In this month's Salesforce Magazine there is an interesting article about Martin Hess.

Martin is Vice President, Technology Solutions Group, UK and Ireland. He leads the team that sells the entire HP portfolio of products and services to all commercial markets: enterprise, public sector and small and medium-size business.

What caught my eye were his comments about how difficult is was "finding people who combine top sales skills with the confidence to present and understand large solutions - those who are comfortable tend to be consultancy types who find it very difficult to close deals"

He went on to say that the next best thing was to have "Orchestra Conductors" in lead roles who know when and where to bring people in and out of the sales cycle.

I like the metaphor, as that's often the role we play with many of our clients.

The other day a friend in the business called it "Sales Facilitation" - we are facilitating the sales process for our clients, but it's usually the client who finally signs on the dotted line for the big deals.

I'll have to remember to take my baton ;-)

Labels: sales, teams