5 points clés pour définir votre organisation commerciale

It is now time for you to take action and translate this great strategy into effective field practices to achieve your goals.

Not sure where to start? KESTIO guides you with the 5 key questions you need to ask yourself at this stage.

1. What will be your mix between marketing and sales?

The distribution of roles between marketing and sales is an issue that needs to be addressed carefully and at an early stage: with the development of SaaS offers and the increasing digitalisation of sales methods (Inbound Marketing, Social Selling, Sales Automation, etc.), the share of resources allocated to marketing is currently increasing (the ratio of 1 to 2 between marketing and sales is being reversed).

It is absolutely necessary that you have a clear vision of the stages of your sales funnel and that you differentiate between those that are marketing-related and those that are the responsibility of your sales staff.

2. Should you favour sedentary salespeople or field salespeople? 

 This is an essential part of your sales organisation, and depends above all on the nature of your offer and its distribution method.

 If you sell perpetual licences with maintenance subscriptions, you will most likely opt for a network of partners who can manage the installation and follow-up. And in this case, you will mostly need field sales people to go and meet them, supported.

 And in many cases, you will have to manage the cohabitation of these two models and determine all the more precisely the criteria for assigning accounts and the resulting allocation of sales forces between your field and office-based sales staff.

 3. What skills will your salespeople need to master?

It is also useful to ask yourself what skills your salespeople will need to master. In direct relation to the first two points mentioned, but also according to the profile of your customers, you will thus determine the sales methods, techniques and tools to be used.

According to the latest EY-Syntech study, the two main customers of software publishers in France today are the banking sector and industry. If this is your case, your sales staff must be experienced in "key account" sales methods, such as the "Méthode de l'Echiquier" for example, and in complex sales.

The public sector comes^3rd in this ranking. If it is one of your priority targets, it is the mastery of the tendering process and the sales techniques that go with it that should concentrate all the efforts of your sales staff.

In a predominantly digital sales model, the position of sales representatives is very different: as qualified contacts are identified and "nurtured" upstream by marketing, the role of "Inside Sales" is essentially to refine the qualification of needs, to guide the customer in the choice of options, to create ambassadors for the solution within the customer's company, and to map out the decision-making powers.  

Customer loyalty is also becoming more important. We are therefore also seeing the emergence of new business functions, such as Customer Success Managers (CSMs), designed to ensure the quality of the Customer Experience.

In any case, a consultative sales approach - logically demonstrating the ROI of your solutions - is interesting in your sector to show your value contribution.

These are all elements to keep in mind in order to implement an HR plan (recruitment, training plan, etc.) in line with your business strategy.

4. Will you develop your international sales?

 Another decisive subject for theorganisation of your sales force is the share of turnover achieved internationally and the strategic nature or otherwise of the international clientele for your company.

Although French publishers still generate the vast majority of their sales in France2 , the share of total turnover generated outside France is constantly increasing, particularly under the impetus of SMEs and start-ups that have been resolutely international from the outset, such as Criteo or Allegorithmic, for example.

This point has an impact on thesales organisation to be adopted for these companies: once the strategic geographical areas have been targeted, you can determine whether your dedicated sales force will operate from France or directly on site, and consider all the resulting points: whether or not it is necessary to set up a physical branch office, the country's social and commercial legislation, the advisability of favouring an English-speaking rather than a French-speaking "master version" of your solutions, etc.

And from the point of view of your sales organisation in the strict sense of the term: adapting your promise and sales pitches to several languages and local cultures, the need tostandardise sales processes, sharing information between any subsidiaries, deploying an international CRM, setting up cross-border management and steering...

5. What will your performance indicators be?

The last crucial point for your sales organisation is its management, and therefore the monitoring and analysis of results. The choice of key performance indicators and their analysis depend on :

• • Efficient management of your commercial activity
  • Calculating the remuneration of your sales staff (a sensitive subject if ever there was one!)
  • The type of commercial management adopted

And therefore, more globally: the achievement of the objectives you have set! The current evolution of sales methods is reflected in the choice of KPIs in the reporting.

Today, the 5 main indicators monitored by software publishers are :

1. 1. The distribution of turnover by type of sales : licences, Saas subscriptions or support/maintenance (on average today, almost 1/3 for each!)
   2. New orders booked: booking 
   3. The evolution of monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
   4. Turnover by country
   5. The churn rate or attrition rate (rate of non-renewal of contracts)

 Two of them (MRR and churn rate) are directly correlated to the development of SaaS. In this new model, reducing and maintaining the churn rate between 0 and 1% becomes an objective to be reached to ensure the profitability of the system as a whole.

When you know that customer acquisition costs are 5 to 25 times higher (depending on the sector) than the cost of customer loyalty...this is a good reason to pay particular attention to customer loyalty and the commercial levers that support it!

Nevertheless, booking remains essential, as shown by the fact that 34% of software publishers choose this criterion as the basis for calculating the variable remuneration of their sales staff (compared with 26% for the turnover generated).

Scanning all of these 5 key questions will therefore enable you to define the best sales organisation in terms of your objectives and the strategy defined beforehand. And to have a clear vision of how you are going to manage it and ensure its effectiveness over time!