Without a Sales Leader

You can try to run a sales organization without a sales leader, but you will never generate the results you are capable of without one. All of the problems and challenges that will prevent you from acquiring clients and growing your revenue will stem from the lack of a leader. It isn’t a good idea to try to build a sales organization without having a leader in place.

You can build a sales process designed to help you compel change, create value for your dream clients, and win new business. Without a leader to help salespeople learn, follow, and make adjustments to that process, the process is meaningless, worthless. With a leader, a process can provide an excellent framework for winning new deals.

If you want to hire people without providing them a leader, you may as well take the money you would spend on that sales force, pour gasoline on the money, strike a match, and burn the money. Without a leader to set priorities, to set the cadence, to coach and develop them, salespeople will not perform to their true capacity. With a leader, you will have a sales force with priorities, an operating rhythm, and a coach who will improve their skills—and their results.

Maybe you will do others have done before you, try to change the process, train the sales force, install a new methodology, or maybe fire the whole sales force and start over. Doing any or all of these will leave you exactly where these decisions have left the entrepreneurs and executive leaders who tried to change everything instead of hiring a leader. They were left in the same place as where they started, namely, lacking a sales leader.

It is important to get things in the right order. Without providing the sales force with the leadership they need, you are not giving them a fair chance to succeed. Nor are you giving yourself that same chance. Hire the leader first, and then work on building around them.