Limitations
Because the POD is team-based, it can be a challenge to motivate sales reps individually. Additionally, group-based selling can create opportunities for conflict if individuals don’t work well together. Conflict can lead to inefficiencies with the sales cycle and challenges for the sales operations team.
Creating a culture of success
How you structure your sales organization will depend on your specific business, market, and goals. Whatever model you choose, you'll need to imbue the organization with a culture that promotes high performance.
Without culture, your structure can’t reach its full potential. Here are two important ways you can build a winning culture into the foundation of your sales organization.
1. Clearly define sales roles
You can have an elegant sales structure, but if your team members don’t understand their roles and responsibilities, your business will suffer.
Whatever model or approach you implement in your sales organization, make sure each person has a clearly defined role to prevent confusion, inefficiencies, and redundancies.
One way to ensure everyone is on the same page is to use Lucidchart. Lucidchart is a diagramming platform that helps sales teams document and track their sales processes and organization. Team leads and sales reps can use Lucidchart to map out the sales team structure and maintain updated versions of each account.
Not only will Lucidchart streamline handoffs and clarify rules of engagement, but it will also serve as a resource for quickly onboarding new hires and relaying key data to reps who adopt new accounts.
By documenting each step of the sales process and mapping key stakeholders and individual roles, everyone can stay on the same page even in times of change.
2. Promote an environment of learning
A lack of training is one of the biggest problems facing sales organizations today. In fact, according to Kurlan Associates, as many as three-quarters of the people who work in sales “cannot execute.” In other words, they’re ineffective.
But it doesn’t have to be this way!
For most people, the issue lies in lack of training—not a lack of ability. When sales organizations prioritize coaching and bake it into their sales structure, the whole organization thrives.
That is why coaching should be one of the critical functions of any sales manager. In fact, a study by OMG found that when sales managers invested 50% of their time to coaching, salespeople scored 28% higher in sales competency measures than those who are managed by people who train less.
Lucidchart is a powerful addition to a sales manager’s toolbox. Managers can use Lucidchart to onboard new hires and train sales reps on new accounts more quickly and effectively. Plus, our Salesforce integration and sharing features make it easy to transfer knowledge between team members and departments, so no one is left behind.
