Sales leadership and sales organization build-out

Most small-company sales problems aren't effort problems. The reps are working. The structure they're working inside was built for a smaller company, or never really got built at all, and it quietly caps what anyone can produce.

This work gets led by somebody who has carried a VP of Sales seat and the number that came with it.

What it usually turns out to be

• Territories drawn on a map instead of on how customers buy. Two reps calling the same account. Whole segments nobody owns.
• Compensation that pays for behavior you don't want. Comp is the loudest instruction a company gives, and it often contradicts what leadership says out loud.
• A forecast nobody believes. If the number swings twenty percent in the last week of the month, that's a wish list, not a pipeline.
• A CRM the team works around. Systems that only serve management get filled in on Friday afternoon and are wrong by Monday.
• An operations problem in a sales costume. Nobody pushes hard on a promise they aren't confident the company will keep.

How the build-out runs

We start with the reps and the customers, not the org chart, because the answer is usually already sitting with the people doing the work. Then structure, territory, and comp get rebuilt together. Change one without the others and you've moved the problem somewhere else.

Hiring comes last. Adding salespeople to a broken structure buys you more expensive noise.

What you'll notice first

Before revenue moves, the forecast gets boring. Deals land close to when the rep said they would and the end-of-month scramble stops. That's the first honest sign the pipeline reflects reality, and it usually shows up a quarter ahead of the number.