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Sales Effectiveness Services

Sales Role & Organization Design

As businesses progress, their sales organizations can quickly become outdated. What may have been suitable for a start-up will not work for a growth-phase company or, even less, for a well-established company with a diverse product range and a mix of potential and existing customers of varying sizes.

However, companies tend to be slow in adapting their sales roles and organizational designs to keep up with their evolving business. Change can be disruptive and if something has worked well in the past, it's natural to be hesitant to let it go. As a result, there's a significant opportunity to boost productivity by assessing and redesigning sales roles and organizations.

Sales teams often consider organizational re-design to:

Properly support a new product or a new use for an existing product, which may be for a new application or as part of a new “total solution.”

Lower the cost of sale, through more efficient use of existing resources or use of lower-cost resources. This is a natural progression as products age and become commoditized.

Merge with another sales organization or modify channel mix.

Maximizing the potential of your sales force requires a meticulous strategic approach to sales role & organizational design.

Our service is dedicated to refining and enhancing the structure of your sales team through this process:

First, define the objectives of the new organization, e.g.,

  • Lower cost of sales for product x
  • Increase the close ratio for product y
  • Improve penetration into segment z

Next, define and map current sales roles concerning account, product, and sales process responsibility. In other words:

  • What types of accounts is the salesperson responsible for (size, market segment, existing vs. new)?
  • Which products does the sales sell, team-sell, support, or pass leads for?
  • Which parts of the sales process continuum (access, persuade, fulfill) does the salesperson own, support, or hand off?

Identify issues and going-forward needs for the sales organization. This is accomplished through stakeholder interviews of sales management, general management, marketing, and finance. What is the evidence that changes may need to be made?

Identify alternative or competitor models of role and organization design

  • There is a limited universe of sales roles and the ways they can be organized, though there are many permutations. Understanding how and why direct competitors, or players in other industries, have chosen to define roles and reporting structures provides some clear-cut alternatives for consideration

Having gathered internal and external perspectives on sales roles and organization choices, evaluate those that are most promising with regard to how well they meet your organization’s strategic and financial objectives for the reorganization

Design the new sales organization

  • Role definitions: productivity expectations; time expectations; account, product, and sales process expectations
  • Reporting structures
  • Headcount

Define the change management challenge and the training/coaching and other steps needed to meet it

If possible, develop a pilot program for the re-design and evaluate it before rolling it out to the entire organization

This methodical approach ensures a streamlined, purpose-driven sales role & organization that resonates with both market trends and company objectives.