Writing a sales director job description sounds simple until you actually sit down to do it. Most templates available online are written for large enterprises with existing sales infrastructure, a dedicated recruitment team and a clear ladder of seniority above and below the role. None of that reflects what the job actually needs to be at a founder-led company doing AED 1M to AED 10M in ARR.
What the role should actually cover
- Building or fixing the sales process: pipeline stages, qualification criteria, proposal and negotiation structure
- Setting targets and cascading them to individual reps in a way that's grounded in pipeline reality, not just growth aspiration
- Running a regular coaching and review cadence with the team
- Owning forecasting and reporting to you, in commercial language you can act on
- Designing or fixing the compensation structure so it rewards the right behaviour
- Getting personally involved in key deals when the size or complexity of the account calls for it
What to leave out, or make optional
A few things that show up in job specs at this stage and quietly work against you:
- Requiring deep expertise in a specific CRM platform rather than the underlying discipline of running one well. Tools change, the discipline doesn't.
- Asking for a large personal quota on top of full management responsibility for a team of five or more. Very few people do both well, and the job spec should be honest about which one matters more right now.
- Generic language like "rockstar" or "hunter mentality." It doesn't attract better candidates, it just filters out ones who take the role seriously enough to be put off by it.
A working template
A structure that holds up well for this size of company:
- Role summary: two sentences on why this role exists right now, tied to a specific business problem, not a generic mandate
- Reports to: usually the founder or CEO at this stage
- Key responsibilities: the list above, prioritised in the order that matters most for your business in the next 12 months
- What success looks like: a specific, measurable description at the 90 day, 180 day and 12 month marks
- Requirements: years of experience in a comparable sales motion and company size, evidence of having built or fixed a process before, not just carried a quota
- Compensation: base, bonus structure, and how bonus is calculated, stated clearly rather than "competitive"
If you're not fully sure yet what this role needs to look like at your company, that's usually a sign to get the diagnosis done first, either by an experienced advisor or through a short fractional engagement, so the job spec you eventually write is solving the actual problem rather than a guess at it.