Sales Pod 101: How to Build a Winning Team

Sales pods are becoming an increasingly popular way to structure sales teams.

But what exactly is a sales pod? And how do you go about setting one up?

They are an effective away to team up cross-functional roles with a strong focus on the customer. Additionally, a sales pod gets everyone to work in cohesion rather than individual goals.

This article will discuss the basics of sales pod design and outline the benefits of using this type of team structure.

We’ll also look at key metrics that can help determine if your sales pod design is working effectively.

What is a sales pod?

A sales pod comprises of individuals from different sales functions that work together to achieve a common goal. They’re made up of cross-functional roles, including Business Development Reps, Account Executives, Account Managers, and Customer Success Managers. Each member of the sales pod is trained in a specific role to collaborate and work together to achieve revenue goals.

Instead of passing along a customer from one person to another, multiple people from the same pod interact with the customer from start to finish.

The sales pod team structure helps make the customer successful.

Sales pods are designed to focus on a specific market, region, or use case as long as it is relevant to the customer. This enables everyone in the pod to build a stronger knowledge base of their use case, whether in the pre-sale or post-sale phase.

When done correctly, a sales pod sets clear roles, responsibilities, activities, and metrics for each individual. It is a straightforward process, from the first conversation to becoming a customer.

If a sales team needs to scale, the sales pod is replicated instead of expanded. This helps simplify scaling a sales team because you already have clearly defined roles.

Common sales pod structure

When structuring a sales pod, you’ll need to clearly define the roles that would work together.

One clear benefit of a sales pod is that it settles the sales hunter vs farmer debate. Instead of having one role or the other, you can structure a team to include both functions.

Here are the typical roles included in each pod.

• Business Development Representative (BDR): the BDR solely focuses on prospecting, qualification, and discovery. Their time is dedicated to outbound or inbound prospecting. The BDR aims to identify qualified prospects to hand off to the Account Executive for the next step.
• Account Executive (AE): once the BDR has identified a qualified prospect, they are passed onto the AE to take over. The AE initiates the sales process and works with the prospect through meetings such as discovery calls, demo walkthroughs and negotiations, and procurement. They aim to help the prospect purchase their product or service and become a customer.
• Customer Success Manager (CSM): once someone becomes a customer, the AE then transitions them to the CSM. They are responsible for managing the implementation, ensuring product adoption, training, and reporting on success. Their main goal is to ensure a pleasant customer experience.
• Account Manager (AM): The CSM works closely with the AM. The AM takes on the responsibility for retention, renewal, and expansion.

Supporting roles such as sales engineers and implementation specialists are introduced through the customer journey. Although they are not a part of the sales pod, they help support a customer through the process. Companies may even include an additional role, such as an implementation specialist within the same sales pod as they scale.

 

Why do we need it?

There are several reasons why an organization would consider a sales pod design.

Although sales and customer success align with the same goals, they occasionally may not see eye-to-eye. Sometimes, customer transitions aren’t seamless, which creates a poor experience.

A sales pod creates cohesion rather than division.

First, it is a lot easier to organize team structures. Since everyone in the same pod will focus on the same priorities and customer base, it is simple to group people based on specialty or skill. A sales pod provides everyone with a clear focus on customers, whether based on industry, region, use case, or any other common attribute.

A sales pod helps everyone in the team align on clear metrics and performance targets.

Lastly, customers will feel they are more cared for because they’re looked after by an entire team.

What are the benefits of the pod model?

The benefits of using a sales pod design are numerous.

As previously mentioned, pods enable team members to work together, leading to better collaboration and more effective performance.

Additionally, sales pods create accountability within the team since each member is responsible for their sales performance. This helps sales teams stay focused and motivated to reach their sales goals.

Advantages of sales pod structure

Here are several advantages you should consider:

• Continuity throughout the customer journey: the entire team has a strong sense of care for the customer. This creates a stellar customer experience, impacting higher retention rates, expansion, and reducing churn.
• Share common objectives: each department would be compensated and measured by different goals before having a sales pod structure. There would be less accountability when handing off a customer. The sales pod helps team members work towards shared objectives such as:
  • Finding new customers
  • Closing deals
  • Delivering customer success
  • Creating advocacy and expansion
• Avoid negative or selfish behaviors: when everyone in a pod works together, it eliminates the hoarding of sales leads and customers. Common issues such as forgotten leads or undervalued accounts are less likely to happen. This impacts customer lifetime value (CLV) and customer acquisition costs (CAC)
• Improve value messaging: when BDRs work closely with AEs, they improve their ability to prospect and refine their messaging. Due to the team nature, it creates a collaborative environment by having team members bounce ideas off of it. Additionally, having sales reps close to CSMs and AMs in such proximity helps strengthen messaging and value propositions.

Despite the numerous benefits, there are some disadvantages you should consider.

Disadvantages of the sales pod structure

Uneven lead distribution: in a traditional linear sales model, BDRs would book meetings and round-robin so that every AE would get an equal amount of leads. If a BDR isn’t performing in a sales pod, the AE suffers, negatively impacting everyone.

Speed to results: when new sales reps join a team, it’ll take time to onboard. The average rep takes 6-9 months to ramp up to full productivity. In the start, there will be very little pipeline to work, which impacts everyone’s metrics and compensation. Versus a round-robin system, where everyone would have evenly distributed leads rather than one AE having a strong performance while another does not.

Difficult to attribute performance: since a pod includes one individual in each role, it’s hard to attribute good or poor performance. For example, if you have multiple pods and one performs better, it’ll be difficult to determine if one pod’s BDR needs training, the AE, or the CSM. This can create tension within the team.

How to model compensation

As part of sales compensation, the variable amount within sales should have consistent ratios. For example, the variable compensation should be evenly distributed for individual and team performance.

For example, 50% is measured by team-based performance, and the remainder 50% is measured by individual performance. If you’re new to a sales pod structure, you can start by splitting it 75% for team-based performance and 25% for individual performance.

Most sales team members will follow their compensation. If team-based performance helps them get the highest compensation, they’ll shift their efforts toward that.

Individual performance can be measured by metrics that only the sole contributor can control.

For example, a BDR’s performance would be based on qualified sales meetings and leads. Whereas an AE is comped based on closed business. Customer success by retention and account management by expansion revenue.

Team performance can be measured based on the sales pod’s main goal.

For example, it can be based on customer expansion revenue targets. Numbers of new customers in a specific region or target industry.

One important note is that all sales pods within your organization should follow the same compensation model. Any differences may cause competition, politics, and a negative experience when employees feel under-compensated or undervalued

How do you know if a sales pod is working?

When evaluating the success of your sales pod, it’s important to look at key metrics such as sales pipeline, customer satisfaction, retention, and sales cycle time (the amount of time from initial contact with a customer to closing the sale).

Tracking these metrics can help you identify areas where sales processes could be improved and ensure that your sales pod works as efficiently as possible.

Here are several factors to measure to determine if your sales pod is working accordingly.

• Metrics performance: team and individual KPIs are performing well, whether it’s new logo acquisition or net revenue retention.
• Smooth hand-off: the customer experiences a seamless transition between each team member.

Track performance by setting up sales dashboards to measure each sales pod’s performance. This will give you a reference point on how each pod is performing amongst the others. Your dashboard should also include reports on the individual performance of each member within the pod. This gives both a macro and macro-level view of performance.

The success of a sales pod structure depends on how well responsibilities, roles, and metrics are defined. It’s a lot easier to operate as a pod in specific business models, such as in SaaS, where there are clear hand-off points between each role.

Key considerations before implementing sales pods

By following these tips, you can set up a sales pod to help maximize performance and drive success for your organization. With the right sales team structure in place, you’ll be well on achieving your goals.

• Have strong leaders: anyone in your sales pod, whether an AE or a CSM, can act as a leader. Clearly define who leads the pod and put capable people in each team.
• Change management: It can be difficult to adapt to change with a new process and team structure. Especially if you’re used to a specific way of operating. Ensure each team member understands why the change is happening and that they have the necessary resources, training, and compensation to adopt the sales pod design.
• Build pods based on organizational focus: the easiest way to build a pod would be based on geography. However, do not commit to region segmentation if that’s not how your company is structured. If your organization works based on industry or use case, that may make more sense.
• Keep pod structures in the same ratio: as you scale your sales pods, ensure each team has the same ratio. For example, if a pod operates with 1 BDR / 1 AE / 1 CSM / 1 AM, then every team should follow the 1:1:1:1 model. Alternatively, if you need more BDRs to build a pipeline for one AE, a 2:1:1:1 model may be more beneficial.

Are sales pods the right way to structure your teams?

Sales pods are an effective way to structure sales teams and achieve sales success. When setting up a sales pod, it’s important to create cohesion rather than division.

When done effectively, the sales pod is a great way to create team cohesion and have everyone support a customer throughout their journey.

Additionally, structuring the sales team in a pod can positively impact win rate, customer retention, and expansion revenue.