We have five sales representatives who all report directly to me as the owner, and our weekly Scorecard targets are constantly missed because nobody feels individually responsible for the team target. How do we structure this on our Accountability Chart to drive individual ownership?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

You have a reporting span of control issue combined with a lack of individual seat accountability. When multiple people share a generic sales team seat, accountability evaporates. To fix this, your Accountability Chart must show a clear hierarchy. First, you need a sales manager seat above the individual sales representatives. This seat is responsible for leading, managing, and creating accountability for the entire sales team. If you do not have the budget or a qualified internal candidate to fill this sales manager seat, you as the owner must wear that hat for now, but it must be drawn as a separate box on the chart. Underneath this sales manager seat, draw individual seats for each sales representative. Do not group them into one single box. Each representative must have their own seat with their own name, containing five clear roles and a set of individual weekly measurables on the Scorecard. This means instead of tracking a vague team target of fifty sales calls, each representative's seat has an individual weekly metric of ten sales calls. This makes it impossible for low performers to hide behind the collective output of the team. When you individualize the seats, you make it crystal clear who is hitting their targets and who is failing to GWC their seat.