Building a sales strategy: channels, roles, and performance management

What belongs in a sales strategy?

Four decisions. Everything else is execution and belongs in the annual plan.

• Which customers. Segments with names and boundaries, plus an explicit statement of which inquiries you will not pursue. Without that second half, the first stays an intention.
• Through which channel. Your own field sales, inside sales, partners, retail, public tenders. The channel follows order value and how much explaining the product needs.
• With which roles. Who wins new customers, who manages existing ones, who provides technical support. In mid-sized companies one person often does all three. That is a decision, and it deserves to be named.
• How you measure. Two figures ahead of revenue are enough, plus revenue as the result.

These four points fit on a single page. Anything longer is usually a list of activities. That list is outdated within a quarter.

The link to corporate strategy is tighter than the separation of the documents suggests. Corporate strategy says where you want to make money five years from now. Sales strategy says which customers will fund that path over the next twelve months. If the two papers name different segments, sales wins, because sales brings in the orders. That is exactly how strategies quietly fade out without anyone ever abandoning them.

Territories or segments: how do you cut your sales organization?

By segment, as soon as the strategy favors one. By territory, when travel drives your costs and all customers look alike.

The difference matters. In a territory model, every rep covers everything located in their region. That is efficient for the calendar and it prevents anyone from getting truly good in a segment. After two years, nobody speaks the language of the target industry well enough to hold their own technically in a tender.

A middle path often works better than either option: territories for the existing business, plus one person who works the target segment exclusively, regardless of region. That person needs separate targets, because in the first months they will close less than the account managers.

Which roles does sales in a mid-sized company need?

Three tasks that don't combine well in one person. They can still sit with one person, but then with clear priorities.

The first row explains the most common finding: a sales team that hasn't won a new customer in years is rarely a bad team. It is fully booked with existing accounts, and nobody has decided that new business comes first. The test is simple: look at the calendars of the past four weeks and count the meetings with companies that have never bought from you.

How many target accounts per person are realistic?

Fewer than most target lists suggest. Here is a rough calculation you can check against your own business.

A field sales rep has roughly 200 working days, about 130 of them for customer contact. At two meetings a day, that adds up to 260 meetings. A B2B sale with a mid-range order value takes four to six meetings to reach a decision, plus the account work afterward. That allows for roughly 30 to 40 active sales processes a year and an account base of 40 to 60 customers.

A target list with 300 names is therefore not a list, it's a collection. What works is 30 to 50 prioritized target accounts per person per year, with a fixed monthly slot for maintaining the list. If you don't cut the list, the choice is left to whatever the day brings. One hard question per name helps with the cutting: what do you know about this company that isn't on its website? If you can't answer that, you have an address, not yet a target account.

What do you manage by before revenue shows it?

Two figures. More metrics create reporting work without adding insight.

• First meetings in the target segment per month. This number shows whether the strategy has made it into the calendar. You can influence it, which is what makes it useful for steering.
• Win rate on proposals, broken out by segment. It shows whether you convince people in the target segment. If the number of proposals rises and the win rate falls, sales is working the wrong segment or the offer doesn't fit.

Add two quarterly reviews that don't require an ongoing metric: the reasons for lost proposals and the average discount. Both reveal problems that won't show up in revenue for another year.

With loss reasons, the source of the answer matters. "Too expensive" is the default response and is rarely the whole story, because it's the most convenient answer for the buyer. The reason becomes useful when you ask who the customer chose and what that provider committed to. Two follow-up questions are enough, but someone has to ask them.

What doesn't work: visit counts with no link to segments. They measure effort and can be hit without ever reaching a single target account.

How do you get a new sales strategy into the team?

Through the target list and through compensation. Both are hard signals. Everything else is explanation.

The target list is the fastest lever. When every rep sets 30 names with their manager at the start of a quarter and that list gets reviewed in the monthly one-on-one, the work shifts within a single quarter. Without that meeting, old habits stay.

Compensation is the second lever, and the less comfortable one. As long as commission is tied to total revenue, an experienced salesperson will sensibly keep working the existing base. A higher rate for new customers in the target segment costs money in year one, and it's the only change that reliably works.

That comes with an expectation about timing: a shift in customer profile shows up in the numbers after two to four quarters. Reverse course after one quarter and you've taught the team that the next strategy will pass, too.

And if you hire new people for it, plan for their ramp-up. Depending on how much explaining the product needs, a B2B sales rep needs six to twelve months before bringing in deals independently, and during that time they tie up an experienced colleague. That's why two hires at once almost always mean a step backward in performance in year one, even if the team has grown on paper.