Sales Team Structure & Hiring

Sales Team Structure & Hiring

The structure of a sales team reflects its stage of growth, its product, and its go-to-market motion. Early-stage companies often have founders selling everything; scaling companies specialise roles to maximise each person's impact on the stage of the sales process they own.

Sales Team Roles

SDR (Sales Development Representative) / BDR (Business Development Representative):

Specialises in the top of the funnel — identifying prospects, executing outbound, and qualifying inbound leads. SDRs book meetings; they do not close deals. The role's outputs: number of qualified meetings booked per week, number of SQLs passed to AEs.

Splitting prospecting from closing serves two purposes: SDRs can develop deep expertise in outreach and qualification without being distracted by deal management; AEs can focus entirely on advancing qualified opportunities to close without spending time on top-of-funnel work.

SDRs are often junior (entry-level or early-career) and used as a training ground for AEs. The best SDRs want to develop the full-cycle sales skill and move to AE roles in 12-18 months.

AE (Account Executive):

The closing role — manages the full sales process from first meeting (handed off from SDR) through close. Paid on commission with quota. AE types: SMB AE (high volume, lower ACV, faster cycles), Mid-Market AE, Enterprise AE (low volume, high ACV, long cycles, complex committees).

CSM (Customer Success Manager):

Post-sale owner of the customer relationship. Does not typically own new business (that is the AE's role), but manages renewals, expansion, and health of the existing customer base. CSMs are responsible for retention metrics (NRR, churn) and often paid on a combination of renewal and expansion attainment.

Sales Manager / VP of Sales:

Player-coach or manager role. Responsibilities: pipeline review, coaching, forecasting, hiring, compensation design, cross-functional liaison with marketing, product, and customer success.

Sales Hiring

Hiring bad salespeople is extremely costly: 6-12 months of base salary, ramp investment, and opportunity cost of the pipeline they should have built. The most expensive hire on a team is often a salesperson who is promoted before they prove they can do the next level's work, or a senior hire who brings the wrong pattern for the company's stage and market.

What to look for in AE hiring:

Proven track record: did they consistently hit quota? Not in one exceptional year — consistently, across varying market conditions. Top performers at a previous company may not perform at your company if your product, market, or sales motion differs significantly; understand what drove their success before assuming it transfers.

Intellectual curiosity: great salespeople are relentlessly curious about customer problems. In interviews, do they ask good questions about the product, the customer, and the competitive landscape — or do they talk about themselves?

Coachability: sales is a skill that improves with deliberate practice and feedback. Salespeople who respond defensively to coaching rarely improve; those who actively seek it develop quickly. Test with a role-play exercise and give specific feedback; observe how they respond.

Process orientation: do they have a clear method for managing their pipeline, planning their week, and handling objections — or is their success personality-driven? Personality-driven salespeople are hard to coach and hard to scale; process-oriented salespeople improve consistently.

Reference checks that matter: "Was this person consistently in the top third of their team?" is more useful than "Did they hit quota?" because managers rate their entire team and quota is often set at different levels.

Compensation Design

Sales compensation is one of the most powerful levers in managing sales behaviour. Comp plans should be simple (salespeople need to understand them), aligned (comp should drive the behaviours that produce the outcomes the company wants), and competitive (OTE should be at or above market to attract and retain talent).

Common compensation structures:

• 70/30 split: 70% base salary, 30% variable (on-target commission). Common for SMB and mid-market AEs.
• 50/50 split: more aggressive variable component; common for enterprise AEs and companies that want higher upside motivation.
• Quota accelerators: commission rate increases once the rep exceeds quota (e.g., 10% commission up to 100% of quota, 15% from 100-120%, 20% above 120%). Rewards overperformance and retains top earners.

Compensation plan mistakes:

• Overly complex plans: if a rep can't calculate their commission on a deal in their head, the plan is too complex
• Capping commissions: caps remove the incentive for top performers to continue working hard at the end of the quarter
• Annual rather than quarterly payouts: quarterly recognition maintains motivation; annual payouts create a peak-end dynamic that demotivates through most of the year