Are Sales Organizations “Team” Crazy?

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Compensating the Sales Force by David Cichelli

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Internet Marketing Management

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Are Sales Organizations “Team” Crazy?
By Richard Diefenderfer, Deloitte & Touche, Human Capital Strategies Group

Can segmenting the sales process help your organization? Be sure to research the ramifications before joining the team selling bandwagon.

"We structure our teams around the customer.”
“Our teams must learn to work well together.”
“We have to figure out a fair way to pay our team members.”
“Often our team members compete against each other.”

If the items above sound familiar, then your organization has probably embraced a team-based approach to sales and customer service. Are we seeing the end of the independent “lone wolf” salesperson?

Is the sales process so complex that no one alone has the bandwidth to completely handle the entire sales and customer service process? Is customer service and satisfaction always enhanced with multiple resources?

Why Are We Seeing So Many Teams?

Common buzzwords around sales forces today are “customer focused selling” and “CRM” (customer relationship management). These approaches to managing customers often demand multiple customer contact resources, hence the need for teaming.

Another cause of the ubiquitous growth in teams is the dissection of the sales process into distinct segments. Best practice in sales effectiveness historically dictates that the most efficient resource tackles the applicable role in the sales process.

For example, telesales is used to identify opportunities and gain access, field reps develop and close the deal, and finally customer service will fulfill the order. Sounds logical right? Maybe yes and maybe no.

What Kinds of Teams Are out There?

Generally two types of teams form within sales forces, selling teams and customer teams.

Selling teams are usually formed to go after new business. The general goal, besides the obvious one of making sales, is to keep the most costly sales resource, usually the territory sales representative, doing what they do best, persuading the prospect and closing the deal. Telesales, customer service resources, and product or technical specialists are frequent team members who assist in the sales process.

Customer teams are generally formed around existing customers, either large national accounts or defined accounts within territories. The goals of these teams are to provide the highest level of customer service, retain existing business, and maximize penetration sales into the account. Frequent members to these teams include the sales representative or account manager and multiple customer service resources.

Do We Really Need These Teams?

On paper the reasons for segmenting the sales process to the most efficient resource sounds logical; however, in the real world this theory can easily fall apart. Three common sources of failure are often overlooked when companies jump on the team bandwagon.

Customer perspective – Customer contact resources should be based on customer desires. Too often companies lose sight of this most basic business tenet and create their customer contact model based on their own organization. Internal department structure and reporting relationships mistakenly influence the customer contact model more than customer desires. Create your organization around customer needs. If it’s not there already, have the courage to change.

Efficiency myths – Segmenting the sales process may not always improve the efficiency of the sales process. One common issue revolves around taking the sales representative out of the service function. Add-on sales opportunities can go unnoticed if the sales representative quickly distances himself from the customer after the sale. In cases where the customer is a broker or gatekeeper to other opportunities this segmentation is especially egregious.

Access to customers is often one of the costliest steps of the sale. When customer service is the only means or most efficient means of gaining access, be careful of segmenting the service function. Don’t corrupt a key segment in the sales process for the sake of perceived efficiencies.

Job design – Sometimes shrinking a job’s scope makes the job less desirable. There is a risk in segmenting the sales process and allocating tasks to different jobs. Up and down the sales process, individuals can feel unrewarded at a job with limited scope. Telesales reps may feel alienated by not having the opportunity to close a sale. Likewise, sales representatives often enjoy nurturing relationships and want some responsibility for account management.

Reps in these jobs can become “burnt out” quickly if their job is focused on “burn and turn” of accounts. Of-course, in many organizations the pure hunter role is very appropriate and desired by the types of individuals hired. Identifying the core competencies for each job helps with deciphering the job scope puzzle.

So What’s the Answer?

Approach your issues like a chess match. Look a few moves ahead considering the likely effects of each change to the customer contact model. Consider the ramifications of multiple scenarios and run models until you maximize your organizations sales effectiveness.

To effectively judge each move you must have a firm grasp on all the key issues surrounding the sales process, including:

Customer segmentation by differing buying processes.
Customer needs and expectations.
Sales objectives through new account sales and existing customer retention and penetration.
Sales process from identification through fulfillment.
Job roles and responsibilities.
Reporting and measurement infrastructure for sales performance metrics.

Organizational changes must then be made to support the revamped go-to-market strategy. One of the biggest challenges is realigning the reporting relationships of the diverse customer resources. Political battles and numerous barriers often surface during this phase.

Finally, revisit your compensation and incentive programs to insure alignment with the revised job roles and objectives. Performance measures and sales crediting are major concerns with sales and customer teams.

Generally, you want to reserve the incentive dollars for access and persuasion roles of the sales process. However, with teams, you may need to stretch the rules and include other resources in the incentive plan.

Teams of some sort are probably here to stay. However, in the future, a sales representative’s teammate may be the company’s e-channel. If you think this notion silly, think again. E-channels, like people, can gain access, offer technical information, and provide customer service.

You must even consider compensation issues for the e-channel such as how should sales credit be split between the e-channel and the sales representative. Is the e-channel beginning to sound like a teammate? One thing is certain, sales models will continually evolve as customers and technologies evolve. Sales organizations must rapidly adapt to these changes.