Make It All About Them: Winning Sales Presentations

9   Behaving as a Team: Team Dynamics

In earlier chapters, I talked about the real reason everyone comes together for final presentations: so that the client can experience and assess what it is like to work with you compared to your competitors. Therefore, the explicit and implicit messages that you send about how you work with others are critical.

I remember attending a training session many years ago with a very highly regarded consulting firm that helped individuals and organizations work better with one another. The company's approach was grounded in linguistics, and the goal was to help people to think and perform outside of their traditional realm of possibilities. I had previously attended several other programs put on by this firm, and I always came away thinking slightly differently than when had I arrived—a mark of a good program.

This particular session was being team-facilitated by two women, and it became very apparent during the first hour that there was conflict between the two. Even though they were polite and professional to one another, I could sense an air of competitiveness. It wasn't a particular comment that either of them made or a look that one gave the other, but something was just amiss—like a disagreeable odor in the room. And it was distracting. Of course, it was also disconcerting that they were supposed to be practicing what they were preaching.

You can be absolutely certain that buying committees can easily pick up on a team's chemistry—and that ...