The new mode of thinking in the business world is that a well organized and functioning sales team is a tangible asset. Although there are no generally accepted accounting principles to calculate for the value of your sales team, the proof of their value is in the business that these individuals bring to the table, day after day. While maintaining a sales team does result in human resources costs, your sales team also makes an enormous difference on the profit side of your organization’s balance sheet. Without a sales team bringing in new business and encouraging further business from existing clients, even a thriving organization will quickly falter. In a challenging marketplace, you should be looking at your sales team as an asset rather than as an expense. Here’s why.

Even the Best Technology Can’t Capture Business on Its Own

Your organization has made considerable investments in technology to support its growth and competitiveness in the marketplace. However, even the best sales force automation software on its own can do little more than provide metrics, reams of data that are useless unless you have a sales team in place that can turn this into actionable information that captures new business. It takes a sales team to make presentations, explain products and services, and create the personal relationships on which growing businesses thrive.

It’s Your Sales Team that Creates Value

The value-driven approach to sales is a tried and true method for generating deals. Especially when there are several options in the marketplace, organizations need to be able to see the value behind the buy in order to make a purchase commitment. Your sales team creates this value for customers, by understanding customers’ unique business needs and differentiating your organization’s offerings from the rest of the pack. Well written marketing materials may be a supplement to a customer’s buying decision, but it takes a sales team to cement the deal.

Your Sales Team Can’t Just Be Replaced

Every sales team has three basic tiers of performers: The rainmakers, the reliable performers, and the bottom third. While those in the last tier who are not making enough sales to be truly competitive may be separable, the people on your sales team in the other two tiers cannot be simply switched out. How long would it take you to replace even the middle 40% of your sales team, and how much would your organization need to invest in terms of time and direct costs to accomplish that? Looking at the costs to replace your sales team compared to the cost to maintain your sales team and the sales that the team brings in shows just how much of an asset your sales team truly is to your organization.

Your Sales Team Is Your Biggest Competitive Advantage

All other considerations being equal, your sales team is the one thing that your competitors cannot mimic. Your sales team is an inimitable group of skilled, experience individuals who you have carefully recruited from hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other applicants who did not make the cut. Your sales team understands your company’s culture and preferred methods of doing business inside and out, and works hard every day to translate your business processes into business generators by adding the personal touch to deals that only a cohesive sales team can provide. In doing so, your sales team is establishing itself as an asset that pays for itself.