Whiteboard Selling: Empowering Sales Through Visuals

Chapter 19

Forming a Working Team

Few things in life are less efficient than a group of people trying to write a sentence. The advantage of this method is that you end up with something for which you will not be personally blamed.

—Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert

A working team for a whiteboard design initiative is different in purpose and makeup than a working team for other marketing and sales messaging projects.

Whiteboarding initiatives stir the passions of salespeople as a new and novel presentation mechanism, therefore they usually generate working teams whose members are from groups all over the company, not the least of which is sales. Sales is driving (and in some cases paying for) the whiteboard initiatives. This often results in sales executives who are willing to commit the time and resources of key members of their teams to participate and ensure that the whiteboard meets the needs of the field.

Even when whiteboarding projects are sponsored through marketing, sales is extremely interested and wants to participate. This is why whiteboarding projects are so effective in bridging the marketing and sales divide—whiteboarding finally brings together all the great work that marketing has done. It results in sales and marketing messaging delivered in a format and delivery model that appeals to salespeople. Salespeople want better ways to engage with their customers and prospects, ...