Ask a sales organisation how many sellers it has and the answer comes quickly. Ask how much of their week reaches meaningful customer and prospect conversations, and the room goes quiet. Senior commercial time is usually the most expensive resource in the company — and the least measured. Activity reports show busyness, but busyness is not the same as commercial progress.
The calendar tells the truth the org chart does not.
Job titles suggest focus: business developers develop markets, account managers develop accounts, sales leaders manage sales. The calendar often tells a different story. The same senior people research accounts, rebuild proposals, reconcile CRM records, chase internal approvals and rescue follow-up that nobody owned.
None of these tasks is wrong in itself. The question is who performs them. When the most experienced commercial judgment in the organisation is spent on work that a system or a specialist could carry, the cost is invisible in any single week — and decisive over a quarter.
Before asking for more headcount, ask how much of the existing week actually reaches buyers — and what consumed the rest.
Time does not disappear in one dramatic block.
Commercial capacity rarely drains through one visible hole. It leaks through small switches: searching for the context behind an old opportunity, preparing the same account brief twice, chasing a decision that had no named owner, or reconstructing history a CRM should have preserved.
Each switch looks minor. Together they fragment the long stretches of attention that relevant conversations and thoughtful follow-up actually require. A fragmented week can be full and still produce little.
“A full calendar is not evidence of commercial capacity. It is only evidence of activity.”De Grijff · Commercial operating principle
Map the real week before redesigning it.
For two or three representative weeks, classify where senior commercial time went: direct conversations with buyers and prospects; preparation that improved those conversations; internal coordination; administration; and follow-up that existed because ownership was unclear.
The pattern is usually uncomfortable and immediately actionable. Teams discover that the constraint was never motivation or headcount, but the distribution of work around the people who carry the customer relationship.
Reclaim time before adding people.
Sort the activities into three groups: what genuinely requires senior commercial judgment, what a specialist or system can carry with clear ownership, and what should simply stop. Give the first group protected space, give the second a defined owner and make the third visible in weekly reviews.
Capacity improves when the operating model changes — not when the team gets bigger inside the same model. Hiring then adds to a system that already protects the value of the person you hire.
References & further reading
- Sales capacity is a design problem — De Grijff
- Sales Capacity Assessment — De Grijff
