Optimizing Coverage and Roles for Profitable Growth in B2B Service Providers

Optimizing coverage models and job roles is crucial for B2B services organizations aiming to achieve profitable growth. As part of our research efforts this year, Alexander Group conducted an in-depth study around coverage and job roles. We surveyed chief commercial and revenue officers, as well as leaders across sales, marketing and service functions at B2B organizations. Additionally, we incorporated findings from over 80 client projects executed over the last twelve months.

Understanding Coverage: Account Segmentation, Sales Processes and Role Evolution

When we talk about coverage, we’re talking about the combination of account segmentation, sales processes and role evolution within a go-to-market (GTM) organization. When well-executed together, these three facets allow an organization to efficiently cover their targeted customers and ultimately drive profitable growth.

Key Considerations for Achieving Profitable Growth

High-performing organizations achieving profitable growth organize themselves around and focus on growth plays that align with the overall GTM strategy. This means following the buyer journey and executing various growth plays to ultimately close new clients and increase customer lifetime value (LTV) through expansion and retention.

Our research has identified four key growth plays that business service providers are focusing on to achieve this:

1. Increasing Primary Seller Productivity
2. Investing in Solution Selling
3. Investing in Demand Generation
4. Enhancing Service Sales & Delivery

Efficient Coverage and Growth Goals

Efficient coverage facilitates achieving growth goals by making significant headcount investments in certain pre- and post-sales roles to execute these growth plays and support primary sellers. To increase primary seller productivity, companies are offloading non-selling activities, such as prospecting and customer service, to optimize primary seller engaged-selling time. This allows sellers to spend +12% more of their time on account development and persuasion.

50% of companies are investing in solution selling by increasing their industry/product specialist headcount in 2024. This specialization facilitates closing highly technical sales for these organizations. Investments in demand generation headcount are also a high priority for business services leaders in 2024, with lead generation roles being cited as the #1 demand generation investment category for senior executives.

Finally, 53% of organizations are increasing their customer success manager (CSM) headcount this year, allowing them to proactively streamline delivery, manage recurring customers and identify growth opportunities within their customer base.

Optimizing Seller Productivity

B2B service sellers can wear many hats, often dedicating substantial time to pre-sales activities like prospecting, sales completion activities such as addressing delivery, implementation problems and internal administrative or reporting activities. While these activities are important, they make up what we call non-engaged selling time – time not spent actively pursuing opportunities and directly selling to customers. When sellers spend too much time on these non-engaged selling activities, they often struggle to maximize their productivity.

Organizations can address this by investing in the appropriate support resources, which allows their sellers to increase their engaged selling time (EST) and increase productivity. For example, investments in pre-sales support, such as lead generation roles, lead to +2 points EST for sellers. Investments in post-sales support, such as CSM roles, result in +6 points EST and even technology investments to support sales facilitation can lead to +3 points EST for sellers.

Similarly, organizations are increasing their investment in technology and AI-driven tools to unlock incremental sales productivity. For example, over half of organizations are investing in Lead Scoring and Predictive Modeling tools, which is a 15-point increase year-over-year. Similarly, 55% of companies are investing in Customer Support tools, up 13 points from last year.

Correlation Between Solution Selling and Specialization

There are three primary families of sales motions—Transactional, Advocacy and Innovation—each require different approaches and skills. Transactional sales focus on straightforward, often price-driven deals, while Advocacy sales involve building relationships and trust with clients. Innovation sales, on the other hand, are centered around a consultative or solution selling approach that entails more complex, often multi-dimensional customer solutions.

Within our survey, many GTM leaders expressed a desire to evolve to a solution selling model but find it challenging to gain momentum (and with good reason). As you move from Transactional to Innovation selling, the importance and value of the individual seller in the sales process increases significantly. Alexander Group’s experience suggests that sellers typically excel in only one or two of these sales motions, as each requires distinct skills, mindset and end-to-end sales process.

In addition, the need for sales role specialization (e.g., subject matter expertise, technical knowledge, contracting, industry experience), grows as you progress towards Innovation selling. Organizations often attempt to transition legacy sellers to more advanced sales motions or forego the addition of the specialized roles (e.g., industry specialists, technical sales) and struggle given the dramatic gap between their desired state and current capabilities.