When I use the SALES PDCA approach in Lean Marketing, I emphasize the use of sales and marketing teams. It is one of the underlying principles that is needed. Sales has operated for so many years based on the idea of the individual salesperson calling on “his” accounts and the organization reinforcing this structure through individual commissions that it is very difficult to consider another way even working. A preliminary description of all of the roles can be found in this post: Lean Sales and Marketing Roles.
I am creating a series of blog posts to add more insight into developing sales and marketing teams and there are some basic team development structures that need to be identified at the very beginning. One of these areas is the basic consideration of objectives. I prefer the method established way back in 1989 by Larson and LaFasto and later emphasized in the book, Rapid Development
Once you established the objectives you choose a team structure to match it. Without this process you may have creative teams working on tactical execution or on the other hand a problem solving team working on a creative solution. In the SALES PDCA framework we emphasize before starting the PDCA IMPROVEMENT LOOP is locate the people who understand the process. An abbreviated definition of that step is:
Locate the people who understand the process: One of the key considerations in developing a team is to determine the objective of the cycle. Is it primarily problem-resolution, creativity, or tactical execution? Team structure needs to be considered as well as the participants. You will find a variety of structures will work for you but the typical model in sales and marketing is one of a business team that has a team leader and all others are on equal footing. Many times the team leader is really just a participant but has the administrative work as an added responsibility.
Kinds of Teams: Once you've identified the team's broadest objective—problem resolution, creativity, or tactical execution—then you set up a team structure that emphasizes the characteristic that is most important for that kind of team. For a problem-resolution team, you emphasize trust for a creativity team, autonomy for a tactical-execution team, clarity. Listed below is an outline identifying the team structures.
Adapted from Teamwork
Problem-resolution team:
- Objective: Focuses on solving a complex, poorly defined problems.
- Dominant Feature: Trust
- Sales Process Example: Sales inquiry for proposal
- Process emphasis: Focus on issues
- Lifecycle Models: Try and Fix, spiral
- Team Members: Intelligent, street-smart, people sensitive, high integrity
- Team Models: Business team, professional athletic team, search and rescue, swat
Creativity Team:
- Objective: Explore possibilities and alternatives.
- Dominant Feature: Autonomy
- Sales Process Example: Creating a new advertising program
- Process emphasis: Explore possibilities and alternatives
- Lifecycle Models: Evolutionary prototyping, evolutionary delivery, staged delivery, spiral, design-to-schedule
- Team Members: Cerebral, independent thinkers, self-starters, tenacious
- Team Models: Business team. feature team, skunk-works team, theater team
Tactical-Execution Team
- Objective: Focuses on carrying out a well-defined plan.
- Dominant Feature: Clarity
- Sales Process Example: Upgrade to an existing product
- Process emphasis: Highly focused task with clear roles
- Lifecycle Models: Waterfall, design to schedule, spiral, staged delivery
- Team Members: Loyal, committed, action-orientated, sense of urgency, responsiveness
- Team Models: Business team. feature team, swat
Do you identify your sales and marketing teams differently?
Related posts:
How to build a Sales and Marketing Team
Pair Problem Solving in the Workplace
There is no Team in Kaizen
Improve Communication – Have more meetings?
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