When Should You Deploy Sales Specialists?

Sales departments face the unique challenge of balancing two arts. A seller must exhibit sales expertise by skillfully applying advanced methodologies and tactfully addressing customers’ needs. Meanwhile, the seller must also understand the company’s offerings. Sellers need to communicate functionality and value from a position of expertise. For many companies, deploying a product sales specialist is the answer.

Product sales specialists help Sales departments refine their go-to-customer strategies. The specialist becomes an expert on the product and target customer. Then, they optimize the sales strategy accordingly. They draw from their sales expertise in pursuit of specific goals.

Sales specialist deployment is beneficial but comes with its own set of challenges. Alexander Group helps businesses see success through product sales specialist deployment.

What Is a Sales Specialist?

A sales specialist is an expert seller focused on a specific product. The products or accounts that sales specialists deal with are typically those that generate the most value. Alternatively, a sales specialist may focus on building product expertise, especially for complex products. In either case, the specialist targets a specific market and engages with customers on a deeper level than typical sellers. Companies often deploy sales specialists as a team, which is called a sales overlay.

The Need for Sales Specialists

Sales specialists, especially product sales specialists, are valuable additions to a Sales department. Their focus on high-value and complex products helps to boost sales and revenue. A sales specialist has the expertise to close important sales. They may also identify and nurture leads.

Sales specialists are also necessary because they elevate the entire department. As leaders within the sales team, specialists share their knowledge and findings with front-line sales representatives. Their high-level support helps sellers achieve revenue goals surrounding new, valuable or complex products.

When Should You Deploy Sales Specialists?

Sales leaders deploy strategies that leverage a sales specialist’s unique expertise. There are numerous situations in which deploying a sales specialist can benefit your business.

Using Sales Specialists to Support Front-Line Sellers

Some organizations use sales specialists to team up with their front-line reps. These sales overlays aim to drive success where front-line sellers could struggle. Sales specialists can direct additional focus on certain products or solutions. They typically prioritize newer products or more complex ones. Their specialized attention and expertise generate more sales of profitable products or solutions.

Sales overlays fill skill gaps with expert sellers. After all, the average sales rep spends a paltry 3% of sales time each week selling the new product. This is a disconcerting statistic when the sales leader relies on new product sales in order to hit plan.

Using Sales Specialists After Acquisitions

Many teams of sales specialists feature new sellers from a preexisting agency. These overlays are the result of acquisitions. A sales overlay can provide valuable support when a company acquires another. The overlay makes the transition go smoothly by establishing continuity. The sellers bring their sales and product-specific expertise with them. After a strategic acquisition, your company could convert an acquired sales force into a sales overlay. This type of deployment capitalizes on the new team’s expertise, supporting the core sales team.

But say the word “overlay,” and the controversy begins. Finance can’t live with them. Sales seemingly can’t live without them. When is an overlay necessary? Do you need them immediately, and for how long? What is the right number of specialists in the overlay? Deploying too many specialists causes cash flow inefficiency. They can be difficult to manage, and you’ll get buried by double crediting sales compensation. It is also possible to have too few specialists. When the overlay is small, you run the risk of insufficient focus on the new, high-margin product your businesses acquired. Finding the right balance can prevent you from leaving good opportunities overlooked and money on the table.

Sales Specialist Deployment and Job Design

Understand first that this question of when to deploy sales specialists begins with job design. Every well-designed sales role has bandwidth constraints defined by three factors—the type of customer called on, the nature of the sales process and the products and services sold.

Sales specialists play an important role in situations where teaming is required to bring the necessary strength of knowledge and support to the sale. There are many aspects to a successful a sales structure, including sales capacity planning and organizational design. When deployed correctly, sales specialists can more than pay for themselves. The trouble is that sales leaders are often in a quandary on how to do it right.

Compensation and Sales Crediting

As your business deploys sales specialists and overlays, compensation and crediting will become notable considerations. The compensation and crediting models for specialists must facilitate profitability and incentivize success. There are various factors to consider. The deployment style, teaming requirements and level of solution customization are some of them. Alexander Group can help your organization implement an effective compensation model for sales overlays.

When to Use Sales Specialists

Here is a simple decision tree to use when considering deploying sales specialists. Notice how the first three questions map to the three job design factors of customer, process and product. The last question gauges the criticality of the business goals for the product in focus.

Notice also that specialists are designed to team with your existing sales force, hence the word “overlay.” However, under certain circumstances, you are best off deploying a separate or “discrete” sales force. This is generally true when selling unrelated products to a different buyer, or when there is no obvious benefit gained by selling them together.

Temporary Nature of Sales Specialists

Generally speaking, sales specialists should be deployed temporarily. Their goal should be to “work themselves out of a job” by training both the sales force and customers on the new offerings. The lifespan of a sales specialist can be as short as six months and as long as five years. Some specialists might stay on far longer if they continue to evolve, shifting their focus over time to newer products.

How Many Sales Specialists Do You Need?

The right number to deploy depends on the complexity of the sale and the nature of their role. Here is a simple guide to consider when determining the ratio of specialists to your front-line sales reps:

As the table shows, the ideal ratio of specialists and sales reps varies. Scaling the ratio with the number of buying contracts, buyers and stakeholders optimizes coverage. A high specialist-to-rep ratio also helps handle long, complex sales processes. Additionally, specialists improve sales outcomes when selling products that are important to a larger solution. Any product that is critical to the organization’s success should have a high specialist-to-rep ratio.

Every Sales Organization Has Different Specialist Needs

Realize that these are simply guidelines. The answer for your organization may vary based on several factors, including product maturity, sales force experience levels and competitive landscape, among others.

At Alexander Group, we’ve observed ratios as low as 1:20 and as high as 1:1. An inside-based (phone and web only) sales specialist can effectively support more field reps. Practically speaking a field-based sales specialist will struggle to adequately support more than eight sales reps. The average sales deployment ratio is 1:4. Scenarios with 1:1 are rare and short lived, usually the result of two sales forces merged but not fully integrated.

Learn More About Sales Deployment With Alexander Group

By driving revenue from complex or highly valuable products, product sales specialists provide integral services for sales organizations. Deploying a sales overlay team can help your business capitalize on revenue opportunities and identify new ones. Alexander Group helps sales organizations develop and deploy sales overlay strategies. Contact us online today.

Learn more about Alexander Group’s services.