Hiring a Head of Sales into a broken commercial structure does not fix the structure. It adds an expensive person to the noise.

I have heard the same story enough times to recognise it. "We hired a great Head of Sales. Six months later, revenue is flat. We don't know what went wrong."

The person was capable. Nothing moved.

The problem was not the hire. It was what the hire walked into.

A Head of Sales is not a commercial structure. A capable person in a broken system delivers the same results as a weak person in a broken system.

I have walked into commercial operations where a Head of Sales was already in place. In most cases, the issue was not the person. It was that nobody had built the four things a commercial leader needs to perform.

Fix the four things first. Then hire.

  1. A clear ICP

    Not a market segment. A specific profile: company size, sector, decision-maker title, the exact problem they have, why they buy now and not in three months. If your new Head of Sales has to figure this out from scratch, they will spend six months in the wrong conversations. That is a strategy problem handed to the wrong person.

  2. A defined commercial motion

    How does a deal move from first contact to closed? What qualifies a lead and what kills it? Where in the process do most deals die? Without this, every person on the team builds their own version. Your new hire defaults to what worked in their last company, which may have nothing to do with yours.

  3. Baseline pipeline data

    Win rate. Average deal size. Sales cycle length. Where deals die. If you do not have this before you hire, your new Head of Sales walks in with nothing to measure against. Six months in, you are both guessing. Building this takes three weeks. Do it before the hire.

  4. A CEO who is ready to step back from commercial

    This one is uncomfortable. In most early-stage B2B companies, the founder is still the best salesperson in the room. They have the relationships and the authority to close. When you hire a Head of Sales and the CEO is still running the big accounts, the new hire has no real ownership. They manage a team without controlling the outcome. They will leave within a year. If you are not ready to hand over the commercial operation, including the key accounts, do not hire a Head of Sales yet. Hire a senior sales rep and keep running it yourself. That is a more honest structure.