I’m going to start blog posts with a TL;DR for a while because – let’s be honest – none of us read the whole thing anyway. Consider this a shortcut to asking ChatGPT to summarize it for you.
The Collaborative TL;DR:
- Hiring more salespeople doesn’t always mean more revenue. Without efficient systems to support their efforts, it just means more overhead.
- Companies too often underinvest in marketing and process optimization, leading to inefficient sales efforts and lower profitability.
- Common inefficiencies include a lack of automation, weak product-market fit, and disconnected product/marketing/sales strategies.
- Streamlining growth through better processes, automation, and strategic marketing support leads to higher profitability without bloated costs.
Startups love hiring salespeople. Growth-focused companies in general love hiring salespeople. More salespeople means more money, right?
Not necessarily. Without the right support and processes in place, hiring more salespeople is like adding more passengers to a sinking ship and hoping it will float.
As Jim put it: “Our CEO just doubled the sales team to ‘increase revenue.’ Problem is, we have no lead gen strategy. Now we just have twice as many people fighting over the same bad leads.”
I love salespeople: you can’t be a growth-focused marketer without them (easily). But we should talk about why more salespeople won’t solve your growth problems — and why profitability comes from process, not just people.
The Sales-Heavy Growth Trap
When revenue starts stalling, many companies default to hiring more sales reps. The logic is simple: more salespeople = more deals closed = higher revenue.
Except that’s not how it works. Sales doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Without proper marketing, your team is working harder, not smarter.
- No lead generation strategy? You’re hiring reps with no pipeline to sell into. They’re cold calling their friends to look busy. (Hello, wasted salaries.)
- No automation and a mediocre CRM? Your reps are spending hours on admin work instead of selling.
- No marketing support? Your sales team is making up messaging on the fly and designing (frankly) appalling material on their own, leading to inconsistent positioning, conflicting pricing, low brand value and lost deals.
- No product-market fit? Yeah, you can sell to that one big client – once. The rest of their industry still isn’t interested. You’re just scaling inefficiency and burning through cash.
It’s not that sales doesn’t matter! It does. (Again, I love salespeople.) But profitable growth means scaling sales intelligently. Empower your sales people and power your profit.
Process First, People Second
Before you grow your sales team, ask yourself: Are we growing profitably, or just growing? Here’s what we hear from the market, over and over and over again.
Automation Saves More Than Hiring
“We finally invested in AI tools for lead scoring and follow-ups. Turns out, we didn’t need 10 more sales reps. We just needed better systems.” – Sarah
Sales & Marketing Need to Talk
“Our sales team was complaining about low conversion rates. Turns out, our messaging was totally misaligned with what our customers actually needed.” – Mark
Product-Market Fit Isn’t a Given
“Our founders assumed we had product-market fit. But when we actually talked to customers, we realized we were selling the wrong value props entirely.” – Alex from a startup forum
Profitable Growth = Smart Growth
If your company is struggling to balance growth and profitability, don’t start with hiring. Start with efficiency.
- Audit your sales and marketing process before you add headcount.
- Automate what can be automated so your team can focus on closing deals, not manual work.
- Make sure your product positioning is aligned with actual customer needs – and you’re chasing the right customers.
More salespeople won’t fix a broken system. But better processes will make the salespeople you already have exponentially more effective.
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