Q: Can you point me toward any articles or information regarding the pros of having a sale team who work in a different job role than the actual program develop people?
A: A. Class programming is timeline-based, thus a person who is selling and class programming will always defer to class programming when his/her plate gets full.
B. The best salespeople are not subject-matter experts, thus a class programmer who is focused on one or more areas of class programming is not the best person to sell just because he/she is a subject-matter expert.
C. Contracts are sold differently from open enrollment classes, thus the skill sets are different selling an individual and a company.
D. Closing a new client can take up to 12 months, thus time needs to be spent developing a relationship creating the need to dedicate time to contract sales and not split the time with another responsibility.
E. Ideally a revenue generator should be generating 6-20 times his/her salary. If this can be done while handling both responsibilities, then the person is probably pretty unique.
We have some additional information from LERN publications that I can send you, and our Contract Training Senior Consultant, Julia King Tamang, will be writing an article on this topic that I will be sure to send to you.