Market Response Rep (responds to website leads) Sales Development Rep (develops new opportunities at cold accounts) Account Executive/Sales Executive (closes deals) You can have a much more specific system with more levels. In the following example, with a larger organization and more roles, each role helps prepare the person to succeed in the next step: 1. Marketing intern or Sales Operations contractor 2. Inside Sales Development, Qualify Inbound Leads 3. Inside Sales Development, Outbound Prospecting 4. Inside Sales Closing, Small/Medium Businesses 5. Inside Sales Closing, Small Field Deals 6. Field Sales Closing, Mid-Market Accounts 7. Field Sales Closing, Enterprise Accounts And this doesn't even include account management, sales engineers, customer support, and other customer-related teams that always benefit from moving people in and around them. The more kinds of different experiences your people are exposed to and develop an expertise in, the better equipped they are to become killer problem-solvers for customers! And that's a great thing in ANY role in the company, customer-facing or not. Timing Depending on the role, you'll want to move people up the ladder (or rotate into another group) anywhere from 6-8 months on the very fast side, early in the first stages of the system, to 1-3 years in the other stages. Any short-term transaction cost/effort in moving someone into a new role is really outweighed by the benefits of getting a more well-rounded, developed employee who has another learning curve to keep them energized, and a broader understanding of what customers need.