your team should wait around for business to come to them ­ but only to a handful of strategic accounts or partners. While every team is different and creates different flavors, start with the template of four categories of roles that fit most (but of course, not all) companies: 1.Inbound lead qualification 2.Outbound prospecting 3.Closing new business 4.Post­sales roles, such as account management, professional services, and customer success. When not to specialize, or do it very differently......because exceptions exist for every rule: You have a very simple sales process, like a one­ or two­call­close product. You’re in a business or segment currently succeeding with generalized salespeople (like financial services advisors). CASE STUDY: HOW CLIO RESTRUCTURED THEIR SALES TEAM IN 3 MONTHS SPECIALIZATION: TWO COMMON OBJECTIONS Two common objections to specializing sales role First: It’ll Hurt Customer Relationships “Doesn’t passing off a prospect or customer from one person to another create problems? Shouldn’t the same person be building a relationship from Day One with a customer, then owning and maintaining it?” No –– not if you have a pre­defined process to hand off customers thoughtfully, and you set their expectations appropriately. In fact, prospects and customers get better service this way. With specialists at each step, prospects are always getting fast responses appropriate to what they need. It’s hard for a salesperson who’s working on proposals, or traveling, to drop everything and get back right away to a new inbound lead, an urgent problem at a current customer, or to focus on much of anything important that’’ s not getting them to their quota this period. So by specializing –– in a way that makes sense for your business –– you’re doing customers a favor, too. Second: “Those Four Roles Don’t Fit Us” The core roles discussed are not absolute requirements –– but a starting template for you to adapt. Almost every b2b company should have at least three of those four roles, but there are exceptions, as we listed out earlier. Implement the principle behind specialization ––focus–– in your own way. Give people fewer, more important things that they can do better. Also ­ the principle works in any team –– marketing, customer support, partners, etc.