Changing The Way You Think About Scaling Revenue

How Role Specialization Can Transform Your Sales and Boost Revenue Predictability

Most sales organizations operate under the assumption that sales is a catch-all—responsible for every aspect of the sales cycle. This is no longer a tenable way of thinking. While it may not be a new idea for everyone, many organizations have not yet explored or implemented a role specialization approach for scaling revenue.

Organizing positions around role specialization better aligns skillsets with the corresponding job requirements. Doing so puts the right people in the right seats allowing them to thrive by doing what they do best. The impact? A buyer friendly approach which starts the relationship off on the right foot. Taking this approach will help any organization deliver faster and more predictable business outcomes. (A.K.A. dollar, dollar bills y’all)

When you adopt a role specialization mindset, you begin to see how each individual may excel at some aspects of the sales cycle but not all of them.

Some employees derive energy from cold calling and opening new doors, while another may be more adept at key account management. In other cases, a seller may be more technical and clearly understand the inner workings of your solutions. Regardless, they all bring unique value to the organization with a common goal of achieving revenue and EBITDA targets.

In my current role, I’ve been making the shift towards sales role specialization over the past year and we’re reaping the rewards of this approach.

Here are five steps that I’ve taken to build a higher-performing revenue operation:

Step 1: Create executive buy-in

Step 2: Align sales and marketing

Step 3: Implement new systems

Step 4: Define team structure and process

Step 5: Execute smartly and optimize often

Step 1: Create executive buy-in

I’m very lucky to work with a CEO who believes in the vision and gives us the support required to execute. We began building and documenting our framework and presented the vision to our board members. They too were fully bought in and aligned with our plan.

In some organizations, it may not be that easy. You might be required to build a much stronger case. The good news? There are a plethora of examples showcasing the success this approach has had on many organizations.

Salesforce being the shining example as called out in the book “Predictable Revenue” by Aaron Ross & Marylou Tyler. A great read and good starting point to help build and support your case. In their experience, it started with a small test to prove the validity of the model.

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This is an endorsement of “Predictable Revenue” but not of the paid variety. :-)

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Convincing executive leadership to run a test may be the easier first step before you’re given the green light to expand org-wide. If this is the case, be sure there is a clear understanding of the metrics that will be used to track progress and define what success for this test looks like. Know that data will be on your side.

Step 2 - Align sales and marketing

One of the most critical steps to getting the role specialization structure right is making sure your sales and marketing teams are unified. Oftentimes, sales does not fully understand the important role that marketing plays on their ability to hit ever-growing sales targets. This disconnect directly impacts revenue and slows growth.

With role specialization, the focus on lead generation by marketing is the starting point to a closed-won opportunity. By holding the marketing team accountable for prescriptive inbound lead flow and outbound prospecting, the top of the funnel fills faster.

When feedback loops are created between sales and marketing, the insights surfaced help to refine the process. This includes ideal messaging, ideal customer profile definition, and a clear understanding of what drives the most qualified leads. This helps speed up the machine, delivering increased lead flow with greater predictability and efficiency.

Step 3 - Implement new systems

In order for role specialization to become a reality, you will likely need to invest in new systems like CRM and sales automation tools.

While personalization is critical in all messaging, these tools help to organize the team and automate the easy parts. Tasks such as secondary and tertiary follow up emails don’t require as much personalization so let the machines do some of the work for you.

The other key component is a source of data to mine contacts that match your ideal customer profile. You can always purchase a list but I’ve found that tools like ZoomInfo give you more control over list building activities. When connecting these systems, you are provided with the data needed to quickly identify what’s working and what’s not.

These systems allow you to track leads all the way through the sales funnel. This will give you insights including messaging effectiveness, ideal messaging cadence, and top-performing channels to use.

Data is at the heart of the role specialization strategy and gives you the tools needed to prove its ongoing success. Don’t forget to share these outcomes with your executive leadership team who believed in your vision from the start.

Step 4 - Define team structure and process

As an enterprise software solution, I specialized our sales team into these three functions:

• Business Development: Responsible for opening doors, qualifying leads, and making smooth handoffs.

• Sales Director: Responsible for managing the lead, performing initial client needs analysis, and the coordination of all pre-sales resources throughout the sales cycle.

• Sales Engineer: Subject matter experts who help scope and build the prospect’s ideal solution. Done right, Sales Engineers will have the biggest impact on maximizing deal size.

Getting the mechanics of the process down requires trial and error to ensure you’re executing in a way that works for the team and your prospective buyer.

Making this shift can oftentimes feel uncomfortable for those who have been working in a traditional sales environment. You’ll need to consistently remind your team why you’re doing this and how the process drives more revenue for them and the company.

If everyone understands their role in the sales process, things become much smoother. When deviations from the process occur, they should be corrected quickly so behavior change happens faster.

Step 5 - Execute smartly and optimize often

You’re not likely to get this right the first time around so be patient. You are building a process that is unique to your organization. Stay the course and trust that you’re on the path to something great.

Meeting frequently with your core team to review data and surface process insights is critical.

• If lead volume is low: Sales Directors will see a decrease in activity which triggers the need to increase outbound prospecting and inbound marketing efforts.

• If lead quality is low: Business Development teams need to improve their qualification process.

• If demo quality is low: Sales Directors need to enhance their client needs analysis.

Coupled with the right performance-based compensation plans, each function becomes dependent on the other to reach their individual total target compensation.

Choosing the role specialization path is not for the faint of heart and may require more work than you had originally anticipated. It’s also important to continually remind yourself that this shift is not isolated to just the sales team.

When an entire organization has a clear understanding of the vision, the path to success and the impact it will have, revenue scales.