Dearest Reader,

I keep watching founders try to solve the wrong sales problem.

It’s alarmingly easy to do, because every sales problem ever in the herstory of the world presents in the same way:

We need more sales. Which, is, about as illuminating as literally any episode of The Joe Rogan Experience but I digress...

→ Revenue feels inconsistent, so you look for more leads.

→ Follow-up feels awkward, so you look for better scripts.

→ Pipeline is tracked through post-it notes and an assortment of “oh shit I was supposed to reach out to them,” so you shop for a CRM pretending that you and I both don’t already know that this software isn’t going to personally solve your avoidance patterns. (I know this because hi! Hello, my name is Talica)

→ Your calendar is too full, so you wonder if it’s time to hire someone.

And sometimes, yes, those things are part of the answer. But if you’ve ever done any of the above and still not had the results you’re looking for, it’s likely because all of that advice is so irritatingly correct and still completely unhelpful.

Correct Advice. Wrong stage.

→ “Follow up more” might be great advice for one founder and a waste of time for another.

→ “Hire a salesperson” might unlock one business and create a very expensive new layer of confusion in another.

→ “Build a funnel” might help if you know what buyers need to hear. It will not help much if you are still trying to figure out why people buy in the first place.

I almost never see inconsistent revenue because founders are shit at sales. If you breathed a sigh of relief…too soon, babe.

Because this is exactly what keeps great entrepreneurs trapped. You know, deep down, you’re not shit. You’ve taken some if not all of the steps outlined above…so why are the results shit?

I’m so happy you asked, @Reader.

The single most common failure I see in founder-led sales is trying to solve problems out of sequence.

That matters because founder-led sales is not one static thing. It changes as your business matures.

The Evolution of Founder Led Sales

In the beginning, sales usually lives inside your head. It runs on instinct, relationships, reputation, and your ability to explain the work live. You can get someone to understand the value when you’re in the room. You can read the conversation. You can adjust the language. You can connect the dots in real time. This type of traction is excellent, it’s just not always enough to create consistency.

Then your business starts attracting more interest. Hallelujah! Past clients, referrals, warm leads, event attendees, content lurkers, almost-clients, and people who have been “meaning to reach out” since approximately 2017. Suddenly, the issue is not whether people are around. The issue is knowing what is real.

Eventually, you realize sales is working, but only because you are personally holding every piece of it together.

You know who to follow up with, what to say, when a lead is actually viable, when a proposal is premature. Hell you’re even versed in when a buyer is giving “introduce-you-to-my-parents” energy versus “I enjoy your free content and will never pay you a dollar” energy. Useful skillset but a terrible operating model.

Then, if the business keeps growing, sales has to become something sturdier. Something visible, and where the team has a shared understanding of what how the business sells. At this point, sales needs to be structured, refined, and actually led.

What I’ve loosely described above is the exact evolution every single business I’ve supported has done through. Yours is going through it, mine is. This is a work in progress but the stages are: sales as instinct, sales as signal, sales as structure, sales as a function.

Sales is not a Monolith

Your standard industry advice tends to treat sales as a monolith: here are best practices, now go do the thing. Which is neat. In the same way handing someone a whisk and saying “make dinner” is technically culinary guidance.

But I’m not your average woman doling out sales advice, plastering on nose strips and waxing poetic about overcoming objections. Hell, I don’t even have a podcast.

What I do have is over $750M in sales under my belt and deep expertise in what the revenue engine of growing, service-based businesses with founders at the helm actually needs to look like if we want sales to stop depending on memory, reputation and heroic amounts of caffeine.

Read my next series!

So over the next few newsletters, I’m going to break this down properly.

So over the next few newsletters, I’m going to break this down properly.

Not in a cute “here are four stages, good luck out there” way.

I mean what each stage actually feels like, what you experience inside it, what usually gets misdiagnosed, what decisions matter most, what kind of support is useful, what resources map to that moment, and where I’ve seen clients make the shift in real time.

Because when your sales function is still mostly instinct, you don’t need the same advice as someone trying to lead a team through a shared sales rhythm.

The stage of founder-led sales you’re in determines the strategy, the skills you need to sharpen, the decisions you need to make, and the type of support that will actually help.

Next week, I’m starting with Sales as Instinct: the stage where sales lives almost entirely in your head. We’ll get into what it feels like, what founders usually overbuild too early, and the three decisions that matter most before you go anywhere near a funnel, a CRM, or a job description.

For now, here’s the question I’d sit with:

What is sales functioning as inside your business right now?

Is it mostly instinct? Building structure so other people can support it? Or trying to lead a sales function that needs more visibility, rhythm, and decision discipline?

Hit reply and tell me which one you think you’re in.

Bonus points if your answer is “somewhere between post-it notes and divine intervention,” because honestly, been there done that, have still the post-it…

Until next week, happy selling!

Talica
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