Chapter 7 Sales Distribution & Segmentation Strategies Get close to our customers via a hub model Coverage Map as of FY15 Overview Career development Segmentation Verts — HLS, CPG, FINS Localization — Manufacturing Strategic AE Role Hub Distribution Model There’s a new paradigm to drive successful direct sales teams — the hub strategy. The hub approach is all about hiring across the spectrum of sales experience, from development to enterprise, and getting closer to your customers by spreading your team across multiple offices in different geographical locations. There are many benefits to this model, and we’ll dig into them in more detail below: 1. Get closer to your customers. I’ve seen our pipe-to-close rates increase three times whenever we’ve invested the effort to meet with our customers face to face versus just relying on Web conference or the phone. It’s interesting that in this age, with all of the social media tools, that meeting face to face is becoming much more important to building a successful sales organization. To break through the clutter and effectively sell to companies of all sizes, it’s critical to set up a sales environment where you can economically meet with your customers. Sure, you can travel periodically to a territory, however, in the cloud-selling age, you need to be able to balance transaction volume on a monthly basis. Thus, it’s not manageable for an account executive to travel thousands of miles to meet with customers. The best salespeople are ones who are able to build rapport. If I’m based in San Francisco and I’m selling to a customer in Dallas, how can I possibly understand what’s going on within the community that