Sales Director: A JD That Attracts Top Quota Carriers

The sales director hire is often the highest-stakes commercial decision a mid-market company makes outside of the CEO. Get it right, and the next two years' growth becomes mechanical. Get it wrong, and you lose 9–12 months of pipeline plus the credibility of the GTM bench under them.

Most sales-director JDs we see fail at the same thing: they describe a senior account executive role with three direct reports, not a sales-leader role. Top quota-carriers see through that instantly and skip. Here is the template we use across sales-leadership searches at TheHireHub — what you'd actually post if you took the brief from us.

What this JD filters for

• Sales leaders who think in systems: pipeline mechanics, conversion rates, ramp curves, territory design — not just war stories.
• Operators who can hire, ramp, and performance-manage AEs as a craft — not as an interrupt.
• Leaders who can run a forecast call without flinching — including the calls where the news is bad.

The template

Role summary

We're hiring a Sales Director to lead a team of 8 account executives selling our platform into mid-market HR teams across North America. You'll report to the Chief Revenue Officer, own a team quota of $12M ARR, partner closely with marketing on pipeline, and own AE hiring, ramp, and performance.

What you will own

• Quota: a team quota with personal accountability for the team's attainment, not just attendance.
• The AE bench: hiring, onboarding, ramp design, ongoing coaching, performance management, and the hardest call — letting underperformers go.
• The pipeline operating system: deal review cadence, forecast hygiene, MEDDIC or MEDDPICC discipline, territory design, account planning.
• Cross-functional partnership: marketing on pipeline contribution, customer success on expansion, product on roadmap intel and competitor escalations.
• The forecast call: deliver an honest, defensible weekly forecast — including the awkward ones.
• Win/loss intelligence: a system for actually learning from losses, not just logging them.

Must-haves

• Seven or more years in sales, including three or more as a frontline sales manager carrying a team quota at a B2B SaaS company between Series B and Series D.
• A demonstrated track record of overattainment as a manager — not just as an IC AE. Name the year, the team, the quota, the result.
• Hired and ramped at least 5–8 AEs in a previous role, with ramp time at or below industry benchmark.
• Comfort with a deal-review cadence: MEDDIC, MEDDPICC, Force Management, or equivalent — applied, not theorized.
• Forecast accuracy as a track record (within 10% of called number, multiple quarters running).
• Comfort being the "no" voice: pushing back on unqualified pipeline, on bad-fit deals, on under-resourced segments.

Nice-to-haves

• Direct experience selling to your specific ICP — not just adjacent buyers.
• Experience scaling a team through a quota expansion or geography expansion.
• Familiarity with your sales tech stack (Salesforce, Outreach, Gong, ZoomInfo).
• A network of AEs you'd re-hire.

Compensation guidance

Mid-market 2026 sales director bands typically run: US $200–280k base + 80–120% OTE + equity. UK £130–180k base + variable. India ₹70 lakh–1.2 crore fixed CTC + variable. Variable should be at-risk and outsized if hit; sales directors who don't want it are often the wrong hire.

Success metrics — first 12 months

• Team attainment at or above 100% of quota, with the math behind it (not single-deal heroics).
• Forecast accuracy within 10% for at least three consecutive quarters.
• Ramp time on new AEs at or below your benchmark — typically 90 days to first deal, 6 months to full ramp.
• At least two AE hires you would rehire — measured by team peers, not just by the new hire's quota.
• A documented sales operating system the rest of the company can audit: deal review cadence, forecast process, account planning, win/loss tagging.

Interview rubric

• Operating reasoning (30%): walk their last team — territory design, hiring, ramp, attainment, what they'd change.
• Coaching (25%): a structured roleplay where they coach an AE through a real-feeling deal stuck at proof-of-value.
• Forecast judgment (20%): a structured scenario on diagnosing a soft quarter and deciding which deals to push, which to cut, which to call.
• Team and leadership (15%): hardest hire-to-fire story, with explicit follow-ups on what they got wrong.
• Domain and customer fluency (10%): can they talk about your customer in a way that signals real understanding — not boilerplate?

Customize this template

• PLG-augmented motion: add a "self-serve to sales-assisted" judgment scenario. Drop the cold-pipeline emphasis.
• Greenfield or category-creation: weight team-building and coaching higher than operating-system depth (because there is no operating system to inherit).
• Sales director under a CRO: drop forecast-call ownership to "co-owns" and add a "scaling under a CRO" scenario.
• Quota: anchor against the team headcount × $1.5M ARR per AE for mid-market SaaS as a starting heuristic, then adjust for ACV and motion.

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