Cedar Collaborative
Cedar Collaborative

Tag: scaling

  • Why Hiring More Salespeople Isn’t the Solution to Your Growth Challenges

    Why Hiring More Salespeople Isn’t the Solution to Your Growth Challenges

    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.

  • Billboards in Minnesota, or How Scrappy ABM Drove Global Growth

    Billboards in Minnesota, or How Scrappy ABM Drove Global Growth

    Industry: SaaS search solutions
    Role: Director of Marketing (foundation for fractional CMO work)
    Duration: 2017–2021

    Director of Marketing — in Australian usage, the senior marketing seat. The CEO’s title was Managing Director, not CEO, which is the usual source of the confusion.

    The Challenge

    When I joined Funnelback, marketing barely existed. A partner had once helped to craft a core brand and some collateral, but the effort was brief and dated. Sales carried most of the weight. A talented salesperson moonlighted as a copywriter, but without design or marketing support her work had no chance to scale.

    Leadership was skeptical that marketing could drive revenue. In fact, it was seen as a cost center or a nice-to-have. Yet the mandate was clear: Australia was increasingly saturated, the UK team was faltering, and North America was the big bet. Success meant proving that marketing could create focus, credibility, and growth. This was a full-time role, years before Cedar Collaborative existed, not a Cedar Collaborative engagement.

    The Approach

    I stepped into a hybrid role: strategist, operator, and team builder. I was the first US-based marketing hire, joining a tiny Seattle office filled with brilliant but mismatched ideas shipped over from Australia. The product positioning, sales collateral, and partner approach all needed rethinking for a very different market.

    Key moves:

    • North America first: Emphasized higher ed as the breakout vertical. We pitched the product team in Canberra on creating a higher ed “template,” cutting implementation time and giving sales a head start.
    • Scrappy ABM: Built targeted campaigns that made Funnelback look far bigger than it was. One sales engineer returned from a prospect meeting convinced we had “billboards in Minnesota.” In reality, the account was being hyper-targeted with ads, email, and content everywhere they turned.
    • Community-first credibility: Instead of spending heavily, Funnelback invested in trust with higher ed associations like HighEdWeb. Showing up every year, even on small budgets, earned the credibility to outlast better-funded competitors.
    • Right-sized systems: Migrated from clunky SugarCRM + Mailchimp + spreadsheets to Salesforce + Marketo, unlocking visibility for both sales and marketing. No more blind spots heading into prospect calls.
    • Team building: Hired generalists who could execute across strategy and tactics, then added specialists only when needed. Built a culture of shared ownership where designers, copywriters, and even martech staff learned from, and covered for, one another.
    • Pandemic pivot: Positioned our technology as a crisis communication channel. Helped customers shift to all-digital, supported industry partners, and doubled down on community even as others pulled back.

    The Results

    By combining strategy with hands-on execution, I turned Funnelback’s marketing from an afterthought into a growth lever.

    Key outcomes:

    • 150% year-over-year attributable growth, driven largely by North America.
    • Higher ed template became the repeatable engine for new wins.
    • ABM campaigns gave a small company outsized visibility and credibility.
    • Customers and partners remained loyal through pandemic turbulence.
    • Led marketing through acquisition/merger with Squiz, carrying Funnelback’s practices and product into the larger company.

    The Merger Reality

    The merger with Squiz was both validation and trial. It proved Funnelback’s value, but it also meant colliding with a very different culture and system. Teammates were anxious, leaders were stretched, and pandemic uncertainty made everything harder.

    As de facto senior leader during the transition, I kept communication open, steadied morale, and ensured that Funnelback’s DNA carried into Squiz. Best practices in marketing and product enriched Squiz’s North American success, even as the integration was messy.

    Lessons for SaaS Leaders

    • Scrappy ABM works: Smart targeting can make a small brand look much larger.
    • Right-size systems: Avoid tool sprawl. Build stacks that scale with you.
    • Balance leadership with ground game: Credibility comes from steering strategy and joining prospects on the conference floor.
    • Invest in community: Customers and partners remember who shows up when resources are thin.
    • Stability first, then growth: In crisis or inflection, retention and credibility buy you time.

    Fractional CMO Relevance

    Funnelback was my training ground for what I now bring to Cedar Collaborative clients: the ability to create marketing where none exists, build nimble systems under pressure, craft ABM that punches above its weight, and guide both leaders and teams through turbulence.