Sales Role & Organization Design
As businesses evolve, sales organizations quickly become obsolete. What is right for a start-up with one product and no customers is not right for a mature company with a broad product portfolio and both potential and existing customers of widely varying sizes. But companies tend to be slow in transforming their sales roles and organization designs to keep pace with their changing buiness. Change can be disruptive and when something has worked well in the past, there is a natural reluctance to discard it. Because of this, there can be significant opportunity to increase productivity through sales role and organization assessment and re-design.
Some of the reasons why sales undertake sales organization re-design are:
■ Need 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.”
■ Need to lower the cost of sale, though more efficient use of existing resources or though use of lower-cost resources. This is a natural progression as products age and become commoditized.
■ Merging with another sales organization or expansion of sales channels
The process goes like this:
■ First, define the objectives of the new organization, e.g.,
– Lower cost of sales for product x
– Increase close ratio for product y
– Improve penetration into segment z
■ Next, define and map current sales roles with regard to account, product, and sales process responsibility. In other words:
– What types of accounts is the sales person 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 sales person own, support, or hand off?
■ Identify issues and going-forward needs for 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 roles and organization choices, evaluate those that are most promising with regard to how well they meet your organization’s 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 that will be 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
Some of the reasons why sales undertake sales organization re-design are:
■ Need 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.”
■ Need to lower the cost of sale, though more efficient use of existing resources or though use of lower-cost resources. This is a natural progression as products age and become commoditized.
■ Merging with another sales organization or expansion of sales channels
The process goes like this:
■ First, define the objectives of the new organization, e.g.,
– Lower cost of sales for product x
– Increase close ratio for product y
– Improve penetration into segment z
■ Next, define and map current sales roles with regard to account, product, and sales process responsibility. In other words:
– What types of accounts is the sales person 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 sales person own, support, or hand off?
■ Identify issues and going-forward needs for 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 roles and organization choices, evaluate those that are most promising with regard to how well they meet your organization’s 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 that will be 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
