1. “Inbound” Lead Qualification: Commonly called Market Response Reps, they qualify marketing leads coming inbound through the website or 800- number. The sources of these leads are marketing programs, search engine marketing, or organic word-of-mouth. 2. “Outbound” Prospecting/Cold Calling 2.0: Commonly called Sales Development Reps or new business development reps, this function prospects into lists of target accounts to develop new sales opportunities from cold or inactive accounts. This is a team dedicated to proactive business development. Highly efficient outbound reps and teams do NOT close deals, but create and qualify new sales opportunities and then pass them to Account Executives to close. 3. “Account Executives” or “Sales”: These are quotacarrying reps who close deals. They can be either inside or out in the field. As a best practice, even when a company has an Account Management/Customer Success function, Account Executives should stay in touch with new customers they close past the close until the new customer is deployed and launched. 4. Account Management/Customer Success: Client deployment and success, ongoing client management, and renewals. In today's world of “frictionless karma,” someone needs to be dedicated to making customers successful—and that is NOT the salesperson! If you aren't specializing your people into these kinds of roles, this is the very first place to begin! You MUST specialize your people to effectively grow results. When To Specialize? I frequently hear, "We're too small to specialize yet." It is always “sooner than you think,” even if you just have a handful of Account Executives. The second person you hire, after a salesperson who can close, should be a sales rep who is dedicated just to generating leads for your first closer. A second rule of thumb is the 80/20 rule. When your reps, as a group, are spending more than 20% of their time on a secondary function, break out that