What if the biggest thing holding your business back isn’t the market, the economy, or even your product? It might simply be that you haven’t decided to hire a salesperson yet.
That might sound bold, maybe even a little uncomfortable, but stick with me for a moment, and you will know.
Over the years, I’ve worked with countless entrepreneurs, founders, and small business owners who were working harder than a one-legged man in a kickboxing contest. They were handling operations, dealing with customers, managing employees, fixing problems, chasing invoices, and, somewhere in the middle of that whirlwind, trying to sell. And that’s where things usually start to wobble.
There’s a statistic that a business coach like me often brings up when this conversation begins. Trust me when I say 91% of small businesses never gross more than a million dollars a year, and over 99% of solopreneurs never break that barrier either. When people hear that number, they immediately begin pointing fingers.
They blame the economy and their competition. They blame taxes, healthcare costs, employees, interest rates, and sometimes even personal circumstances like divorce or family pressures.
Turn on the news, and you’ll hear these explanations all day long. But let me be blunt, those aren’t reasons. They’re just excuses. After decades of coaching business owners specifically in sales, I’ve realized that the real reason isn’t complicated, but it is uncomfortable. The truth is, most businesses stall because they don’t have a dedicated salesperson.
Instead, the owner tries to sell while running the business and putting out fires. Or even worse, they hand sales responsibilities to an already overwhelmed employee and call it a “hybrid role.” And when that happens, the business grows like a part-time hustle, because it becomes one. If sales are part-time, growth will be too.
The Hidden Growth Ceiling Most Business Owners Never Notice
One of the strangest things about running a business is that the ceiling often becomes invisible. At first, growth feels exciting. Orders come in, customers are happy, revenue increases. You’re hustling day and night, and it feels like you’re building momentum. But then something odd happens. Growth slows.
You’re still busy, sometimes busier than ever. However, the numbers stop climbing the way they once did. Revenue plateaus. Opportunities slip through the cracks. Leads don’t get followed up on quickly enough. Proposals sit half-finished. And the most dangerous part comes when you start believing that this is just how business works.
In many cases, the issue is simple but overlooked: nobody owns the sales function full-time. Sales is treated as something squeezed between meetings, phone calls, hiring decisions, operational issues, and endless email threads. Imagine trying to grow a garden while watering the plants only when you remember. Eventually, things dry up. Sales works the same way. If no one is tending to it every single day, growth struggles to take root.
Entrepreneurs eventually realize this when they hire a salesperson, and everything changes.
The #1 Sign It’s Time to Hire a Salesperson
The clearest sign to hire a salesperson is when you find yourself playing multiple roles in your business. For start-up owners, wearing multiple hats is unavoidable. Founder, marketer, product builder, customer service rep; you’re everything. But eventually that jack-of-all-trades approach starts working against you. Every hour you spend managing operations is an hour you’re not selling. Every fire you put out internally is a conversation with a potential client that never happens.
I’ve seen owners who spend entire days solving internal problems and then try to squeeze in sales calls in the last 30 minutes before dinner. That’s like trying to run a marathon after sprinting uphill all day. The energy simply isn’t there.
Sales requires focus, persistence, and rhythm. It’s not something that thrives on leftovers. This is why every scalable business eventually needs to hire a salesperson whose only job is to sell. No distractions or competing priorities, just relentless focus on revenue.
Why Businesses Grow Slowly Without Dedicated Sales
There’s an old saying, “what gets measured gets managed.” But in sales, something even more powerful is true: what gets attention gets revenue. When sales are treated as a side task, they get side results.
Imagine a situation where a business owner starts the week with good intentions. They plan to follow up on leads, reach out to prospects, and maybe schedule some demos. But then reality walks in. A supplier problem pops up. An employee calls in sick. A customer needs urgent support. A technical issue interrupts operations. By the end of the day, sales have been pushed to tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes next week and next week becomes next month. Before long, the pipeline dries up.
That’s why I believe, if you don’t have a full-time salesperson, your business will always grow like a part-time business. And part-time businesses rarely experience explosive growth.
When You Hire a Salesperson, Look for a Sales Closer
Now here’s where things get nuanced. Many founders receive advice that says, “Don’t hire sales too early.” And to be fair, that advice isn’t entirely wrong. Hiring a full VP of Sales or building a large sales team before understanding your market can backfire.
Thankfully, there’s another role that often bridges the gap perfectly. It is the sales closer. This person is different from a traditional sales executive or sales manager. A VP of Sales typically focuses on building and managing teams. They design processes, set quotas, and organize departments.
A traditional sales representative usually works from an established playbook, following defined sales cycles. But a sales closer operates differently. They thrive in ambiguity.
They’re comfortable navigating unknown territory and figuring things out along the way. Instead of simply executing a prebuilt system, they help discover what actually works. In many early-stage companies, this person becomes part of the foundational team. For them, it’s not just selling but also learning. They experiment with messaging, testing value propositions, and identifying patterns in customer behavior. In short, they help uncover the path to growth in any market.
Customer Discovery: The Secret Power of a Sales Closer
Here’s something that might sound counterintuitive. The best sales closers in early-stage businesses often focus more on customer discovery than aggressive selling. That doesn’t mean they ignore revenue. They understand something far more critical: that is, before you scale execution, you need clarity.
What problems matter most to customers?
Which features resonate?
What objections come up repeatedly?
Who is the real buyer inside an organization?
These insights are gold. A skilled sales closer gathers them constantly and feeds them back to the product team, helping the company refine its offering. Customer conversations that feed product improvements accelerate growth. And when that loop runs smoothly, sales begin to compound.
When to Hire a Salesperson Based on Your Sales Complexity
Another important factor is the type of deals your company is pursuing. Not all sales are created equal. Some businesses sell simple products with short buying cycles. A customer sees the offer, quickly understands it, and makes a decision within days.
But enterprise sales are a completely different story. They involve multiple stakeholders, lengthy decision processes, budget approvals, internal politics, and extended negotiations. Managing these deals requires skill and patience, or as some entrepreneurs call it, “muscle memory.”
Experienced sales professionals know how to guide conversations, maintain momentum across stakeholders, and disqualify weak opportunities before they waste valuable time. Without that experience, deals can spiral into endless conversations with no decision in sight. That’s why founders should ask themselves an honest question: Do we already have someone in the team who knows how to manage complex sales cycles? If the answer is no, it may be time to hire a salesperson who does.
Founders Should Still Stay in the Sales Game
Founders might be concerned that their role will be limited after they hire a salesperson. Honestly, it doesn’t. In fact, the opposite is often true. When I hired my first sales leader, I realized something surprising. Instead of stepping away from sales conversations, I became more effective in them. The reason is the sales closer who brought structure and momentum to the process.
The team handled outreach, qualification, follow-ups, and pipeline management. That allowed me, as the founder, to step in at the most strategic moments. A great salesperson doesn’t replace the founder in the sales role. They amplify the founder’s impact. They turn scattered conversations into a coordinated effort.
The Power of Monomaniacal Customer Focus
Every founder claims that the customer comes first. And I believe they most truly mean it. But reality is messy. Running a startup or small business means juggling a thousand responsibilities, fundraising, product development, hiring, operations, and finances, all at the same time. No matter how much you care about customers, it’s impossible to focus on them every minute of the day.
That’s where a dedicated salesperson becomes invaluable. While you’re pitching investors, they’re talking to customers. If you’re in a strategy meeting, they’re following up with prospects. While you’re building the next feature, they’re learning what customers actually want from it. Their attention remains singular, relentless, and customer-focused. That kind of focus can’t be replicated by someone who splits their attention across five different roles.
The Dangerous Myth of the “Hybrid Sales Role”
One of the biggest mistakes I see business owners make is assigning sales to someone who already has another job. Maybe a project manager, a marketing coordinator, or even an operations lead. The logic seems reasonable. Since they already know the business, they can handle sales too.
But here’s the problem. Sales isn’t a side hustle. It requires persistence, emotional resilience, and constant follow-up. Prospects need reminders, proposals need refinement, objections need handling, and deals need nurturing. When sales are added to someone’s existing responsibilities, they almost always slide to the bottom of the priority list. It isn’t because the employee doesn’t care, but because urgent tasks always win. And sales rarely feel urgent, until revenue starts slipping.
The Moment Everything Changes
I’ve seen it happen countless times. A founder hesitates for months, sometimes years, before deciding to hire a salesperson. They worry about payroll, onboarding, and sometimes even the right timing. Then, eventually, they leap, and suddenly, the business feels different. The pipeline grows as conversations multiply and deals move faster. The founder finally has breathing room.
Founders can focus on strategy, innovation, and leadership instead of chasing every opportunity themselves. And the business starts to feel less like a job and more like an engine.
Look closely at companies achieving significant growth. They all have something in common: a dedicated sales team that wakes up every morning thinking about leads, conversations, and opportunities. Their only job is to move deals forward and generate sales.
The Final Thought
Let me leave you with the same message I give to every overwhelmed entrepreneur I meet. If you’re working nonstop yet growth feels stuck, take a step back and ask yourself one simple question. Who is responsible for sales every single day?
If the answer is “me, when I have time,” then you already know the next move. Hire a salesperson. And watch what happens next. Your business might finally grow the way you always imagined.
Your revenue might surprise you and your schedule might open up. I’m cheering you on.
Larry Vivola is a successful business coach who coaches entrepreneurs anywhere in the world via Zoom. If he’s not coaching he’s making meatballs and entertaining friends and family!
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