Efficient Sales Force (sharing an idea)

How does an efficient Sales Force operate? This is a topic that could easily fill a couple of books. So I want to restrict my idea here to a very short list of tasks that I think a small to medium size Sales Force in the IT Industry should perform. Do they perform tasks like account planning, opportunity management, quote preparation etc. by themselves or do they have to have Support Personnel to do these tasks for them? 
My answer is yes they should do most of these tasks themselves because it is beneficial for the Sales Team to be self reliant. It's also fosters a more dynamic culture. The less teams/people are involved in the Sales Process the less points of failure we have. This requires a good and clear partnership between the appropriate business and IT resources/departments.
Asking the Sales Force to perform more tasks by themselves requires the Sales Team to have an "allrounder" mindset. This is only possible when the tools and processes are manageable for one person. To find an environment where the system and process landscape is manageable by one person is more likely in newer and smaller companies. Example: If every product (Hardware, Software, Services) an IT company is selling can be quoted in one process and tool then one Sales Person needs to be trained (in <= 1 day excl. Product training) to use that tool and they are good to go. The good thing about this is that the Sales Reps feel responsible for these tasks. They "own" the process and tools and don't hide behind other teams. Many newer small to midsize company Sales Teams seem to be more self reliant than older/bigger companies.What I mean with self reliant is that the Sales Reps do more tasks themselves. Is that good or bad? Is this approach scaleable once the companies become bigger or not? How can this work for companies that have hundreds of systems and different systems in each part of the world? I don't have the answer and I don't pretent there is an easy solution but it is worth thinking about these and similar questions because the correct answer for your company could potentially yield large benefits.

Here is what I would consider an ideal example of a small to midsize Sales Force (assuming we are beyond the opportunity phase).

1. Prepare the customer visit (determine what Customers to visit, determine products that these customers would benefit from, determine contacts at company etc.)
• Sales Rep uses one tool to access information
• What products at what price did we sell to the customer before?
• What competitor products are out there? How are they different from the products our company offers?
• Who is the contact person in that company?
• Is there any cross or up sell opportunity?
• special notes about company contacts (e.g. upcoming birthday, lunch/dinner preferences etc.)
2. Go to the customer and build a mutually beneficial relationship
• Capture Opportunities (e.g. current issues with xyz ...customer might benefit from our product/service abc)
3. Prepare a quote for your customer
• Sales Rep should be able to prepare one (preliminary) quote for all products in one system
• Configure complex products in configuration tool (e.g. SAP Variant Configuration, Big Machines etc.)
• Show cross and upsell opportunities
• Tools shows what products/services this customer bought from us before
• Determine VSOE compliant Price with applicable Discounts for customer (based on Sales Rep authorization levels)
• Show price on header/item level to Sales Rep (to determine potential discounts)
• If additional price approvals are needed a workflow routes it via email to the correct people
• Prepare customer presentable quote
4. Turn the quote into an order
• typical ERP functionality (e.g. Credit Check, Global Trade Checks etc are performed)
• trigger sales compensation for Sales Reps that they can follow

This list could obviously be much longer and much more detailed (!) but for the Blog Post this should suffice. Note that there are many different situations and circumstances and hence the "ideal" answer I describe above does very clearly not apply to everyone.
How can you make your Sales Force more efficient? Think about it! There are improvement opportunities in EVERY companies. What can YOU do in YOUR company today?