Sales must improve. But the head of sales already spends all day selling, while the salespeople wait for them to become available. The head of sales has strong individual results. The team has a queue of questions for them.
Imagine a supplier of professional tools. Let’s look at an illustrative situation. A salesperson is preparing a proposal for a buyer: the required model is unavailable, but there are alternatives. The head of sales promised to help them decide before lunch which alternative to offer and how to explain the difference. These decisions are part of their job; there is no need to wait for the owner.
Meanwhile, one of the head of sales’ own regular clients sends a repeat order. The head of sales confirms the quantity, checks availability and prepares an invoice. The salesperson’s question is left for later. The deadline for replying to the buyer passes.
You could demand that the head of sales deal with the team’s questions more quickly. I would first find out why an ordinary repeat order needs to go through them at all.
The head of sales’ own deal may not need their involvement
Open the order that caused help for the salesperson to be delayed. What exactly was the head of sales doing? Negotiating difficult terms themselves, resolving a dispute with a key client, or copying familiar items into an invoice?
In our example, the client has already chosen the product. The price is known, and the terms are unchanged. The head of sales is busy with work that a trained salesperson could do independently. In the other deal, by contrast, the salesperson needs help working out which alternative suits the buyer’s needs and what needs to be clarified before making a proposal.
This creates an odd queue. Work that needs the head of sales waits for work that could be assigned to someone else to finish.
Meanwhile, everything may look fine in the CRM system: both deals have someone responsible for them, and the head of sales has completed tasks and sent an invoice. To see what is holding things up, you will need to compare when the head of sales promised the team a decision with what they were doing instead.
Personal sales are easier to defend than time spent on someone else’s deal
An arrangement like this may have a perfectly reasonable beginning. A strong salesperson was promoted to head of sales and kept their familiar clients: orders were coming in, relationships were good, and handing them over felt scary. Managing the team was added to their previous work.
An order from their own client immediately becomes a clear result. Involvement in a salesperson’s deal looks more modest: helped choose an alternative, reviewed a reply, came back to check the proposal. Even if the buyer later pays, the report will credit the sale to the salesperson.
If the owner holds the head of sales accountable for both a personal sales plan and the team’s results, a choice needs to be made in advance about which takes priority when tasks clash. Otherwise, the next client who calls the head of sales directly quietly makes that choice. There is no need to explain it by attributing greed or a dislike of people to the head of sales.
An extra sales meeting will not take the repeat order off their hands. It will take up another part of the same day. And the instruction not to get distracted by clients will remain a wish as long as they are still held fully accountable for their personal sales.
Taking part in a deal and handling an order place different demands on the head of sales
It is easy to draw too broad a conclusion from this: the head of sales should never sell. I disagree. A large deal may need their experience, authority and presence. But the need to handle a difficult conversation does not mean they need to prepare every subsequent invoice themselves.
Review what the head of sales does on their current orders:
- A decision within their authority is needed: the salesperson prepares the facts, the head of sales makes the decision, and the next steps stay with the salesperson.
- The terms are already settled, leaving the calculation, paperwork and contact with the buyer: this work can be handed to a trained employee with the necessary access and time.
- The client still contacts only the head of sales: the head of sales introduces the person who will handle the order and checks that the first working conversation has taken place. Simply changing the name in CRM is not enough.
- No one in the team can handle this kind of order yet: the handover is not ready. Someone needs to be trained and assessed on a suitable task. Until then, the head of sales’ personal workload remains a constraint.
Separately, check the questions brought to the head of sales. If a salesperson is waiting for permission to do something they already have the authority to do, remove the unnecessary approval. There is no reason to free up the head of sales’ time for that.
The point of this review is to leave the head of sales with the decisions that actually need them. A ban on talking to clients will not achieve that.
Not all revenue in the head of sales’ records will disappear after a handover
The owner has a strong objection: the head of sales’ own clients bring in money now, while the value of the time freed up still needs to be proved. That is a fair objection. You cannot take their clients away and count the team’s future sales as compensation today.
But it is also too soon to count all revenue from clients assigned to the head of sales as the cost of their move into management. For a repeat order, a familiar product, agreed terms and a timely reply may have been enough. The name of the person responsible shows who processed the sale. It does not prove that the purchase would not happen without that person.
So start with one suitable repeat order. The terms are clear, the buyer can be introduced to a new employee, and that employee has the time and access to the history. The head of sales remains available for a truly difficult question, but another person handles the routine correspondence and paperwork.
If no one can take over the order, the owner needs to make a separate decision about staffing and costs. Promising the head of sales time to manage by adding work to an already overloaded salesperson is pointless. Changes to the personal sales plan, responsibilities and pay must also be agreed before the handover: you cannot demand the same personal sales once part of the work has been taken away.
The time freed up must be used for specific work
Before the trial, choose a question from the team that really needs the head of sales’ involvement. In our situation, it is the proposal offering an alternative to the unavailable model. Record what the head of sales must decide before the reply to the buyer and when they must return to the salesperson after that reply.
This gives you two things to check. The repeat order that was handed over must proceed without missed commitments. In the salesperson’s deal, there must be a timely decision and a completed action: the requirements clarified, a suitable option chosen, and the proposal sent by the agreed deadline.
The buyer may still say no. Timely help from the head of sales does not guarantee a sale. But now you can see that the work was done and examine the client’s response, rather than explain our failure to reply by saying we were busy.
Return to these same orders the following week. If the orders take longer to complete, look at the next promised steps. An empty slot in the head of sales’ calendar does not count as a result: there must be evidence of what they did for the team in that time.
What to do if the trial did not help
The repeat order was formally handed over, but the head of sales still prepares the invoice and replies to the buyer themselves. In that case, no time has been freed up. Check whether the salesperson received the necessary access, whether they were introduced to the client, and whether the head of sales passes direct enquiries back to the salesperson. A failed handover of this kind says nothing yet about the value of management.
The order moved to the salesperson, but they missed an agreed step. Look at what happened in that specific instance: the salesperson did not know the terms, ran out of time because of their workload, or failed to take an action they knew was required. The cause determines whether to train the person, change their workload or examine how they carried out the work. It is too early to hand over more work until this has been addressed.
Time really was freed up for the head of sales, but they again failed to carry out the promised review of the deal. Their own clients no longer explain this. There is now specific work the head of sales has failed to do: a task, a deadline and the opportunity to do it. That gives you a starting point for a conversation about the quality of their management.
If, however, the repeat order is moving forward without the head of sales personally processing it, and the team gets decisions on time, there is a reason to hand over the next suitable piece of work. This is not yet proof of revenue growth. It confirms that some of their personal workload can be removed without bringing the order to a halt, and that the time freed up can be used as intended.
At RENTROP, the “turnkey sales management” service includes daily work by the head of sales with the team and help with difficult negotiations. The business development director checks what happened after that help: what decision was made, what the salesperson did, and when the head of sales checked that the work had been done. A successful personal sale by the head of sales does not resolve the question of the deals that were waiting for their involvement.
The product, prices, budget and staffing decisions remain with the owner. The head of sales must show what work they will take on and what the department will be able to do with their help.
If the team waits while the head of sales sells, their personal sales need to be assessed alongside the cost of that wait.