Do Not Delegate Sales: The Incredible Benefits of Founder-Led Sales
Many entrepreneurs dream of building an amazing product that sells itself. While a great product is undoubtedly important, having the founder directly involved in sales - especially in the early days of a startup - can provide tremendous value. In this post, we’ll explore why founder-led sales are so critical for startups and some of the common pitfalls of handing off the sales function too early.
Why Founder Sales Matter
There are several key reasons why actively participating in sales calls and interactions can benefit startup founders:
- Understanding Customer Needs Firsthand
No one can develop more empathy and a deeper understanding of what customers truly want or need than the founder through firsthand sales interactions. The feedback a founder gains from these customer conversations is invaluable for iterating on product-market fit. No game of “telephone” through account managers or other middlemen can compare.
- Conveying Authentic Passion & Vision
Customers – especially early adopters – buy into the vision, passion, and enthusiasm of the founder. The ability to convey your “why” behind the product and business with authenticity and conviction is best coming directly from the founder versus being relayed second-hand through a sales rep.
- Building Customer Bonds & Trust
Making sales is fundamentally about building personal connections and trust. Customers want to know they can rely on the founder’s word to deliver value and support the product. Having the founder directly involved in sales conversations leads to stronger personal connections and credibility with customers.
- Closing Deals & Overcoming Objections
During the life-or-death early days of a fledgling startup, having the founder directly push to close deals and overcome customer objections is critical. Founders tend to have the greatest motivation to win deals at any cost compared to early sales hires. Founder involvement often makes the difference between landing a customer or not.
While there are many positive reasons for founders to be actively selling, why is it they often stop or scale back prematurely?
Why Founders Stop Selling
There are a few common pitfalls that lead founders to pull themselves out of sales prematurely:
- Discomfort with Selling
Let’s face it – sales is hard. Repeated rejection is taxing. Many founders build products because they love to create solutions, but they don’t relish promoting or selling them. Selling can feel unnatural or uncomfortable, leading some founders to throw in the towel too early.
- Lack of Time
Startups encounter an endless stream of demands on the founder’s time - fundraising, product development, team building, and more. It’s easy for sales interactions to get deprioritized. Customer sales calls get pushed to the back burner.
- Pursuit of “Scale”
Many founders have the false sense that real “scale” requires pulling back from sales. There’s pressure to act like a “serious” CEO, which is interpreted to mean removing oneself from the sales trenches. In reality, fast-scaling startups like Shopify and Mailchimp had their founders selling for years even after major growth.
- Over-Reliance on Sales Hires
Founders often hire sales reps or SDRs faster than they should, trusting too soon that a sales team will produce revenue. But early sales hires take time to ramp up and often fail without direct founder involvement. This premature delegation slows sales momentum.
Best Practices for Founder Sales
Maintaining active involvement in sales is crucial, but it’s equally important to develop an effective founder sales model. Here are some best practices:
Set Aside Dedicated Time Weekly Even through exponential growth, famous founders like Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes maintained regular customer sales calls. Protecting a recurring time slot helps ensure customer interactions don’t get deprioritized.
Pair Up with Sales Reps Joining sales calls and meetings with your early sales hires helps them learn directly from you while you continue making important customer connections.
Create Customer Onboarding/Success Systems Make the hand-off smooth for customers once the sale closes through well-designed onboarding, implementation, adoption, and support processes.
Document Learnings and Feedback Stay actively engaged through regular sales calls, but avoid getting bogged down operationally. Document key learnings in CRM and feedback loops to inform product and operations.
Celebrate “Small” Deals Early customers wins - even small deals - need to be celebrated publicly to reinforce the value of founder sales involvement to the culture. Make it clear that no deals or customers are too small for the founder.
The Bottom Line
Founder-led selling should persist for multiple years into the startup journey because so much value comes from keeping your founder in front of customers. Savvy founders make time for regular sales conversations with customers and early hires throughout growth phases rather than delegating too fast. Maintaining these customer connections breeds product-market fit, strengthens vision sharing, and ultimately fuels sales momentum that any scale-hungry startup needs.
So even amidst the tornado of activities running any startup, never stop selling. Your baby will thank you for it.
Want to read more? Try these articles:
Decoding the Distinction Between Sales and Marketing: Unveiling the Core Differences
How to Scale Your Leadership Skills to Match Your Startup Growth
11th December 2023