Last week I proposed that should you, following the B2B sales process I have outlined in this series, arrive at the beachhead that tells you to avoid creating hybrid roles <the preferred and default starting point of the debate> in your B2B sales team, rather create two role types.  But avoid the classic farmers-vs-hunters segregation – go with a separation around  role type that allows for focus on proactive, programmable front foot visit activities, leaving reactive, responsive largely service oriented activities to a separate role type.  Even though that will mean that two different role type people will be account managing some of the same customers.

Why?

You want those sales specialists who are going to focus on growing business – maintaining  existing revenue streams and finding new ones, both from existing customers and prospects, to be able to plan their visit programs in advance.  Ideally a full year calendar of programmed visit “streams” to maximise the B2B sales process performance.  And you do not want to minimise their instance of being thrown off the program by tending to unprogrammable visit requirements.  As per a previous step in this process <and outlined in a previous post from this series>, all such activities should be hived off as much as possible to non-field personnel <eg Customer Service, Operations, Technical et al>, leaving ONLY those that need to be conducted by field personnel  to be undertaken by the folk in this second sales/service role type.

Bottom line = proactive, pre-emptive type sales visit activities should be programmed  and dedicated to a front foot sales role type.  Reactive and responsive type sales/service visit activities should prioritised for the back foot sales/service role type.

Want to look back over last weeks post? Click here to re-read Part 5 of this series.