There is no transition "out of sales" as a founder

A 6-step framework to grow sales as a founder

👋 Hi, it’s Kyle Poyar and welcome to Growth Unhinged, my weekly newsletter exploring the hidden playbooks behind the fastest-growing startups.

When I ask founders about their biggest growth mistakes, they almost always bring up early sales decisions. Their first AE was a costly mishire, setting them back 6+ months. They hired a sales leader before they were ready for it. Or they thought they could transition “out of sales” to focus on product.

Thankfully, Seth DeHart is one of the foremost experts on this topic. After successful runs as an early sales leader, he’s gone on to advise 80+ B2B startups — including Typeform, Attio, incident.io and SuperAnnotate — on this exact journey. He also runs Founder Led Sales, the free platform and community helping 250+ founders up their sales game. Today, Seth shares his six-step framework for nailing founder-led sales.

More resources: Future of GTM series | Zero to One series

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This wouldn’t be a post about sales if I didn’t mention that to close deals and generate revenue someone at your startup has to actually “do sales.”

And as someone who’s spent 20 years “doing sales” I’m comfortable saying that much of it sucks. Too much of it is glamorized by sales people with the “man in the arena” quotes, which misses the point that if you haven’t done it before the whole idea is extremely intimidating for many of us.

But the harsh truth is that I’ve yet to see a SaaS startup go the distance without at least one Founder closely focused on revenue. Hopefully after reading this you’ll have more confidence that you not only can “do it” but you can make it a core competency of your startup’s culture.

It may sound obvious, but if you’ve been around enough startups you see the same nonsense repeated over and over that you can “just hire someone to do sales” or that “the founder transitions out of sales.” No. There is no transition “out of sales.” The roles transition, but at least one founder is the steward of revenue for the company. Forever.

What I've learned from working with hundreds of founders is that successful revenue scaling follows a clear progression. The key is knowing exactly where you are in the journey and what to focus on next.

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The six phases of the founder-led sales journey

Check out the Founder Led Sales community for more checklists and resources

Your journey breaks down into six distinct phases, each building on the foundation of the previous one:

1. Finding early product-market fit (PMF)

2. Acquiring customers

3. The first sales hire(s)

4. Making it predictable

5. Multiple sales hires

6. Hiring a sales leader

Let's dive into each phase and what makes it critical for success. But first, here’s a quick framework to identify where you are today.

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Phase 1: Finding early product-market fit (PMF)