If you are the only one who can close deals in your company, your growth is capped by your desire to spend all day selling.

Even if you are a non-stop selling machine, there’s a limit to how much you can sell! So if you want to grow your business beyond that point, it can’t be 100% on you.

When folks tell me this lie, here are some possible underlying causes.

1) There’s no sales process because you are selling snowflakes

You might call it “highly customized engagements,” but you are the only person who can sell your company’s services because you are, in fact inventing new services or new solutions each time you sit down with a client.

If this is what your business is (a few companies are), then value price the heck out of them so you can grow profitably. Unless you are bidding these with huge margins (more than 50%), this is a tough way to make money. 

But it’s way easier to grow by finding many similar engagements that you can do over and over again. When you are selling similar engagements to similar clients you can build a consistent sales process and train others to do it. 

2) You’re not generating enough leads, so each one is precious to you. 

When you have just a few leads, you don’t want someone to screw one up! We’ve got to make them into clients. Every. Single. One.  

Living with the anxiety of a scarcity of leads can be crippling. It’s hard to ask for what you are worth. (What if they say no?) or to lead the client into more highly impactful solutions (too much risk). 

Developing a better lead generation process is going to be critical so that you can afford to “waste some leads” training someone. Don’t be afraid to try using ads to buy some traffic to a lead magnet!

3) You haven’t tried teaching someone else. 

For some of us, being the rainmaker is a source of pride. Since you’re not “doing the thing” anymore, you feel valuable when you’re making the sales. “I mean, what would be my role if I wasn’t selling or delivering the services?”

If you have someone else helping you to sell, you can still keep the most significant deals to sell yourself. You can always make it rain! It just means you can take some pressure off.

You can spend time doing other things without putting your business at risk.  (Hint: Leading the company is essential work.)

Is this a lie you are telling yourself?

What can you do this week to start to shift some of the sales burden to someone else? Could you start with an inside salesperson who does some of the administrative tasks? Someone who sets appointments, writes proposals, and does some of the follow-up?