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- Facebook is shaking up its sales execs.
- Dan Levy, the former head of small business, has become the new VP of product on ads.
- Facebook sales exec Carolyn Everson has taken on more responsibility and is now overseeing the high-value managed SMB accounts.
- Small business are a crucial part of Facebook’s business, and was highlighted by CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a key focus for 2019.
Facebook has reshuffled some of its top sales executives.
The Silicon Valley tech giant has moved around two of its top performers in the sales organisation and given one new responsibilities, Business Insider has learned, as it reconsiders how it handles small and medium business (SMB) sales.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the moves, but otherwise declined to comment.
The first big change sees Facebook’s veteran vice president of small business, Dan Levy, move out of the sales organisation altogether.
He’s now VP of product on ads, where he will "lead the Product Management organization for advertising," according to his LinkedIn profile, "serving millions of businesses who invest tens of billions of dollars on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger."
In his absence, VP of Global Marketing Solutions Carolyn Everson’s domain has expanded.
Everson, one of Facebook’s most high profile sales execs, subsequently absorbed parts of the SMB business into her responsibility. She now oversees the higher-value tier of managed SMB accounts along with the giant brands that were already in her domain. "Carolyn is the best talent in all of sales, so [this is] a further bet on her," one source told Business Insider.
And Rich Rao, who leads SMB Global Operations, will pick up the smaller, unmanaged SMB accounts.
The SMB label at Facebook has historically been "a bit of a misnomer," with the majority of revenue coming from "larger accounts (e.g. American Airlines), not true SMB accounts," the source said.
As such, the shift will put these high-value accounts in the hands of an experienced operator; Everson has been with Facebook since 2011. And it’s a marked change in how the sales organisation operates: "It was always Carolyn and Dan Levy as a two-headed hydra, that has shifted," the source said.
"The days of SMB being its own island are over," they added.
Small businesses are a crucial area for Facebook. The social network says it has 90 million small businesses on its platform, and seven million active advertisers. One of the four objectives CEO Mark Zuckerberg set the company for 2019 highlights them as an area of focus: "Keep building our business by supporting the millions of businesses, mostly small businesses, that rely on our services to grow and create jobs."
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Source: Business Insider