From Impossible To Inevitable

Chapter 10Specialization: Your #1 Sales Multiplier

If you haven't specialized your sales team roles yet, nothing will make a bigger impact in your ability to increase sales productivity and grow.

If you don't specialize, you're going to struggle.

Why Salespeople Shouldn't Prospect

Specializing sales roles is a cornerstone of Predictable Revenue. As a quick review, one of the biggest sales productivity killers is having salespeople do multiple roles: some mix of qualifying their own inbound leads, cold prospecting, closing, and account management into one general “sales” role. Let's look at the case of juggling prospecting and closing, as an example of why it's such a problem:

• Ineffective: Experienced sales people hate to prospect, and are usually terrible at it. Plus, why have your most expensive people make cold calls?
• Erratic focus: Even if a salesperson does do some prospecting successfully, as soon as they generate pipeline, they become too busy to prospect. It's not sustainable, and leads to up-and-down rollercoaster results.
• Unclear metrics: It's harder to break out and keep track of key metrics (inbound leads, qualification and conversion rates, Customer Success rates …) when multiple functions are done by the same team. Different roles makes it easier to break out different steps in your processes, which means clearer metrics.
• Less visibility, accountability: When things aren't working, lumped responsibilities obscure what or who is gong wrong, making it harder to ...