Increasingly, your customers are seeking complete and proven IT solutions that can help them address complex business requirements, gain competitive advantage or improve upon operational efficiencies. And they expect your company -- and particularly your salespeople -- to exhibit sufficient business acumen and industry knowledge to customize a solution to fit their specific needs.

Since your salespeople are the first, and sometimes the only, line of contact with your customers, they have the ability to positively or negatively affect your overall customer satisfaction and image in the marketplace. Your long-term success rests largely on the effectiveness of your sales force, the individual sales representatives and their competencies, and the organizational structure supporting your go-tomarket activities.

Although companies devote a significant amount of time and money to managing their sales forces, few focus on how their sales structure should evolve as the company changes over time. Adjusting anything of substance in a sales organization is no easy task, yet it is necessary if you want to stay competitive and create long-term viability.

Specifically, you should regularly assess the size of your sales and sales-support organizations; how your salespeople allocate their time among different customer types (new and existing), as well as technical and other nonsales activities; sales compensation plans; and the expected degree of specialization (market, product or geography) each salesperson possesses. By conducting such evaluations, you can avoid:

• Missed sales opportunities
• Unnecessary increases in selling cost
• Lost market share
• Increased turnover of key salespeople
• Reductions in your market image and client-satisfaction levels

To put this into perspective, imagine that you sell project-based point solutions (including hardware and software), support customers in a reactive fashion, and compensate your sales force exclusively on top-line deal revenue, while expecting them to sell all available products to any type of customer. Now imagine that you are planning to begin offering very narrow, specialized solutions and proactive support contracts in key growth verticals, with services contracts structured in a recurring or annuity-stream pricing model. Can you maintain the same sales structure through this transition? Or should you determine your long-term strategy, identify areas that need reorganization to support it, and adjust accordingly? If you want to remain relevant and competitive over the next three to five years, the second choice is the only way to go.

The main challenge in the transition is likely to be whether you possess the business acumen, determination and corporate culture to both plan and execute the necessary changes. Gartner predicted in 2004 that more than 30 percent of current channel companies (resellers and solution providers) will no longer exist by the end of 2007. Those that emerge will succeed as a result of a narrower focus, improved financial and business management, changed sales and partnering models, better marketing, and improved leverage of targeted vendor and distributor relationships. While some of this attrition will be caused by an increase in mergers and acquisitions or by companies choosing to get out of the business altogether, other companies will fail because they made poor business decisions at critical points in their evolution.

To avoid becoming one of these, Gartner recommends establishing, over a set period of time, a specialized sales force focused on particular vertical markets or business solution. You should also understand and define selling costs for each customer type you serve, adjust your sales forces wherever and whenever necessary, implement robust sales tools, and focus up front on selling and supporting the "right" business and customer type. The success of both your business and that of your customers depends on your ability to approach the future with a willingness to be flexible and open to change.