“I need someone to do this.”
The head of sales starts work. At the first meeting, the business owner tells the team: from now on, all questions go to them. Two days later, a salesperson messages the owner directly: an important client is asking for a discount, and an answer is needed now. The owner knows the background and replies. They cannot lose the deal.
The question is settled. The team has also learnt who is still the real head of sales here.
I would not start by concluding that the new head of sales is weak. First, I would reconstruct this episode step by step. Not who was appointed to lead, but whose decision changed what the salesperson did.
One quick answer brings back the old way of working
Before hiring a head of sales, the owner personally worked through difficult deals, authorised discounts, corrected salespeople and kept agreements with important clients in their head. This was not a mistake. It was how the department worked.
But a position can be handed over by formal instruction. The usual route a work question takes cannot.
The salesperson goes where they will get a final answer faster. The owner replies because they do understand the situation better than the new person. The head of sales hears about the decision afterwards. Next time, the salesperson takes the shortcut again.
Everyone acts reasonably. The result is unreasonable: the head of sales is responsible for the department but does not control the decisions that shape its work.
Here is how it shows:
- the salesperson explains the difficulty to the owner before the head of sales;
- a task on a deal is changed without the head of sales;
- after the review, no one goes back to check what the salesperson did;
- two different answers remain valid, and the team chooses the convenient one;
- the head of sales receives a decision that has already been made — to record it, communicate it and check that it is carried out.
This is not “poor delegation” in general. It is much more specific: the new person has the position, but the previous leader still has the right to determine the next step in everyday work.
Check the chain of decisions, not the person’s character
The phrase “The head of sales is not up to the job” explains nothing. Different things may be going wrong behind it.
A deal has stalled. The head of sales did not ask for the missing facts and passed the problem upwards — they have not done their job.
The head of sales asked for the facts and told the salesperson what to do, but the owner gave a different instruction directly — the head of sales’ work has been overridden within the company.
The head of sales set a task, the salesperson did not do it, and there was no follow-up check — the department has a decision, but no check that it is carried out.
From the outside, all three situations look the same: the important deal is back with the owner. But replacing the person, stating who can decide what and setting up checks on tasks are three different actions. Mix them up, and you can hire a second strong candidate and get the same result.
So I would take one disputed incident — the most recent — rather than an assessment of the head of sales:
- What fact was unknown at the start?
- Who asked for it?
- Who chose the next action?
- Who set the task for the salesperson?
- Who could overturn that decision?
- Who came back and checked the result?
If all the head of sales does in this chain is report, they are not in charge yet. If the chain is theirs but they do not take it through to the next check, then there is a concrete basis for discussing the quality of their work.
“I cannot hand everything over to someone new straight away”
This is a fair question. It mixes up two different kinds of work.
Handing prices, the budget and decisions that could put the whole business at risk to someone you do not know is one thing. Handing them everyday work on deals and with salespeople, within limits set in advance, is another.
No one is asking for the first. Without the second, you cannot assess a head of sales.
For a week, a limited area is enough: a few stalled deals and one recurring team mistake. Agree straight away:
- what the head of sales decides independently;
- what fact they must bring to the owner;
- which decision remains the owner’s alone;
- when the head of sales checks that the salesperson has carried out the task.
Pricing, strategy, the budget, production constraints and the employer’s staffing decisions remain with the owner. A question for the client, the next step in a deal, a task for a salesperson and returning to that task are the head of sales’ responsibility.
The boundary is not there for freedom for its own sake. It is there so that someone is responsible for the result and a mistake can be examined.
A work trial starts when something does not go as planned
At an interview, it is easy to work through a tidy situation. In the department, facts are missing, a salesperson argues, a client asks for an exception, a task has not been done. This is where the head of sales’ work becomes visible.
Not through a promise to increase sales in a week. Through what happens between the first task and the next check.
After a week, you can see:
- salespeople take work questions to the head of sales first;
- a stalled deal now has a confirmed next step;
- the task is stated specifically, rather than “push the client to close”;
- the head of sales came back at the deadline and saw whether the task had been done;
- if the action did not work, they changed it based on a new fact;
- the owner received a decision that had been prepared, rather than the whole problem.
“Work with the client” cannot be checked. “By Thursday, find out who is involved in making the choice and agree a date for the next conversation” can. There is a person, an action, a deadline and a record for the head of sales to return to.
If these signs are missing, do not rush to defend either the head of sales or the owner with general statements. Separate the causes again. Does the head of sales fail to make a decision? Are they unable to turn a review into a task? Do they fail to check that it has been done? Or is their decision overturned before it has a chance to work?
Why a new search often takes you back to the same point
A strong candidate does not undo the way a company is organised.
The second head of sales will also start work, look at the CRM system, hold meetings and give the team their first tasks. Then an important deal will come along. The salesperson will again message the person whose word is final. If the owner answers directly, bypassing the head of sales, the new head of sales will get the same role: stand by as others make decisions and be responsible for the overall result.
So the obvious solution, “we will find someone stronger”, does not work until you have checked the route a work question takes. You may find that the person does need replacing. But that should be clear from their actions, not from a role they were not allowed to perform.
Where RENTROP fits in
That is precisely why “turnkey sales management” does not mean giving the owner another head of sales.
The head of sales runs the everyday work with salespeople and on deals. The business development director checks the quality of their decisions: what facts they are based on, whether a specific task has been set, whether the head of sales came back to check that it had been done and what they changed when things went off track. AI helps find stalled deals, missed steps and recurring mistakes in data and communications. A person makes the final decision.
If the head of sales changes, the accumulated figures, decisions and agreements stay within the project, and work does not start from scratch. Strategy, prices, the budget and decisions affecting the business as a whole remain with the owner.
Before assessing the head of sales as a whole again, reconstruct one difficult deal from the question to the follow-up check. It will show who you hired — a leader or someone who reports.
A head of sales is assessed not by the fact that they have been put in charge of a department, but by the decisions the department has actually left to them.