How can you successfully challenge it on a daily basis, especially in an uncertain context? These are the questions that Fire Tiger (gamified solution for managing and animating employee objectives) and Koban (CRM solution) have decided to answer for you!
Join us every Tuesday for a series of 4 articles, published each week alternately on our 2 websites. We start right away with the first article of this series!
Structuring your sales force is a vast subject on which it is necessary to constantly question yourself. Defining a good structure for your sales force adapted to your market and successfully deploying it on a daily basis is at the heart of all performance and commercial profitability issues. But what is the best structure for my company? How to choose? That's what we'll see in this article!
Sales force building models have evolved significantly in recent years. Yet, traditional methods are still widely used in many companies. But in 2021, are they still effective? Let's take a look at the different possibilities:
If you are a career salesperson, chances are you have already experienced this organization. You are responsible for the Eastern region and your objective is to develop the customer portfolio in the area. In other words, you try to find new prospects, you work on the existing base, you make commercial offers and you take care of the closing.
We are talking here about the geographical organization but in reality it is the same for the organizations by sector of activity. For example, one salesperson for large accounts, one salesperson for small accounts, etc. Generally speaking, this is an organization wherea single salesperson is in charge of the entire sales cycle.
This structuring, although traditional, still works very well in some sectors. But it is not the only one that exists and, above all, it is not necessarily the most suitable for everyone.
⚡Avantages: there is only one contact person for the customer which strengthens the feeling of trust and the salesperson thus knows his customers and his area very well.
⚠ ️ Disadvantages: profitability and time management are not necessarily there. Sales people with an already full address book will do little commercial prospecting which slows down the development of your business. Finally, this method does not take into account the evolution of consumers and their new behaviors.
As for the famous "1 salesperson per sector doing everything" model, it implies continuing to put the responsibility of an entire customer portfolio to a single salesperson. This leads to a strong dependence on the salesperson and the information he has managed to gather.
Dominique SEGUIN, General Manager at Kestio (leader in sales and marketing performance support).
This type of organization is becoming increasingly popular, particularly due to current societal and digital developments. It is, in fact, about assigning a person to each stage of the sales cycle.
💡 A lead is a contact you have generated through marketing actions. A lead is not yet a prospect, but it is destined to become one.
Lead generation is an essential point to feed your sales people and especially to fill your pipeline. No matter how good your sales people are, if there are no new contacts, there are no new signatures. Setting up a team dedicated to this step can ensure that you are regularly fed with new contacts.
Beware, it is not easy to set up. It's up to you to find the most efficient channels to generate leads. And contrary to what we think, this is not limited to digital actions! You can also think about events (when the health context allows it, of course) or even telemarketing campaigns.
⚡Benefits: ensures long-term lead nurturing, frees up time for your other teams to focus on other stages of the sales cycle
⚠ ️ Disadvantages: it is not an easy strategy to implement and requires human and financial resources (when you consider that time is money!).
A hunting team:
Hunters are the sales people who turn your leads into prospects. They are on the front line and represent your company. The challenge for them is to gather as much relevant information about the lead as possible. Does he have a real project? Does he have a budget to match? Does my offer match? All the data that allows you to define if the lead has a real potential or if, on the contrary, it is not necessary to spend more time on it.
💡 Good to know: some CRM tools allow you to assign a score to your leads based on their digital behaviors. For example, you can decide to assign points for reading a page on your site or even for filling out a web form. This score already allows you to judge the level of interest of the lead and to make a first selection!
This team saves time and maximizes your profitability. You can see very early in the sales cycle whether the project is "worth it" (commercially speaking) or not. Depending on your organization (and your workforce), the person who implements the lead generation strategy can also be the one who "hunts".
A closing team :
Once the lead is qualified, it's time to hand over to the closing team. You know that your prospect has a real project and that your company can meet their needs. All that's left to do issign them! That's what the closing team is there for. This step will take more or less time depending on your industry and the average length of your sales cycle.
This step may require the intervention of other people in your company. Indeed, to sign a deal, you may need to involve a technical profile to reassure on certain points. A commercial eye is not always enough.
⚡ Advantages: Structuring by activity has the advantage of being more comprehensive by dedicating one or more people to a specific stage of the sales cycle. Each person has a well-defined role which allows for a better experience for the prospect. It also ensures that no stage of the sales cycle is left behind and maximizes your profitability.
⚠ Disadvantages: The difficulty with this organization is getting your team to accept it. Many salespeople are used to being "on their own" and totally autonomous in an area. Prospects have to deal with several contacts, which can lose them if the transmission between each team is not well assured.
Today, we realize that the the most efficient structures will divide up the activities: one person who prospects, one person who closes, one person who builds loyalty. Breaking down the activities means accepting that each of them has different success factors and that entrusting everything to the same player is not a guarantee of efficiency and can be much more expensive.
Dominique SEGUINGeneral Manager at Kestio (leader in sales and marketing performance support).
In conclusion, it is now necessary to decide if your structuring is the right one and the most efficient for your company. What is the right way? When is the right time? Here is the answer brought by Dominique Seguin, Managing Director at Kestio (leader in sales and marketing performance)
The question I suggest asking yourself when you are a business leader is: "Will the means that have allowed you to succeed until now be sufficient to succeed tomorrow? "In a world that is complex, where we have little visibility and where we must constantly do more with less, it is important to ask ourselves whether all this will be relevant for tomorrow. If the answer is no, then we must consider changing our organization.Dominique SEGUINGeneral Manager at Kestio (leader in sales and marketing performance support).
There is no right answer to this question. Each company is different, with specific processes and different means, which necessarily requires a customized structuring. However, we can give you some guidelines to help you:
Take into account the opinion of your sales representatives:
They are the ones who will have to face these changes, so it is important to collect their opinions but also their field feedback! They are on the front line, in direct contact with customers, so they are in the best position to provide you with relevant feedback.Beyond having to suit your sales force, your structure must be adapted to your market.
Hybrid structuring:
Nowadays, you don't have to limit yourself to one structuring method. It is sometimes necessary to mix several of them to find the perfect match.
Why not set up a team of hunters by geographic area? For example, hunter A will take care of all the northern leads while hunter B will take care of all the southern leads.
Get help:
The organization of your sales force is the very heart of your business. Without it, your activity cannot develop (nor your turnover!). It can be useful to call on experts to help you in this (re)structuring.
For an efficient structuring, you must also think about your tools. An Excel file is good, but it quickly shows its limits (no matter how you structure it!). For example, it's not practical for a field sales person to have to take his computer and open his Excel file to mark his comments or see which companies he should prospect? For a lead generation team, it is very time consuming (and without added value) to process all the website requests by email and add them to your Excel file. A CRM tool is there to help you implement your structuring operationally and save you time!
"There are many risks in not changing your structure: high sales costs, taking the risk of having a part of the sales force that does not have enough time to sell (while at the same time the objectives are increasingly high), having a sales system that is not very efficient, a low return, depriving yourself of channels of exchange that are more efficient, correspond better to the customers, and above all, are less expensive. The context is always to do more with less, so it is difficult to avoid reflection.Dominique SEGUINGeneral Manager at Kestio (leader in sales and marketing performance support).
In his complete interview, Dominique Seguin gives you, among other things, his recipe for an ideal sales force structure and the keys to successfully adapting his team to new models. You will be able to find the interview in its entirety within our white paper that will be released at the end of the series. A little patience 🙂
