Best practices of successful software salespeople: the best sales forces operate as a team; quality products, good training and fair compensation help; software company CEOs value leadership and a good attitude

Software Magazine, Summer, 2002

Internally, software firms have worked hard to integrate their sales teams with technical support, professional services, and the senior executive team. This partnering with professional services is driven by many software firms transitioning from a product sale to a solution sale.

However, they concede that they have not built strong bridges to the engineering and product development organizations, nor to the customer service organization. Product development may not always be working closely enough with sales to get an accurate view of what customers need. And the lack of integration with the customer resource management, customer services, and sales force automation suggests that those areas have not lived up to their promise.

On Some Issues. Views of CEOs and Their Sales Execs Differ

Software CEOs and sales executives agreed on many of the determinants of success, such as the product quality, quality of the first-line sales managers, and their ability to hire and organize effective sales teams. However, they did look at some issues differently. CEOs felt more strongly that the ability of their sales teams to penetrate top-level executives in their customer organizations was critical, a view not expressed as strongly by the sales executives. Conversely, those sales executives were more focused on the compensation plan, both as a tool to recruit top performers, as well as a way to motivate their teams once hired.

CEOs and sales executives agreed that the ability to create effective teams was one of the most important ways of outperforming their competitors. Equally important is their ability to field a highly technically competent field organization.

RELATED ARTICLE: Stratton Sclavos, CEO and Chairman, VeriSign

"Even in the current challenging economy, VeriSign saw the inherent value in developing a National Account Model for our sales team, says Stratton Sclavos, CEO and chairman of VeriSign. "Increased sales across all lines of our business through VeriSign's consolidated sales effort have proven to be a robust model. Today's CIOs are looking for one-stop-shopping for VeriSign's trusted solutions, whether it be network consulting, authentication or digital brand management. Our account managers--our quarterbacks--serve as the single point of contact for VeriSign's team of issues experts and allow a concise delivery of our trusted solutions."

Dean Senner, President and CEO of Thales Navigation

"Our teaming strategies are based on best practices. We have found that giving product category responsibility to our sales team members enables them to become experts in their field, while giving them regional responsibility gives them a view to the rest of the business as they encounter customers outside their product area, and work to ensure they are covered by other team members with the expertise needed."