How to Define the Sales Role Before You Advertise It
A job advertisement is a public commitment. Make sure you know what you are committing to before it goes live.
Our panel has reviewed thousands of sales job descriptions. The most common problem is not bad writing - it is premature writing. The description goes live before the organisation has genuinely agreed on what the role is, who it reports to, what success looks like, or what kind of person is actually needed. What follows is a hiring process in search of a candidate for a role that has not been properly defined.
The Conversations That Must Happen First
Before a single word of the job description is written, three conversations need to happen. The conversation between the hiring manager and their leadership about what this role is actually meant to achieve. The conversation between sales and other functions - particularly marketing, product, and customer success - about where the role sits in the commercial motion. And the conversation about the candidate profile: what experience is genuinely essential versus merely desirable.
These conversations are uncomfortable because they surface disagreements that have been avoided. Have them anyway. The alternative is a hiring process that discovers the disagreements six weeks in, when a candidate is already at offer stage and the organisation does not know what it wants.
Output Definition Before Input Specification
Most job descriptions are written as lists of requirements - experience, skills, qualifications. They describe the input rather than the output. What they rarely articulate is what success in the role looks like at 90 days, at six months, and at one year.
Defining those success markers before the search begins does three things. It forces alignment on what the role is actually for. It gives interviewers a framework for assessing candidates against outcomes rather than CVs. And it gives the eventual hire a clear understanding of what they are being measured on from day one.
"Define success at 90 days, six months, and one year before you define the candidate profile"
The Seniority Trap
One of the most reliably damaging definition failures is seniority misalignment. A company decides it needs a senior sales hire, writes a senior job description, offers a senior salary - and then gives the hire a territory, a target, and an expectation that they will operate as an individual contributor.
Senior people with strong track records in leadership roles do not always thrive in pure IC positions. The role definition conversation needs to be explicit: is this a player, a player-coach, or a leader? The answer shapes everything about who you should be looking for.
Defining the Market, Not Just the Role
The role definition should include a clear statement of the market the hire will be working in. Which customer segments? Which geographies? Which verticals? Which deal sizes and sales cycles?
This matters for two reasons. It allows you to assess whether candidates have relevant experience rather than just transferable skills. And it shapes where and how you recruit - the channels, the networks, the language of the search. A strong enterprise SaaS rep and a strong SME field sales rep are very different people, even if both have impressive CVs.
The Internal Sign-Off That Prevents Surprises
Before the role goes live, the definition should be signed off by everyone who will be involved in the hiring decision. Not just the hiring manager - the hiring manager's manager, any internal stakeholders who will interview, and finance if the compensation structure is non-standard.
This sounds bureaucratic. It is actually the single most effective way to prevent the scenario every recruiter has experienced: a strong candidate reaches the final stage and the process collapses because someone who was not involved earlier disagrees with something fundamental. That conversation should have happened at the start.
Key Takeaways
- Have the alignment conversations before writing a word - unresolved disagreements surface at the worst moment
- Define success at 90 days, six months, and one year before you define the candidate profile
- Be explicit about whether the role is a player, player-coach, or leader - seniority misalignment is costly
- Get sign-off from everyone in the hiring decision before the role goes live
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