Amp It Up

11Ramp Up Sales

Sales Growth Is About Timing

In my 2009 book, Tape Sucks, I wrote: “There comes a time when the venture must pivot from conserving resources to applying them rapidly, as fast as you know how to do effectively—when that cross‐over time comes is not always obvious.”

This is one of the questions I hear most often from entrepreneurs: How do you know when to ramp up a start‐up's sales? There's no simple answer, but I can share some additional questions that should help you draw your own conclusions:

• Are you happy with your current sales productivity metrics? If not, how can you improve productivity before adding more sales headcount?
• Are you happy with the metrics of your lead generation pipeline? If not, how can you improve it?
• Are you being realistic in your timeline of sales targets? Are you projecting too much too soon, or too little too late?
• Are you being aggressive enough and thinking big enough to outpace your competition?
• Is your sales team buying into your targets and timeline? Are they owning the goals and fully committed to hitting them?

Trying to staff a whole sales team prematurely is a very common managerial mistake. So is failing to figure out what distinguishes top sales performers from weak performers before ramping up headcount. And so is hesitating to invest major resources to scale up your sales effort after all the conditions are in place. Here are three examples from my companies that will give you a better understanding of these common sales ...