How To Review Your Sales Jobs During A Sales Transformation

Many companies are going through change in their sales organizations. Whether this change is due to COVID-19 or a normal business cycle change, many of the most critical factors to sales success lies within the control of the sales rep and how their job is structured and measured.

It is a true statement that different sales jobs have different priorities. How well a sales job’s priorities are designed affect how well you implement your strategy. When sales roles are clearly defined, the organization can drive specific behaviors and results through performance management tactics and ultimately compensation and reward.

Unfortunately, in reviewing many sales organizational transformations for the last five years, we see a definitive struggle with three important factors of job role definition and clarity:

1. How a specific sales channel (the means through which a company interacts with its customers and distributes its products and services to its buyers or potential buyers) figures into job role definition.
2. What aspects of a job’s role (i.e., its critical success factors, priorities, and relationships within the sales organization) to consider in your sales transformation.
3. How to determine where a job plays in the overall go-to-market strategy and customer engagement strategy.

Job Role Clarity Needs To Be The Foundation – Your Sales Role Defined

Think of it this way, your overall go-to-market sales plan is the architectural blueprint for your sales transformation. Done correctly, it specifically identifies what products and services you are going to sell, what customers you are going to target, and how you will build a sales strategy to match your products to your customers in an effective way. Your job roles will then serve as the foundation for executing this plan.

To ensure your sales role definition supports all aspects of your sales transformation…from sales focus to sales targets and every step in between, you must truly understand what a job does, how it does it, and why it does it. If a job is not well defined (or if you wonder why the organization wants to put a technical role, product rep, and/or a customer success manager alongside an account manager), it is your responsibility as a transformation agent to challenge the organization and ask for a better description.

For starters, 5 things you need to know about your sales roles before your transformation:

1. Who are we targeting and what is the organization trying to sell? (Go-to-Market: Segmentation and Targeting)
2. What sales strategy do they employ? (Acquisition, Retention, Penetration)
3. What role do they play in the organizational hierarchy? (Direct, Indirect, Management)
4. What are the sales process steps needed for their role? (Identify, Propose, Close)
5. How do different product and service offers affect the reps effort? (Solution, Service, Product)

Are All Of Your Roles Truly Sales Roles?

Over the last five years, the sales process has become more sophisticated and an individual’s role has shifted to become more specialized. This has created an increasing number of positions within the sales organization, yet in many cases, not all are truly sales roles.

When considering an atypical role, think through the following questions to determine if it truly belongs in the sales organization.

Does the position…

1. Spend significant time on direct customer contact?
2. Have a specific set of assigned accounts?
3. Have strong impact on the customer's buying decision?
4. Have the ability or expectation to up-sell to customers?
5. Have direct influence on customer retention or acquisition?
6. Have sales results that tie directly to performance?
7. Participate in the key phases of the sales process?
8. Get involved with numerous transactions per year?

Framework For Defining Strategic Roles

Strategic account roles can be specialized in five ways:

Who Are We Targeting And What Is The Organization Trying To Sell? Customer Segmentation And Targeting...

The first step in defining a strategic job role is understanding the customer and how the accounts are segmented. Segmentation defines the types of customers/accounts the strategic account job sells to. Customers may be defined by size, type, strategic importance, geography, etc. Different types of accounts require different skill sets and selling techniques. Understanding segmentation and strategy helps you focus in on what each strategic sales job is all about—in other words, how hard is the job and how hard is it to serve the customers? You need to know what type of customers the role is targeting and the skill sets required to perform to the expectation. For example:

• What/Who are the assigned customers/targets?
• Are leads provided or do they need to be generated?
• How many accounts are current (they are customers now), target (want to sell to them), or dormant (haven’t purchased in a while)?
• How often do reps call on each category of customers?
• Within the customer organization, who is the targeted purchaser?
• What is the strategic seller’s focus, e.g., major accounts, geography, etc.?
• On what basis do customers make buying decisions (e.g., budget, opportunity for customization, etc.)?

What Sales Strategy Do They Employ? 

Once you’ve identified the strategic sales job’s targeted customers, you need to understand the strategic seller’s primary sales strategy: penetration, acquisition, or retention (also known as the PAR strategy).

Sales strategy helps to determine, not the ease of the strategic sales job, but the focus of the job. Each one of the sales strategies takes a different skill. So acquisition sellers are hunting for new customers; they have to create awareness and stimulate interest. When the focus is retention, the customer already knows the account manager and the product, so the seller’s role is to maintain the relationship. Penetration also involves building relationships, but in addition, the strategic account seller seeks out new sources within the organization's current customers. Penetration entails crossing boundaries and broadening one’s reach within an organization.

PAR strategies play a large role in how strategic account jobs should be compensated, and depending on the role, pay may differ significantly. Acquisition is generally considered the toughest role and most valuable. Penetration is generally second in importance and difficulty. Retention is about holding on to the base. It’s often the most cost effective and streamlined sale. Typically, a strategic job encompasses all three strategies, with primary emphasis on penetration and retention.

Questions to ask about sales strategy include:

• What type of selling does this strategic account role do?
• How does this selling support the overall organizational strategy?
• How does the company value the different types of PAR revenue?
• How should the company compensate differently based upon the different roles and strategy?

What Role Do They Play In The Organizational Hierarchy? 

The organizational hierarchy filter considers the supporting structure around the strategic seller, e.g., do the strategic sellers get help from others or are they on their own? Strategic account roles can be specialized by organization and reporting structure (individual contributor vs. manager, etc.). A strategic account manager typically oversees all sales activity into an account, and is supported by a team of strategic sellers. In other cases, strategic sellers independently cover an account, most typically smaller accounts. Questions that are important to the organizational hierarchy include those that focus on the strategic seller as well as other roles that support the sales organization.

The issue becomes, do these roles merit incentives too?

• What resources within the company (human and other) does the strategic seller have available or utilize throughout the selling process?
• What other support roles should be considered for incentive pay and how do they affect your strategic sellers’ pay, e.g., double credit, split credit, etc.?
• How are the resources allocated/assigned?

The above questions cover the basic areas to explore. However, keep in mind, that given the complexity of the sales organization and the sales strategy, it may be relevant to also consider other external, non-customer personnel who are involved in a transaction such as resellers, distributors, marketing partners, fulfillment houses, etc. Bottom line: The more complex your organization, the deeper you need to dig to flesh out the requirements, skills, and demands of a strategic account role.

What Are The Sales Process Steps Needed For Their Role? 

Sales process focuses on the steps a strategic seller takes to complete the transaction—what are they actually doing? Do they identify, qualify, propose, close, fulfill?

Each of the steps in the sales process has a value associated with it, and you need to understand what the value is. Generally, a strategic seller focuses on all five steps, which equates to higher pay than sales representatives that may only play in a couple of those steps. However, much depends on the type of industry and the way the strategic accounts are organized.

Questions to ask about the strategic account sales process include:

• What are the steps the strategic account managers and sellers use to complete the transaction (sales process)?
• Does the typical transaction cross all of these steps?
• Is a certain transaction more valuable than another?
• Is the transaction a one-time exchange or an ongoing flow of business?
• What is the length of the sales cycle?
• What is the amount of the sale for the various roles?
• What is the length of time within each process step? How long does it take to complete a sale from the initial lead? For example, if it takes a day to identify, a day to qualify, a day to propose and a day to close, the entire sales cycle is four days.
• How many transactions can occur within a payment cycle (e.g., monthly, quarterly, annually) for each customer?
• When is the transaction considered closed or complete, i.e., at order, at billing, or at delivery/installation?

How Do Different Product And Service Offers Affect The Reps Effort?

Strategic account roles can be specialized according to product and/or product lines. Knowing your company’s products helps you understand the strategic account role and length of sales cycle. Product is particularly important if strategic accounts are specialized by product. Each product has an associated value, and you want to make sure the sales incentive is commensurate with a product’s value and profit. Additionally, if strategic sellers specialize in certain products, they develop in-depth technical knowledge and expertise in selling assigned products and/or product lines to many customers. That expertise may be worth a premium.

Questions related to products and services include:

• What is the range of products or services the seller represents?
• Do products/services differ by customer?
• Are they sold “as-is” or do they have to be “customized” for customer needs?
• How is each type of product or service measured in sales results (units, sales value, revenue, margin dollars, margin percent)?
• Are individual quotas set for the products or services?

Where Do You Go From Here?

These key areas and questions will help you to identify the specific accountabilities of each strategic account role and how it may change in your sales transformation. This level of clarity will strengthen transformation efforts and help you tailor your organizations’ focus to its strategy and customers. Failing focus on the jobs and the impact, may cause your transformation to trigger the wrong behaviors or underwhelm leadership in the area of the critical results.

With a clear understanding of the strategic account roles, the decisions in the next incentive design steps will be grounded in the positions’ true accountabilities and drive the results that keep customers on board for the long haul.

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 About the author: Joseph F. DiMisa is Korn Ferry's Global Sales Force Effectiveness & Rewards Advisory Leader. For more information, please contact Joseph DiMisa at +1.770.403.8006 or [email protected].

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