schism
/'s(k)izem/
noun
a split or division between strongly opposed sections or parties, caused by differences in opinion or belief.

If you have a schism on your sales team, it's time to start asking yourself a few simple questions:

• Do you dread coming to work?
• Are you tired of the bickering and back-biting between colleagues?
• Is your company's bottom line suffering because of all the bad blood that exists among members of your sales team?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, it's time to huddle up, call a couple of trick plays, and get your team members together on the same page of the playbook.

Here's how.

Acknowledge (and appreciate) differences

You want everyone working toward the same goal, right? Then you have to acknowledge (and learn to appreciate) the fact that everyone will take their own path towards the goal.

In sales, most managers focus on behavior. They set goals, develop a sales process, and expect all of their team members to follow the exact same path to success.

It rarely works and often creates conflict.

It's a science-based fact (called whole brain thinking) that people process information differently. Some are rational, some intellectual, some intuitive, and some instinctive. The sooner you can get up to speed on the nuances of whole brain thinking, the sooner you can discover how each of your team members prefers to process information – and then tailor your sales training, sales processes and financial rewards to motivate everyone on your team to use their preferred methods of thinking to achieve the same goals.

Help your team acknowledge (and appreciate) differences

Whole braining thinking isn't just for senior leaders or entire organizations. It's scalable. It can work wonders for your sales team, too. If you take the time to help your team understand the concept of whole brain thinking, they will be better prepared to work with (and be more successful in dealing with) people who are different from themselves.

Each member of your team will understand how they think as well as how to understand how their customers think – meaning they will be able to tailor their communication to better solve problems for and connect with their audiences.

In other words, your sales team will be more effective and efficient.

Think of it this way. If Democrats and Republicans, the Hatfields and the McCoys, and Simon and Garfunkel understood whole brain thinking, there would be less yelling on cable television, a lot of lives could have been saved, and the world would be filled with even more sweet, sweet beautiful music.

Focus on the A-B-Cs and Ds.

Even if everyone on your team understands whole brain thinking (and acknowledges and appreciates differences), you are still going to have to focus on the A-B-Cs and Ds for every project.

This is another concept that comes from the whole brain thinking model. Focusing on the most important things for every project helps ensure that your team will have clear, actionable, and easily understandable goals toward which to work.

• A. Make sure you have clear performance goals and objectives (as well as the ability to measure them).
• B. Make sure you have a clear plane and timeline.
• C. Make sure you know your customer(s).
• D. Make sure your team is pushing itself to take risks.

These are the steps that can focus, energize, and bring your team together. And when they are combined with the power of whole brain thinking, they can help you steer clear of malfunction junction, which is inhabited by a bunch of schisms.