait until some progress is made at identifying the prospects’ needs and desires.

Here’s a team selling scenario: It’s a slow Tuesday morning at the car lot until prospect Ben enters the store. You greet Ben and introduce yourself. Within a few minutes, Ben feels some level of comfort with you and he’s explaining why he’s there and what he needs.

To begin team selling, you excuse yourself and retrieve the other team member. You bring Rachel into the conversation and introduce him to Ben by saying, “Ben, this is Rachel, and she also has an interest in hybrid vehicles, so she’s going to join us as we chat if you don’t mind.” Rachel and Ben shake hands, Rachel shares some niceties, and if Ben seems amenable to the situation, you have now successfully initiated a team selling initiative.

You selected Rachel for some asset that you yourself don’t possess. It might be her analytical nature, her knowledge, or her killer body, but team selling works best when each team member offers distinct advantages to the conversation.

You and Rachel split the commission for the sale.

3. The Product Expert.

John and Danielle enter your furniture store. You learn that they are looking for a pair of recliners for their new cabin. As you get into the sales interaction, you excuse yourself and bring Charles into the conversation like this:

“Charles, this is Danielle and this is John, and they’re looking for a pair of recliners for their new cabin they purchased on Lake Whisper by Big Falls. Charles and Danielle, I wanted you to meet Charles because nobody knows more about recliners than he does.”

You and Charles continue selling together. Consumers love experts, and the more specialized the expert, the greater the likelihood this will influence your shopper’s decision.

You and Charles split your commission for the sale.

Popularity: 31% [?]

For the uninitiated, sales would likely be thought of as a great example of collaboration, not only individuals collaborating, but whole teams or departments working together for a united cause: revenue through client satisfaction.  Sales people seen as quarterbacks of resource and specialists, working together to craft and deliver solutions made up of the best of everyone’s contributions.  As you look at sales teams that have been consistently successful in both revenue attainment and client satisfaction, you do find that of the common characteristics is that they are indeed collaborative.  

As you look closer at these organizations, you find that the thing that enables them to collaborate so well goes way beyond technology, and is usually rooted in the culture of the organization.  Their collaboration is driven by their view of their customers, their obligation to the customer, and the realization that maintain a leadership role through a commitment to excellence and improvement.

While technology empowers companies and individuals, it can not drive the process.  Looked at another way, technology does not create pull-through in team dynamics and execution.  Going back to things like Louts Notes, to the first wave of portals, intranets, all the power of technology in ones palm, it always took more.  These things changed the way we did things but did not always change the productivity, efficiency and most importantly, the client experience.

Collaboration happens when individuals with in an organization realize two key things and then commit unconditionally to them.  First is the understanding that the customer pays for everything, and even after you have sucked every last questionable expense out of the system, you still need revenue at the top to realize returns on the bottom; and the only source for revenue is the customer, so you better do everything satisfy the customer so they will give you revenue.  The second is the acceptance that everyone in the client chain is capable and committed to the same cause as you, so if you focus on what you need to do, like everyone else who is involved before and after you in the chain, the customer will get the best possible outcome, and give you revenue.  Combined these two elements create the right conditions for collaboration. Again, the conditions, you still need to execute, but if these elements are not driving the process, the resulting action will fall short of collaboration. 

To further complicate things, this also has to happen on a team level as well.  Sales have to play nicely with all the other groups in the client chain.  While an internally competitive environment is good, it also has to be kept at a level where it contributes to efficiency, not overshadow it for ego reasons.  When the competitiveness drives client satisfaction, great, otherwise it impedes collaboration and is likely impacting the big goals.

 The above may seem straight forward, but that does not make them simple.  The hardest part is managing ones ego.  It is hard when you have the ego and drive that many sales people do, to work in an environment where the work of the whole group determines success.  So have difficulty letting go, all to often we here sales people say they need to be involved in implementation, delivery, etc.  While they mean well, and probably think they are “collaborating”, they are not.  They are perceived to be, and likely are, interfering in some way; condescending, as they are saying directly or just by their actions, that they need to supervise, and there by do not trust the others to do their work, this clearly decreases efficiency.  In most instances, the sales person is there to ensure client satisfaction, but the result is different.

Not to take it to a Zen level, but efficiency in collaboration is to make sure that you maximize and produce the best results in you link of the client chain; having been handed the absolutes best from the previous link, you want to build on that with your work and hand on the absolute best to the next link.  The complete trust in the other team members, organizationally the other groups, is what allows collaboration.  Technology facilitates execution, attitude, vision and market view create and enable collaboration.

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