When Should Founders Step Back From Selling?

(many don't want to sell at all)

First of all: founders have to sell!

I know that many are scared because they’ve never done it.

(Good news: at the early stage, authenticity is more important than a perfect process. I keep seeing that with the founders I engage with.)

Founders are literally the human face of the company. There is no way around it, even if you work with someone like myself.

But of course, they cannot and should not do it full-time––as they often do in the early stages (while working on product, hiring, and later, fundraising.)

The moment when they can reduce their presence is when they start closing repeatable wins:

1️⃣ At this point, deals come in less randomly (intros, friends, angels) but through people who don’t know you and like what you’ve built. 

2️⃣ That is always the holy grail. As a result of repeatable wins, you manage to distill patterns that you can apply to new accounts. 

That is when you have a sales process.

3️⃣ Building on this, it makes sense to delegate and hire first sellers to build on what you’ve started.

4️⃣ This becomes a flywheel, where new ongoing learnings help train newbies and achieve what you now call scale.

Should founders step away entirely? 🤔

No!

In the first stages of scale, they should still make themselves available for later stages of the deal cycle.

Once you’re at scale-up or pre-IPO level, for selective deals.

In both cases, sellers should use and play this card for a white-glove treatment 🤵‍♂️

Sold on selling?