The first sales hire lasted nine months. The founder took the pipeline back.

Founder-led selling bundles four different jobs into one person. Hiring a salesperson usually replaces only one of them, and rarely the one that was binding.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The first sales hire lasted nine months. The founder took the pipeline back.

A familiar sequence: revenue is growing, the founder is the bottleneck on every deal, so the business hires its first salesperson. There is a good month, driven by deals already in flight. Then a quiet quarter. By month seven the conversation is about fit, by month nine the person has gone, and the founder is back in the pipeline telling themselves that sales hires don’t work here. The second attempt usually fails the same way, because the diagnosis was never made in the first place. The useful question is not…

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