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When the Founder Is the Rainmaker: How to Scale Without Losing the Spark
In many founder-led businesses, the founder isn’t just the leader—they’re also the best (and often only) rainmaker. They land the big deals. They have the trusted relationships. They know the pitch inside and out because they are the pitch.
It works—until it doesn’t.
As the business grows, this model creates a bottleneck. Every new opportunity depends on one and only person. And it’s the same person every time. But there’s a downside. When that person is also responsible for running the business, mentoring the team, and shaping the vision, something eventually gives.
Seven Considerations in Evaluating your Marketing and Sales Process
Sun, Jun 23, 2013 — I just finished reading several books that come at the changes in the marketing and sales process from different perspectives. Launch by Michael Stelzner, discusses how to use social media to grow your brand and your business. It includes some very pragmatic tools and examples for the marketing crowd. I highly recommend it as a primer for anyone interested in how to optimize their social media efforts. Sales Shift by Frank Belzer presents how the buying process has changed and how it will continue to evolve. Of particular interest is Belzer’s discussion of why sales skills that have worked in the past will no longer be effective going forward. When considering the combination of these two perspectives, the transformation of the commercialization process is significant.