Gerd Bauer is a car salesman with his heart and soul and his favorite cars are big, heavy ones. Gerd really perks up when someone enters his showroom. Economy cars don’t excite him at all.

Times have changed however – sales talks with potential customers no longer revolve around horsepower, performance and rpm but about the cost of gas, hybrid engines and environmental features, all of which are not Gerd’s world. He becomes increasingly unable to identify with his day-to-day activity. The same is true for his colleagues on the sales team.

There are a lot of teams in Germany and other countries that are in the same situation as this team, especially in the financial sector – they are on the way to negative integration. Evidence of this can be seen in the inquiries that I am currently getting from industry. In this context, “negative integration” means that team members are integrated on a team but that they assume an increasingly negative mindset towards their individual jobs and the company. It is obvious that this mindset impacts performance and company success in the long run.

Naturally, a trainer cannot ensure that customers will once again demand a particular salesperson’s favorite products. What one can do however is support sales teams in recovering their positive attitude toward their job in general and developing a positive attitude toward their products in particular.

By means of introduction, I am using a tool that our Team Dynamics trainers are familiar with as “team telling”. This tool makes use of shared team experience. That may sound trivial but it has incredible effects since discussions focus on positive as well as negative experiences, which can be reflected upon.

Team telling also helps teams to redevelop positive language. More often than not a negative mindset changes the language used as well. One no longer sells “hot wheels” but “boats”. Instead of talking about revving up from  “0” to “100” one finds oneself talking about “the stupid hybrid engine that no customer understands anyway much less needs”. This simple example shows how quickly language develops a momentum of its own.

A sales team needs to be supported as it recovers positive language. This is extremely important because attitudes and emotions determine future behavior. In the Team Dynamics Model, we speak of “emotioning” when we talk about developing a positive mindset and emotions. However, success only becomes evident if the team pulls together. Fortunately, for integrated teams (in positive as well as negative terms), this is no issue!