What Most Sales Organizations Get Wrong, And How To Fix It BY TROY HARRISON, THE SALES NAVIGATOR Here’s a question I ask almost every CEO I meet: How much of your sales organization was designed and built on purpose — and how much just happened? I’ve been asking that question for twenty years, in twenty-three countries, in companies ranging from five employees to five thousand. And here’s what I can tell you: almost nobody designed their sales organization. They accumulated one. They hired their first salesperson because they need- ed help. Then they hired another when things got busy. They promoted someone to sales manager because she’d been there the longest, or because he was the top rep, which — as any experienced sales leader will tell you — has absolutely nothing to do with whether someone can actually manage. Fifteen years later, they have something that looks like a sales organization from the outside, but operates like an accident from the inside.
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Then they wonder why training doesn’t stick, results don’t improve, and good salespeople keep leaving. Here’s the diagnosis: they’re trying to solve an organi- zational problem with an individual solution. And it never works. There Are Four Layers. Most Companies Have Pieces of One I’ve developed a framework I call The Navigator’s Chart. It’s a complete operating model for the modern B2B sales organization, and it has four layers. The Waters — understanding your buying environment. The Vessel — building the organizational infrastructure. The Crew — hiring and developing the right people. The Route — the actual selling. Most companies have invested heavily in Layer IV, The Route. Sales training. Scripts. Closing techniques. CRM systems. And they’ve left everything above the individual salesperson completely to chance.
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