There are three dominant models in B2B sales organizations: geographic, customer, and product. Each comes with its own logic, and more importantly, its own failure modes.

Geographic models are the most intuitive. You divide your market into territories and let each region operate semi-autonomously. The logic is compelling: local teams understand local markets. They build deep relationships with regional buyers. They can spot trends early and respond quickly. This model thrives in businesses where local tastes and relationships matter more than scale – think craft beer or regional banking.

But geographic models have a hidden tax. As your customers get bigger and more sophisticated, they start demanding national or global coordination. Your largest accounts end up dealing with multiple teams, each with their own priorities and processes. You get regional fiefdoms that compete with each other instead of your actual competitors. Worse, your best practices stay trapped within regional boundaries instead of spreading across the organization.

Customer models solve these coordination problems by organizing around account size or customer type. Your most important customers get dedicated teams that can coordinate nationally. Smaller accounts get handled by regional or inside sales teams. This model shines when a few key accounts drive most of your growth. It lets you align resources with revenue opportunity and deliver consistent service to your highest value customers. Take private wealth management, for instance, where high-net-worth clients require dedicated relationship managers who can coordinate across multiple services. 

The catch? Customer models can create product blind spots. When your teams are focused entirely on specific accounts, they sometimes miss broader market trends. Innovation can slow down because no one owns the product strategy end-to-end. You also risk over-serving large accounts while under-investing in emerging customers who might become tomorrow's giants.

Product models flip the script entirely. Instead of organizing around geography or customers, you build teams around product lines or categories. This works beautifully in technical industries where product expertise matters more than anything else. Your teams become deep experts in their categories and can spot innovation opportunities across markets. A key advantage is their ability to embed deeply with clients – consider medical device sales representatives who work alongside surgeons in operating rooms, demonstrating new equipment and providing hands-on support.

But product models can turn into echo chambers. Teams become so focused on their products that they lose sight of actual customer needs. They often build complex features and pursue innovations that customers don't value, creating solutions in search of problems rather than addressing real market demands.

I saw all of this play out recently at a mid-sized food manufacturer. They had grown up with a geographic model, dividing North America into various regions. Each region operated like its own kingdom, with sales teams, and customer relationships. The breaking point came from both their key customers and their P&L. They weren't sophisticated enough on innovation to win with retailers like Trader Joe's, who demanded unique products and rapid development cycles. Meanwhile, their geographic model had them investing heavily in small, regional accounts which were actually losing money. They were trapped in a structure that kept them focused on the wrong opportunities – servicing the long tail of customers instead of building innovation capabilities for their highest-potential accounts.

They eventually reorganized around customer segments. Their top accounts each got dedicated teams that could coordinate nationally, while regional chains and independents stayed geographic. The transformation was expensive and messy – they lost some talented regional leaders and had to rebuild core sales processes around the new model.

The counterintuitive truth about sales models is that they don't fail dramatically – they fail gradually through slow erosion of market share. Competitors with better models start winning key customers bit by bit, and one day you realize your structure is actively holding you back. Smart companies don't wait for their models to break completely. They see the early signs: customer complaints about coordination, market share quietly slipping away at key accounts, talent leaving because the organization doesn't make sense anymore. The hardest part isn't designing the new model. It's admitting the old one needs to change.