The Place Guide to Founder-Led Sales: Transitioning from CEO Selling to a Scalable Sales Organization
Most founders start with a simple plan: hire salespeople, train them, and watch revenue grow. But as Place discovered, the reality of transitioning from founder-led sales to a scalable sales organization is far more nuanced.
In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, founder Snorre Jordheim Myhre shared their journey from founder-led sales to building a successful sales team, revealing insights that challenge common assumptions about this critical transition.
The Planning vs. Reality Gap
The initial plan seemed straightforward enough. As Snorre explains, “You raise money with a plan where you have excel rows, saying that you’ll have this and this person, this role starting this month, and then everything is fine.”
But market conditions quickly complicated this plan. “This being Norway, where the labor market is slightly less flexible than the US, and especially hiring during a pandemic where every field is booming, it seems it took a lot of time getting the right people to the right cultural fit, the right team fit, the right competence fit and so on, to actually build the commercial team.”
The Founder’s Challenge
The transition proved particularly challenging from a founder’s perspective. “From a founder perspective, it’s a bit rough when you are the one in charge of talking with the customers all the time. You are the one driving being that bridge between the customer needs and taking over to the product side and holding everything together,” Snorre shares.
This highlights a key challenge many founders face: being deeply embedded in both sales and product development makes it harder to step back from either role.
Building the Team
Place’s sales team evolution followed a careful progression:
- Started with founder-led sales
- Hired their first dedicated salesperson about a year ago
- Expanded to four people on the sales team by year’s end
- Currently allocate about 25% of internal resources to sales and commercial activities
The results speak for themselves. As Snorre notes, “We tripled our revenue, our annual recurring revenue last year from 150,000 NAR to 450,000. And we’re looking at tripling this again.”
Keys to a Successful Transition
Rather than maintaining tight control, Snorre focused on building team autonomy. “The good thing about it is now where we’re standing is that I almost feel a bit like I don’t really have that much to say, but it seems like the whole cop this is running by itself and everyone’s doing what I think they should be doing.”
This approach helped Place avoid a common pitfall: founders who can’t let go. Instead of micromanaging, Snorre focused on “not being too micromanaging and letting loose.”
Looking Forward
The successful transition from founder-led sales has positioned Place for continued growth. “Me personally, I used to spend a lot of time on typical founder led sales, but now we built up the sales team. So I spend almost just a few hours per week maybe on sales,” Snorre explains.
For founders navigating this transition, Place’s experience offers several key lessons:
- Expect hiring timelines to be longer than planned
- Focus on cultural and team fit, not just sales experience
- Be prepared to gradually reduce your involvement
- Build systems that can run without constant founder input
The key to success isn’t just building a sales team – it’s building one that can operate independently while maintaining the company’s momentum and culture. Place’s journey shows that while this transition is challenging, a measured approach focused on the right fits rather than quick hires can lead to sustainable growth.
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