How do I make sales less dependent on me as the founder?
Separate the parts of selling that need the founder from the parts the founder merely happens to do. Finding prospects, first approaches, follow-up and proving the firm's credibility can all run without you once written down and owned by someone. Closing the largest deals may stay with you for years. The aim is conversations that keep arriving while you are away.
Why it all still runs through you.
Buyers trust you, not the firm
Your reputation lives in your phone and in rooms you have stood in. A stranger looks up the firm and finds a services page and a team photo, which persuades nobody.
Nobody else opens conversations
You start every conversation as well as closing it, through lunches, introductions and people you have known for years. The team can take a warm lead forward, but nobody else creates one.
The method was never written down
You know which firms to call, what change makes them ready to buy, and what to say first. It never needed writing down because you were always there.
What it is costing you.
Take last year's new business and mark every deal you personally started or closed. For example, if £1m of £1.2m came through you, that £1m rests on one person's health and attention. Divide by twelve for the price of a month off. Anyone who might one day buy your firm will do the same sum, and take it off the offer.
Check it yourself in ten minutes.
Your diary and your deal list are enough.
- 1
From your diary, total last month's selling hours. Split them into finding, first conversations and closing.
- 2
List your last ten wins and mark who started each conversation.
- 3
Ask your number two to explain, without you in the room, why clients choose you. Compare it with the website.
- 4
Ask ChatGPT about yourself by name, then about the firm. Compare how much it knows about each.
What we would do in the first 90 days.
The job is to move what you know out of your head and into things that work while you are elsewhere.
- Week 1
Growth Review with a founder. We check your site, two competitors, and what Google and ChatGPT say about all three, then send three fixes in writing. Then a first 30-minute interview with you about who buys and why.
- Weeks 2 to 6
That interview becomes site pages answering the questions buyers put to you, and expert pieces in your voice. Your LinkedIn profile is rewritten, with six to eight posts a month from the same interview.
- Days 45 to 90
After a warm-up month, researched outreach runs at 80 to 120 approaches a month, each written and approved by a person. You decide which meetings need you.
The Growth Team programme covers all three services from £2,500 a month (most clients pay £5,000 to £8,000), all prices exclude VAT, and you can stop after any step.
How Growth Team programme works ↗The short answers.
Possibly, but look at what they would walk into. They still need conversations to have and public proof to point at, and at the moment you supply both. Hire one into a firm with neither and you have an expensive person waiting for your introductions.
It should, because it starts with you talking. One 30-minute interview a month becomes the expert pieces and the LinkedIn posts, with your opinions left in. Outreach messages are written and approved by a person, and LinkedIn engagement is done by a person too.
Not this quarter. A rebuilt site takes 4 to 8 weeks to go live, outreach needs a warm-up month, and movement in AI answers takes months, not weeks. Test it with a week away, phone off, then a fortnight. Book the month when the fortnight passes without a dip.
Founders who said this also said these.
We've been at £5m for three years.
A founder-led B2B firm usually stalls when the things that built it, referrals and the founder's own selling, reach their ceiling. The network has been worked, the founder's diary is full, and each year's new business only replaces the clients that left. Growth tends to restart when strangers can find the firm, trust it before the first call, and are approached on purpose.
Growth Team programmeI am still our best salesperson.
A founder usually outsells everyone because they carry authority, know every past project and can change the offer in the room. None of that transfers by hiring a salesperson. What does transfer is the work before the meeting: finding the right firms, researching them and opening the conversation. Hand that over first and keep the closing meetings.
Pipeline That Fills
Bring this one to the call.
Thirty minutes with a founder. We look at your site, two competitors and what Google and ChatGPT say about all three beforehand. You leave with three fixes in writing.