The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

What Skyscrapers Can Teach Us About Sales Structure

Imagine trying to construct a skyscraper without blueprints or support beams. Even with the finest materials and most skilled workers, the building would never stand tall—or worse, it might collapse. The same is true for your sales organization. A well-designed sales structure is the framework that supports everything your team does. Without it, your efforts might look busy but lack the stability and scalability needed to grow.

From Steel Beams to Sales Teams: Why Structure is Everything

A solid sales structure acts as the steel frame of your business development skyscraper. It dictates how efficiently tasks are handled, how well your team collaborates, and ultimately, how effectively deals are closed. Conversely, a shaky structure causes confusion, inefficiency, and underperformance—no matter how talented your team is. Just as engineers routinely inspect the integrity of a tall building, leaders must regularly evaluate their sales structure to ensure it’s supporting performance and growth.

If you're grappling with organizing your sales team or pinpointing issues in your current structure, you're not alone. Many sales leaders face these challenges, and understanding the right sales organizational structure can make a significant difference.

Determining the best way to organize your sales team is important, and you're likely looking to find the most efficient sales structure. Your sales team organization matters, because it can affect the sales that you make and the revenue you bring in.

Let's talk about what the different kinds of sales organizational structures are and list some pros and cons. Then, we can discuss how you should go about organizing your own sales team.

The structure of your sales team can make or break your success. Are you trying to organize your sales team? Are you trying to figure out what the best sales organizational structure is or trying to identify the problem within your current structure? 

Determining the best way to organize your sales team is important, and transitioning from a one approach to another model could significantly impact your sales performance. Here are some key benefits and strategies to consider as you’re exploring effective sales organization structures. 

Let’s cut to the chase—there’s no magic formula to building a successful sales team.

Unless, of course, you consider “hiring the right people” a kind of magic. The foundation of any high-performing sales structure starts with one thing: talent.

You can have the latest CRM, a killer product, and the best marketing team behind you, but you're spinning your wheels without the right people in the right roles.

Recruiting the right talent isn’t just important—it’s everything.

In the fast-paced and competitive business landscape, an effective sales structure is crucial for organizations to achieve revenue targets and drive growth. However, many companies face challenges in designing a sales structure that aligns with their objectives and maximizes their sales potential.

Typically, when it comes to sales structure, common challenges may include inconsistent performance, misaligned roles and responsibilities, or too many people on the team not achieving their overall revenue goals to name a few. First, you have to identify the problem you are trying to solve.

As we get closer to the New Year, we're taking some time to reflect on 2022 and the success we've seen our clients achieve. While many are enjoying this special holiday with family and friends, we're bringing you a recap of the most popular posts we've published in 2022. 

Providing quality content that helps our clients and visitors improve their sales performance is a goal of ours, and we hope this blog has brought you insight, education, and tips to get you on the path to success.

We've searched for the most popular blogs of 2022, and we've curated these lists that will publish each day this week to bring you some of the most informative content from the year. Check out these top blogs on sales structure from 2022.

Strong sales leaders often think about how to have better business outcomes in their organizations.

And while thinking about ways to improve sales performance, the idea of changing the sales structure has likely come to mind. It may seem overwhelming, and you may be wondering where to start.

As a sales leader, you often need to revamp your sales structure to improve your sales team’s or department’s effectiveness.

That involves carefully studying your current sales structure to determine what works and what doesn’t. In today’s rapidly evolving selling environment, many sales leaders have realized the benefits of shifting from a retained sales structure to a growth sales structure.

Sales structure organization can bring new skills to light and help put tired and outdated concepts to bed. Just because a strategy worked for your team five years ago doesn't mean it will still bring out the best in each team member so that your team will flourish now.

Consider revising sales goals and implementing a new sales structure with new possibilities in mind.

A new sales structure can help improve productivity. 

Sometimes it becomes necessary to go back to the drawing board. Remind yourself what your original goals were for your team.

• What objectives did you have that still have not been accomplished or that are no longer being accomplished the way they used to be?
• How can you fix problems and begin reaping the rewards you once had?