Sales Force Design

Design a Customer-Centric Sales Force

The sales force is one of an organization’s most valuable and expensive marketing resources. Unlike other marketing tactics, building or reshaping a sales force can take considerable time, money, and attention. Implementing the right design, and carefully evolving it as market conditions change, requires a thorough understanding of customer needs and potential, both now and projected into the future. ZS can assist in addressing questions such as:

• What is the most cost-effective mix of sales channels and sales teams to optimize market coverage?
• What accounts, products, services, and activities should be assigned to each team?
• What is the optimal number of sales people for each sales team? How should effort be allocated?
• How should technical support resources be sized and allocated?
• What is the optimal reporting structure for the sales organization?

ZS has designed sales forces for organizations across more than 25 industries and in over 70 countries. We have experience across a broad range of sales models including global, strategic, and key account teams; generalist and specialized field sales teams; telesales teams; and business partners. Our sales force design solutions have helped our clients increase revenue growth and profitability through sales channel selection and sales resource optimization. We have helped:

• Develop, test, and implement leading sales models to increase market share
• Identify multi-year development paths that maximize sales effectiveness while minimizing customer disruption
• Directly link brand plans to sales force decisions for greater alignment between strategy and execution
• Combine data, advanced methodologies and tools, and field force insights to increase objectivity of sales force decisions and promote cross-organization agreement
• Simulate what the strategy implementation will actually look like, to validate feasibility and better understand downstream issues

ZS sales force design recommendations are grounded in thousands of actual implementations, which enable us to anticipate the critical implementation issues that can differentiate a winning strategy from one that is good only on paper. Our design approach leverages rigorous, fact-based analysis, supported by industry-leading sales resource sizing and deployment tools, to help our clients understand the risks and benefits of alternative sales force design scenarios.