Are job titles important in Sales environment?

This question was posted on LinkedIn and I thought it made for some interesting reading.

I feel job titles are important in sales on two main fronts.

Accurate titling assists in the continued branding of your organization.  I managed a sales team and we branded the sales titles as "graphics specialist".  This was in response to the customers' feedback from surveying that they were searching for companies with a higher level of knowledge from the sales representative.  In addition, this helped continue the identification of our organization since we had a name that could have easily been mistaken for a law firm, accountants or a funeral home. 

The second area was from a hierarchy standpoint.  In the process of growing customers it is important to develop peer to peer relationships.  By this I mean it is helpful for owners to know owners, accounting to know accounting and so forth.  This is a necessary step for companies to insulate themselves from a sales person holding all of the relationship cards.  The best way to do this is with titles.   

I feel several titles such as “Account Executive” or “Account Manager” are overused and rather than clarify what someone does they may confuse the situation.

These titles lead clients to believe their representative may have more authority than they actually do; particularly when you introduce the word Manager into the equation.  As such the client may ask something of the representative – like a discount- that they are not solely responsible for. 

If others in the organization have titles on their cards then it is not just appropriate but necessary for the sales representatives to have them as well.  As is the case with anything of this nature it is important that this be given thorough thought and explained internally fully so it is understood.  Too many initiatives such as this never get the internal attention they deserve and then become a failed experiment.

Good Selling!