As a business owner or sales manager, one of the greatest challenges you face is in how to configure your sales team. The traditional view of sales management boils down to viewing the sales ‘team’ only as a group of individuals, some of whom achieve quota more consistently than others.
This view leads sales managers to think of their job as one focused almost exclusively on managing individual sales people, without giving much thought to the nature, roles and dynamics of the sales team as a whole — and how that team can achieve greater success when properly formed. In other words, a great sales team is stronger than just the sum of its parts or people.
In order to make this change, business owners or sales leaders have to embrace a change in how their teams are configured, moving from a traditional silo model (often divided purely on the basis of sales territory) into an integrated, role-based model where groups of individuals work collectively to achieve key goals.
To understand the potential value of a role-based sales team, consider the key roles that are deployed in a process-focused sales team.
Role #1 – Lead Generation
This position, often assigned under the title of business development or market research, centers on techniques such as online research, target account strategy and examination of potential good-fit suspects using consumer or business databases from vendors like Dun & Bradstreet and InfoUSA. Techniques in use may include warm outbound calling; relationship selling and social selling.
Role #2 – Lead Nurturing
Supported by digital marketing automation or drip marketing methods, this position focuses specifically on building relationships and answering questions from identified leads. This is truly a nurturing role in the sense that the person in this position works in partnership with digital communication such as customized, prospect-specific email marketing; industry-targeted landing pages; downloadable content opportunities and special invitations to create interest and engagement.
In traditional organizations this role is often assigned to an inside sales representative, although the role can also involve some outside activities (especially where multiple prospects are brought together in person, such as at seminars or events).
Role #3 – Sales Cycle Management
People in this role only work with prospects who are actively engaged in the sales process – those who are ready to buy. When it appears that a prospect isn’t ready to engage, or isn’t able to make a decision ‘now’, the sales cycle manager hands the relationship back to the lead nurturing role.
As long as a sales cycle is in play, this person is responsible for managing the process as well as presenting the company’s products and services convincingly to the prospect. In traditional organizations this role has often been assigned to an outside sales representative, although in today’s digital-centric era more and more components of the sales process can (and often should) be performed via email, web, phone and online conferencing.
Role #4 – Post-Sale Success
Whereas in the past this position was often viewed through the narrow lens of ‘customer service representative’, today we are talking about something far more strategic and holistic. This individual now provides customer experience management — ensuring that resources and key people are brought to bear in order to ensure customer success.
And this individual also handles a variety of follow-on components such as documenting the customer success story, nurturing the customer relationship post-sale, and seeking/identifying and pursuing future opportunities for product and service add-on sales. Finally, this person seeks opportunities to turn passive but satisfied customers into active and engaged brand advocates.
Each of these roles is dynamic, intense and carries a high level of responsibility. The key to success using role-based teams is to create a logical structure by which teams are formed — perhaps around a specific industry (aerospace vs. construction) or customer type (business vs. consumer). This also encourages the team members to get to know their market or customer personas in depth and work collectively to become experts at serving their focused prospects and customers.
By leveraging and implementing the power of role-based teams within your sales organization, your company can truly benefit from a 1+1=3 level of impact on your ongoing sales success.