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Sales careers & hiring

Sales team and org structure guides

Structure decisions are hiring decisions. These guides cover what to build, in what order, and which shapes tend to break.

Guides

Team & org design guidance

  • Team and org design

    SaaS sales org structure

    How to structure a SaaS sales organisation from startup to enterprise: which shapes fit which motion, who owns renewal and expansion, and what each choice costs.

    10 min read

  • Team and org design

    SDR and AE team structure

    How the SDR and Account Executive split works in practice: reporting lines, the handover definition, ownership of each stage, and when full-cycle selling is the better answer.

    9 min read

  • Team and org design

    First Sales Operations hire

    The observable signals that justify a first Sales Operations hire, how the seat usually grows, and when a fractional or manager-owned arrangement is still the right answer.

    8 min read

  • Team and org design

    When to hire a RevOps leader

    How to tell whether you need Revenue Operations leadership or more operations capacity, where the seat should report, and how to fill the gap in the meantime.

    8 min read

  • Team and org design

    When to hire a Head of Sales

    How to tell whether you need a Sales Manager, a Head of Sales or a fractional leader, what triggers each layer, and the cost of adding leadership too early.

    8 min read

  • Team and org design

    Hunter vs farmer structures

    Whether to separate new business from account management: what each structure protects, what it costs, and how to allocate renewal and expansion so the split holds.

    8 min read

  • Team and org design

    Customer Success and Sales

    The handover, adoption, renewal, expansion and escalation decisions that determine whether Customer Success and Sales cooperate or compete — with an ownership matrix to fill in.

    8 min read

  • Team and org design

    When a founder should stop selling

    The observable signals that a founder has become the constraint on revenue, what to hand over first, and what a founder should keep long after the first sales hire.

    8 min read

  • Team and org design

    Founder-led to repeatable

    How to convert what a founder knows into something a sales team can run: documenting the buying reason, the qualification rule, the process and the handover order.

    9 min read

  • Team and org design

    Your first three sales hires

    How the first three sales hires tend to sequence in a technology company, why the order changes with the sales motion, and the trigger to look for before each one.

    9 min read

  • Team and org design

    Player-coach or Sales Manager

    When a player-coach is the right first sales leadership hire, when it is a false economy, and how to define the split so the role does not quietly become a solo selling job.

    8 min read

  • Team and org design

    Structuring your first sales team

    The order to build a first Sales and GTM team in, what each hire should own, and the structural mistakes that show up two quarters later.

    9 min read

Elsewhere in the hub

Other sections

  • Hiring guides

    Role-by-role guides to hiring Sales and GTM people: when to hire, what to write in the brief, how to assess and what usually goes wrong.

  • Interviews & scorecards

    Interview questions, live exercises and written scorecards for Sales and GTM roles, so every candidate is assessed against the same criteria.

  • Onboarding

    Practical onboarding and 30/60/90 day plans for new Sales and GTM hires, with what to measure at each checkpoint.

  • Career paths

    How Sales and GTM careers actually progress: what each step requires, what changes at each level, and where people move sideways.

  • Career maps

    Visual and tabular maps of Sales and GTM roles, showing titles, seniority, ownership and the realistic next steps from each seat.

  • Role comparisons

    Side-by-side comparisons of Sales and GTM roles that are commonly confused, covering ownership, KPIs, skills, reporting lines and which one you actually need.

  • Salary & OTE

    How Sales and GTM pay is structured — base, OTE, commission and accelerators — and what to check before you publish a range.

  • Benchmarks & market

    Hiring process benchmarks and Sales and GTM market guidance, with the source and date attached to any figure that changes.

  • Hiring by industry

    How Sales and GTM hiring changes by sector: what a SaaS, early-stage startup or enterprise software business actually needs from a seller, and how to assess it.

  • Talent markets

    Regional context for Sales and GTM hiring, based on the markets we recruit in — local employer types, commute and hybrid realities, and what they mean for a brief.

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