The Hidden Sales Team Behind Your Business: Who’s Training Them?
- Kevin Wash
- Apr 21
- 2 min read
In challenging times, many organisations shift their focus. Attention moves away from the high-profile success of Sales and Marketing and turns toward operational efficiency specifically, the performance of support staff.
Administration, follow-ups, collections, handovers, these roles are often non-client-facing, yet they are critical to the productivity and long-term success of any business.
"Sales is not a moment; it’s a cycle. Every department plays a role in that cycle." Kevin Wash
From the first phone call or email enquiry, the individuals handling those interactions shape the client experience. Their engagement, awareness, and understanding of the business directly influence outcomes, it can be positive and equally it can be negative and damaging to the overall business.
Do they know the company’s targets?
Do they understand how the business is performing overall not just within their silo?
Do they see how their work contributes to growth?
Do they actually care?
When people understand their role in the bigger picture, their performance changes.
Client engagement at every touchpoint matters. It can either build momentum toward a sale, or stop it before it even begins.
At VOS, we’re typically brought in for sales training, helping teams improve performance, close more deals, and increase revenue. The return on investment is easy to measure: invest in training, see a direct impact on sales.
But there’s a critical question often overlooked:
What about the support staff?
Who is supporting them?
Around eight years ago, we introduced cross-department training within a client organisation. This included marketing, administration, reservations, collections, and finance.
We built the training around four key fundamentals:
Understanding the company’s targets and current performance
Recognising how each role impacts present and future sales
Providing practical tools to handle daily challenges more effectively
Highlighting how individual performance affects other departments—positively or negatively
The results were remarkable.
We’ve since implemented similar programmes across multiple large organisations and the outcomes are consistently the same.
Before looking at what happens, it’s important to understand why.
Sales teams are accustomed to training. Often, they attend reluctantly distracted, disengaged, no pen or notepads, just their phones ready to receive that life changing big deal call, (it never rings).
Support staff are different.
They arrive early. Prepared. Focused. Notebooks open, questions ready. Phones turned off, They want to learn, to improve, to contribute more.
But most importantly they appreciate that the company is investing in them, they recognise the are cared so for.
When training is tailored to their real, daily challenges, engagement increases dramatically.
The results?
Significant increases in engagement levels
Stronger cross-department collaboration
Increased productivity
Higher staff retention
Reduced recruitment costs
More internal promotions
Greater demand for ongoing development
Increased engagement leads to increased productivity levels that leads to increased output and lower costs.
Clients notice the difference immediately: every interaction transpires to being professional, engaged, and aligned.
It becomes a true win-win.
So, let me ask you again:
In these challenging times, who is supporting your support staff?
Let’s talk.
Written by Kevin Wash / VOS Consultants
