How to get the best results from your sales team

Your biggest client has a problem with a delivery. They don’t ring your sales director or their account manager. They ring you, on your mobile, on a Sunday. And you pick up, because that’s what you’ve always done.

Meanwhile the sales team misses its numbers, new customers trickle in, and you start to wonder whether you hired the wrong people. I get it. It’s incredibly frustrating, and every quarter it waits, the gap between you and the competitors who sorted it gets wider. But before you fire anyone, look at what you’ve built around them.

Is it really a sales problem, or a company problem?

Poor sales results usually trace back to the company, not the sales team. When Steve W. Martin studied more than 1,000 salespeople for Harvard Business Review, only 15% beat their quota by more than 25%. Great salespeople are rare. So the question is what you do with the team you’ve got.

It’s easy to blame Sales. In the companies I see, the team gets little personal development. Mediocre salespeople take orders from existing customers and collect commission. Now and again a big deal lands through luck or word of mouth. The company grows at 5-10% year on year, and everyone calls that normal.

So how much of this is your salespeople’s fault, and how much is the ambition of your company? I’ve asked that question in a lot of boardrooms, and the honest answer is rarely the one the CEO walked in with. To improve sales performance, you need to change the way your company operates. Start with who you sell to.

Who is your core customer, and does your sales team know?

When they first come to us, many of our clients don’t know why their customers buy from them. If the executive team can’t say who the core customer is, how on earth can they expect their sales teams to succeed?

Buyers notice. In Salesforce’s State of Sales report (2024), 86% of business buyers said they’re more likely to buy when their goals are understood. Yet plenty of B2B firms still talk as if customers buy rationally, with feature lists as long as your arm. Who do they sell to? “Anybody.” How do they segment? “Anyone with a pulse and a wallet.” That’s just not good enough. When the economy shifts or a sharper competitor arrives, BANG. Their business will be gone.

Great companies use Jim Collins’ Hedgehog Concept. They’re the best in a world they define (“best in Yorkshire” counts). They’re passionate about their purpose. And they’ve worked out what drives their economic engine. That gives the sales team clear product and company positioning to sell from.

Then put in place a model that says, very clearly, this is how you’ll approach your market. Too often, companies cast the net too widely. Work out how fast you want to grow and how many net new core customers that needs. In many markets, this won’t be thousands of leads.

Segment the market and find the customer who buys from you at the highest profit. Give them a name and a job title. Say it’s Trevor, the HR director. People buy stuff, not companies. Every member of the sales team should know who Trevor is, what keeps him awake and why he picks you. At your next sales meeting, ask three salespeople to describe your core customer. If you get three different answers, you’ve found your first fix.

How do you build a sales team when you hold all the relationships?

Hand over the knowledge before you hand over the clients. Your clients aren’t loyal to you. They’re loyal to what you know about them: why they buy, who decides, what went wrong last time. Decide which relationships stay yours, move that knowledge to your team on the rest, then hire to fill the gaps.

Think of it as the Sunday phone call problem. Your company can’t grow past what you won’t let go of. If every significant customer relationship runs through you, your sales team only ever gets the small deals. Your diary, not your market, sets the limit on revenue.

And you pay for it again when you come to sell. Exit Factor’s 2026 white paper looked at UK SMEs with £3m to £30m in revenue. Owner-dependent businesses that do sell typically achieve 20 to 40% lower valuations than comparable companies, as London Loves Business reported. The paper blames perceived risk, not profit. A buyer looks at your diary and wonders how much of the revenue leaves when you do.

You can move the relationships without losing the clients in five stages.

1. Map every relationship you hold

List every account where you’re the main contact. Note the revenue, the renewal date, who decides and who else in your team already knows them. Then pick the small named set you’ll keep: the strategic accounts where your presence genuinely changes the outcome. Everything else is on the handover list.

2. Write down what only you know

For each account on the list, get the history out of your head and into the CRM. Why did they buy? What do they value? What upset them? What did you promise? When James Dawson and Richard Doherty came on my podcast, they called this making the founder’s judgement teachable. Your sales process should be written down before anyone else has to follow it.

3. Introduce a named account owner

Introduce each client to one named person, in a meeting, with a reason that serves the client. “Sarah knows our delivery better than I do, and she’ll be on top of your account every week.” Never let the client discover the change from an email signature.

4. Sell together, then swap seats

Run the next few calls together. First you lead and the account owner supports. Then they lead and you support. Then you only join for the moments that need you, such as a renewal or an escalation. This is where the player-coach model for founder-led sales earns its keep.

5. Step back, but not out

Agree the date you stop attending, and stick to it. Jason Lemkin at SaaStr argues founders never fully leave sales, and he’s right. Keep your small named set. Give your team time in your diary for the deals that need you. Just stop being the default contact for everything.

Stage	What you do	What your team does	Sign it’s working
Map	List every account you hold and pick the few you keep	Check who else already knows each client	A written handover list exists
Write down	Record history, decision makers and promises	Read it and ask questions	The CRM answers questions you used to answer
Introduce	Introduce one named owner in person	Follow up within the week	The client contacts the owner first
Sell together	Lead, then support, then join only key moments	Take over the lead role on calls	Renewals close without you in the room
Step back	Keep a small named set of accounts	Own the rest, including escalations	Your diary has time for CEO work

What doesn’t work is hiring a big name and handing over the lot. When Renan de Villiers came on my podcast, he described a founder who didn’t feel legitimate enough to close his biggest accounts, so he hired a senior executive from SAP on a quarter-of-a-million package. Six months and roughly $125,000 later, the hire had achieved almost nothing without the army of people he’d had at SAP. The big accounts had been badly managed while the founder stepped back completely. “He should have felt legitimate and closed the big accounts himself,” de Villiers said.

If you haven’t hired anyone yet, start with the guide to hiring an amazing first salesperson, then come back here to plan what you hand them once they arrive.

How do you stop distractions eating your sales team’s time?

Protect selling time ruthlessly. Salesforce’s 2026 State of Sales data says reps spend 60% of their time on non-selling tasks. I’d want a sales team spending 80% of its time talking to potential Trevors. Every internal report, admin task and pet project you hand them pulls against that.

Make sure you’ve employed people skilled in the art of conversation, then let them have conversations. If something isn’t helping a team member move a deal forward, ask whether someone else should own it.

What should you measure to improve sales team performance?

Measure one leading indicator alongside revenue. Manage your sales team the same as everyone else: work out the leading and lagging indicators, look at activity levels and set realistic goals. The lagging indicator is revenue or order intake. By the time it moves, it’s too late to change anything.

The leading indicator is a single number the team controls. Say you work out it takes 400 customer demos a year to hit your sales target. Demos become the number. Track the conversion rate from demo to deal, the win rate and the average deal size as your performance metrics, and you’ll see which part of the sales cycle needs work. That matters more now, because Salesforce found 57% of sales professionals say the sales cycle is getting longer.

Talk about the number in daily huddles and weekly check-ins. Put up scoreboards that show individual and team progress, so there’s a collective sense of achievement when the team succeeds. A good sales leader uses the same numbers to decide where sales training will actually make a difference. The same numbers are how you tie the team’s rhythm to bigger revenue goals.

Are you investing enough in your sales team?

Many growing companies under-invest in sales and marketing, then blame the team. In one Blossom Street Ventures analysis of SaaS companies, the median company had 39% of its headcount in sales and marketing. Now count your own. If your number is a fraction of that, the shortfall in your sales results probably isn’t the team.

When I was MD of Peer 1, our finance team ran the benchmarks and came back with a clear answer. We should have been spending 15% of gross revenues on sales and marketing.

Often, we find our clients spend 10% and are disappointed. They have too many people in customer service or account management who aren’t adding value, and too little going into marketing. An extra 5% could make all the difference. Once you’ve done the core customer and product positioning work, that cash funds focused marketing campaigns aimed at Trevor.

Should you pay your salespeople commission?

Now I know this sounds odd. Commission feels like the one lever that obviously works, and plenty of good companies pay it. But my answer is no, if the rest of your employees aren’t paid commission. I have a big aversion to commission, and in Mind Your F**king Business I advise executives not to pay salespeople commission at all. In my experience, companies use it because they haven’t figured out their sales strategy, and you can’t use money to drive the right behaviour.

Coin-operated salespeople are a mistake. You wouldn’t pay developers per line of code or a support desk per ticket. Commission pushes people to close deals that aren’t right for the customer. And once someone hits target, where’s the incentive to do 2x?

If you want to be a great company in the Jim Collins sense, hire for the right traits. The best salespeople are motivated by solving Trevor’s problem, not by the bonus. I don’t believe pay is what changes their behaviour.

Commission is also corrosive to your culture. In tech firms, the salesperson rarely wins the deal on their own. Everyone else involved is on a salary. Why should Sales get more of the money when the whole team did the work? Get rid of this toxic mix.

---

There are only two things you need to grow your business: the desire to change and the willingness to put in the effort. Have a model, follow it, put the effort in, hire the right people, then test and iterate. If you’re not prepared to put in the hard work, accept mediocrity. If you are, start with the next Sunday call. Who should they have rung instead?

Frequently asked questions

How do you hand over client relationships without losing the client?

Hand over the knowledge first, then the client. Write down why each client buys, who decides and what you’ve promised. Introduce one named account owner in person, with a reason that benefits the client. Sell together for a few calls, let the owner take the lead, then agree the date you stop attending.

Should the founder keep any client accounts?

Yes, a small named set. Keep the strategic accounts where your presence changes the outcome, and hand over everything else. You’ll rarely leave sales completely, and you shouldn’t try. The goal is to stop being the default contact for every client, so your diary no longer sets the ceiling on revenue.

Should a founder’s first sales hire be a sales director?

Usually not. A senior hire who relied on a big support team elsewhere can struggle in a smaller company with no playbook, and your biggest accounts drift while they find their feet. Write down your sales process first, close the strategic deals yourself, then hire people who can run what you have proved works.

How long does it take to move from founder-led sales to a sales team?

Think in quarters, not weeks. Renan de Villiers, who works with a portfolio of around 20 companies, tracks the shift from founder-led chaos to people-led process. He says the best companies make it in one quarter and the slowest take three. Mapping and writing down your relationships is the part you can start this week.

Does commission improve sales team performance?

In my view, no. Commission rewards closing over fit, gives people a reason to stop once they hit target and divides salespeople from the salaried colleagues who helped win the deal. If the rest of your team isn’t on commission, pay your salespeople the same way and hire people motivated by solving the customer’s problem.

What is the first thing to measure to improve sales results?

Pick one leading indicator your team controls, such as customer demos, and review it in daily huddles alongside revenue. Revenue tells you what already happened. The leading indicator tells you what’s about to happen. Add conversion rate, win rate and average deal size once the habit sticks, so you can see where deals stall.

What should you do next?

---

A sales problem is rarely only a sales problem. It usually exposes weak positioning, unclear expectations, too little management rhythm, incentives that reward the wrong behaviour, or a founder who still holds every important relationship.

When the system improves, salespeople know who they are selling to, what good looks like, which clients they own and how the rest of the business supports the win.

Better sales results come from better sales architecture, not just more pressure on the team.

Four ways to take this further

1. Book a call. If you’re still holding every key client and it’s constraining growth, Dominic can help you decide what to keep, what to hand over and who to hire. No obligation, no pitch. You will know quickly whether this is the right kind of help.
2. Grab the book. Mind Your F**king Business gives founder-CEOs a practical way to stop being the person every decision waits for and build a company that can scale without them in every room.
3. See how founder-CEO coaching works. If you lead a growing company in or around London, this is how working with a business coach helps you step back from day-to-day selling without losing your best clients.
4. Subscribe to the newsletter. Get a weekly founder-CEO note on sales, focus and building a business that can grow without the founder carrying every deal.

Your move. Pick the one client relationship only you could keep alive today, then ask what it would take for someone else to own it by the end of next quarter.