I truly believe that founders make the best salespeople. We work with many founders through our fractional sales offerings and my founder-led sales training, so I say it often. Many founders are shocked by this, as they typically don’t enjoy sales or don’t think they are very good at it.

However, founders possess key attributes that make them exceptional: passion for the solution, deep subject matter expertise, and an immense amount of motivation to keep the company moving forward. Here are a few tips founders can use to improve their sales game.

Have a Plan

Creating a sales plan takes time, but it saves significant effort in the long run. A solid plan should highlight the ideal customer profile, sales goals, steps in the sales process, CRM usage, sales cadence, and messaging. Founders can maximize their efforts by using time-friendly tools like LinkedIn outreach strategies and email templates. This makes sales tactics easier to execute and more comfortable for the founder to manage.

Make the Time

While founders make the best salespeople, I know it’s often not their favorite task. Consistency is key to getting results. Set specific goals for activities like discovery meetings, demos, and proposals. To stay on track, try blocking off dedicated time in your schedule each week specifically for sales. Most importantly: follow through on the sales work you’ve committed to.

Get Ready for Growth

I often speak to technical founders who create a product and immediately want to outsource the sales effort. Before doing that, you should personally test the product-market fit, pricing, and competitive landscape through direct sales interactions.

We suggest securing some “wins” yourself before hiring a sales team. As a founder, you will gain a better feel for what works and what doesn’t, which prevents you from paying someone else to do the heavy lifting of figuring it out. Once you have a plan, message, and process in place, it is much easier to add more sales horsepower. The strategy will evolve, but your new hires will have a proven roadmap to follow from day one.

I really believe that founders make the best salespeople. If you want to talk about sales planning or founder-led sales, please reach out to me!