The Strategic Sales Seat: The Missing Piece in Scaling Your Engineering, Architecture, or Construction Business

In the engineering, architecture, and construction (EAC) industry, the seller-doer model that often fuels early growth can become the very ceiling that prevents further scaling. Senior technical professionals juggle project delivery, client management, and sales, which works well for smaller firms. However, as businesses grow, this model can lead to inefficiencies, misaligned goals, and missed opportunities. The solution to breaking through these limitations is implementing a Strategic Sales Seat—a dedicated role focused on driving long-term sales strategy and ensuring alignment across markets, offices, and teams. This blog will explore the importance of structuring your business around core functions, the challenges of the seller-doer model as we scale, and why a Strategic Sales Seat is crucial for sustainable growth. 

Structuring Your Business Around Core Functions 

Every business, regardless of industry, is built around four core functions: selling profitable work, doing profitable work, getting paid for that work, and supporting the work – said another way, sales and marketing, operations, finance, and administration. When these functions are clearly defined and assigned, they create the backbone of a scalable organization. For companies in the EAC industry, however, the sales model that often fuels early growth can become the very ceiling that prevents further scaling. 

At the start of their journey, most EAC firms rely on a few key employees wearing multiple hats—handling sales, client relationships, project delivery, and a variety of other tasks as needed. As the company grows, firm leaders often continue to juggle both sales and operations in a seller-doer model, managing client relationships, generating new business, and delivering projects. While this model works in the early stages, it becomes harder to sustain as the organization scales and roles are delegated to more team members. The main issue is that the sales and marketing function, which should focus on business growth, becomes diffused across the operations team. The day-to-day demands of project work take priority, pushing the critical task of generating new business to the backburner. 

Without clear lines between these core functions, businesses inevitably hit growth plateaus. They struggle to coordinate between offices, markets, project teams, and principals. As a result, opportunities are missed, markets remain untapped, and growth stagnates. Structuring your business to include a dedicated sales function—and more importantly, a strategic sales seat on your leadership team—is essential to aligning the company for sustainable growth. 

The Limitations of the Seller-Doer Model 

In many EAC firms, the seller-doer model dominates. This approach works by having senior technical experts (engineers, architects, project managers) double as salespeople. These professionals are often the best at maintaining client relationships because they understand the work and can speak directly about the value they provide. They also tend to generate significant revenue by staying top of mind with clients. However, as effective as this model can be for driving short-term revenue, it presents a major limitation: strategic sales planning is often missing. 

In the seller-doer model, much of the sales effort is short-term and/or reactionary. Seller-doers often focus on the next project or client request instead of thinking strategically about the company’s overall growth objectives. The lack of an overarching sales strategy becomes more apparent as the company expands into new markets, opens additional offices, or seeks to diversify services. Without a big-picture perspective, the company risks becoming fragmented, with each office or seller-doer pursuing their own goals without alignment to the broader organizational strategy. 

In addition, seller-doers are typically busy with operational duties. Project delivery takes priority, meaning that business development efforts can become sporadic and inconsistent. This results in lost opportunities and misalignment between sales and operations. 

To scale effectively, businesses need a sales structure that focuses on both execution and strategy. A dedicated Strategic Sales Seat brings that balance, ensuring that the sales effort is aligned with the company’s long-term vision while allowing seller-doers to focus on what they do best. 

The Value of a Strategic Sales Seat 

The sales and marketing functions in your organization consist of both execution and strategic roles. Execution roles, such as sales, marketing, and proposal writing, focus on the day-to-day activities necessary for generating new business. In contrast, strategic roles include branding, high-level sales planning, and win strategies for major proposals. As firms scale, the importance of strategic roles increases, making a dedicated Strategic Sales Seat essential for overseeing the entire sales function and ensuring alignment with the company’s growth goals. 

The strategic sales leader functions like a magnet, pulling together all the seller-doers, offices, and markets to ensure alignment and collaboration. This role is responsible for overseeing the company’s overall sales goals, identifying how much growth will come from existing clients and how much will need to come from new clients, markets, or services. By coordinating opportunities across various markets, offices, and teams, this leader fosters a unified approach to driving sustainable growth, ultimately strengthening the firm’s competitive edge in the marketplace. 

In a growing EAC firm, the Strategic Sales Seat is essential to manage the complexities that come with scaling. This individual is responsible for: 

• Setting sales goals and ensuring they align with the company’s long-term growth strategy. 

• Coordinating opportunities across different markets, offices, and teams. 

• Driving the sales pipeline, ensuring that the company’s opportunity funnel is well-managed and aligned with its strategic goals. 

Without this strategic oversight, companies risk hitting a ceiling, struggling to coordinate sales efforts across regions or disciplines, and losing out on major growth opportunities. The strategic sales leader ensures that the company’s growth is not left to chance but is actively pursued through a well-defined, long-term strategy. 

Conclusion: Break Through Growth Ceilings with a Strategic Sales Seat 

As companies in the engineering, architecture, and construction industries scale, the seller-doer model that worked in the early stages becomes a limiting factor. Without a clear separation of sales and operations, and without strategic oversight, businesses risk stagnation. A Strategic Sales Seat provides the necessary alignment, bringing together all the various parts of the business to pursue growth in a coordinated and strategic way. 

If your company is struggling to manage its sales pipeline across multiple offices or markets, or if you’ve hit a growth ceiling and aren’t sure why, it might be time to consider implementing a Strategic Sales Seat. This role will ensure that your sales efforts are aligned with your long-term growth strategy and that your company continues to scale with intention and efficiency. 

Are you ready to focus on the bigger picture and unlock sustainable growth for your business? If so, email me at info@odysseyadvisors.us and let’s start doing simple better today.