How To Improve Sales In an Expert Business (So You Can Exit in the Future)

As a founder of an expert business, you are either in a lifestyle business or you are building to sell your company in the future.

This article is for those who are building to sell.

To achieve this, one crucial aspect you cannot ignore is building an effective sales team. I’d like to double underline the effective part - because a sales team that is not delivering results is a very expensive problem.

If you’ve found this article and that's your problem - you’re in the right place. 

After working with expert founders for over 15 years, some of the most common problems that come up are directly related to the fact that the founder is an expert in their focus area, and not in effectively managing a sales team. 

That's right, the first hurdle is self-awareness. Continuing to repeat the same mistake and expecting different results.. we all know what that defines - yet we have seen founders make the same multi-million dollar mistakes twice or more in a row before they get advisory support. 

Founders like to figure things out, and our clients are always very smart people - so it's very understandable.

However, when these mistakes cost hundreds of thousands of dollars that could have gone toward your EBITDA, and potentially millions of dollars in missed opportunities - it's time to take this problem seriously.

The first question a founder needs to ask is: do we have a well-defined target customer?

One of the fastest ways to burn through any available budget is to fail here. Every business has to get good at solving the same problem over and over again, then identify another problem and solve that as well, and it multiplies.

However, if your business tries to solve a new problem each time for a new industry or business model, then scale becomes exceptionally difficult and expensive.

With a focus on sales, the salespeople need to feel confident that the company is able to deliver an excellent solution, on time and on budget. If this feeling is not present - sales performance will drop very noticeably

We have assessed many businesses where sales performance had fallen, only to find one major contributing factor was a lack of confidence in the delivery team.

Developing competencies and solving the same problem over and over again enables the sales team to find people who are actively experiencing that problem and work with them through the sales methodology to become a client.

The second question a founder needs to ask is: do we have a sales methodology?

If you just thought, “What's that?” you probably don't have one.

It’s essential for a growing business to have a consistent method of working with potential customers to turn them into paying customers.

This should be a roadmap that anyone can follow so they know they are consistently taking prospects through each of the stages needed to win their trust - in a service business, by the end of the process they need to be ready to take a leap of faith to work with you.

Skipping steps on the roadmap will affect the close rate very negatively. Not having a roadmap is a surefire way to cost the business a lot of potential business as salespeople try and freestyle their way to each deal.

This is very fixable - and a methodology can be mapped out in a short working session with an experienced advisor.

The third question a founder needs to ask is: am I using the correct sales process?

With the explosion of SaaS companies and the unicorn valuations we’ve all seen over the past few years, there’s a never-ending flow of content, influencers, books, and methods that are being pushed out on social media, and the growth rates they talk about are impressive. But as the owner of an expert consulting business - these are not for you!

Selling products is a totally different sales process than selling services.

SaaS processes that were funded by huge VC rounds are intended to grow topline revenue at all costs - mostly without profit along the way.

If your salespeople only have experience selling products by demonstrating how specific features solve business problems - then you have a problem. Services businesses are people businesses - they solve problems by developing solutions with expertise.

SaaS uses very specific formulas to calculate their sales and marketing investments, so do professional services - they are not the same.

We have assessed many professional services firms and identified they hired a SaaS sales team trying to use a product sales process to sell services - and it’s not working.

The fourth question a founder needs to ask is: am I investing enough in sales and/or marketing

If the sales team is not receiving leads from a marketing campaign, and the sales efforts to go and find clients are not working, then something is off.

The most important consideration is leverage - if your business operates in a sector where many people have the specific problem you solve and are looking for a solution, then making yourself easier to find via marketing may make a lot of sense.

If like many professional service businesses you solve things in a unique way, then your target market may not know that a solution exists, so it's important to gain their awareness using a sales process designed to go and find opportunities.

This balance of investments will shift over time due to referrals, brand reputation, and growing existing client relationships, and needs to be reviewed regularly to make sure investments are being allocated correctly to drive efficient growth.

Most founders hire freelancers to deliver marketing tactics, and salespeople to deliver deals - the part that is most often missing is strategic review and oversight to guide those resources and manage their performance.

Recognizing that analyzing effectiveness and adjusting strategy is at minimum a quarterly event in a growing business is very impactful to minimize losses and recognize opportunities.

The fifth question a founder needs to ask is: am I investing enough in developing my existing team?

In today’s market, businesses are running lean, and minimizing expenses. It's essential that the core team is upskilled to lead the business forward and make the most of available resources.

Founders aim to hire high-potential candidates and then fail to invest in helping them reach their potential.

Where good perhaps used to be good enough, in a tougher market the core team needs to be great. 

The investment should continue to deliver results for years when the founder has aligned the growth of the business to the goals of the team, and so the investment in helping them reach their potential has a very high Return On Investment.

In the sales department - the most important investments are in onboarding reps to the sales methodology and process, and investing in the time they need to spend with peers and mentors to build their company-specific skill set and start increasing their effectiveness.

If you’re currently onboarding salespeople and then expecting them to self-train and figure it out - you’re dependent on making a rare hire that can succeed in doing that. If you haven't hired tens of salespeople before - figuring out how to attract and hire this profile of person is a tough ask, which creates a lot of risk. 

The sixth question a founder needs to ask is: have I hired the right sales leader?

The next most common issue is that a founder promotes the best-performing rep to become the leader of the sales team without giving them exposure to what good sales leadership looks like first.

This is a very common problem that directly causes churn of team members and missed revenue goals.

When a founder is a rookie sales leader themselves - leading by example is extremely difficult. Hiring a full time and highly experienced sales leader is a big investment.

Investing in a one and done training course is a good start to help the rep - but again without a peer to mentor the new manager they are in a tough position with a high failure rate.


As you have seen, these top few questions give some perspective.

If you’re an expert in your field and that field is not sales, then you should also consider that these are very high-level issues with a lot of details behind them.

Figuring them out is possible and has been done. But if you want to grow efficiently and achieve a future exit - the question is do you have the time to focus on it? Also if you intend to sell the company can you afford not to get guidance or hands-on support? These issues and others will affect your growth rate significantly.

Mindracer’s solution to these issues is right-sized to meet your needs. If you want an advisor to talk to so you can execute - we can help. If you want a sales leader to build and manage the sales function for you - we can help.

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