Building a sales function: from target customer to leading by numbers

The short answer

Building a sales function means answering seven questions in the right order. Who do we sell to? What exactly, and on what pricing logic? Through which channel? With whom, and how are they paid? Following what process, recorded where? How do we see each week whether it is working? And which mistakes do we avoid that almost everyone makes? Most companies start with the fourth question. They hire and hope the rest falls into place. It does not.

This guide works through the seven steps in order. Each step has its own detailed article. Here you will find what matters at each stage and how the pieces fit together. The legal references are German, as that is the market these guides are written about.

Step 1: Define the target customer

Start with a description of the customer most likely to buy and to stay. Not "SMEs", but something like: owner-managed firms with five to fifty staff in a particular sector, with a problem you can name. The narrower the description, the easier the pitch, the onboarding and the measurement. A salesperson who knows who to call does not need motivation. They need a list.

A usable target-customer profile answers at least five points:

• Sector and size: which firms, how many staff, what revenue band?
• Trigger: what happens at the customer just before they buy? A contract ending, a move, a new law?
• Decision-maker: who signs, and who else has a say?
• Exclusions: who do you explicitly not want, even if they would buy?
• Reachability: where can you find these customers as a list, an association or a network?

Exclusions are the point most people leave out. They matter most. Every customer who does not fit costs support time and leaves sooner.

A useful test: can you name three existing customers who match this profile exactly, and say why they bought? If not, your target customer is still a guess. How to draw out the need cleanly in a first meeting is covered in The B2B first meeting: a structure that holds.

Step 2: Offer and pricing logic

The offer should be explainable in two sentences, and the price needs a logic the salesperson can defend. If what you sell needs explaining, you need a rationale that lands with the customer, not just a price list. It also matters whether the business is one-off or recurring. That decides your commission model and your key metric later on.

Also check that the price leaves room for the cost of selling. Commission, onboarding and failed hires all have to come out of the margin. If it cannot carry them, no sales team will fix that.

Further reading: Selling products that need explaining and Negotiating price without discounts.

Step 3: Choose your channels

Phone, field sales, referrals, partners, LinkedIn: at the start, one main channel that suits your target customer is enough. Two half-run channels deliver less than one that runs properly. On the phone there is a legal limit many people underestimate. Under § 7(2) no. 1 UWG, telephone advertising to consumers needs prior express consent, and to businesses at least presumed consent.

I learned the basics in structured sales at Deutsche Vermögensberatung in Kassel, from 2001 to 2005. There were no online leads. Every customer came through direct approach and referral. That teaches you early that a channel is a system, not luck.

Further reading: B2B cold calling in 2026, Building referral sales systematically and Social selling on LinkedIn.

Step 4: The team – hiring, onboarding, pay

Only now do people come in. Three decisions meet here.

Hiring. An interview shows how someone talks about selling. A trial day shows how they sell. The gap costs more than it sounds. How to set one up: Hiring salespeople with a trial day.

Onboarding. The first 30 days decide whether a new salesperson becomes productive or quietly gives up. That needs a plan with clear weekly goals: Onboarding new salespeople: the 30-day plan.

Pay. Salespeople optimise exactly what they are paid for. For employed salespeople in Germany, § 65 HGB applies parts of the commercial agents' commission rules. When a commission claim arises is set out in § 87a HGB. If your revenue is recurring, pay for retained customers, not just for the signature: Commission models that hold.

Employed or independent? Under § 84(1) HGB a commercial agent is self-employed and essentially free to organise their work and set their own hours. That saves fixed costs but limits control. How to manage independent partners anyway: Steering sales partners and commercial agents.

I have seen first-hand how quickly a model can tip when the pay rules change. From 2008, my company Qualitura GmbH sold private health insurance by phone and online. Within twelve months we had 150 sales partners and EUR 14 million in revenue. In 2012 the legislator extended commission clawback liability from one year to five. The rule now sits in § 49 VAG. That made the model unviable in that form. The lesson: a sales model is only as stable as the rules on how commission is earned and paid back.

Step 5: Process and CRM

A process describes the stages an opportunity passes through and when it moves to the next one. A CRM records that process. The order matters: write the process on one page first, then choose the tool. A CRM with more fields than the process has steps will not be kept up to date.

Five stages are enough to begin with: contacted, first meeting held, need confirmed, proposal sent, decided. Each transition gets a written rule. "Need confirmed" might mean: decision-maker known, problem named, next meeting booked with a date. Without such rules, each stage means something different to each salesperson. The pipeline then becomes a collection of hopes.

Further reading: A CRM salespeople actually use and Following up on a proposal without being a nuisance.

Step 6: Leading by numbers

A revenue target tells you where you are; it does not steer anyone. You lead through a few activity metrics the salesperson controls, and through a fixed weekly pipeline review. Two or three metrics are enough. More dilute attention. Typical ones are conversations with decision-makers, qualified first meetings and proposals sent. What matters is that each number is defined in writing and reviewed at the same time every week.

At MEG AG in Kassel, the team grew between 2005 and 2008 from 40 to 750 people at seven locations in 36 months. Commission revenue rose from EUR 4 million to EUR 48 million. Growth like that only works if every new manager reads the same few numbers in the same way. Otherwise every new location adds to the confusion.

Further reading: Sales targets: activity versus results and The pipeline review as a leadership ritual.

The stages at a glance

Which structure makes sense at which size depends on the business. The table below is a guide, not a rule.

Stage	What to set up now	Key metric
Owner sells personally	Target customer, two-sentence offer, first pricing logic	Close rate from first meetings
First one to three salespeople	Trial day, 30-day onboarding, commission model, one main channel	Qualified first meetings per week per salesperson
Small team with a team lead (about 4–10)	Written process, CRM, weekly pipeline review	Pipeline value per stage and cycle time
Several teams or locations	Shared metrics, managers promoted from within, a second channel	New customers per salesperson and first-year churn
Partner or agent network	Agent contracts under §§ 84 ff. HGB, commission and clawback rules, partner support	Active partners with a deal in the quarter

Step 7: Common mistakes when building sales

Hiring before the target customer is clear. Each salesperson then hunts for their own market. Results cannot be compared, and nobody learns from anyone else.

Paying only for the signature. In recurring business, that buys you cancellations. What happens in the first months after signing is covered in Preventing cancellations in the first 90 days.

Too many channels at once. Every channel needs practice, material and its own numbers. Launch them all together and you will not know which one works.

Buying the CRM before defining the process. A tool does not replace the decision about what counts as a qualified opportunity.

Losing good people. Building sales also means building loyalty. When your best people leave, you lose knowledge as well as deals: Why good salespeople leave.

Treating legal questions as an afterthought. Telephone advertising, agent contracts and commission rules all have clear statutory bases. For an individual case, bring in a specialist lawyer rather than a contract template from the internet.

Action list

1. Write your target customer on one page and test it against three real customers.
2. Put the offer into two sentences and write down the pricing logic so a new hire can explain it.
3. Choose one main channel and check § 7 UWG before any phone prospecting.
4. Have the trial day and 30-day plan ready before advertising the first role.
5. Match the commission model to the business: recurring revenue pays for retention, one-off revenue pays for the deal with a clawback rule.
6. Process before CRM: define the stages first, then choose the tool.
7. Two or three metrics and a fixed weekly slot for the pipeline review.