Sales Team 6

Over the summer I worked on the sales team of a software company. There were two other teams within the organization. These were the product development and the product support teams. The objective of the sales team was to set a demo, and then from there the product specialists would perform the demo. Following the demo, if someone was interested in becoming a client, the process of creating a proposal would be worked on by the sales rep and whoever performed the demo. When the proposal was written, it would then be passed on to the owners of the company to be approved or disapproved. If it was approved and the client accepted, the product development team would handle any modifications to the platform that the client might have asked for. Three teams worked together as a larger team in order to complete the sales process. In terms of the decision making process, it resembled a one boss arrangement because the owners had the most through understanding of the companies health and status of the industry. They would either approve or disapprove the proposal based on the conclusions they came to on information they've gathered themselves. However, when viewing how information was transmitted between people up to the point of sending the proposal for review, the structure resembled an all-channel network. This had to do with the incentives put in place.

Each sales rep needed to generate a certain amount of revenue determined by higher management. This alone might make for a cut throat environment with fear of sales being stolen, but there were territories assigned to each rep to combat that fear, and there was a certain amount the sales team as a whole had to generate. This encouraged the exchange of information between people, and was especially helpful when leads would leave their company and join another one in a different territory. People would talk to each other, exchange notes, and this helped make it a lively and collaborative environment. The sales people that have worked in the company are also expected to coach the less experienced people. The less experienced people were also expected to ask questions. This exchange was easily noticed because the office was so small, and it was recognized with praise and considered when raises or promotions were in question. The product specialists also had similar incentives in place, and the connection between them and the sales team was driven by commission. With similar interests, the sales rep would share all the information he had with the product specialist before the demo, and the specialist would want to do a good job during the demo so that both people could benefit. It was important for the sales people to have a deep understanding of the product so they could sell to people that might ask technical questions. Many sales representatives become product specialists as a result of this. With a similar distribution of skills across teams, a product specialist might come over to the sales team or vice versa if one of the teams needed more manpower.

This cross functionality of employees made it more important for information to be easily accessible. To address this, each team had a whiteboard with their current objectives and where they were within them. This public record of performance kept everyone accountable for what was or wasn't accomplished, and developed an interdependent structure. Overall it made the selling process productive, but the pressure did get high occasionally. Fortunately, everyone worked together and and asked questions when they thought necessary, which helped keep things under control when goals had to be hit.