It didn’t take long for returning CEO Bob Madonna to make some changes at Savant. The company announced a reorganization of its sales team over the past two weeks, combining disparate regional teams serving individual sales channels into single regional teams.
“Since Bob has been back, he is looking at everything,” says Tim McInerney, director of product marketing. “He is hands-on with everything from product development to sales.”
McInerney says Savant had separate sales teams broken down in nine to 11 regional teams serving different channels: the custom integration, specialty retail (primarily Magnolia Design Centers), homebuilders and other influencers such as architects and interior designers.
“The separate sales channel teams communicated with each other but they weren’t really working well with each other. Bob looked at the big picture and decided to bring them all together as one regional team serving all of the channels,” says McInerney.
Among the benefits Savant anticipates from the single regional teams is improved communication, increased collaboration on projects from the players in the channels, and the elimination of conflicts. For example, McInerney says if the same Savant salesperson is speaking with both the builder and the integrator, he can potentially bring them together for a large project and always be thinking about benefitting both parties.
Each regional team consists of at least two people – a sales manager and a sales engineer – with more populous regions having more than two on the team. In some cases, integrators might find their new sales rep is farther away from their business.
“We made sure we have the right people on each team. For integrators, they might have a new sales contact, but that person is now going to be much closer to the entire business because he will be connected with every sales channel,” adds McInerney.
He declined to reveal the number of individuals who lost their jobs during the restructuring. McInerney noted that Savant is committed to the professional installation channel and working on some dynamic product development.
