The £500,000 Sales Mistake Most Business Owners Don't Know They're Making

I can remember sitting in my office one Friday afternoon feeling pretty pleased with myself.

We'd had a good week. We'd won some new business, the phone hadn't stopped ringing and I'd spent most of the week doing what every business owner ends up doing at some point... jumping in and helping to get deals over the line.

One customer wanted to speak to me before they signed, another needed a slightly different proposal and yet a third wanted some reassurance that we could deliver what we'd promised.

No problem. I picked up the phone, had the conversations and, one by one, the deals came in.

Driving home that evening I remember thinking, "That's what being it's all about." 

I genuinely thought I was doing the right thing.

Looking back now, I couldn't have been more wrong - because what I thought was leadership was actually dependency.

I wasn't building a sales team, I WAS the sales team.

At the time I didn't see it like that because everything looked healthy from the outside. The business was growing, customers were happy and the numbers were heading in the right direction. If anyone had asked me whether I had a sales problem I'd probably have laughed.

"No," I'd have said. "We're doing really well."

But here's the thing about founder-led businesses. Sometimes the very person who helped build the business becomes the thing that's stopping it from growing. And that sounds weird right?  Because they are doing a great job.  BUT actually that is creating the problem. 

They're doing such a good job that everyone starts relying on them.  All of the difficult conversations come back to them, and so do the biggest opportunities.  The important customers always ask for them by name.

And without meaning to, they have become the answer to every sales problem.

And that's exactly where I found myself. I thought I was helping my team.

What I was actually doing was stopping them from growing.

It took me quite a while to realise what was actually happening because, on the face of it, everything looked fine. The business was growing, customers were happy and we were winning work. If you'd looked at the figures, you'd probably have said we were doing really well.

The problem was, we'd accidentally built a business that depended on one person.

Me.

Now don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to create it that way. In fact, I thought I was doing exactly what a good business owner should do. I was supporting the team, helping them out when they got stuck and making sure we didn't lose opportunities. If there was a difficult customer, I'd jump on the phone. If there was a big proposal to get over the line, I'd get involved. If someone wasn't quite sure what to say, they'd come and ask me.

At the time it felt completely normal.

It was only later that I realised what I was teaching everybody around me.

Without ever saying it out loud, I was teaching them that I had all the answers and that if something was really important, Marcus would deal with it.

If a customer was difficult, Marcus would sort it, and if there was a chance of losing a sale, Marcus would step in.

Can you see the problem?

The more I helped, the less confident everyone else became, the more I stepped in, the fewer opportunities they had to learn.

And before long, I'd become the bottleneck in my own business.

Looking back, I think this is one of the biggest mistakes business owners make, especially in growing companies. We think we're protecting the business, when actually we're preventing it from growing beyond us.

That's when I started asking myself a completely different question. What would happen if I wasn't here for a month? Not a week, because most businesses can cope for a week. A month is long enough that it is a real test of whether you have an actual business that can survive without you, that has been set up to run on systems not on personalities.  

I wondered - would the sales conversations still happen in the same way? Would customers get the same experience? Would the team know how to deal with the situations that I'd always dealt with? 

Or had I accidentally created a business that only worked properly when I was in the building?

If that question makes you feel slightly uncomfortable, you're not on your own.

It certainly made me uncomfortable.

Because that's when I realised the real value in a business isn't having one brilliant salesperson - whether that is the owner or an employee.  No, the real value is in creating a team of people who all know how to have brilliant conversations, whether you're there or not.

Once I'd realised that, I started seeing it everywhere.

I'd walk into businesses and within half an hour I could usually tell who the "hero" was. Sometimes it was the owner. Or it was a salesperson who'd been there for years. At times it was a sales manager who seemed to have every answer.

At first glance, they looked like the business's biggest asset, and in many ways they were. But here's the truth - the trouble is, they were also its biggest risk.

If that one person was off sick, on holiday, decided to retire or accepted a job with a competitor, the whole business seemed to lose its confidence overnight. Customers started waiting longer for answers, sales decisions slowed down and everyone else became nervous because they were constantly asking themselves, "What would they have done?"

Because you see, they'd never been given the opportunity to think for themselves.

The business had unintentionally trained everyone to rely on one person instead of relying on a way of working.

Now let me ask you a question.

If your best salesperson handed in their notice tomorrow morning, what would happen?  And if that best salesperson is you - what would happen in your were sick?

Would another member of the team naturally pick up those relationships and continue having the same quality of conversations? Or would there be a slight feeling of panic?

Would everyone suddenly realise that all the customer knowledge, all the trust and all the experience was walking out of the door with them? Because if that's the case, you've got something much more valuable than a member of staff tied up in one individual.

You've got years of knowledge, experience and customer relationships that have never been shared with anyone else.

And that's where the £500,000 mistake starts to make sense.

Most business owners think they're losing a salesperson in that scenario.  And that is true but it is much bigger than that. 

They're losing future revenue, confidence, consistency of customer experience. 

They're losing everything that person knew but never passed on.

The irony is, they often don't notice the cost until months later. The pipeline starts slowing down, conversion rates begin to drift, customers stop coming back as often and everyone starts looking for the reason.

So what happens then?  They start blaming their Marketing or the economy or the competition.

When in reality, the problem started the day the business allowed all of its sales knowledge to live inside one person's head.

For me, that's why sales performance has never been about creating superstar salespeople.

It's about creating a culture where great conversations happen whoever picks up the phone, whoever walks into the meeting and whoever turns up for work that day.

Because customers shouldn't have to hope they get "the good salesperson."

They should get the same experience every single time they deal with your business.

So where does that leave us?

Well, if you've recognised yourself anywhere in this article, don't beat yourself up. Nearly every business owner I've ever worked with has done exactly the same thing, including me. We build businesses by getting stuck in, solving problems and doing whatever it takes to keep customers happy. That's one of the reasons we become successful in the first place.

The challenge comes when the business grows.

What helped you build the business isn't always what helps you scale it.

At some point you've got to stop being the person with all the answers and start building a team that knows how to find the answers for themselves. That doesn't happen because you send everyone on another sales course. It happens because you create a culture where people learn from one another, where conversations are shared, where good habits become the norm and where customers get the same experience regardless of who they're talking to.

For me, that's what sales performance is really about.

It's not about producing one superstar salesperson. It's about creating an environment where average people become exceptional because they understand how to build trust, how to ask better questions and, most importantly, how to put the customer at the heart of every conversation.

That's a business that's worth something. A business that can grow without you and that buyers (or competitors) want to buy.

And it's a business that gives you the freedom you probably wanted when you started it in the first place.

Before I finish, let me leave you with one question.

If you disappeared from your business for the next thirty days, would your customers notice?

Not because they'd miss you personally, but because the quality of the conversations, the confidence of your team and the consistency of your customer experience would all change overnight.

If the answer is yes, then perhaps the biggest asset in your business isn't your product, your service or even your reputation. 

Perhaps it's you.

And if that's true, then you might also be the biggest risk.

In the next article, I want to look at another assumption that keeps businesses stuck. Because once we've stopped relying on one person, the next instinct is usually to go looking for more leads.

The trouble is, more leads don't always create more revenue.

Sometimes they just create a bigger version of the problem you already have.