A Totally Different Vision For Structuring Sales Teams I have a vision for technology companies, one that is already working in some other kinds of services and manufacturing companies. The management practices of most business-to-business technology and business services industries are in many ways like the manufacturing practices of the giants of old, like General Motors, that were surpassed by the lean giants of late, like Toyota. I want to see the management and sales models of more companies evolve towards a collection of “businesses inside a bigger business.” Rather than being divided into teams based purely on function (Sales, Marketing Services), employees are grouped into minibusiness units that include a variety of functional roles in each team. For example… What if, instead of having massive and distinct teams of people just doing sales, or only doing support, or only marketing, you remixed those employees into minibusiness units similar to a retail chain that is composed of lots of minibusinesses (retail stores)? Say you’re a software company. What if you created a “pod-team” minibusiness structure with its own territory that included (just as an example) one marketing person, two inside salespeople, two outside salespeople, an account manager, two support people, and a technical expert/ sales engineer? What if each person in that minibusiness could learn about customer needs and experiences from each other? Imagine your sales guy, after he’s been through basic sales training with other salespeople, is sitting next to a marketing person and a support person… Wouldn’t the salesperson know how to sell more effectively by learning from the marketing and support persons how to speak in the customers’ language, avoid problem customers, set expectations, get more referrals and win more deals? Wouldn’t the marketing person learn how to market more effectively by hearing the salesperson sell, and by learning from the support person how customers