Last week I proposed  that the increasingly commoditised environment for many B2B sales orgs should cause a rethink toward geographic, generalisation of sales team structure and away from the “over-specialisation” that characterised sales team structure in the good old days before the GFC.  For balance, I also argued that, like any such conundrum, there are pros and cons to my assertion.  Let’s bullet point the three main ones…

Pros

• Greater concentration of customers for improved sales team productivity and visit: drive time efficiency
• Greater leverage up and down the supply chain/distribution channel, if the sales team members are visiting different players that constitute these go-to-market structures
• Greater job satisfaction for the team members, from greater variety , challenge, and control

Cons

• Lesser ability to focus on a narrower product/service type and customer type
• Lesser ability to control the sales process up and down and between coordinated players in a value chain or distribution channel
• Lesser ability to be able to recruit for the wider scope and skill/competency set required

Want to more? Check out ‘How do you find the submarines? Sales team modelling for when your new target market or sector players are not readily obvious and identifiable’.

Next post: The great myth about the number of visits required to influence buyer behaviour