Keys to Sales Force Structrue

The sales structure should enable individuals to thrive by providing clear marching orders, realistic performance expectations, the right tools, and a productive, supportive environment. 

Organizational structure decisions can frequently determine financial success.  The following takeaways are ones to consider for your sales force structure:

• Structure should follow from strategy.  Properly aligning your sales organization to fit the evolving marketplace is essential--more important than the specifics of how you manage, reward, and equip your sales reps.  It is also potentially disruptive, which is one of the reasons that many wholesaler-distributors fall into the trap of relying on incremental changes, which, over time, may leave them far away from their ideal market position.
• Your target customers' needs should be the basis for evaluating your sales structure.  There are many established models that can provide useful ideas.  Market gap analysis and role maps are great tools for defining clear sales positions starting from an external, customer-centric viewpoint.
• Sales roles should also consider the inevitable trade-off between accountability and specialization.  It is easier to measure performance when a single individual has end-to-end responsibility for all aspects of the sales process.  However, a competitor who offers specialists for quotations, project management, or application support may be able to provide these services more cheaply and effectively.
• Estimating the average cost of sales force "coverage" for a customer is an important part of structure and, ultimately, compensation design.  This evaluation provides an economic reality check of both your sales roles and your cost to serve different customer segments.
• At the end of the day, every sales position is filled by a flesh and blood human being.   The sales structure should enable individuals to thrive by providing clear marching orders, realistic performance expectations, the right tools, and a productive, supportive environment.  Tacking training, technology, or incentives onto a fundamentally dysfunctional structure will not work.

ACTION POINT: Establish your sales organizational structure based on the key takeaways above.