What does a Sales Director Actually Do?

A lot of businesses hire a "sales director" and end up with a glorified sales manager instead — someone managing their own patch and their own target, rather than steering the whole sales function. In this episode of The Sales Director Podcast, Jerry Meldrum unpacks the real difference: a sales director should have the objective, strategic view of a ship's captain, not the narrow focus of a department head, and should never be carrying an individual sales target of their own.

Jerry also shares a candid admission from his own career — he was never the best salesperson on any team he was part of, and explains why that's exactly what made him a better sales director. He walks through what a business should actually expect across a quarter (strategy, targets, process, coaching, forecasting) and the outputs that prove it's working after six months: fewer fires, a strategy you could explain to someone at a barbecue, and a sales function that could survive the director leaving tomorrow.

For any business owner deciding whether to hire a sales director, or wondering whether the one they've got is actually doing the job, this episode sets out exactly what to expect.