The Subscription Business Model and Your Sales Team

Account acquisition and account management are increasingly difficult to juggle in a subscription sales business.  How can your sales team balance them?  As the subscription sales business grows, there are advantages and disadvantages to maintaining a single sales role, as there are in splitting the two.  The pros of a single sales role include efficiency, and customer focus and accountability.  The sales people enjoy having ownership over their accounts, and customers like the continuity.  Disadvantages of this approach exist, such as a sacrifice in business development to address customer support. 

As disadvantages become more apparent, splitting the sales roles is worth considering.  Sales people can be matched to their strengths – networking, versus customer collaboration, for example.  This approach affords the company the ability to control sales effort allocation where needed.  Be sure to manage handoffs, stay organized with a CRM, and demonstrate value of the transition to the customer.