Jun 4, 2018
Senior-level
sales & biz dev executives from Forbes Business Development
Council share firsthand insights.
No matter what industry you’re in, every sales team has
the same goal of growing revenue through new or repeat business. However, the
way that team operates depends heavily on your product,
market and people — and sometimes, that means modifying your team's structure to
boost efficiency.
If you want to increase your future sales,
you may want to take a look at your sales organizational structure and
see if there’s anything you can change to optimize it. To find out what works,
we asked a panel of Forbes Business Development Council members
how to do just that. Here's what they said:
Photos courtesy of
individual members.
Members share a few
approaches sales teams can use.
1. Aim For The Future
The ideal structure for a sales team is
an arrow. The arrow point is the savvy, strategic reps focused on unlocking key
accounts. The shaft is comprised of reps, who are passionate about supporting
and expanding growth in new and existing accounts. The
fletching, your sales management, helps guide the arrow to its
target. All of this ensures everyone is focused on forward-looking revenue
opportunities. - Logan Ketchum, Veritone, Inc.
2.
Organize Your Team Around Your Customers
There are only a
few ways to structure a sales force: Around
customers, products or business functions. Ideally, you'd always organize
around customers, because it builds intimacy and familiarity (e.g., by
geography, customer type, account demographics). If your products are
technical, you may need to organize by product or function as a practical
reality, but customer focus is always the best. - Jason Jordan, Vantage Point
Performance
3. Hire A Mix Of Generalists And Specialists
Our sales force consists of generalist and specialist
sellers. Having a mix of resources allows you to couple broad knowledge with
technical and solution area expertise to deliver optimal solutions for
customers. Our generalists develop personalized customer relationships to
deliver value and revenue growth holistically, while our specialists provide
deep expertise at scale. - Rakhi Voria, Microsoft
4. Hire For Agility In Industry Shifts
There are always shifts in buying behaviors, but you don't need
a big team to be agile with changes — you just need to make sure your staff is
stacked with agile people. You can't predict when changes will happen in the
future, but you can be proactive in anticipating these changes. Monitor
customer acquisition cost to determine when and how your sales team needs to
adapt in order to maximize future sales. - Christian
Valiulis, Automatic
Payroll Systems
5. Look For Managers Who Are Caring, Transparent And
Constructive
Hire managers who care about those who report to them, are
willing to be transparent and give constructive criticism. If they're actually
trying to help when they critique, that will make whoever they are dealing with
a better salesperson. Aside from that, institute onboarding and training
programs that will help you weed out those who will be successful from those
who won't. - James Weitzman, Cockroach Labs
6. Hire 'Hunters' To Incentivize Growth
Most sales team roles are based on different
behaviors: defend the business or grow it. I propose
you structure your teams (and compensation plans) to incentivize
growth, either from net new clients or new lines of business from existing
ones. Your "hunters" should always be bringing in new
business, but your "farmers" should be hunting within the
account itself. - Christopher
Kingman, TransUnion
7. Align Your Incentives With Your Team's
Future Success
Regardless of the size of your sales team or
the industry you are in, there is nothing more important to ensuring future
success than aligning incentives. To maximize future sales, make sure
that your salespeople are motivated to sell — and nothing motivates
salespeople more than the ability to earn more money. - Adam Mendler, Beverly Hills
Chairs
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