Startup Sales — 5 Common Sales Mistakes by Founders
August 12, 2025
Founders are responsible for the first sales a startup will make. For many founders, this is one of their very first experiences of sales and mistakes are often made.
It might sound crazy, but if you’re hiring salespeople to generate calls with potential customers, then you need to hire them in groups of 3. Here’s why:
Sales acumen is hard to test for in an interview process, even promising candidates may underperform once they’re on the job. If you do get a bad hire and you don’t have the other 2 folks, then you’ll be starting over.
Salespeople tend to perform better in a competitive environment. If you only hire one salesperson at a time, there will be less competition for them. Hiring more at once inherently creates healthy competition, which should lead to more revenue.
When founders only hire salespeople one at a time, I often see them holding on to a bad hire for far too long, which slows down your growth. In contrast, hiring more salespeople is cost effective, as their base salary tends to be low and they only get paid commission on success.
Best of luck out there.
