If you have a global sales operations organization, is China part of your Asia region or is it a standalone team?

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Sr. Director of Sales Operations in Hardware5 months ago

Two key considerations: 1) Is the sales process substantially different in China for any reason, and 2) What is the size of the current and near-future sales team in China?

My thoughts:
1) China has been a part of the Asia region in every company that I have experience to date, large and small, hardware and software. While the market and language is clearly different, those differences were not enough to warrant a separate team. There are synergies in having the teams aligned under one Asia unit from a sales process standpoint (e.g., regional forecasting/pipeline, sales support (same time zone), and even sales strategy and annual planning considerations). I would lean toward rolling them into APJ unless I had a very compelling reason to have them stand alone. I think the efficiencies you get from shared services/process provide scale that will help stretch your Sales Ops budget in the long run.
2) Perhaps if you have a very large China operation, say 30+% of sales, then it would make sense to break it out so you ensure it has all the resources needed to support that revenue, but even then, this scale isn't much different than large European countries and yet they are most often grouped into one EMEA region.

What do others think?

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