Sales Leadership Roles
Here's what really matters.
Founders spend weeks debating which title to hire. The title isn't what books meetings or closes deals. The job is. Here's what each role really does, and the 12-item checklist somebody on your team has to own, whatever you call them.
By Louie Bernstein, Fractional Sales Leader · Last updated September 24, 2026
A Sales Manager coaches reps every day. A Sales Director manages managers or a segment. A Head of Sales is the senior sales person at a startup, usually still building the process. A VP of Sales is an executive who owns the number and scales a working engine. At $1M to $10M ARR, the title matters less than who runs the checklist.
Four titles, four different jobs. Here they are from the ground up, with the checklist items each one owns.
A Sales Manager coaches one team of salespeople, usually BDRs and AEs, and owns that team's activity and weekly results. This is the person in the room every morning. They listen to calls, run the pipeline review, hold the 1:1s, and get new reps productive. Tactics, not strategy. It's the most important title on this page and the one founders skip, because they assume a VP will do it. A VP won't. Somebody has to run the daily rhythm, and at your stage that's usually still you.
A Sales Director manages managers, or owns a region, segment, or product line. They don't coach every rep every day. They make sure the managers do. Directors own the process for their piece of the business: the funnel stages, the KPIs, and the forecast they roll up. You need one when you have more than one team that needs to run the same way. Most $1M to $10M ARR companies don't have that problem yet, so a Director title at your stage is usually a manager with a bigger business card.
Head of Sales is the flexible one. At a startup, it's the senior-most sales person reporting to the CEO, and it's usually hands-on: building the process while still carrying deals. Founders like it because it avoids committing to a VP title and VP pay before the engine works. That's smart. The risk is that nobody defines the job, so the Head of Sales ends up as your best rep with a title. Give this role an Accountabilities Document on day one, or don't hire it.
A VP of Sales is an executive. They own the number, the sales strategy, the org chart, comp plans, and hiring the leaders below them. They sit on your leadership team. What they don't do well is build from zero. A VP scales a sales engine that already runs. Hire one before you have a repeatable process and you'll spend about $400K all-in on someone fixing problems they were never hired to fix. That's the most expensive title mistake a founder can make.
| Title | Manages | Owns | When You Need One |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales Manager | Reps (BDRs, AEs) | Daily coaching, activity, weekly results | As soon as you have 3+ reps |
| Sales Director | Managers, or a region/segment | Process, KPIs, segment forecast | When you run multiple teams |
| Head of Sales | Whoever is in sales today | Building the first real process | Leaving founder-led sales |
| VP of Sales | Directors and managers | The number, strategy, org, comp | A repeatable engine exists |
Because they hire a title to escape a job. I know. I was the de facto sales manager in my own company for years. When you're doing everything, a VP of Sales sounds like relief. But nobody fixes a missing process by adding a bigger title on top of it. The fix is writing down what each seat does, starting with a signed Accountabilities Document for every sales role →
This matters most for B2B founders between $1M and $10M ARR who aren't ready for a full-time VP of Sales. You don't need four layers of leadership. You need the daily and weekly work done by one person you can hold accountable. Most of that work is coaching and inspection, and the weekly pipeline review is where it starts. If yours happens only when you have time, here's how to run a sales pipeline review every week →
The founders who get this right stop asking "which title?" and start asking "who runs the checklist?"
| Hiring a Title | Hiring the Job |
|---|---|
| ✕Picks the title first, then figures out the job | ✓Defines the job first, then picks the title |
| ✕Hires a VP to build a process that doesn’t exist | ✓Builds the process, then hires someone to scale it |
| ✕Promotes the best rep and calls them Head of Sales | ✓Puts a coach in the seat and signs an Accountabilities Document |
| ✕Pipeline reviews happen when the founder has time | ✓Pipeline reviews happen every week, no matter what |
| ✕Reps learn by watching the founder close | ✓Reps train 33 minutes a day and study Gold Calls |
| ✕Nobody owns the checklist, so the founder does | ✓One named person owns all 12 items, every week |
The Sales Manager's Checklist is the 12 habits that keep a sales team booking meetings and closing deals, whoever holds the title. I've run it for decades. If nobody on your team owns all 12, you've found your real hiring need.
Have a 1:1 with every direct report in sales every quarter. Separate from the pipeline review.
Run a pipeline review with every Account Executive once a week.
Hold a 15-minute coaching session for BDRs every morning. Listen to Gold Calls, the calls that set an appointment or booked a demo, and reinforce what worked.
Keep funnel stages simple: four at most leading to an Opportunity, four at most after the first meeting. Every stage is an action the prospect took. No hoping or wishing.
Get an automated notification every time an Opportunity is created.
Train the team every business day for 33 minutes. Lunchtime works great.
Give every sales role a signed Accountabilities Document: job summary, duties, what success requires, a typical day, and exactly what they’re held accountable for, and when.
Everyone, including you, has a self-improvement plan that includes self-care.
Set KPIs that actually matter for BDRs, AEs, and managers.
Always be interviewing, even with no openings. You build a bench and keep your interviewing sharp.
Build an onboarding system that gets new salespeople productive fast.
Lead by example. Show them how. Then teach them to fish instead of cooking them a fish dinner every night.
Louie Bernstein, Fractional Sales Leader who helps B2B founders at $1M–$10M ARR escape founder-led sales. I have 50 years in business, including 22 as a bootstrapped founder, and I've been helping founders as a Fractional Sales Leader since 2017.
I've held most of these titles and hired for all of them. The ones that worked had a clear job and someone running the checklist. As your Fractional Sales Leader, I do the VP-level work part-time, install the checklist, and help you hire the manager who'll run it after me.
Usually not. At a startup, Head of Sales is often the most senior sales person because there's no VP yet, and it reports to the CEO. At a larger company, Head of Sales can sit below the VP. The title flexes. The job doesn't. Ask what the person manages and what number they own, and you'll know exactly where they sit.
No. A Sales Manager coaches reps directly and owns the team's daily activity. A Sales Director manages managers, or owns a region or segment, and owns the process and forecast for it. If the person is coaching reps every morning, they're doing a Sales Manager's job, whatever the business card says.
For most founders at $1M to $10M ARR, neither title is the first move. Your first move is getting the process out of your head and into a system, then putting someone in charge of running it. A VP scales an engine that already works. If the engine isn't built yet, a Head of Sales with an Accountabilities Document, or a Fractional Sales Leader, is the smarter, cheaper step.
They coach. A good day starts with 15 minutes of BDR coaching around Gold Calls, includes pipeline time with AEs, a 33-minute training block, and whatever it takes to get new reps productive. They're the person keeping the rhythm when you're not in the room. That's the job most founders are still quietly doing themselves.
At your stage, often yes. A Fractional Sales Leader does the VP-level work part-time: builds the process, installs the checklist, writes the Accountabilities Documents, and coaches the team, for a fraction of a $400K all-in VP hire. Then they help you hire and train the full-time manager who'll run it. When you do grow into a VP, that VP inherits a working engine instead of a mess.
In 30 minutes we'll walk through the 12-item checklist together. You'll see which items nobody owns today, and whether you need a manager, a VP, or a Fractional Sales Leader to own them.