How the Best Founders Close the Biggest Sales

A poem: “Founders Selling” by Tom Searcy

All like to close

Many like to sell

Some like to network

None like to prospect

Thank you. I can hear the Beatnik finger snapping at the coffee house reading of this poem.

The biggest deals of any small to mid-sized company are closed by the founder. Period.

In principle I don’t like this fact. If I hire salespeople, pay them well, give them a target for growth and larger sales, I expect them to close the deals. It’s their job, right? I hear from founders of companies frequently their frustration that, “I have to close all of the big sales myself.” It’s an obvious desire to delegate, but on big sales, it doesn’t work that way.

There are several reasons why –

• Building Trust: Trust doesn’t transfer. Prospects often feel more confident when engaging directly with the company’s founder, or the CEO.
• Product Knowledge: Founders possess an intimate understanding of their product or service. There is an ability of founders to tailor what their company does to help a prospect in solving a problem that is unique and difficult for salespeople to replicate.
• Negotiation Agility: Founders can make swift decisions during negotiations, accommodating client needs without the delays that might occur in larger companies.

What to do –

Raise the floor – Increase the size of the revenue opportunity you will give your personal attention. I was the founder of a company that I knew I wanted to grow through large sales. I told my salespeople that –

• “If the opportunity will generate over $1M in 18 months, I’ll stop by when they visit our location and say hello, shake hands.”
• “If the opportunity will generate over $2M in 18 months, I’ll have dinner with the prospect and be there for the presentation.”
• “If the opportunity will generate over $3M in 18 months, I will wash the prospect’s car, walk their dog, and sponsor their children’s baseball team.”

It was partially a joke, partially truth. Salespeople knew that the bigger the opportunity that they qualified, the greater amount of my engagement and the higher potential the sale would close. By raising the floor of what is worth your full attention, your salespeople seek bigger opportunities because your close rate is higher.

Give Credit Away – Founders and CEOs can’t take credit for the biggest sales if they want their salespeople to bring them opportunities. Founders become unintentional competitors with their own salespeople when they take the credit. Salespeople will bring opportunities if they are given credit, they’ll horde them if they don’t.

Pay the Commission – When founders either cut commissions or don’t pay it in full for salespeople who bring big opportunities the result is obvious; the salespeople don’t bring the opportunities and try to close the sales themselves. Of course, the founder is the person who closed it. That’s not the point. The salesperson prospects the opportunity, generates the interest and creates the potential for the founder to close the sale. If you want bigger sales, pay commissions even if the founder does heavy lifting on the close.

The salesperson prospects and creates interest, the subject matter experts in the company show the strength of what the company can do, and the founder closes the sale. When everyone does their job, the conversion rate for big sales jumps significantly.

Side Note: I love closing big sales. I don’t know a founder who doesn’t. If all my salespeople did was to bring me sales opportunities that were qualified and the buyer had real interest, I would spend every minute I could helping to close those sales. It’s not the salespeople’s job to close the biggest sales, it’s the founders.