Want to Sell More? Make Your Team Less Competitive, Not More | Entrepreneur

"As someone who has coached several sales teams over the years, I've seen how traditional competitive sales environments run leaders down. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges of managing this particular group of personalities is that they're extremely competitive. This competitiveness can be both a boon for your company (e.g. the sales will keep coming) and a burden for you (e.g. you're trying to keep high-achievers from acting aggressively or impulsively)."

"I've seen top sales performers clash over territories and go to war with each other. Their sales manager then has to move from focusing on strategic leadership to constant conflict resolution. The stress is overwhelming not just for the manager, but for the entire organization. This experience led me to explore alternative approaches to sales team structures, studying companies that had successfully reimagined their sales cultures."

"The natural go-getter attitudes of your sales team are a benefit to you, but when they are at odds with each other, it's a drain on their time. If your salespeople are constantly trying to outdo each other, they won't be as focused on outdoing the competition. They will also have trouble working together to meet shared goals. One way to fix this is to switch up your internal selling framework and move toward one that rewards collaboration."

Highly competitive sales environments create internal conflict and exhaust leaders. Top performers can clash over territories, forcing managers into constant conflict resolution and straining the entire organization. Some organizations reduced this strain by breaking down silos and changing compensation to reward collective success instead of individual achievement. Rewarding collaboration enables salespeople to pool talents, focus on beating external competitors, and pursue shared goals. Simply declaring collaboration is insufficient; collaboration must be supported by structural changes to compensation and internal selling frameworks. Shifting to collaborative selling requires deliberate redesign of team structures, incentives, and management focus.

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