Top 30 Crimes of Founder Led Sales

Your founder is guilty! (Are you the founder?)

Your founder is guilty! (Are you the founder?)

Your founder is guilty! (Are you the founder?)

All founders are guilty! (You are guilty!)

The hypothesis is simple. All founders are guilty of at least 51% of these atrocities. How many of these would your employees say you are guilty of. Your opinion kinda doesn’t matter, you’re biased because your mom says your wonderful.

30. GUILTY! You think hiring the pedigree sales leader from a big company who has never actually built a process or a team is the perfect fit.?

29. GUILTY! You over-subcribe to the notion that it only takes a teeny-tiny-itsy-bitsy spider of equity and the potential of an IPO will seduce the best talent and make people fall magically under your spell.

28. GUILTY! You think ramp time should be two weeks and a sales person will be profitable in 30 days when you have a $100,000 ACV

27. GUILTY! You think forecasts are supposed to be 100% accurate all the time.?

26. GUILTY! You say you treat your employees like family except you don’t realize you’re the crazy uncle we like to see at Thanksgiving and 4 hours later that’s enough until next year.?

25. GUILTY! You think hiring a big shot AE will bring you business immediately. It rarely brings any business at all.

24. GUILTY! You think its smarter to leave the money from your VCs in the bank and do things manually to save money.

23. GUILTY! You think you need a complete sales process in the CRM before you have 20 customers

22. GUILTY!? You are forgetting you need to talk to 100 people BEFORE you go up market just like you did when you first started the company. Not just because you have a few larger clients.

21. GUILTY! You don’t understand that it’s easier for you to sell based on your title as founder/ co-founder compared to someone with a traditional sales title.?

20. GUILTY!? You don’t understand that delegation means you cannot keep re-inserting yourself just because you would do it differently.?

19. GUILTY! Even if your solution is horizontal you think you should sell to all verticals, and not focus on 2-3 verticals to get the most traction and momentum.

18. GUILTY! It will not, not now, and not ever go as fast as you think it should. Your projections are hypotheses at best in early-stage sales.

17.? GUILTY! You are not so special that you will prove #18 wrong. Spend that energy elsewhere.

16. GUILTY! Just because you read a sales book over the weekend does not mean you are an expert in sales.

15. GUILTY! Your value prop is wrong because it talks about what you do, not what pains you solve. Speak in use cases and case study stories. Nobody buys words; they buy pictures of pain. Example: When I say “Tylenol”, do you imagine a pill, it’s shape, etc.? Or do you see an image of someone holding their head, and the frontal lobe is red? Did you know that’s the same red as the box and bottle?

14. GUILTY! Your value prop is wrong because it’s what you think your value prop should be. How many customers have you asked why they purchased your product or service and then asked them to put that in a value prop?

13. GUILTY! Your value prop is wrong because you are using words like Effective, Efficient, Fast, Easier, Accurate, AI, Analytics, Analyze, World Class, World Leader, ___-first. Remember, your competitors can and probably say the same thing until the prospect asks the “question we pray they won’t ask.”

12. GUILTY! Your value prop is wrong because you don’t follow it up, and this is good because it [insert use case].

11. GUILTY! Building a revenue team is EXPENSIVE, always. (SDR, Sales, Customer Success, Account Management, etc)

10. GUILTY! If you only hire one salesperson at a time, tells me you’re guilty of most things on this list.

9. GUILTY! You are hiring Ops way too late. Should be first alongside a Head of Sales.

8. GUILTY! If you have more AEs than SDRs, it also tells me you’re guilty of most things on this list.

7. GUILTY! Not allowing new reps to go out and meet with clients to understand the value they bring to the right customer. (Courtesy of my friend John Barrows of JB Sales)

6. GUILTY! If you haven’t documented your stories (not just recorded, but also transcribed on paper), you are probably guilty of most things on this list.

5. GUILTY! You buy into the “we must have someone who’s done it before”. That’s just advice VCs want to give so when it doesn’t work out, they can turn it around on you (more subconscious of them, than conscious). Hire “can do” vs. “has done”. More hustle, more grit, a bigger chip on their shoulder.

4. GUILTY! You think sales reps and sales leaders are expendable commodities. Yet, when product teams miss their release dates, they don’t get fired. When marketing misses lead goals, they don’t get fired.

3. GUILTY! In most cases, your VCs won’t give you this list because they haven’t done it themselves in a long time and don’t know. Not their fault, just the reality.

2. GUILTY! You blame the sales team for your willingness to give the client the discount after the deadline when the real issue is you’ve never given them any training on pricing, negotiations, and discounting in the first place.

1. GUILTY! You are freaking out because you are now realizing you are guilty of 70% of these crimes, not the 51% hypothesis.?

Agree or disagree, let us know in the comments.

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