I work with family-run businesses, teams, entrepreneurs and solopreneurs.
Different businesses get stuck in different ways, but underneath it there is usually something similar going on.
Sales is either sitting too heavily with one person, being left to chance, not being led properly, or not matching what the business now needs.
That is the work. Not chucking more tactics at people. Actually understanding what is happening and helping sales work properly for the business you have, not the one someone else thinks you should have.
You’re good at what you do. That is not usually the issue.
The issue is that no one has shown you how to lead sales in your own business.
So sales gets squeezed in. Follow-up gets delayed. Referrals carry too much. The pipeline goes quiet. And then you make it mean something awful about yourself.
I see that all the time. And I do not think it is because you cannot run a business. I think it is because no one handed you the sales director bit and explained what that actually involves.
Someone needs to be selling in your business. Even if that someone is you.
Selling and delivery need to keep running alongside each other. Because this is where so many solopreneurs get stuck. They’re delivering, delivering, delivering, then they look up and realise no one has been selling. Then panic kicks in. Then they scramble for leads. Then they hope for referrals.
You just haven’t been shown how to be the sales director of your own business. That is what this support is for.
You built it. You sold the products or services. Then it grew.
Now sales cannot just sit in your head anymore. You’ve got people involved. You’ve got meetings that may or may not be useful. You’ve got targets. You’ve got expectations.
And often, you’ve got a gap between what you know the business needs and what is actually happening in the team.
That is not unusual. It is just the point where sales needs growing up a bit inside the business.
What worked when it all sat with you does not work in the same way once a team is involved.
Not because the team is useless. Not because you’ve built it wrong. But because your instincts, expectations and standards haven’t yet been translated into a sales structure that the wider team can consistently follow and deliver against.
That is where proper sales leadership comes in.
Maybe you do not even know how you got here. Or maybe you do, and you know full well the plan that worked at the start is not going to cut it now.
This next bit on your own is usually tricky. No sounding board. No lived experience around you. Just you making bigger decisions with what you know from inside the business. That gets limiting.
The next stage usually asks for clearer thinking, stronger decisions and better sales leadership than the earlier one did.
That is where outside perspective becomes really valuable. Someone who can see what you cannot, challenge what you are assuming and help you make better commercial decisions at the stage you are actually at.
Not sure where you fit?
Start here.