Should a Head of Sales Report to the Managing Director or a Sales Director?

Reporting lines get decided by habit far more often than by logic. A business that has never had a Sales Director defaults to putting the Head of Sales under the Managing Director. A business that already has a Sales Director defaults to putting them underneath. Neither default is automatically right.

The reporting line determines who the Head of Sales escalates to, who sets their targets, and — most importantly — who is accountable for the commercial strategy the role is expected to execute. Getting it wrong creates a role with responsibility but no clear source of direction.

The question behind the question

Reporting lines are really a question about where commercial direction comes from. A Head of Sales executes a plan; the reporting line should connect them to whoever is accountable for that plan's existence and quality. Draw the org chart around that accountability, not around seniority or history.

When reporting to a Sales Director or Commercial Director is right

Where a Sales Director already owns the revenue plan, the sales function's structure, and the forecast the board relies on, the Head of Sales should sit beneath them. This preserves a clean chain: strategy and structure at director level, execution and coaching at Head of Sales level. It also means the Head of Sales has a single, commercially literate escalation point who can resolve pricing, resourcing or account conflicts quickly.

• The Sales Director owns the plan the Head of Sales is executing
• There is enough team scale to need a layer between individual reps and the director
• The Sales Director has genuine bandwidth to manage and develop the Head of Sales, not just receive a number from them

When reporting to the Managing Director is right

In businesses without a Sales Director — commonly turnover under roughly £5-15m, though this varies by sector — the Managing Director is often still setting commercial direction personally. In that structure, the Head of Sales reporting directly to the MD is correct, because that is genuinely where strategic decisions are made.

The risk in this model is capacity, not logic. An MD who cannot make time for regular, substantive conversations with the Head of Sales creates a role that is nominally reporting upward but is actually operating without direction — expected to interpret strategy that was never properly communicated.

The two failure modes

Does company size settle the question on its own?

Size is a reasonable proxy but not a rule. A ten-person sales team selling a simple, short-cycle product can be run well by an MD who has designed a clear, largely self-sustaining process. A five-person team selling complex, long-cycle deals may need director-level commercial thinking above the Head of Sales far sooner, because every deal carries enough judgement and risk to require senior input.

What changes with interim and fractional engagements

An interim Head of Sales brought in to stabilise a team mid-transition usually needs a very clear, single reporting line from day one, since ambiguity is exactly what an interim mandate cannot absorb. A fractional Head of Sales, working limited days per week, often works best reporting directly to the MD or owner even where a Sales Director exists, purely for scheduling and communication efficiency — but this should be agreed explicitly, not left as a default.

Making the decision deliberately

1. 01Identify who currently owns the revenue plan in practice, not on the org chart
2. 02Check whether that person has real capacity to direct and develop a Head of Sales
3. 03If a Sales Director role does not exist and is not planned, confirm the MD can commit the time
4. 04Write the reporting line into the role brief before recruiting, and share it with candidates
5. 05Revisit the decision as the team grows — the right answer at ten people may not hold at twenty-five