Yesterday, LivingSocial announced that it had hired a high-ranking Yahoo sales exec (“Vice President of North American Field Sales”).  Now, although the timing has to be a coincidence, Yahoo’s made two personnel changes that should help strengthen its sales organization.

Wayne Powers, who is himself somewhat new to Yahoo, explained the adjustments in an internal memo obtained by Kara Swisher.  Carol Bartz, Ross Levinsohn, Blake Irving, Elisa Steele, and Tim Morse were all on the “Cc” list, by the way.

At any rate, Powers wrote, “I am pleased to announce that Liz Ritzcovan will be joining Yahoo! as vice president of Marketing Solutions, leading our Sales Development organization.  I am equally excited to announce the promotion of long time Yahoo!, Andrea Morokutti, to vice president of Sales Operations and Strategy.”

Later, he added, “Both Liz and Andrea will report directly to me. Frank Weishaupt will continue to lead our North America Region Ad Marketplaces organization.  And I’d like to thank him for his leadership of the Sales Development and Operations organizations over the last nine months.”

Ritzcovan comes to Yahoo from Time, where she dealt in corporate sales and marketing.  Morokutti, meanwhile, was most recently a VP of ops finance.

So this development should give Yahoo one sales exec who has experience at a big, successful media entity and another who has plenty of knowledge regarding the company’s inner workings.