Sales department tasks include finding buyers, handling enquiries, negotiating, taking deals through to payment and working with existing clients. The department is responsible for sales on agreed terms, while calls, meetings and proposals serve that result. The business owner needs to know how much money will come in and when, have grounds for expecting further orders, and get a clear answer about what the head of sales does when things go off track.
When you want to bring order to the work, it is easy to start with a list of duties: make calls, maintain the CRM system, prepare proposals, send payment reminders. There is nothing wrong with such a list. But it leaves the main question unanswered: what work can the department count as finished?
Sending a proposal completes the preparation of the document. Negotiations on the deal continue. Handing over an order after payment completes the salesperson’s work only for the part accepted by the next person responsible. If these points of completion are not defined, each employee finishes their part in good faith, while the remaining questions pile up with the owner.
I think a business owner should specify a result for the department, with clear conditions for accepting the work, rather than a detailed schedule of actions. Let’s look at how to define this so that being responsible for the money does not mean being responsible for absolutely everything in the company.
Sales department goals
Sales department goals describe the commercial result for a chosen period: how many sales the company should make, what kind, by when and on what terms. The number of calls helps the head of sales organise the work, but on its own does not answer whether the department has moved closer to this goal.
For money coming in during the current period, specify exactly what you are counting: payments received, orders dispatched or contracts signed. These events happen on different dates. If the owner’s goal is to receive money this month, progress against the sales plan for contracts must be shown separately. Otherwise, the head of sales and the owner will argue about the same word, “sales”, while meaning different results.
For later periods, a separate goal is needed: prepare new orders. When approval takes a long time, work started today will not produce payment tomorrow. So, alongside the current month’s money, it helps to see deals where the buyer has confirmed a need, agreed what the order will cover and stated the next step. Simply increasing the total value of open deal records does not give you those grounds.
Choosing buyers is also part of the goal. If the company has decided to build business with a particular group of clients, growth in the total amount from the existing client base does not show whether business with that group has grown. Orders and money from the chosen group must appear separately in the report. There is no need to create new roles across the whole department for this straight away.
Sales terms are set alongside the goal: permitted discounts, payment arrangements and deadlines for completing orders. The link between deal terms and money is discussed in detail in “Sales seem to be coming in, but there is no money. What is the department actually delivering?”. Here, it is enough to establish the principle: the team knows the terms before negotiations, and exceptions are agreed before a promise is made to the buyer.
Sales department functions
Sales department functions are ongoing areas of work that bring the company new and repeat orders. For each function, name the result received by the next person involved: the buyer, the person fulfilling the order or the head of sales.
You can use the table below as a basis for allocating work. It does not require a separate employee for each row: in a small department, one person combines several functions.
| Function | What the department does | What result should be visible |
|---|---|---|
| Attracting buyers | Finds suitable companies and people through the chosen channels | There are new potential buyers with confirmed interest and an agreement to continue |
| Handling enquiries | Responds, clarifies the task and checks whether what is offered meets the need | Suitable enquiries are being worked on; reasons for declining the others are stated |
| Negotiations and proposal | Clarifies what the order covers, explains the solution and agrees terms | The buyer understands the proposal; unresolved questions and the way to resolve them are known |
| Taking deals through to payment | Manages agreement on documents and terms, tracks the promised payment | Money has been received, or the reason for the delay, the action and the person responsible are known |
| Handover of the order | Passes on the agreed contents, deadlines and special arrangements | The person fulfilling the order has accepted it and confirmed that there is enough information to do the work |
| Working with the client base | Finds out about future needs, handles renewals and repeat purchases where these apply | Each client’s future need, contact date or reason for ending the work is known |
| Records and feedback | Records agreements, reports reasons for refusals and changes in demand | The head of sales can see the state of sales; other departments receive facts for their decisions |
Handovers are the most vulnerable point in this division of work. Sending information to the person fulfilling the order and receiving confirmation that the order has been accepted are different events. Until that confirmation arrives, the sales department remains responsible for getting the order accepted or resolving disagreements. This does not make the salesperson responsible for producing the goods.
There is no point at which a function can be completed once and for all. A one-off task within it does end. Sorting out old enquiries is a task; taking in new enquiries without losing any is ongoing work. Once the backlog has been cleared, it must be clear who will keep things in order.
What does the sales department do?
The sales department organises the buyer’s path from the first meaningful contact through to purchase, payment and the next order, if the client needs one. The salesperson works with an individual buyer, while the head of sales allocates the team’s work, helps with difficult deals and changes actions that are not producing results.
You can see the difference in their tasks. A salesperson finds out what is preventing the client from agreeing to the proposal. The head of sales notices a recurring cause of delay across several salespeople and decides what to change in how proposals are prepared. If the head of sales simply takes over every difficult case, their personal sales increase, but the team keeps bringing them the same difficulties.
At the same time, the department’s name does not make it responsible for doing all the work around the buyer. Marketing is responsible for its own ways of attracting buyers, production for fulfilling orders, and accounts for recording payments. Sales connects these areas with promises to the client. For example, it gives marketing specific reasons why enquiries are unsuitable, and production the agreed requirements for the order.
A salesperson cannot be given all the blame for a late dispatch. Their task in this situation is to obtain a confirmed date from the person fulfilling the order, tell the client and agree the next steps within their authority. The head of production resolves the delay. The business owner needs a way for departments to work together that gives the buyer an answer without the owner personally acting as a go-between.
How do you set a task in terms of money and deadlines?
A task for the sales department must state the expected result, deadline, clients or deals covered, and what counts as completion. Set the financial goal together with the conditions: which payments count towards the result and what work the team must complete before they arrive.
Start with the period in which you want to receive the money. For the remainder of the current month, a simple calculation is enough:
Amount still to receive = monthly sales plan for incoming payments − payments already received.
For example, the sales plan is 10 million ₽ and 6 million ₽ has come in: 4 million ₽ remains to be collected. Both amounts must follow the same counting rules; signed but unpaid contracts do not count as payments received.
Break down the remaining amount by source: payments under contracts already signed and money from deals not yet agreed. This changes the task. In the first case, the department identifies obstacles to payment and manages the agreed schedule. In the second, negotiations, the buyer’s decision and the order paperwork still lie ahead. You cannot use the same instruction, “push them through”, for both amounts.
If new orders are expected to cover the remaining amount, estimate the number of first payments needed: remaining amount to come from new orders ÷ average first payment on comparable orders, rounded up. For example, 4 million ₽ ÷ 2 million ₽ = 2 first payments. For instalments, use the first payment, not the full contract value. This is a guide if the average payment stays the same; the head of sales must separately justify the number of available buyers and when they will decide.
After the calculation, use this template. It is enough to agree the task with the head of sales without instructions for every call.
| What to record | Wording to fill in |
|---|---|
| Result and deadline | Receive the specified amount by the set deadline; count incoming payments using the same accounting rule |
| Scope of work | We work with existing and new buyers; payments under old contracts and new orders are shown separately |
| Terms | We sell on approved terms for payment, discounts and deadlines; the head of sales agrees exceptions before any promise to the buyer |
| Person responsible | The head of sales is responsible for the department’s result and for allocating work among salespeople |
| Dependencies | We need agreed deadlines for completing the order from the relevant department; if there is a delay, the head of sales contacts the head of that department |
| Sign of completion | Incoming payments are confirmed by payment records; the person responsible for carrying out the work has accepted the obligations to clients |
| Current information | For each reporting period, I receive information on the total received, expected payments, deviations and the head of sales’ actions |
The owner does not have to fill in every row. They need to provide the desired result and the key conditions. The head of sales provides the allocation of work, deadlines for intermediate steps and dependencies. If the new volume requires extra people or an advertising budget, that is a separate decision to make before accepting the sales plan.
How do you track progress without daily involvement?
The business owner sees how the department is completing its tasks through three things: the result achieved, unfinished work and the head of sales’ actions in response to deviations. The head of sales needs the details of individual calls; the owner needs them when a specific decision cannot be made without them.
Accept a one-off task as complete based on what has changed. For a task to sort out stalled proposals, the result will be clients divided into groups: those continuing discussions, those who declined, those who postponed their decision until a stated date, and those who did not respond after the agreed sequence of attempts to contact them. The last group cannot be recorded as refusals just to close the list. Each group has its own next action, already assigned to someone responsible.
Assess an ongoing function by the new enquiries coming in. If old enquiries have been sorted out but new ones are again left without anyone responsible, the one-off clean-up is complete, while the daily work still needs fixing. There is no need for another large project to clean up the database. The head of sales needs to change how incoming enquiries are allocated and ensure that new ones reach people without reminders from the owner.
Check the financial result against the event chosen in the goal. When a sale takes a long time, the next confirmed step must appear alongside it: agreeing what the order covers, the purchaser’s decision, signing or payment. This lets the owner distinguish work that still needs time from a deal where the salesperson is simply holding on to hope.
To start with, a short summary once a week is enough, and the head of sales reports immediately on anything that requires the owner’s decision before then. The summary must bring together three lines: the deviation, the action already taken and the decision actually needed from the owner. If no decision is needed, the head of sales continues working within the agreed arrangements.
Why does a list of duties not free up the business owner?
A list of duties does not free up the business owner if they are still allocating work, resolving delays and coordinating how departments work together. Handing over day-to-day leadership requires a person who not only receives tasks but also takes the team’s work through to a result.
You can see this in an ordinary message from the head of sales to the owner. A report of a delay must include the cause, its effect on the deadline and a proposed course of action. If the head of sales only brings a problem and the owner has to come up with a solution every time, all that has been delegated is preparing information. Another list of duties will not close that gap.
At RENTROP, turnkey sales management means handing over the day-to-day leadership of the department to our team so that the owner does not have to do the work of the overall head of sales themselves. This arrangement makes sense when the department needs ongoing management, including seeing agreed decisions through to implementation.
Requiring someone to be accountable for money looks tougher than requiring them to make calls. But without the right to choose actions, it becomes a punishment for an amount they were not allowed to influence. For me, the department’s responsibility begins where the head of sales accepts a financial task along with the ability to organise the work — and is obliged to identify in good time any obstacle they have no authority to remove themselves.