Bigger U.S. Sales Force

Vertical and solution sales experts will join Microsoft’s field offices as part of a 10% enlargement of its U.S. enterprise sales force. The planned changes will help Microsoft make larger, more complex sales of specialized solutions, which are increasingly important for the company and its partners as they try to move mature products such as Office 2003 and Windows XP into enterprises.

Microsoft plans to add two main types of personnel to U.S. field offices. First, it will hire enough salespeople with specific industry expertise (e.g., in healthcare or finance) to cover all of its managed accounts, rather than the smaller set of strategic accounts that vertical teams cover today. Second, it will add technical specialists for sales of particular solutions such as portals, networking infrastructure, and security management. Both changes have reportedly been piloted in specific U.S. regions, such as Northern California. By selling larger and more complete solutions based around Windows and Office, Microsoft hopes to offset the increased personnel costs resulting from the changes.