Even the best sellers in the world can not go out - they need a support group that will remove the burden of unnecessary work from them and allow them to fully focus on concluding a deal. The support group includes technical specialists, advertisers and marketers, office workers, logisticians, all those who "clear" the way for salespeople and allow them not to care about some technical issues.

It is impossible that there are too few of them, because then sellers will have to spend time on another job, on someone else's work. And you can't have too many of them, because then the company will incur costs.

So how many should there be, Santa's little helpers? Fortunately, cool foreign analysts have already conducted a study and found out everything.

How many support staff does the company need?
According to the study of the technogiant McCinsey, a strong company will not do without:

customer support,
records management and administration (this includes accountants),
Department management, such as the head of sales.
Analysts examined the experience of large corporations with high net profit relative to the volume of investments (ROI). They had something in common in the organization of internal processes, and after some brainstorming, experts were able to identify exactly four variables on which the profitability of the company depends – that is, the effectiveness of its sellers. Here they are.

1. 50-60% — for support
About half of the employees should be engaged in supporting salespeople. 30% will be too small, more than 60% - unprofitable and simply expensive.

Why so many? First, support frees up time for sales staff that they spend directly on fulfilling their core function: attracting customers and closing deals, in other words, what keeps most businesses afloat. Secondly, when each employee is busy with his own business, the company as a whole demonstrates high economic efficiency.

2. Choose the right composition
The composition is almost more important than the size of the "support group". You will not be able to work effectively without clerks and administrators who solve constantly arising routine "paper" tasks. It is these two categories that are the most important of the supporting ones.

Suppose we have two companies that have the same size of customer support team, but the first has more records than the second. It is easy to guess which will be more effective statistically, according to a study by experts.

3. Recruit as many executives as you need
Let's not bore you and immediately name the optimal ratio (in accordance with research, of course): between 10: 1 and 5: 1, ideally - 8: 1. Where 8 refers to sellers and one refers to management.

Too many subordinates reduce the effectiveness of control, and with it the efficiency of the entire department. But if the manager has few subordinates, especially if the company has several small sales departments, each with its own manager, then all this begins to cost the company a tidy sum - high-class sellers are expensive, and management is even more expensive.

4. Automate anything that can be automated
It's simple: the more processes are automated and digitized, the simpler, and the higher the company's profit and efficiency. For example: digitizing planning saves up to 25% of the time previously spent on planning, and increases revenue by 5%, simply because machines eliminate human error, and this is very cool.

Own communication system within the company with a clearly built coordination mechanism can significantly save the time that employees spend on meaningless trips "to bow" to the manager. Often sellers are forced to engage in design work - the preparation of documentation accompanying the transaction. This process can also be automated, freeing up a huge amount of time for everyone.

It is clear that the initial costs of automation will be considerable, it will not be easy to retrain employees to work with digital, and not to do everything the old way, but the savings will become so significant that any costs will quickly pay off.

As a summary, we can say that for perfect work, companies need:

50-60% of clerks, administrative workers and customer service employees,
most of them should relate specifically to the administrative and office apparatus,
for every 8 salespeople there should be one competent manager,
the more routine processes are automated, the better for everyone.