Sales management asks an awful lot from the reps they supervise. The pressure to close deals, and manage prospects is very real.

Unfortunately, all too often management teams think that having reps work the entire sales process from start to finish is the best way to keep them productive. It shouldn't be that much work to act in both roles, they think. It's not like the processes are totally different, right?

But studies have shown, however, in a Sales 2.0, it seems that it's more productive to be fantastically good in a single area than to be average at half-a-dozen.

Though it's not always incorrect, too many sales organizations create sales processes where their reps are generalists, by definition meaning they're expected to manage the entire end-to-end sales process--finding leads, qualifying new accounts, and closing sales.

When set up properly, sales teams see more productivity when they switch to a specialist model. In these cases one group of reps works on generating leads, and the other team works on closing sales. Using a specialist model provides more detailed reporting, makes better use of employee time, and pushes the system to utilize employees' inherent strengths.

Teams that specialize find they are more productive because sales personnel can focus on their highest priorities, and use their training and mentoring to improve their most important core skills. Specialist teams don't lose time by having to switch between two types of actions that use vastly different skill sets, many of which don't cross-over between roles.

Even though the results are real, don't forget that building a specialist sales team takes an investment to set up, but ultimately the results justify the effort. Specialist sales teams get more highly qualified leads, are able to contact a much higher percentage of the leads they get, and close more deals.