How many reps should one head of sales have?

The guide is this: the head of sales has to have time each week to review at least one conversation per rep and hold a one-to-one with them. Count how many hours that takes at your conversation length. Once it stops fitting into a week, a team lead appears.

Do I need a separate qualifier?

One is justified on a big uneven flow with a lot of enquiries outside your product entirely. On an even flow, qualification takes the first minutes of a conversation, and moving it into its own role gains nothing — you only add a handover.

Can the owner be the head of sales?

At the start, yes. For long, no: the owner has production, money and growth to run, and daily stand-ups with conversation reviews are the first things to fall out of the diary. The sign that it is time to hand over is missing the reviews two weeks running.

What do I do about customers who «belong» to a rep?

Assigning customers to a rep works while the customer history sits in the company's records. Write the rule: how many days a deal with no movement stays with the person, and when it goes back into the common queue. Without that rule the base gets locked inside somebody's phone.

When does a conveyor do harm?

When the customer gets handed between roles in the middle of negotiations. Every handover takes context away and adds a pause, and on a complex sale a pause costs the deal. On a long cycle it is better for one person to carry the customer through to payment.

Where do I start rebuilding if the team is already running?

With the records and the rule for assigning enquiries. Until you can see how many enquiries arrive and who is answerable for them, any new scheme rests on people's memory and falls apart inside the first month.

Sales team structure: models, roles, headcount

Two numbers decide the structure

The typical picture: three reps, each with «their own» customers, an enquiry goes to whoever saw it first, and the biggest seller in the team is the head of sales. Formally there is a structure. In practice it survives neither a holiday nor a resignation: half the customer history walks out with the person.

Two numbers set the structure. The first is the flow of enquiries per month. The second is deal length in days, from first contact to payment. Count both over the last three months and the choice of model narrows to one or two.

While you are counting, get a third number out: the share of repeat purchases in revenue. If repeats bring in a noticeable part of the money, a single line will start eating them quietly — someone busy with fresh enquiries does not get round to the old base for months.

Four models and the point where each one breaks

One line: every rep carries a customer from enquiry to payment. Works while one to three people hold the flow and the deal cycle is measured in days. Breaks on a long cycle: a person tied up in open negotiations never goes back to finding new customers.
New and repeat: some work fresh enquiries, others run the base, upsells and win-backs. Works when repeat purchases bring in a noticeable share of revenue. Breaks if your records do not show who brought the customer in: arguments over commission start.
Conveyor: qualification, then selling, then aftercare. Works on a big uneven flow with a lot of enquiries outside your product. Breaks on a small flow: every handover of a customer costs time and context, and there is nothing to divide.
Two tiers: a team lead per group, a head of sales above the team. Works once one person physically cannot listen to everybody's conversations. Breaks if the team lead keeps a personal sales target: they will always pick their own deal over reviewing somebody else's.

One model for the whole company is a rare choice. When you have two products with different cycles — a fast retail line and long corporate deals — that is two sets of rules and usually different people. Running both flows through the same reps ends the same way every time: the long deals sit still, because the fast money pays today.

Who assigns enquiries

The cheapest part of the structure and the commonest hole. An enquiry goes by queue, by hand from the head of sales, or by an automatic rule in your records. Each option has its price.

Round robin. Simple and transparent, works well on even enquiries. The downside: the strongest enquiry of the month can land on the weakest rep.
Assigned by hand by the head of sales. Flexible and accurate while enquiry volume is low. The downside: the head of sales becomes the bottleneck, and in the evening and at weekends an enquiry waits until they see it.
An automatic rule: by product, region, amount or enquiry source. The downside: the rule needs reviewing, or six months later it scatters enquiries at random.

Whatever you pick, write down three things: who takes an enquiry outside working hours, what happens if a rep misses the agreed time, and after how many days a deal with no movement goes back into the common queue.

One number per role

A role exists when a number is attached to it that is visible every week. If no number will hang on a role, the role is invented.

rep — conversion from enquiry to payment, and first response time
qualifier — the share of enquiries brought through to a conversation with a rep
head of sales — the team hitting plan, and how fast a new rep reaches standard
team lead — their group's conversion, and how many conversations they reviewed that week
customer care — repeat sales, receivables, win-backs

The check takes a minute: name a role and then the number the person is asked for every week. If you paused on the second role, so far it is alive only on the chart.

When to split a role: the count in minutes

Count how many minutes a full cycle on one enquiry takes: contact, quote, touches, closing, paperwork.
Multiply by the flow of enquiries per month.
Divide by 160 working hours.
The number you get shows how many people your flow holds today.

Then look at what those minutes are made of. Part of them goes on work that needs no selling skill at all: collecting documents, preparing quotes, sending reminders, paperwork. That part goes to a separate role before you hire a second seller — it comes out cheaper and faster.

3% → 7.5%conversion in legal B2B over five months

35%from qualified enquiry to payment, EdTech Poland

62%from enquiry to payment on the five-day launch

Three mistakes you can spot on day one

A head of sales with a personal target. They take the best enquiries, show excellent personal conversion, and the whole team's result rests on one person.
An enquiry with no owner. Until the rule on whose enquiry it is gets written down, some enquiries go unanswered and some get two reps at once, and the customer sees it.
The base inside a rep's head. If customer history lives on a personal phone, the base leaves with the person, and the next rep starts the conversation from nothing.

In legal B2B we ran a project for five months and conversion from enquiry to payment rose from 3% to 7.5%. A long deal cycle dictates its own structure: the first role worth separating out is finding new customers. Someone with ten open negotiations in hand never goes back to cold outreach, not once.

How many people, and when a head of sales appears

A head of sales appears once the owner stops keeping up with four jobs: the morning stand-up, reviewing conversations, onboarding a new rep, and checking plan against actual. Count how many hours a week they take from you. Once that is most of your working time, it is a post of its own.

Before you hire one, check there is something to hand over. A head of sales who arrives into a company with no process and no records starts building both from scratch in their own way, and you end up with a second system on top of the first. You hand over ready-made: the daily stand-up, the weekly conversation review, checking the records, onboarding new people.

One more check before the vacancy goes up: write out, hour by hour, exactly what you do with the team over a week. That list is the job description for a head of sales. Hiring against general words about running sales gets you one more rep, only on a higher base salary.

What you should have at the end

a model picked for your deal cycle and your flow of enquiries
one number per role, visible every week
the rule on whose enquiry it is written down and working without you
every customer's history living in the company's records
the head of sales judged on the team, with no personal sales target
the time per enquiry counted, and headcount taken from it

Sales team structure: models, roles, how many people