Salesforces

Salesforces refers to the groups of sales personnel within an organization, or collectively to an organization's sales teams. The term describes individuals whose primary function is to sell products or services and to manage customer relationships. In practice, salesforces may be organized by geographic territory, product line, customer segment, or channel, and they often include multiple roles at different levels of seniority.

A typical salesforce includes a range of roles such as inside sales representatives, field or outside sales representatives, account executives, business development representatives, sales engineers or solutions consultants, and sales managers. Support roles such as customer success managers and sales operations staff may also be part of the salesforce. The core duties are identifying prospective customers, qualifying opportunities, presenting or demonstrating offerings, negotiating terms, closing deals, and expanding or renewing existing accounts. The salesforce is usually aligned with marketing, product, and customer support to address customer needs and messaging.

Salesforces commonly follow a defined sales process, from lead generation and qualification through proposal, negotiation, and closing, followed by onboarding and account management. They rely on customer relationship management (CRM) systems and sales enablement tools to track activity, manage pipelines, forecast revenue, and measure performance. Common metrics include quota attainment, win rate, average deal size, sales cycle length, and renewal or churn rates.

Note that "Salesforces" can be confused with Salesforce, the cloud software company that provides CRM and related services. The latter refers to a specific brand, whereas the plural term generally describes a type of organizational function rather than a company.