The Team Selling Framework is a powerful visual that helps define roles and responsibilities within the Sales Process. In this framework, roles are color-coded: Blue, Red, and Green. Everyone on the team has a role to play, but not everyone is responsible for ‘asking’.

Important note: Think of these as ‘roles’; they are not necessarily ‘jobs’. If you’re a smaller operation you might wear ‘hats’. There are times when you wear a blue hat and times when you wear a green hat. As an entrepreneur, you start out wearing all three hats!

Green Team:

• This is the Core Sales Team responsible for driving the sales process with prospects, including strategy, asking, closing, and follow-up. The Green Team needs to be out-of-the-office making visits.
• Green Teamers are Relationships Managers (RMs) assigned to prospects.
  • There can be only ONE Relationship Manager assigned to each prospect.
  • The RM is accountable for that prospect’s strategy.
  • The RM is always a member of your Green Team!

Red Team:

• The Red Team supports the sales process. One simple way to think about this is to define the responsibilities of the Red Team around ensuring that the Green Team is out-of-the-office more.
• The Red Team helps with setting up visits, especially with phone follow-up and callbacks.
• Using this definition, a grant writer is often a member of the Red Team.

Blue Team:

• Blue team members can be brought into the process as needed/directed by the Green Team. For example, a few years ago I worked on a gift that took 18 months to close. During the process, more than 20 Blue Team members were brought into the process at some point. However, ALL of that activity was coordinated through and by the singular Relationship Manager on the Green Team.
• The Blue Team is not accountable for ‘asking’. The implications here are big! It means the model does not default to board members asking their friends for money (see: no more peer-to-peer solicitation).
• That being said, the Red/Green Team NEED Blue Team members! They play a crucial role in TEAM selling. The Blue Team members provide context, connection, and credibility in a way that a Green Team Members often cannot.
• Blue Team Members can be engaged before, during, or after the visit. Example: Use your ‘Blue’ Team to help with a predisposition, opening doors, and even setting up or requesting the visit.