With the increase in organization complexity and runaway expectations in market growth, a re-organization of the field force can deliver significant results in a short time. Is there ever a right time for such a re-org and why should one do it at all? While there are several reasons mandating such a decision, let us examine a scenario where historical performance can assist in fine tuning the go-to-market model.
Say, your organization expects you to grow your business by an enormous percentage over the last year. By sheer dint of hard work aided by some charismatic leadership and a fair bit of luck, there could a possibility of landing a great year. However, a bit of additional homework can also help. Ask yourself a few questions:
a) What were the numbers of transactions executed in the last year?
b) How many of those could be considered outliers - both at the top and at the bottom.
c) What would be an average deal size without considering the outliers?
d) What was the average volume of deals executed by each sales rep?
e) How many sales reps have met their quota over the last 3 years? Is there a room for a growth in quota?
f) Was the number of transactions per rep influenced in any way by the limitations of process complexity? If yes, could a simplification result in a positive change?
g) What has been the trailing 3-years y-o-y growth in deal size, deal volumes and Outlier size and volumes? Is there a predictable pattern that could be used as a sustained learning?
Armed with the above perspective, draw up a reasonable estimate of how much the sales team is currently equipped to deliver and temper this with your judgmental estimate of macro economic growth factors.
Do you still see a gap to budget? If yes, pick up the cudgel now because here is where a re-organization can help you. Expand headcount, Realign priorities or focus, Create a newer SWAT team, Go after newer markets, Regroup teams, Attack process times on lead to order booking, Hire mavericks capable of challenging conventional wisdom etc and anything else you infer it will take to bridge the gap. Narrow down your efforts to counter the immediate challenge posed by the incremental terrain and then re-group the other parts of the organization around that. And all the while, resist the temptation to just rotate executives around.
Make no mistake, for a reorganization to work; it needs to be much more than a vanilla job rotation - moving around executives does have a near-term impact but longer term benefits can also be secured with carefully analyzed historical information.
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