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What An MBA Didn’t Teach You About Sales

The sales profession is challenging. You need to work hard at it to succeed. You need to learn from the best. You need to improve your skills continuously. If you think you can sell since you are a hit at parties and have a lot of friends, you may soon find that you are a failure as a salesperson. Blunt truth:

because the sales profession is so hard, you have to focus on doing everything in sales very well, or you will be considered a failure.

I call this blog, Skinned Knees because I try to relate all of the learning that I have done over the past 4+ decades (while skinning my knees in the learning process).

I hope that you learn from my mistakes so that your business will grow!

Hiring Your First Sales Leader? Build a Sales Machine, Not a Band-Aid

You are ready to hire your first sales leader when you are prepared to buy leverage, not relief. Titles do not grow revenue. A high-impact sales leader creates durable selling capability, reduces owner dependency, and raises standards through coaching, recruiting, and operating cadence. If what you really want is a second version of you to carry the number and keep deals moving, you are hiring a band-aid, and you will pay for it twice.

Most owners make this hire at precisely the wrong moment. The pressure is real, the pipeline feels fragile, and the business is starting to outgrow informal management. So the owner reaches for the obvious move: “We need a sales manager.” The problem is that the role is designed around short-term comfort rather than long-term capacity. The result is a well-paid administrative firefighter who inherits the chaos instead of fixing the system that creates it.

Before you post a job, clarify the objective. Do you want a revenue driver or a capability builder?

A revenue driver is a manager who helps you hit the number by conducting deal inspections, applying forecast pressure, and holding reps accountable. That can be valuable, but it is often a disguised need for personal production. A capability builder is a leader who creates repeatable performance by improving the quality of selling, tightening hiring standards, and building a coaching system that makes average reps better and good reps consistent. That is the role that changes enterprise value.

Here is the hard truth most owners avoid. If you design a role that combines selling and leading, selling will win. Always. When a leader has a quota, the business trains them to prioritize their own deals over the team’s development. They will “help” reps when a deal is in a late-stage, visible phase, then postpone coaching, recruiting, and onboarding because those activities do not pay this month. Over time, the team remains dependent, the pipeline remains uneven, and the owner remains in the middle.

Assessing readiness: leader or band aid

Readiness is not a revenue threshold. It is an operating decision. The question is whether you will let a sales leader lead.

The owner’s trap is hiring a leader while keeping day-to-day control: still running reviews, intervening in pricing, rewriting emails, jumping on calls, and closing important deals. In that environment, the new leader cannot build authority; they become an assistant with a title. You’ll be frustrated they’re “not taking enough off my plate,” while they’re frustrated at not being able to make decisions without you.

If you want a clean test, look for these warning signs:

  • You are still the primary deal closer and default problem solver.
  • You do not believe the company can make the number without your direct involvement.
  • You step into deals because you do not trust the process, the rep, or the forecast.
  • Your coaching is ad hoc, usually when something goes wrong.
  • Recruiting is episodic, triggered by pain, rather than continuous.
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