Here is when you need a head of sales: organising the team's work requires constant involvement, and the business owner no longer has time to make decisions and ensure they are carried out. You need to count both the hours you spend on salespeople and the tasks no one gets round to. The number of salespeople alone does not determine when to hire: a head of sales needs work to do, time to do it and money to pay for it.
The most awkward part of this calculation is the work being missed. If no one reviews a new salesperson's first conversations, this duty does not take up a single minute. The calendar suggests there is almost nothing to manage. The state of the team suggests there is already no one to help someone get started. The head of sales you hire will inherit both realities at once.
How can you tell whether your sales team needs a head of sales?
A team needs a head of sales if organising the work of several salespeople regularly stalls until the owner steps in. A particularly telling moment is when employees know how to sell but cannot decide for themselves who gets a customer or whose task takes priority.
At the start, the business owner deals with these questions as they come up during the day. This makes sense: they know the people, the customers and the agreements. Later, the same questions come up more often, and there is less time to answer them. Your own rescheduled meetings, repeated requests from the team and commitments to employees are enough to inform an initial hiring decision. You do not need to listen to calls across the whole team for this.
| What you see | What exactly is missing | What a head of sales will change |
|---|---|---|
| An absent salesperson's customers wait for their return | There is no one to allocate the work and hand over promises made to customers | Will appoint someone to cover and ensure ongoing work is handed over |
| A new salesperson only works when you are beside them | No one is consistently helping them learn the sales work | Will organise training and determine whether they are ready to work independently |
| The same mistake returns after your feedback | The conversation has taken place, but no one tracks subsequent behaviour | Will analyse the cause and ensure a change in subsequent conversations |
| Two salespeople argue over one customer | Each is protecting their own result, with no shared decision | Will resolve the dispute and establish a procedure for future enquiries |
| You keep cancelling other meetings to work with the team | Managing the team has already taken up the owner's time | Will take on the recurring tasks that force you to change your calendar |
The table does not work like a vote: three matches do not mean you must hire someone. One lengthy induction for a new salesperson is a separate task. New salespeople keep joining, you train each one, and other work gets pushed back — that is already an ongoing workload. It is repetition that turns a list of problems into a head of sales' work.
If a head of sales is already in place but these matters still keep coming back to you, hiring a second head of sales is not the first step. First, you need to find out where the current one stops taking action. There is a separate review of a head of sales work trial for this.
How many salespeople make a head of sales necessary?
There is no universal threshold for the number of salespeople: the need for a head of sales depends on how independently salespeople work, how complex the work is and how often the team changes. Two new salespeople can require more involvement than five experienced employees working with familiar customers.
You can see this even with a single activity. For example, if a conversation about work with each of five experienced salespeople takes 30 minutes a week, that gives 5 × 30 = 150 minutes, or 2.5 hours. If two new salespeople need 90 minutes each, that gives 2 × 90 = 180 minutes, or 3 hours. Neither calculation yet includes allocating customers, the overall sales plan or questions as they arise. This is a way to calculate your own workload, not a standard time allowance per employee.
The number of people has not changed, but a new product has arrived — the head of sales needs to work through unfamiliar objections. An experienced salesperson has left and a beginner has taken their place — time is needed to get them started. So tying the decision to hire a head of sales only to the next position added to the staff list is awkward: the workload changes sooner.
Include any hiring of salespeople that has already been agreed in your calculation too. An employee's start date is the date work begins for the person who will train them. If that person is you again, expanding the team requires your time before the new salesperson makes their first sales.
How do you calculate the future head of sales' workload?
Add the regular management work already being done to an estimate of work that is needed but being missed. Then subtract the tasks you deliberately choose to keep: the remainder shows the workload for the future head of sales.
1. Separate management from your own sales work
Reconstruct your last five working days using your calendar and work correspondence. For each significant activity, record its duration and one of three labels: your own sales work, a one-off change, team management.
Agreeing payment with a customer is your own sales work. Reconfiguring enquiry allocation in the CRM system is a one-off change. Deciding who should receive enquiries from an overloaded employee and following through on the handover is management. If you put everything into a single total, the head of sales vacancy becomes an attempt to buy a replacement for the owner in all their activities at once.
2. Add what did not make it into the calendar
List specific actions that have not been completed: review a newly hired salesperson's first conversations, arrange cover during a holiday, find the cause of a recurring failure. Each needs an estimated time and a deadline in the near future. Keep estimated hours separate from time actually spent.
Count a one-off backlog separately from a future week's work. You will have to hand over a departed employee's customers once. Monitoring workloads and arranging cover for absent staff are recurring tasks. If you mix these workloads, you will hire someone for the first month of clearing the backlog and then discover a very different workload.
3. Calculate the head of sales' work and the time freed up separately
For example, a business owner already spends 6 hours a week on management. Another 4 hours are needed for regular tasks that are being missed. The owner is willing to keep 3 hours of their current work.
| What we are calculating | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| All necessary management work | 6 hours of work done + 4 hours of work missed | 10 hours a week |
| The future head of sales' work | 10 hours − 3 hours kept by the owner | 7 hours a week |
| The owner's time freed up | 6 hours previously spent − 3 kept | 3 hours a week |
The head of sales is occupied for seven hours, while the owner frees up three. The other four go towards work that was not being done before. This is an important distinction when assessing the hire: demanding seven free hours from this handover means setting the person an impossible condition from the outset.
Count each activity once. If reviewing a new salesperson's conversations is already included in the six hours you spend, you cannot also add it to the four hours of missed work. Otherwise, the calculation will create work that does not exist. Set aside time for handing over the work together separately: both of you will need it at the start, but it should then come to an end.
Why can a few hours of management a week be too little?
Alongside the head of sales' workload, you need their availability at the times when the team needs decisions. Seven hours in a single block on Fridays cannot replace brief daily involvement if salespeople are waiting for an answer before speaking to a customer.
Using the same five working days, note when questions arose and when a decision was needed. Each deadline must have a reason: an agreed meeting, a promised reply to a customer, a new salesperson's start date. An employee calling something ‘urgent’ without such a reason does not yet require you to interrupt other work immediately.
A conversation about a recurring mistake can be scheduled. Customers suddenly left without cover because their salesperson is absent need a decision before the next contact with them. If all the work is gathered into a meeting at a time convenient for the head of sales, the owner will continue to cover the gaps between meetings.
This is how you decide the time commitment: how many hours are needed for planned work, on which days answers are needed and who picks up questions when the head of sales is absent. A small team can manage with a head of sales working part-time. But that time cannot all fall when it is already too late for the team to receive help.
When is it too early to hire a head of sales?
It is too early to hire a head of sales for ongoing management if the main gap is your own sales work, a one-off setup or finding an offer that works. Separate these tasks before discussing candidates.
If you prepare proposals yourself and conduct most negotiations, the customer work needs to be handed over to a salesperson. Give a head of sales the same customer portfolio, and customers will fill their day too. This will not create time for the other employees.
If you need to configure CRM and write a procedure for handing over orders, define the result and when this work will end. A permanent role will be needed for what remains after the setup. A one-off project and the management that follows have different durations, even when one person can do both.
If there are no sales yet, the head of sales will be finding customers and testing ways to sell. This is the launch of a new line of business, with separate tasks and resources. Expecting that person to deliver the results of the head of an established team means setting the wrong task. And if sales are held back by delivery times or the company's offer, first examine the constraints that replacing a head of sales cannot remove.
How do you calculate the budget for a head of sales?
Calculate the full additional cost and how long the business can sustain it without extra income from the hire. Promised revenue growth must not be the source of payment for the head of sales' first months of work.
The monthly total includes pay, the costs of the chosen contractual arrangement, agreed services and other new costs. Count recruitment and induction separately as one-off costs. Only use money available after the business's current commitments in the calculation: the reserve for salespeople's wages and fulfilling orders is already committed.
Subtract one-off costs from the available reserve, then divide the remainder by the additional monthly cost. For example, 900 thousand ₽ has been set aside, one-off costs are 100 thousand ₽, and all additional monthly costs come to 200 thousand ₽. That gives: (900 − 100) ÷ 200 = 4 months. If you are hiring another salesperson alongside the head of sales, their costs belong in the same monthly total. Otherwise, the calculation will show a larger reserve than you actually have.
Compare the resulting number of months with the time needed to get the head of sales started and how long a deal takes in your company. If they change how salespeople work in the first month, and it takes a new customer three months to reach payment, expecting money from those changes by the end of the first month is pointless. Even a reserve covering a full deal cycle does not promise that the hire will pay for itself: the customer still has to make a decision.
Do not add the owner's freed-up time to this reserve. Three hours freed up let you do something else, but they do not pay a bill. If hiring means relying on money you have not yet received, change the level of spending or build a reserve first.
Who should you choose: a senior salesperson, an in-house or an outsourced head of sales?
Choose the arrangement based on the tasks, availability and budget you have already calculated. Choosing a person begins after you have answered the question of what work they will take on.
Managing the team yourself makes sense when you are willing to set aside the time needed and the team receives decisions on time. This is a valid option in its own right. But the hours must fit into the working week without constantly cancelling other commitments.
Appointing a senior salesperson is useful when the management workload is limited. First, remove some of their customer work and revise their individual sales plan. If the salesperson keeps their existing portfolio, helping colleagues will have to be squeezed in between their own negotiations. A promotion does not create free time.
Hiring an in-house head of sales makes sense if the workload and required availability justify a dedicated employee. Alongside paying them, you will need to take part in recruitment and handing over the work. The list from the workload calculation will form the basis of a conversation with the candidate: it shows what they are taking on from the first day.
Bringing in an outsourced head of sales is an option when ongoing management is already needed and you want someone else to handle recruitment. Here too, you need agreements on availability, the tasks included and cover during absences. The word ‘outsourced’ alone does not answer these questions.
For this task, RENTROP has a product called ‘Outsourced Head of Sales’: an outsourced head of sales is selected to suit the client's business. RENTROP handles selection and interviews; the head of sales organises the salespeople's work and manages the team.
After handing over seven hours of management, the owner in our calculation will free up three. Another four hours will go to the team for the first time. For those hours, you will need to look for results in the new salesperson working independently and in changes to the actions of salespeople whose mistakes previously went unexamined. If you cross out those hours simply because they did not free up your calendar, the team will again lose the work you were trying to find a head of sales to do.