Head of Sales
Job description, salary, sourcing, 15 interview questions and a 30/60/90 plan to hire a Head of Sales in a German SMB.
At a glance
- Time to fill80–120 days
- Experience8–15 years
How to hire a Head of Sales
A sales leadership at an SMB is the most expensive and most consequential hire many managing directors make in their growth phase. Before the posting, settle three questions. They decide whether a new hire is the right lever and which profile you actually need.
Do you really need a sales leadership, or an experienced Sales Manager? The threshold is not primarily revenue, but span of control and complexity. If you lead 1 to 8 salespeople, a sales manager reporting directly to the managing directors or CEO is enough. From 2 sales managers or from 10 people, the span becomes too large for CEO direct management, and a true sales leadership becomes necessary. Substantive triggers: several markets, planned internationalization, several segments. If you hire below these thresholds, you pay 125 k€ for a profile that sells 60 percent of the time themselves, because no real org work arises, and both sides end up frustrated.
A first or a second sales leadership? A first sales leadership builds the sales organization: defines the ICP, establishes the cadence, decides on compensation and the stack, hires the first leadership team. You need a profile with build experience, one that tolerates ambiguity and shapes, not one that fine-tunes existing structures. A second or third sales leadership takes over an existing organization. You need a profile that can diagnose and change in a targeted way without rebuilding everything from the ground up. Both profiles cost differently and are recognized differently; settle the choice before the posting.
Full-time, fractional or interim? For an SMB at the transition from 3 to 8 salespeople, with 5 to 10 M€ ARR and no clear mandate for internationalization, a fractional sales leadership (0.4-0.6 FTE through an experienced advisor) is often the better choice: 60-90 k€ per year, an operational frame without a full-time commitment, a clear transition path to the internal full-time role after 12-18 months. An interim sales leadership (3-9 months, roughly 800-1,500 € day rate) suits crisis setups (an acute revenue drop, a change of managing directors) or handover during an extended search. Full-time from 10+ people or with a strategic mandate.
An indicative capacity calculation: a sales leadership leads 3-5 sales managers or, in flatter structures, up to 12-15 direct reports. Beyond that you need an intermediate level (a director-of-sales layer) or a second sales leadership per segment. A single person over 25 direct reports is a warning flag.
Where to source this role
LinkedIn (Executive Search)
Recruiter Pro from €1,100 / month plus InMail creditsBy far the most important channel for sales-leadership profiles in Germany, but almost exclusively through active sourcing (Recruiter Pro or Lite plus an InMail sequence). Pure job posts deliver little signal at this level, because the target group rarely searches actively. Expect 70-80 percent of serious applications from this channel when you source and pre-qualify actively over 6-8 weeks.
XING Executive
ProBusiness Premium from €49 / month plus ProJobs from €195 / monthStill strong for the classic Mittelstand outside the tech and Berlin-startup scene, especially for profiles over 40 and in the NRW, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg regions. XING ProBusiness with ProJobs is the usual configuration; active sourcing via the premium search delivers better results than purely passive job ads. Particularly relevant for industry, mechanical engineering, wholesale and product-oriented Mittelstand companies.
Executive search / headhunters
30-50 k€ fee per mandate (retainer model)For an SMB sales leadership from roughly 130 k€ fixed or with sector depth (medtech, industry, regulated sectors), often the only channel that delivers in 8-10 weeks. Kienbaum, Heidrick and Struggles, Egon Zehnder and Spencer Stuart cover the upper segment; for the Mittelstand and scale-ups, boutiques such as i-potentials or Heads make sense. Expect 25-33 percent of the annual fixed salary as the fee, staged by milestones.
Personal network and referrals
At the sales-leadership level, structurally the channel with the highest hit rate. Activate your own network (board, advisory board, former managers, former sales managers), the network of your VP Sales or CEO, and industry circles (Bundesverband Vertrieb, German Sales Network, sales communities such as Surf and Sales DACH). For a role open longer than 12 weeks, almost always the channel that brings the final hire.