I have worked in sales since 2009 and in business since 2017. Over that time, I have seen many different sales teams: in manufacturing, healthcare, property, services, and companies with short and long deal cycles.
And very often, a review starts with one sentence from the owner:
“I have a head of sales, but I still have to oversee sales myself.”
Then a familiar picture emerges. The head of sales runs sales meetings. Salespeople enter data into the CRM system. Reports are sent. But the owner approves discounts. The owner approves non-standard terms. The owner gets involved with major clients. If the month is going badly, it is the owner who brings everyone together and gets the team working properly again.
So the company has someone in the head of sales role. But management still rests with the owner.
I do not see this as a mistake in the early stages. The owner should be closely involved in the first sales: they understand the product better than anyone, know its real value to the client, listen to the market and work out which arguments are effective.
The problem starts later. The company has grown, there are salespeople, a head of sales has been hired, yet the owner is still the person without whom the team cannot make decisions properly and move deals forward.
At that point, the owner is no longer helping sales. They are becoming the main thing holding sales back.
Having a head of sales does not mean someone is managing sales
One of the most revealing questions I ask during a review is:
“What would happen if you stopped taking part in the team's daily work for a week?”
You would not leave for good. You would not revoke anyone's access. You would simply stop running sales meetings, checking every deal, answering salespeople and getting involved with clients.
If, after a few days:
- decisions start getting stuck;
- salespeople are waiting for the owner's answer;
- difficult clients are left without progress;
- the forecast becomes unclear;
- CRM quickly stops reflecting reality;
- the head of sales keeps holding meetings but does not change the situation,
then sales are not supported by management. They depend on the owner's personal attention.
From the outside, this may look like poor discipline, poor salespeople or a shortage of leads. But the visible symptom is often misleading.
Behind it may lie a very different cause: the company has not defined who makes decisions, what authority the head of sales has, what they must check every day and which issues really need the owner's involvement.
Three composite situations from practice
Below, I will combine several similar projects into three composite examples. Details have been changed, and there will be no exact figures or names. But the same pattern keeps recurring in real businesses.
Manufacturing: the head of sales runs sales meetings but does not manage
Imagine a manufacturing company with several salespeople and long deal cycles.
There is a head of sales on the payroll. Every morning, they bring the team together. Salespeople explain who they have sent a proposal to, who is thinking it over and whose reply they are waiting for.
But as soon as a real commercial question comes up, the conversation stops:
- can the product configuration be changed;
- what discount is acceptable;
- can deferred payment be agreed;
- what can be promised on timings;
- is it worth continuing to work with this client.
There is one answer: “We need to ask the owner.”
Formally, the head of sales manages the team. In practice, they gather information and pass it to the owner. Salespeople quickly realise this and also start going straight to the owner.
The company ends up with two heads of sales. One runs sales meetings. The other makes decisions.
When the owner is busy with production, finances or a new line of business, deals are not necessarily lost straight away. They simply start waiting. A day, two days, a week. The team keeps doing things, but progress depends on how quickly one person responds.
In this situation, starting with another hire is pointless. First, you need to divide up the decisions.
Which terms can the head of sales approve independently? Where do agreed rules apply? Which exceptions really require the owner? What must a salesperson bring to the head of sales besides the phrase “the client wants a discount”?
Without this division, every non-standard deal has to go through the owner.
Healthcare: everyone is sure the problem is leads
In healthcare businesses, I often hear another version:
“We need more enquiries. We do not have enough.”
Marketing blames sales. Sales say patients take a long time to decide, compare options and are not ready to pay. The owner sees empty appointment slots and demands more advertising.
But then we look at actual calls and messages.
It turns out that some enquiries received a perfunctory reply. After the client's first doubt, the salesperson did not return to the conversation. No next step was set. CRM lists reasons such as “too expensive”, “will think about it” and “not ready”, without any review of what actually happened.
The owner notices this from time to time. They listen to a few calls themselves, call a stern meeting and explain how to talk to patients. For a few days, the team pulls itself together.
Then the owner turns to doctors, service, finances or developing the clinic. And everything gradually slips back.
The visible symptom is too few sales. The first assumption is too few leads. But the real problem may be that nobody regularly manages how well enquiries are handled.
Not after a failure. Not when the owner gets angry. Every week: reviewing conversations, finding recurring mistakes, giving specific feedback and checking whether the salesperson's behaviour has changed.
Property and services: salespeople sell until the first serious question
In property and services involving large deals, I have seen another pattern many times.
A salesperson can hold the first meeting, show the product and send a proposal. But when the client starts bargaining, comparing options, demanding special terms or asking awkward questions, this phrase appears:
“Let's bring in the owner.”
The owner is often better at closing these deals. They are more confident, know the product in greater depth and can make a quick decision.
But this strength has a downside. The team stops developing.
Salespeople get used to the idea that their job is to bring the client to the owner. The head of sales monitors the number of calls and meetings but does not teach people to handle difficult negotiations independently. The owner becomes the company's chief negotiator, even if they have long wanted to focus on completely different tasks.
Banning the owner from talking to key clients is foolish. Their involvement may be necessary.
But there must be clear criteria: where the owner is really needed, and where a salesperson simply does not know how to get through a difficult part of the deal. And the head of sales must be responsible not only for the team's activity, but also for its growing independence.
How I assess a team's dependence on the owner
I do not start by asking: “Is your head of sales good or bad?”
That is too crude a way to frame it. The same head of sales may look weak in a system where they have not been given authority, and work very differently where their responsibility is real.
First, I look at where management sits in the company.
Who sets the priorities for the week? Who understands which deals will actually close this month? Who notices when a salesperson keeps making the same mistake? Who checks whether anything has changed after a sales meeting? Who makes decisions on discounts and terms? Who do salespeople go to when a client says “no”? Who takes responsibility for keeping CRM in order every day, rather than just saying they do?
If the answers keep pointing back to the owner, the diagnosis is simple: the role has been handed over, but management has not.
There is another important sign. The owner knows more about sales than CRM and the head of sales combined.
They remember that one client “will definitely buy”, a second has delayed a decision more than once, a third must not be promised deferred payment, and a fourth is waiting for a personal call. But this knowledge has not become part of the team's work. It exists only in the owner's head.
As long as this continues, the company is not managing sales. It is relying on the owner's personal memory and intuition.
Why another salesperson often just adds to the chaos
When sales fall short of the sales plan, the first solution seems obvious: hire another salesperson.
But a new employee does not fix the environment they have joined.
If the team is unclear about:
- who is responsible for the next step;
- how agreements are recorded;
- who reviews calls;
- how the quality of work is assessed;
- what to do with a difficult client;
- when the head of sales gets involved;
- where a salesperson's authority ends,
then the new person quickly starts working in the same way as everyone else.
There are more people. There are more messages in chats. There are more deals in CRM. The team is no easier to manage.
I keep repeating a simple point: a new salesperson does not solve a lack of management. They become another person working within it.
Why a new head of sales does not always help either
With an in-house head of sales, the situation is more complicated because the owner expects immediate relief.
The person starts work, receives the title and formal responsibility for the sales plan. But salespeople keep messaging the owner. The owner still approves discounts. The owner handles key deals personally. At the same time, they assign tasks to the team and then double-check the head of sales.
The team now has two centres of authority.
The head of sales runs sales meetings but does not control decisions. They are responsible for a result they can only partly influence. The owner sees this, becomes disappointed and concludes: “Another weak head of sales.”
Sometimes the head of sales really is weak. But before replacing the person, I would check something else:
- did they have real authority;
- was the expected result of their work clear;
- was the quality of their management checked regularly;
- had the owner stopped giving the team separate instructions;
- did the head of sales receive the data needed to make decisions;
- were they responsible for developing salespeople, not just reporting.
A job title changes nothing by itself. What changes things is work that starts being done regularly.
What exactly needs to leave the owner's head
The phrase “I'm handing sales over to you” is almost useless.
What needs to be handed over is a set of specific, recurring actions.
Sales plan and forecast
The head of sales must understand what the sales plan is based on, which deals are really moving forward, where the risk lies and what the team is doing about it.
A forecast must not be the sum of salespeople's hopes.
Managing deals
Every significant deal needs a next step, a deadline, a person responsible and a clear reason if progress has stopped.
“The client is thinking about it” is not a next step.
Keeping CRM in order
This is not about making a report look good. CRM is there so the company can see the real state of sales and avoid losing clients between messages, calls and salespeople's personal memories.
The quality of calls and messages
If the head of sales does not look at how the team talks to clients, they are only managing the final numbers. And when those numbers get worse, it will already be too late to look for the cause by relying on gut feeling.
Training through real deals
Not one training session a quarter, but regular work on where a particular salesperson loses a client, avoids a question, gives a discount too early or fails to agree on the next action.
Following through on decisions
A sales meeting must produce decisions. A decision must lead to action. An action must be followed by a check of the result.
Otherwise, a sales meeting becomes a business ritual without any management.
Keeping decisions and context
Changes to scripts, agreements about the product, details about clients, tested assumptions and the reasons for past decisions must stay within the project.
If the person in charge changes, management must not start from scratch.
How owners can keep control and stop intervening every day
The most common fear sounds like this:
“If I stop getting involved in sales, I will lose control.”
I disagree.
Checking every record, answering every message and personally rescuing deals is not a high level of control. It is managing everything by hand.
Real control begins when the owner can get clear answers at any time:
- How are we doing against the sales plan?
- Where have we gone off track?
- Why has this happened?
- What is the head of sales already doing?
- What decision is needed specifically from the owner?
The owner retains responsibility for strategy, the product, prices, the marketing budget, financial limits, choosing markets and negotiations that truly matter most.
The head of sales takes over the team's daily work, the sales funnel, CRM, training, discipline, forecasting and investigating where things have gone off track.
The owner does not disappear from sales. They change their level of involvement.
Previously, they asked: “Why didn't the salesperson call this client back?”
Now they see: “At this stage, the number of deals without a next step is growing. The head of sales has found the cause, reviewed the conversations, changed how the team works and is checking the result.”
That is control without daily intervention: seeing what is happening, why it is happening and what is being done about it.
Where RENTROP comes in
We arrived at the “turnkey sales management” model, but not because the market needed another way to hire a head of sales.
Quite the opposite. The problem is often that the owner is given another head of sales whom they once again have to check, guide and, if necessary, replace themselves.
At RENTROP, the head of sales manages the team every day. The business development director monitors the quality of management and helps work through difficult decisions. AI analyses available data, calls, messages and deviations so that the head of sales and the owner do not rely on gut feeling alone.
Management must also continue if the person in charge changes or is temporarily unavailable. Decisions, agreements and accumulated context are kept within the project, so the work does not start again from scratch.
The owner keeps decisions on strategy, the product, prices, the marketing budget and the business as a whole. RENTROP takes on daily sales management within a clear scope of responsibility agreed in advance.
This is not a universal solution for every company.
It requires an operating business, a sales team, real clients or functioning channels, data and an owner willing to hand over real authority. If the owner wants to keep every decision, no external model will make the team independent.
Check for yourself without a complicated assessment
Answer ten questions honestly:
- Can the head of sales run a productive sales meeting without you — and get the team to make specific decisions?
- Is there a forecast you trust without recalculating it yourself?
- Is it clear why deals get stuck at each stage?
- Does someone review calls and messages regularly?
- Do salespeople receive feedback on real situations?
- Can the head of sales resolve most daily issues independently?
- Does CRM reflect the real state of sales?
- Have salespeople stopped bypassing the head of sales and coming to you?
- Can you see not only the problem, but also the action already being taken?
- Will the team continue working properly if you are absent from daily operations for a week?
The more “no” answers you have, the more likely it is that the owner is still the company's main head of sales.
A final thought
I am not urging owners to leave sales and never talk to clients again.
The owner must know how the company sells. They must see the risks. They must take part in strategic decisions and negotiations that truly matter.
But they must not be the person without whom salespeople stop making decisions, the head of sales becomes a meeting host, and deals wait for a free slot in the owner's calendar.
You can hand over a job title with a single formal instruction.
You can hand over management only through real authority, daily work and clear responsibility.
Review where sales management in your company still depends personally on the owner.