Our sales representatives are currently responsible for both hunting new accounts and managing existing customer relationships, but they are neglecting outbound sales to focus on easy client service tasks. How do we restructure this on our Accountability Chart?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Hunting for new business and farming existing accounts require completely different skill sets and personality profiles. Hunters are driven by the thrill of the chase and closing deals. Farmers excel at building long-term relationships, solving client problems, and ensuring retention. When you combine these into one seat, people will naturally gravitate toward the activities they find easiest or most comfortable, which is usually servicing existing clients. To fix this, you must split this hybrid seat into two distinct seats on your Accountability Chart: an Account Executive seat and an Account Manager seat. The Account Executive seat should have roles focused purely on prospecting, qualifying leads, and closing new logos. The Account Manager seat should focus on onboarding, client retention, upselling, and customer satisfaction. Both seats should report to your Sales and Marketing Director. By separating these seats, you can place the right people in the right seats based on their natural strengths. This structural split ensures that outbound sales activity remains consistent and does not get cannibalized by daily customer service emergencies, unlocking predictable revenue growth.