Design the sales team your next stage of revenue actually needs.
Gully Sales works out the selling motion your deals require, the coverage it needs, the roles that carry it, who reports to whom, where work is handed over, and the order in which the seats get filled.
- A sales structure sized to your revenue plan, not to who happened to join.
- Every role has a charter, a manager and a defined handover to the next role.
- A hiring sequence that says which seat to fill next, and what it must produce.
Gully Sales Private Limited designs and then helps run sales organisations for small and medium businesses across India.
In one paragraph
What is Sales Organisation Design?
Sales organisation design decides the shape of your selling team. Gully Sales defines the sales motion your deals need, the coverage model that reaches your market, the roles that carry each part of the work, how many of each you need, who manages whom, where work is handed over, and the order in which you hire. You get a structure your revenue plan can actually be run through.
The problem
Your sales team grew by hiring, not by design.
Most sales teams in Indian SMBs were not designed. They accumulated. Someone was hired when the pressure got high, someone else was given a title when they threatened to leave, and everybody reports to the founder because there was never a reason to add a layer. Each salesperson does a little of everything: finding leads, quoting, following up, closing, chasing payment and handling the customer afterwards. It works while the founder is in every deal. It stops working the moment the team is larger than the founder's attention.
You will recognise it as
- Everyone does everything, from cold calling to collections, and nobody is clearly stronger at any one part.
- Every salesperson reports to you, and your day goes on unblocking deals one at a time.
- Two people call the same customer, or a customer calls and nobody is sure whose account it is.
- New hires are added when the pressure builds, and the role is explained verbally in the first week.
- One performer carries a share of the revenue that would be dangerous to lose.
- Nobody can say how many salespeople next year's target needs, or in which order they should join.
What it costs the business
- Senior people spend their time on work an inside or junior seat could do, so the cost of every rupee of revenue rises.
- Leads and accounts fall between people because no rule says who owns what, and the customer notices before you do.
- The founder stays the bottleneck: little closes without the founder, and the team never learns to close without them.
- Hiring is reactive, so salespeople arrive late, ramp slowly and often into roles that were never defined.
- Capable salespeople leave, because there is no seat above them and no manager coaching them in the one they have.
Why it persists. Restructuring a sales team feels risky in a way that restructuring anything else does not, because the revenue is attached to particular people. Changing who owns which accounts, or adding a manager between the founder and the team, can look like a threat to the very people you depend on. So the structure is left alone and the pressure is absorbed by hiring one more person, or by the founder working longer hours. And nobody inside has the distance to redesign a team they are part of.
If it stays unresolved. The business keeps growing in line with how much selling the founder can personally supervise. Revenue concentrates in one or two people, the cost of selling rises faster than sales, and every new product, market or territory is handed to whoever has capacity that week rather than to a role built to carry it.
What changes
A selling organisation that holds its shape as you grow.
In the first weeks
- A clear picture of how your team spends its selling time today, and what that costs you per rupee of revenue.
- The sales motion your deals require, written down: how a customer is found, won and kept, and by whom.
- An organisation chart for the sales function showing roles, numbers, reporting lines and coverage.
In how the work runs
- Every role has a one-page charter: what it owns, what it does not, what it is measured on and who it reports to.
- Named handover points between marketing, inside sales, field sales, service and accounts, with what passes at each.
- Spans of control set so each manager has a team small enough to coach and large enough to justify the seat.
In sales and marketing
- Senior selling time moves to the deals that need it, because routine work now sits in the seat built for it.
- Coverage becomes deliberate: every segment, territory and account tier has someone accountable for it by name.
In what management can see
- A capacity view showing how many seats next year's target needs, and which of them are missing today.
Over the longer term
- A structure that absorbs the next hire, the next product and the next territory without being rebuilt each time.
- A hiring sequence and role charters an incoming sales head could inherit and run from the first week.
Gully Sales controls the design, the role charters, the coverage model, the capacity model and the transition plan. Whether revenue improves depends on who you hire into the seats and how the structure is led. We do not promise a revenue result; we make the structure deliberate and the gaps visible.
Who it is for
Who this is for, and when structure becomes the constraint.
The businesses it suits
- Founders and directors of Indian SMBs with roughly three to forty salespeople and no deliberate sales structure.
- Businesses where every salesperson reports to the owner, and the owner has become the bottleneck.
- Companies adding a territory, a product line, a segment or a channel the current team cannot simply absorb.
- Sales heads inheriting a team that grew by hiring and now needs a shape before it can be managed.
- Businesses whose cost of selling is rising faster than revenue, with senior people doing junior work.
- Companies moving from founder-led selling to a team that must sell without the founder in every deal.
- Firms planning several sales hires next year who want the roles and the order settled first.
What usually prompts the call
- You are about to hire two or more salespeople and are not sure what each of them should actually do.
- A strong performer resigned, and you realised how much of the revenue left with the account list.
- Two people called the same customer, or an account went unattended because nobody owned it.
- Next year's target is materially higher and the present team cannot reach it by working harder.
- You are appointing a first sales manager and do not know what should report to that role.
- A new market, product or channel has been given to the existing team as extra work on top of their own.
What Gully Sales does
The work, component by component.
Sales motion and coverage model
We work out how your business genuinely wins: how a customer is found, who they speak to first, how many conversations and site visits a deal takes, who signs, and how long the cycle runs by segment. From that we set the coverage model, deciding whether the market is divided by geography, segment, product, account size or channel, so that every part of it has an owner.
- Why it matters:
- Structure has to follow the way your deals are actually won. A team built for a walk-in motion cannot sell a product that needs six months of technical calls.
- You receive:
- Sales motion map and a written coverage model for every segment, territory and account tier.
- Business value:
- You stop guessing at structure and start deriving it from the way your customers really buy.
Role architecture and charters
We define the roles your motion needs, from lead generation and inside sales to field sales, key accounts, channel management, pre-sales, sales support and first-line management, and then decide which of them your business needs now. Each role gets a one-page charter: what it owns, what it explicitly does not, what it is measured on, who it reports to and who it works alongside.
- Why it matters:
- When everybody does everything, nobody becomes good at any one thing, and the cost of selling stays high while quality stays uneven.
- You receive:
- Role architecture for the sales function, with a one-page charter for every role in it.
- Business value:
- Each person knows the boundary of the job, and you know what a new hire is being hired to do.
Capacity and headcount model
We work backwards from next year's target through win rates, average order value, sales cycle and productive selling days to the number of seats each role needs, quarter by quarter. Ramp time is built in, so a seat that must produce in the third quarter shows a hire date in the first. This sizes the organisation; setting each person's number is quota planning, which follows.
- Why it matters:
- Headcount decided by pressure arrives late, costs more and ramps slower than headcount decided by arithmetic.
- You receive:
- Capacity model showing seats per role by quarter, with ramp and productivity assumptions stated.
- Business value:
- You can answer how many salespeople the target needs, and defend the answer to your finance lead.
Spans of control and reporting lines
We decide how many people each manager carries, where the first management layer belongs, and what the owner should deliberately keep. A span that is too wide leaves nobody coached; one that is too narrow adds cost without adding control. What stays with the founder, such as the largest accounts or the final price call, is chosen rather than inherited.
- Why it matters:
- Most SMB sales teams have one management layer too few, so coaching never happens and the founder is the only escalation anybody has.
- You receive:
- Sales organisation chart with reporting lines, spans of control and the founder's deliberate scope.
- Business value:
- Deals get unblocked by a manager during the day instead of waiting for the owner's evening.
Handoffs and account ownership
We write the rules for where work passes between people: marketing to sales, inside sales to field sales, sales to delivery or service, and sales to accounts for collection. Each handoff states what must be true before it happens, what information travels with it, and who owns the customer afterwards. Account ownership is set by rule, not by whoever answered the phone.
- Why it matters:
- In a small sales team, most leaked revenue is lost in the gaps between people rather than inside anybody's own work.
- You receive:
- Handoff definitions with entry criteria, plus an account ownership and lead conflict rule set.
- Business value:
- Nothing sits waiting for someone to notice it, and two people stop working the same customer.
Hiring roadmap
We sequence the seats: which role is filled first, what it must produce before the next is added, and the trigger for each subsequent hire. Every role gets a hiring brief covering the profile, the experience that matters in your market, the compensation shape to expect and what the person must achieve in their first ninety days.
- Why it matters:
- Hiring in the wrong order is expensive. A field seat added before the lead flow exists sits idle, loses confidence and resigns.
- You receive:
- Hiring roadmap with sequence, triggers and a hiring brief for each seat in it.
- Business value:
- You know which seat to fill next, and what has to be true before you fill the one after it.
Transition and implementation plan
Redrawing a sales team touches people's accounts, their earnings and their standing. We plan the move: which accounts change hands and when, what is communicated to whom and in what order, what the first ninety days look like, and how the change is explained to customers. Where a change would put a major relationship at risk, we phase it instead.
- Why it matters:
- A structure that is announced without a transition plan is usually quietly reversed within a quarter.
- You receive:
- Transition plan with account movements, a communication sequence and a ninety-day rollout.
- Business value:
- The new structure comes into force without customers feeling passed around or strong performers feeling demoted.
What you will have at the end.
- Sales motion map: how a deal is found, worked, won and kept in your business, and who touches it at each point.
- Coverage model: how the market splits by geography, segment, product, account size or channel, with an owner for each.
- Role architecture separating the roles you need now from the ones that belong at the next stage of growth.
- A one-page charter per role: what it owns, what it does not, its measures, its reporting line and its interfaces.
- Capacity model: seats per role by quarter, derived from the target, win rates, cycle time and productivity, with ramp.
- Sales organisation chart with reporting lines, spans of control and the scope the founder deliberately keeps.
- Handoff definitions for marketing to sales, inside to field, sales to delivery and sales to collections.
- Account ownership and lead conflict rules, so every customer has one owner by rule rather than by habit.
- Hiring roadmap: the sequence of seats, the trigger for each and a hiring brief with ninety-day expectations.
- Transition plan: account movements, communication sequence and a ninety-day rollout with owners and dates.
- A structure review pack for leadership showing the current shape, the designed shape and the cost of each.
How it runs
The engagement, step by step.
- 1
Frame the design
We agree what the structure has to deliver: next year's number, the markets and products it must cover, the constraints on cost and hiring, and what leadership is genuinely willing to change. We also agree what is out of scope, such as incentive plans or individual quotas, so the work stays bounded.
- You provide:
- The revenue plan or target for the coming year, the current team and its cost, and the owner's constraints on hiring and change.
- We produce:
- A design brief stating the objective, the scope, the constraints and who signs the design off.
- Done when:
- Leadership agrees what the design must decide, and what it will not touch.
- 2
Read the current organisation
We map the team as it works, not as the chart says: who does what, where selling time goes, which accounts each person holds, who reports to whom in practice, and where deals stall. We interview salespeople individually and read the CRM or order book where one exists.
- You provide:
- Time with each salesperson, the current account list, CRM or order data, and last year's results by person.
- We produce:
- A current-state map with time allocation, account concentration and the gaps in coverage.
- Done when:
- You can see on one page how your selling capacity is actually being spent today.
- 3
Define the motion and the coverage
We establish how your deals are genuinely won, including the steps, the people involved on the customer's side and the cycle length by segment, and then decide how the market should be divided so that every segment, territory and account tier has one accountable owner.
- You provide:
- Access to a handful of recent won and lost deals, and a session with the sales and marketing leads.
- We produce:
- The sales motion map and the coverage model, with the reasoning behind the split written down.
- Done when:
- Leadership agrees how the market will be covered, and by which kind of role.
- 4
Design the roles, spans and handoffs
We draft the role architecture, write a charter for each role, place the management layer, set spans of control and define every handover point and account ownership rule. We then test the draft against real recent deals to see where it would have helped and where it would have got in the way.
- You provide:
- Review sessions with the owner and the sales head, and candid input on individual strengths.
- We produce:
- Role charters, the organisation chart with spans, and the handoff and ownership rule set.
- Done when:
- Every part of the selling work has exactly one role accountable for it.
- 5
Size capacity and sequence the hiring
We work back from the target through win rates, order value, cycle time and productive days to the seats each role needs, quarter by quarter, with ramp time included. Where the design needs more seats than the business can fund, we say so and change the coverage rather than pretending the arithmetic works.
- You provide:
- Cost constraints, the earliest date a hire could be approved, and the current cost per salesperson.
- We produce:
- The capacity model and the hiring roadmap with its sequence, triggers and briefs.
- Done when:
- The design is affordable, sequenced, and the next seat to fill is defined.
- 6
Transition and embed
We plan the move account by account, agree the order in which people are told, run the session where the new structure is explained to the team, and stay through the first weeks so questions are answered by the design rather than by improvisation. A short review at ninety days checks what held and what did not.
- You provide:
- A leadership decision on account movements, and time for the team session and the review.
- We produce:
- The transition plan, the team briefing and a ninety-day review of what is working.
- Done when:
- People are in their new roles, accounts have moved and the first review has run.
Ways to work with us
Engage for the design, for a growth step, or through the change.
Sales organisation design
The full method from current-state read to transition plan: motion, coverage, roles, spans, handoffs, capacity and hiring sequence. Suited to a team that grew by hiring and now needs a deliberate shape.
Design for a growth step
For a business adding a territory, a product line, a segment or a channel. We design only the part of the organisation that change affects, and fit it to the structure you already run.
Founder-to-team transition design
For owners who are still the main salesperson. We design the roles and the first management layer that let the business sell without you in every deal, and stage the handover of your accounts.
Design with implementation support
The design plus a Gully Sales consultant through the transition and the first quarter, running the team briefing, supporting the new manager and reading what the structure is doing to your pipeline.
Why Gully Sales
What you are actually choosing when you choose us.
We design from how your deals are actually won.
The structure comes out of your own motion: the steps a deal really takes, the length of your cycle by segment, the people on the customer's side. That is why the chart we hand you fits your business rather than a textbook.
We separate the roles you need now from the ones you will need later.
A twelve-person team does not need the structure of a fifty-person one. The design says what to build now, what to hold back, and the trigger that tells you when the next role or layer has become worth its cost.
The design is sized against money you actually have.
Capacity is worked back from your target, then set against what the business can fund. Where the two disagree we show it and choose with you, rather than handing over a chart you have no way to staff.
We plan the transition, not only the chart.
Account movements, the order in which people are told, what customers hear and the first ninety days are part of the work. That is the part which decides whether a new structure survives its first quarter.
We stay in the sales pillar with you afterwards.
The same team can carry the design into process design, playbooks, recruitment, onboarding and management reviews, so the structure is not handed to somebody else to interpret second-hand.
Where it applies
The same service, in different businesses.
Industrial manufacturing
- The situation:
- Six salespeople each cover the whole country, chase enquiries from exhibitions, quote, follow up, and also handle service complaints from the customers they sold to two years ago.
- How it applies:
- Coverage split by region and account tier, an inside seat created to qualify enquiries and follow quotations, service complaints routed away from sellers, and a first regional manager placed.
- Likely benefit:
- Field time goes to visits that need a person present, and enquiries stop cooling while a salesperson is on the road.
B2B and IT services
- The situation:
- The founder closes every deal above a certain size. Three account executives handle the smaller work, and none of them has ever run a full enterprise cycle on their own.
- How it applies:
- A key account role defined with the founder as coach rather than closer, a pre-sales seat for solutioning, and a staged handover of named accounts with triggers for when the founder steps back.
- Likely benefit:
- The founder's calendar returns, and larger deals stop depending entirely on their presence in every meeting.
Building materials and distribution
- The situation:
- Sales staff are attached to dealers by history. Some carry thirty accounts, others four, and a new region has been given to whoever had a free week in the diary.
- How it applies:
- Coverage rebuilt by territory and dealer tier with a stated workload per seat, ownership rules for overlapping dealers, and a hiring sequence for the new region.
- Likely benefit:
- Every dealer has one owner with time for them, and the new region gets a seat rather than a spare afternoon.
Healthcare providers
- The situation:
- A hospital group works corporate tie-ups, doctor referrals and insurance empanelment through the same three people, and referral relationships get whatever time is left over.
- How it applies:
- Roles separated by relationship type, a defined handoff from business development to the front office, and capacity sized against the enquiry volume each stream produces.
- Likely benefit:
- Referring doctors get regular, predictable attention instead of being the work that slips whenever a corporate deal is live.
Real estate and interiors
- The situation:
- Site walk-ins, digital enquiries and channel partner leads all land with the same closing team, and partner relationships are handled by whoever happens to be free that day.
- How it applies:
- An inside seat for enquiry qualification, a channel partner role with its own targets, closers focused on site conversion, and a clear rule for when the same lead arrives twice.
- Likely benefit:
- Partner-sourced and directly sourced leads each have an owner, and enquiries are answered while they are still warm.
Questions buyers ask
Before you enquire, the answers you will want.
Which roles do we need now, and which belong at the next growth stage?
The design separates the two deliberately. Roles carrying work that already happens at volume are built now; roles that would sit idle are named, with the condition that says when to add them. A twelve-person team rarely needs a pre-sales function, but it may need a first-line manager sooner than the owner expects. Every future role comes with the trigger that makes it worth its cost, so you add it on evidence rather than on ambition.
How is this different from sales team structure and role definition?
Sales organisation design decides the shape of the whole function: the motion, the coverage model, how many seats, the management layers, and where work passes between roles. Sales team structure and role definition works inside a settled shape, writing the detailed responsibilities, key result areas and job descriptions for each named position. Most businesses do this page first and the detailed definition second. If your shape is already sound and only the roles are vague, start there.
Is this the same as territory planning or quota planning?
No, though both follow from it. This work sets the coverage model: whether the market divides by geography, segment, product or account size, and how many seats each division needs. Territory planning then draws the actual boundaries and allocates named accounts to them. Quota and capacity planning sets each person's number and the rules for adjusting it. The organisation has to have a shape before territories can be drawn inside it.
How long does the engagement take?
It depends on the size of the team, how many markets and product lines the structure must cover, and how quickly leadership can meet to decide account movements. A ten-person single-market team moves faster than a forty-person team across four regions and three product lines. We agree the schedule in the design brief. The transition itself is usually phased rather than done in one week, because accounts and customers need moving carefully.
What inputs are required from us?
The revenue target or plan for the coming year, the current team with roles and costs, the account list showing who owns what, CRM or order data, and last year's results by person. Then time: a conversation with each salesperson, working sessions with the owner and sales head, and a leadership decision on what may change. Where records are thin, we reconstruct what we can from the order book and say plainly what is missing.
Will this mean removing people or taking accounts away from them?
The design is about roles, not individuals, and we do not recommend dismissals. Some accounts do move, because ownership by habit is usually part of the problem. We plan those movements one by one, address the earnings question honestly, and phase the largest relationships so no customer feels handed around. Where a person is in the wrong role, the answer is usually a different seat rather than an exit.
We have only four salespeople. Are we too small for this?
Not necessarily, though the design will be simple, and that is the point. At four people the questions worth answering are which parts of the selling work should stop being shared, whether an inside seat would free up the field, who owns which accounts, and what has to be true before the fifth and sixth hires. If the honest answer is that the founder simply has to sell less, we will say so.
How is success measured?
Against the baseline recorded before the design, on the metrics agreed in the brief: pipeline coverage by territory and role, stage conversion across the new handoffs, win rate, sales cycle, quota attainment and its spread across seats, forecast accuracy, revenue and pipeline per seat, coverage completeness and ramp time for new hires. We read these at ninety days and again at two quarters, once the new seats have ramped.
3 more questions
What is excluded from scope?
Setting individual quotas and drawing territory boundaries, which are separate services; designing the incentive plan; writing the sales process stages and playbooks; sourcing and assessing candidates; and CRM implementation. We also do not manage the team after the transition. Several of these usually follow the design, but keeping them separate is what stops one engagement from becoming an unbounded one.
Do you help us hire into the new roles?
The design produces a hiring brief for every seat: the profile, the experience that matters in your market, the compensation shape to expect and what the person must achieve in the first ninety days. Sourcing, screening and assessing candidates is sales recruitment and candidate assessment, a separate service you can take up with us or run in-house. The brief is written to work either way.
What if the design needs more people than we can afford?
Then we change the design, not the arithmetic. Capacity is worked back from your target, so if the seats it needs cost more than the business can fund, we show that clearly and choose with you: cover fewer segments deliberately, raise a productivity assumption only where evidence supports it, phase the hiring later in the year, or revise the target. A chart you cannot staff helps nobody.
Talk to us
Look at the shape of your sales team before you hire into it again.
The free audit is a working session, not a pitch. We look at how your team is organised today, where the selling time is going, and whether the constraint is really the structure or something upstream of it.
- No obligation and no sales script
- A reply from someone who does the work
- Your details are never sold or shared