4 More Trends in Sales Org Structures

A few months back, I posted some early findings from our

benchmarking research on sales organizational structures. Since then, we have gone on to profile the sales structures of 30 member companies.

Here's a quick round up of some of the additional sales org structure trends we're observing:

Trend #1: Flatter Sales Organizational Structures:

Partly a result of the economic downturn, sales organizations have significantly cut down their organizational hierarchy and are looking to maintain their lean structure as the new normal. The emphasis is on increasing front line accountability and driving efficient decision making, while at the same time, providing senior leaders with visibility into field operations.

Trend #2: Increased Sales and Marketing Collaboration:

Despite growing recognition of the need for greater Sales and Marketing collaboration, most companies continue to operate the two functions as distinct silos, with Sales operating locally while Marketing residing in the regional/global headquarters. A clear trend for sales organizations is to actively remove organizational structure impediments between sales and marketing staff to allow interaction and alignment of activities toward a common goal. Best practices include establishing formal cross-functional communication channels, aligning incentives and performance metrics, and creating a common vocabulary for sales and marketing activities.

Trend #3: Moderating Manager Span of Control:

Sales managers, with a mandate for growth, are being asked to do more with less. This has resulted in managers not only taking on more reps, but also often spending a disproportionate amount of time on direct selling activities. That said, we are seeing this trend slowly reverse with companies gradually reducing the burden off managers by reevaluating their overall span of control and reorienting manager time to strategic planning and coaching activities.

Trend #4: Dedicated Hunter and Farmer Reps:

Under pressure to bring in new business and grow existing business, many sales organizations attempt to create hybrid reps that are equally skilled at both hunting and farming. However, training reps or tweaking rep compensation plans to drive hunter and farmer behaviors often fails as reps are predominately oriented to only one of these profiles. A clear trend is emerging to accommodate distinct hunter and farmer roles. This allows sales organizations to tap into both hunters' new business skills, and farmers' account management skills.

Do you also see these trends play out in your organization? Any others you'd add to this list?

SEC Members, visit our new key findings page, Benchmark Your Sales Organizational Structure, to review the complete list of org trends, and benchmark your structure against 30+ profiled companies.