Sales Organization and Collaborative Governance

Why does the organization struggle to make an executable decision even when the customer problem is clear?

Clarify roles, decision rights, cross-functional accountability, and deal governance so complex selling does not depend on a few heroes.

See the assessment method
PSS⁵ organization assessment report interface
Assess first, diagnose with evidence, pilot the mechanism, then embed it.

The work starts with real business symptoms

The symptoms are entry points for investigation, not ready-made diagnoses. We test whether they share one root cause or several different constraints.

Many roles, but accountability remains unclear

Sales, solution, product, delivery, and executives all participate, but no one owns the complete customer outcome.

Critical deals depend on individual heroes

Resource coordination depends on personal influence, information stays with individuals, and deals lose momentum when key people change.

Deal reviews produce updates, not decisions

Meetings repeat status updates but do not close decisions, resources, owners, and dates.

Cross-functional conflict has no escalation path

Conflicts over price, delivery, product scope, and customer commitments lack explicit authority and escalation.

Assess before designing

The diagnostic starts with a 40-question, multi-role assessment, then verifies the starting situation through interviews, policies, CRM samples, operating data, and live opportunities. Scores guide investigation rather than replace judgment.

Priority assessment dimensions

Sales strategy and account managementSales organization and collaborationSales process and operationsSales capability and performance

Evidence requested during research

  1. 1Organization charts, role charters, decision rights, RACI, and critical role staffing
  2. 2Strategic-deal review records, resource requests, escalations, and decision closure times
  3. 3Handoff samples and rework events across sales, solution, product, delivery, and customer success
  4. 4Interviews with executives, sales management, functional leaders, and frontline deal teams

The score is not the conclusion

We compare role differences, evidence gaps, business impact, and root causes before deciding what should change.

Does each critical decision have one accountable owner, defined participants, a deadline, and an escalation path?
Does cross-functional collaboration operate around customer outcomes or functional tasks?
What evidence causes executive resources to enter or leave a critical deal?
Can critical roles and handoffs continue when people change?

What the solution can include

The final scope follows the diagnosis. The workstreams below show the typical design space and expected outputs, not a pre-sold standard package.

1

Target operating model and role charters

Define role missions, accountabilities, interfaces, and collaboration around customer management and complex deals.

EXPECTED OUTPUT

Target operating model and role-interface charters

2

Strategic-deal governance

Define which opportunities enter executive governance, what gets reviewed, who decides, and when governance ends.

EXPECTED OUTPUT

Deal-governance charter, review rules, and exit criteria

3

Cross-functional accountability and handoffs

Place sales commitments, solution accountability, delivery feasibility, and customer outcomes in one responsibility model.

EXPECTED OUTPUT

RACI, handoff standards, and joint acceptance rules

4

Decision rights and escalation

Clarify authority and conflict resolution for discounts, scope, resources, risks, and major customer commitments.

EXPECTED OUTPUT

Decision-rights matrix and escalation and exception mechanism

How progress becomes visible

The project records the starting situation, observes a bounded pilot, and performs a T2 reassessment. External business outcomes are tracked, but never guaranteed.

Critical-decision closure time becomes visible and improves
Ownerless cross-functional issues decline
Major commitments pass authority, risk, and delivery-feasibility checks
Priority accounts and deals continue when key people change
Anonymized company caseModule 2/4

A sales-system consulting case, unpacked

A cross-regional manufacturing company

Cross-regional manufacturer: moving from business-unit silos to shared customer coverage

A private-equity-owned manufacturer organized sales by business unit in the Americas and EMEA. Growth was flat, sellers were technically strong but commercially weaker, and no team owned cross-business growth.

Company names are anonymized. The public page keeps the four-part structure, three core judgments in each part, and selected examples. Full operating detail remains in the internal manual.

01

CASE PAGE 1/3

STARTING SITUATION

KEY POINTBusiness-unit depth came at the cost of customer prioritization, cross-sell, and shared decisions

The issue went beyond weak collaboration. Account ownership, seller roles, engineering overlays, key-account accountability, and pay rules all reinforced the legacy business-unit model.

Company and organization
The company operated across the Americas and EMEA with business-unit sellers and application-engineer overlays. Recent market tailwinds had not translated into above-market growth.
Coverage problem
Coverage followed legacy relationships and products rather than buying behavior, cross-sell potential, and cost to serve. Valuable accounts were fragmented while transactional accounts consumed field time.
Operating conflicts
Cross-business collaboration was requested, but legacy pay still favored home-unit revenue and account conflicts lacked shared rules. Technical sellers also lacked clear commercial expectations.
02

CASE PAGE 2/3

SOLUTION AND IMPLEMENTATION

KEY POINTThe redesign addressed segmentation, roles, decision rights, pay, and RevOps together, not just the organization chart

Interviews and quantitative account and seller analysis identified waste. Cross-functional design sessions then linked roles with coverage, compensation, and operating support.

  1. 1

    Map accounts and seller work

    Interview leaders, business units, sellers, and engineers; analyze account economics, buying patterns, cross-sell potential, and seller time to locate duplicated or misallocated work.

    Data used: 过去24个月收入、账户潜力、访问记录、应用工程工时

    Decision: 识别重复覆盖、现场销售处理低价值订单和技术支持被滥用的账户。

    Participants: Sales, finance, HR, and the consulting team

  2. 2

    Redesign account coverage

    Define key accounts by buying behavior and growth potential, formalize a cross-business key-account program, and move book-and-turn accounts to inside sales so field sellers can focus on complex growth.

    Data used: 覆盖价值、单户年度服务成本、所需接触频次

    Decision: 每类客户只有一个主覆盖方式，例外由指定销售负责人批准。

    Participants: Sales leadership and business-unit heads

  3. 3

    Define roles and decision rights

    Group businesses with similar technical complexity, define boundaries for key-account, field, inside-sales, and engineering roles, and assign management decisions for account and resource conflicts.

    Data used: 责任表、决策时限、升级事项、历史争议

    Decision: 一线不再自行协调跨事业部冲突；到期未决事项按升级路径处理。

    Participants: Chief sales leader, regional and business-unit leaders

  4. 4

    Support the roles with pay and RevOps

    Use separate measures for total revenue and newly aligned businesses. Track new measures before making them punitive, phase plan changes, and create RevOps support for measurement and quota allocation.

    Data used: 订单归属、总收入、新业务收入、配额、奖金变化分布

    Decision: 先影子记录再切换正式计算；销售运营负责口径、配额和异常说明。

    Participants: Sales, finance, HR, and RevOps

03

CASE PAGE 3/3

RESULTS AND CONTINUED OPERATION

KEY POINTCoverage, roles, and compensation began pointing to the same growth objective

The company formalized key accounts, strengthened inside sales, realigned sellers across businesses, introduced phased multi-measure compensation, and created a RevOps team.

Segmentation and coverage rules

Key-account criteria, Inside-sales profile, Field coverage, Exceptions

Owner: Sales leadership

Cross-business role design

Key-account manager, Field seller, Inside sales, Application engineer

Owner: Regional and business-unit leaders

Phased compensation change

Total revenue, Newly aligned revenue, Selected cap removal, Phased pay mix

Owner: HR, finance, and sales

RevOps support

Measure tracking, Quota allocation, Calculation guidance, Exception handling

Owner: RevOps team

1名

Key-account program

48小时

Inside-sales coverage

100%

Cross-business sales

+14点

Sales-operations team

Field-case guidance

The ten field cases at the end illustrate live-deal decisions and actions; the main case explains how a sales system is built and run.

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Start with the business question that matters most

Bring the current symptoms, available evidence, and management concerns. The first conversation clarifies whether a formal assessment is warranted.