A head of sales job description overloads the head of sales if ‘responsible for the CRM system’ hides setting up the software, filling in records for salespeople and managing deals. Different people carry out these tasks: the person who sets up the software, the salesperson and the head of sales. The job description sets out what the head of sales gets the team to achieve and what they do personally; moving to a new CRM gets a separate task with an end date.
The business owner looks for a template because they want to stop explaining the head of sales’ job to them every time something goes wrong. An understandable wish. A salesperson forgot about a buyer — a clause about supervision was added. A new recruit sat idle — training was added. A report did not add up — responsibility for the CRM was written in. Each clause makes sense on its own.
But look at where this way of adding to the document leads. If the head of sales now phones a forgotten contact themselves, personally explains every operation to a new recruit and corrects other people’s records in the evening, the department has gained another very busy salesperson. Only an expensive one, with responsibility for everyone else.
One thing interests me above all in a job description like this: where does the head of sales’ intervention end? After their help, does the salesperson handle the client themselves again, or wait for the boss to make the next move? That is what distinguishes handing over management from handing one person all the unfinished work.
Head of sales job description: six points for your team
The job description gives the head of sales ongoing duties involving salespeople, deals and the sales plan, as well as the authority to assign tasks and ensure they are carried out. Below is sample wording, with an explanation of the places where the owner and the head of sales can easily agree to different things.
At the start of the document, name the company, the job title of the immediate supervisor, the employees who report to the head of sales, the products and the sales channels. List the current rules on prices, payment and handing over orders separately. Put the revision date and signatures alongside the company details; align the content with the employment contract when preparing the employment paperwork.
The list of products and channels is especially important here. If the head of sales handles sales to existing clients, launching a new line of business cannot be quietly added under the words ‘sales development’. The launch will need an offer, people and time. Until those conditions are in place, the new clause will be a source of disagreement over expectations.
1. Who handles the client after the head of sales helps?
The head of sales assigns clients to salespeople and steps in where an employee cannot resolve a specific issue. Their help ends when they hand the next action to the salesperson, who continues handling the deal.
The head of sales assigns someone to be responsible for every enquiry and existing client, and redistributes work when an employee is absent or the workload is too high. When joining negotiations, they define which issue they will resolve themselves, what the salesperson will then do and by when. What has been agreed is saved in the deal record.
This is where the text becomes useful. Helping to discuss the terms of a large order is one task. Sending documents, reminding the buyer about payment and checking delivery details yourself after the negotiations means handling that client. If the second part is also the head of sales’ job, name their personal clients separately and free up time for them.
Otherwise, two unpleasant things will start coming together in the department: a capable head of sales rescues deals more and more often, while salespeople see deals through without their help less and less often. The month’s financial results still look good. When the head of sales next goes on holiday, it will become clear how many other people’s tasks have stayed with them.
2. What happens to a task that has not been carried out?
The head of sales is responsible for a task until it produces a result: they spot a delay, establish the cause and change the actions taken. A clause that says ‘assign a task to a salesperson’ ends their work too early.
The head of sales sets the result and deadline for a salesperson’s work and tracks progress. If there is a delay, they find out what is getting in the way: an unclear task, a lack of skill, other work taking up their time or a failure to do what was agreed. They remove the obstacle within their authority, assign the next action and check that it is completed.
If a salesperson postpones a call, reminding them again to make the call is not enough. Have they forgotten? Do they not know what to offer? Have they already made the call but not recorded it? Are they waiting for a calculation from another department? The same delay calls for different actions from the head of sales. A job description that only says ‘monitor deadlines’ leaves them free to record the same delay every day.
The head of sales also needs real authority: to change the order of a salesperson’s tasks, return incomplete work and reassign clients. If every step like this has to be agreed with the owner, the owner is still running the department, while the head of sales collects questions for them.
3. How do you separate CRM work from endless implementation?
The head of sales’ ongoing duty is to ensure that information about deals is reliable. Setting up a new CRM ends when the team starts working in it according to the agreed process.
The head of sales defines what information about clients and agreements a salesperson saves in the CRM. They check the records against the progress of deals, return errors to the employee responsible and ensure they are corrected. For technical faults, they pass a description of the problem to the person who sets up the software, agree a deadline and accept the result after checking it in the team’s work.
For example, the buyer gave a date for their decision, but the salesperson entered a different one in the record. That is a question for the salesperson. If the salesperson entered the correct date but an automatic rule changed it, the settings need correcting. A requirement to ‘put the CRM in order’ without this distinction forces the head of sales to fix the consequence manually again and again.
A separate entry is useful for moving to another system:
- Result: active deals have been transferred, the people responsible and next actions have been retained, and salespeople work in the new CRM.
- Head of sales: describes the required process, trains the team to follow it and checks and accepts the transfer using active deals.
- Person setting up the software: transfers the data and configures the software; salespeople check their own clients.
- Completion: reports on the agreed measures match the source data, and the team has returned to its normal way of working.
- In the project plan: the end date, participants’ hours and the person who accepts the result.
After acceptance, ‘implement the CRM’ no longer rolls over from month to month. If a new report is needed later, that is a new task with its own amount of work.
If the head of sales sets up the software themselves, their technical hours are included in the project plan. These also show what ongoing work will need to be handed over or postponed.
4. What should the head of sales be accountable for when training salespeople?
The head of sales chooses a skill to work on based on difficulties in sales and ensures it is used. The number of sessions held does not answer the question of what the employee now does better.
The head of sales reviews salespeople’s conversations and correspondence, identifies a recurring difficulty, demonstrates a way to act and arranges practice. They then assess its use in new negotiations. When hiring, they define the future employee’s tasks, assess candidates’ skills and organise the new salesperson’s induction.
Suppose a salesperson sends a proposal without finding out who on the buyer’s side will discuss it. The head of sales can keep stepping into stalled deals and obtaining the answer themselves. Clients will start responding, but the salesperson will still not have learnt the skill. The sign that the training has done its job is that, in new deals, the salesperson identifies who will be involved in the decision before sending the proposal.
Hiring also calls for a division of work. Describing the salesperson’s work and assessing how they negotiate are tasks for the head of sales. Going through every application, arranging meetings and reminding candidates of the time are a separate workload. If that also falls to the head of sales, the hours it takes are accounted for before opening several vacancies at once.
5. What does ‘responsible for meeting the sales plan’ mean?
The head of sales prepares a sales plan with a clear basis, directs the work to meet it and promptly shows where results differ from it, together with their own actions. The final amount is needed, but on its own it does not explain the quality of their work.
The head of sales draws up a sales plan based on active deals, expected demand and the available team. They distribute tasks among salespeople, update the forecast when things change, and report differences from the sales plan and measures taken to their immediate supervisor. If a decision is needed beyond their authority, they provide the facts, options and a deadline for a response.
Keep the amount and period in the sales plan. Suppose incoming payments of 10 million ₽ have been agreed for the month, and 8 million ₽ has come in. The percentage achieved is 8 ÷ 10 × 100% = 80%, and the shortfall is 2 million ₽. Contracts signed for that amount do not make up the shortfall in payments.
But ‘the buyers did not pay’ does not end the review either. Some received incorrect documents, others were not reminded by the salesperson, and others are waiting for an order that has not yet been fulfilled. For the first two reasons, the head of sales organises the department’s work. For the third, they get a date from those doing the work and ensure the buyer is told the current terms. Simply forwarding a list of outstanding payments to the owner is not enough.
In the report, the shortfall needs to be accompanied by reasons for specific amounts and actions to address them. Financial records provide the data on incoming payments; the head of sales has access to them or an agreed time by which they receive them. Without a source of actual figures, the company demands accuracy from someone while leaving them to guess.
There is a detailed account of the ongoing work in the article on the duties of a head of sales. Here, the document’s purpose is to set out that work so the head of sales cannot stop at reporting a problem.
6. What makes way for a new task?
A one-off implementation, an additional channel and personal clients take up the head of sales’ time on top of the work already agreed. When adding a task, the owner chooses what is postponed, who takes over part of the work or what resources are allocated.
The head of sales shows their workload before starting an additional project and proposes changes to current priorities. The result, deadline, people doing the work and the work that will be handed over or postponed for this period are agreed with the immediate supervisor. After the project ends, ongoing duties are carried out to the same extent as before or changed by a separate decision.
You can calculate the workload without a complicated system. Take the time the head of sales spends on their normal work in a week, add the hours for the new task and compare the total with the time available. Suppose, out of 40 hours, the team and deals take 24, personal clients take 8, and reports and approvals take another 8. The CRM transfer needs 10 hours. That makes 50 hours of work with 40 hours available.
The difference will have to come out of a specific part of the workload. Hand over personal clients and 8 hours are freed up, leaving another 2. Postpone part of the implementation and the end date changes. Bring in someone to set up the software and the technical work is reduced, but the head of sales still needs time to accept the result and train the team. Saying ‘they should organise themselves better’ makes none of these choices.
Where revising the document ends
A revised job description is useful when it changes a specific expectation of the head of sales. For example, instead of filling in records manually, they return them to the salespeople, while the owner supports this requirement and stops accepting a report in which the head of sales has made corrections for everyone.
The owner has a strong objection: they pay the head of sales precisely so that problems are solved without their involvement. Yes, the head of sales takes over the daily allocation of tasks. But deciding which project approved by the owner to delay for the sake of another means changing an agreement made by the owner. The head of sales sets out that choice; the owner is not being handed back all the department’s work.
The difference is visible in the last task the head of sales did for a salesperson. If it was a difficult conversation after which the salesperson continued with the deal, the help worked. If the head of sales is correcting the same mistake in the documents for the third time for the same person, adding a clause on ‘checking documents’ changes nothing. What needs to be examined is what the head of sales did after the first correction.
When there is no one to return work to salespeople and ensure it is done, the owner needs someone to take over daily management. At RENTROP, the outsourced head of sales service includes selecting a head of sales to suit the business and working with the department: managing salespeople, training and reporting.
A good job description keeps the head of sales responsible for the team’s work and gives them a way to get results from people. If every problem simply leaves them with another personal task, you are gradually relieving the whole department of responsibility, except its head.