Do you have four salespeople, an annual target in a spreadsheet and, by mid-month, nobody knows whether they're on track? It happens in a lot of B2B SMBs: everyone sells their own way, goals are split up by gut feel and management only sees the result when it's too late to course-correct.
In this guide you'll see how to organize a sales team of 2 to 20 people, set sales goals based on your history, avoid quota and commission mistakes, bring order to follow-up and choose the sales KPIs to review each week.
What makes a sales team effective
A sales team is the group of people responsible for turning demand into revenue: finding customers, serving them and closing deals, with a shared structure, goals and way of working. It's effective when every member knows what role they play, what's expected of them each week and how their progress is measured.
When a team underperforms, it's rarely for lack of talent: salespeople do a bit of everything, goals don't come from any calculation, there's no follow-up and the data lives in personal spreadsheets. That gets fixed with sales team management, not with more pressure.
Sales team structure by SMB size
Sales team structure defines how many people there are, what role each one plays and who they report to. In an SMB, roles get split up when volume justifies it.
| Team size | How it's organized | Typical roles | Who leads |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 to 4 salespeople | Each one sells and manages their own accounts | Hybrid reps | Owner or general manager |
| 5 to 10 salespeople | New business and existing accounts are separated | Hunters, farmers, presales | Sales manager with a small book of their own |
| 11 to 20 salespeople | Teams by territory, channel or segment | Inside sales, field sales, KAM, presales | Head of sales and team leads |
The most common roles
- Hunter: finds and closes new customers.
- Farmer: grows the existing book of business through repeat purchases and cross-selling.
- Presales: demos and technical proposals when the product is complex.
- KAM (key account manager): a few large accounts, with a plan for each customer (see key account management and QBRs).
- Inside sales (remote selling): sells remotely and performs best with smaller deal sizes and short cycles.
Sales goals: what they are and how to set them
Sales goals are the commercial results a team or salesperson commits to achieving in a defined period, expressed as a measurable figure: revenue, margin, new customers or activities. A good goal is calculated from your history and the team's real capacity, not just from what the budget needs.
Outcome goals and activity goals
Outcome goals measure what gets achieved (sales, margin, new customers), and activity goals measure what the salesperson controls (meetings, quotes, follow-ups). The outcome tells you whether you're on track; the activity explains why, in time to correct course.
How to set sales goals: a worked example
In the top-down approach, management sets the number and splits it up; in the bottom-up approach, each salesperson estimates what they can achieve with their pipeline. The healthy move is to cross-check both with this formula:
Sales goal = qualified opportunities × close rate × average deal size
Say you want to sell CLP 24,000,000 (Chilean pesos) a month with three salespeople, an average deal size of CLP 2,000,000 and a 25% close rate. Working backward:
- Deals needed: CLP 24,000,000 ÷ CLP 2,000,000 = 12 deals won per month.
- Opportunities needed: 12 ÷ 0.25 = 48 qualified opportunities.
- Activity needed: if half of first meetings produce a qualified opportunity, you need 96 meetings.
- Goal per salesperson: 96 ÷ 3 = 32 meetings a month (about 8 a week), adjusted by role.
- Reality check: if each of them has 4 a week today, you need to double activity or improve conversion before the month starts.
Then comes the breakdown: the goal is split by book of business, role and tenure, not in equal parts.
| Salesperson | Profile | Share | Monthly goal |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Farmer with a mature book of business | 40% | CLP 9,600,000 |
| B | Hunter | 35% | CLP 8,400,000 |
| C | New hire | 25% | CLP 6,000,000 |
| Total | 100% | CLP 24,000,000 |
Next, adjust by month and product: if your history shows February sells less, that gap shifts to the strong months.
Sales quotas and sales commissions: common mistakes
A sales quota is the share of the goal assigned to each salesperson; sales commissions are the variable pay they earn based on what they sell. Designed poorly, they reward exactly what you don't want:
- Equal quotas for different books of business: they punish the rep starting from zero and hand the goal to the one who inherits customers.
- Paying commission on revenue alone: it pushes aggressive discounting. If margin matters, include it.
- Opaque plans: if salespeople can't calculate what they earned, the incentive loses its pull.
- Changing the rules mid-period: it destroys trust faster than a bad month.
- Making commission contingent on customer payment: in Chile this isn't allowed if the salesperson has an employment contract; the commission is earned with the sale, regardless of the payment terms agreed with the customer, according to Chile's labor authority (Dirección del Trabajo, Ord. N° 4814/44 of 2012).
Management cadence: weekly meeting, forecast and 1:1s
Goals are useless without a routine to review them:
- Pipeline meeting (weekly, 30 min): which stuck opportunities get moving and who owns them.
- 1:1 (every two weeks, 30 min): where each salesperson needs support.
- Forecast (monthly, 45 to 60 min): whether what's committed is enough to hit the goal.
- Quota review (quarterly): whether goals need to be recalibrated.
You'll find the agenda for each one in AI-powered sales meetings. The forecast requires every opportunity to have an amount and an expected close date; without that, it's just an opinion.
Sales KPIs to review every week
Sales KPIs are the metrics that show whether the team is on track to hit the goal and where it's getting stuck. Track just a few, with a shared definition:
| KPI | How it's calculated | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Progress to goal | Sales ÷ period goal | Below where you should be to date |
| Pipeline coverage | Open pipeline ÷ remaining goal | Less than 1 ÷ close rate (4x if you close 25%) |
| Close rate | Deals won ÷ opportunities closed | Sustained drop for one salesperson |
| Average deal size | Sales ÷ deals won | Falling because of discounts |
| Sales cycle | Days from creation to close | Getting longer month after month |
| Activities | Meetings and follow-ups | Below the activity goal |
| Stalled opportunities | No activity in X days | Increasing every week |
| Margin per salesperson | Gross margin ÷ sales | Below the defined minimum |
To measure them in Odoo, see Odoo CRM to close more deals, and if qualification is where you fall short, read about lead management.
Tools: CRM, dashboards, alerts and AI
As the team grows, you need four pieces:
- A CRM with teams and goals. In Odoo 19 and 20, with the Sales app, each team has a monthly invoicing target with a progress bar (Odoo documentation), and CRM gamification includes goals such as new leads. Odoo 20 adds rules to distribute leads in rotation among salespeople (release notes). Availability depends on your version and plan.
- Dashboards. Keep BI adds prebuilt dashboards to Odoo, such as "Sales Status & Performance" and "Salesperson Status & Performance," with no report building required.
- Alerts. Keep Checking notifies you inside Odoo with alerts such as "Stalled opportunities," "Overdue CRM activities" or "Opportunity with no expected revenue"; an at-risk goal alert can be custom-built. Put together your selection in the quote builder or read about automatic threshold alerts.
- AI. With the AI assistants and agents from Kersify, such as the CRM and sales agent, every meeting or email logs activities and notes in the CRM, whether it's Odoo or another one, without the salesperson typing them in; a person reviews them first. Learn more in AI sales automation.
Why do it with KPB Solutions
At KPB, we start with how your team sells, not with the software. As an Odoo Gold Partner with a team of more than 40 KPBeers, we set up your teams, pipeline and targets as part of the Odoo implementation, and add Keep BI, Keep Checking or Kersify if your operation needs them.
Want to organize your sales team with clear goals and up-to-date data? Book a meeting and let's talk.
