Chapter 3: Examining the Deployment of Sales Resources

“We’ve changed the organization twice in the past 18 months. We’ve increased the level of expertise in the direct sales force and we’ve added a whole new organization focused on large accounts. We’ve evolved from a ‘sell whatever you can’ model to a more strategic view of market and territory management.”
—Sales Director

Overview

As noted in Chapter 2, a direct sales force remains and will continue to remain a critical channel for selling organizations. This includes the use of field, or face-to-face, sales professionals as well as inside sales representatives. Strategies to best leverage the investment in a direct sales force varied by company. In fact, there was no single deployment strategy that dominated. What was consistent was that almost every organization we talked to was in the midst of restructuring their sales force and, furthermore, the constant changes in customer expectations, solution sets, and channel strategies render it very unlikely that any sales force deployment strategy could be considered permanent.