How to Scale Revenue Fast as a Startup’s New Sales Leader

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

You’re the new sales leader at a startup and you want to increase your sales team’s performance. Maybe you’re the first one they’ve ever had. Maybe you’re replacing someone. Maybe there’s a sales team already, maybe not. The specifics don’t matter as much as this: things are a mess. 

You have big expectations for yourself about building and scaling. The company does too, that’s why they brought you on. The excitement of joining can quickly turn to anxiety when you see that the pipeline is unclear, the sales processes either don’t exist or don’t work, and nobody seems aligned on what success even looks like.

This is the reality most sales leaders face when joining early-stage companies. And here’s what nobody tells you: you’re going to feel overwhelmed. Really overwhelmed. That’s normal. I’ve started, or taken over a small team, at every startup I’ve ever been at. This is what I’ve faced at every startup before scaling it. Embrace the overwhelm.

The good news is that I’m sharing a proven framework for getting things under control and scaling quickly. 

Overwhelmed and Ready to Fix Everything (But Don’t)

When I joined a post-Series A startup a few years ago as their new sales leader, I inherited a team with underperforming and flat revenue numbers, plenty of fires, and a culture best described as low energy and undisciplined.

I felt immediately overwhelmed. During my first week, there was a senior leadership team meeting where we reviewed the abysmal revenue numbers from the prior month. I turned to our CEO, my new boss, and joked, “Am I accountable for these numbers now?” He laughed. A few slides later I saw our burn multiple had crept up to 3x. Flat revenue with a 3x burn. Yikes. I had my work cut out for me.  

I turned my focus to my new sales team. There were so many things that needed to be fixed immediately. I wanted to change everything, right now.

But I knew that would backfire, especially for the complex things. So I had to balance two competing truths: there were fires everywhere that needed attention, but I also needed to deeply understand what was actually happening before making many of the necessary changes.

The key was knowing where to observe for now and where to act now.

For the more complex areas, like our AE’s sales process, I spent a lot of time observing that first month. I asked questions constantly. My questions were to gain understanding rather than critical questioning. What did the team think they needed? How were things actually working? I took a coaching approach rather than directive leadership, helping team members solve problems instead of telling them what to do. 

I also dug into the numbers, looked at the deals in our CRM, really studying what was happening. I needed that holistic understanding before touching the AE process. I also needed to gain the team’s respect and buy-in. You can’t successfully implement changes if your team doesn’t trust you yet.

I needed to understand our product and our prospects. A fatal error that many sales leaders make when they join a new company is trying to replicate everything they’ve done at previous companies. As an example, if your sales process and sales methodology don’t incorporate the nuances of your product and prospects, you are doomed to fail. Even if what you’re implementing has worked brilliantly in the past. This is why the observation period matters so much.

And while I’m observing the complex stuff, I was simultaneously taking aggressive action on other fronts. I didn’t wait to transform the sales culture. I didn’t wait to fix obvious operational problems at the top of the funnel. Some things needed immediate intervention, and delaying them would have been a mistake.

The V1 Mentality: Progress Over Perfection

When you’re building, resist the urge to chase perfection. Instead, embrace what I call the “V1 mentality.” This approach has been one of my most effective tools for conquering being overwhelmed. Your early projects and undertakings don’t need to be a 10 out of 10.

In fact, this early on, you couldn’t build a 10 even if you wanted to. 

You simply don’t have enough information yet. You need to build a V1, get it out into the wild and start getting quantitative and qualitative feedback from your salespeople and prospects.

Speed Wins

When you’ve inherited a mess, speed matters more than perfection. Every day you spend perfecting a process in a document is a day your team continues operating without structure.

A working V1 today beats a great V2 three months from now. While you’re polishing that perfect system, you’re sacrificing today’s revenue and progress. Your team needs direction now.

This doesn’t mean being reckless. It means being deliberate about where you invest your energy. Build something good enough to gather real feedback, then improve it based on what you learn. This approach lets you fix multiple things quickly instead of perfecting one thing slowly.

And more importantly, improve it when/if you need to. As an example, at my last company, my first V1 project was fixing our BDR process. I wanted to dramatically increase our number of Discovery Calls. I joined the company in January and implemented a new BDR process that month. It led to doubling our Discovery Calls in February and 2.5x’ing in March. 

I had tons of ideas for our V2 but we didn’t need any more Discovery Calls at that point. The AEs were already drowning in pipeline. Optimizing the BDR process further wouldn’t make any sense. This V1 turned out to be sufficient and I had other things to prioritize! 

How to Prioritize?

Prioritization Scorecard

Sales leaders ask me how I prioritize things when there’s so much to do. One of the ways is I look around and do a simple scoring like this…

Overall = 1/10

• Sales Culture = 1/10
• AE Sales Process = 2/10
• BDR Process = 0/10

There’s a lot more than these 3 things, of course.

This was roughly what my scorecard looked like when I fixed the BDR process at my last company. So I prioritized getting it to at least a 2 or 3 with a V1. And then I knew I’d turn my attention to other low hanging fruit afterwards. 

How do you score these things? Well, when I joined, I noticed that BDRs didn’t have a process for managing leads. And when I asked a BDR how did he know if he had reached out to a lead or not he said “I’m not actually sure.” It’s subjective, but that’s what a 0 looks like to me.

Prioritize Quick Wins

Here’s the critical insight most new sales leaders miss: if you implement changes that won’t show results for several months, you’ll lose people along the way. The team needs to see that your changes are working, and they need to see it fast.

The early points are way faster to accumulate. For example, it may take a month to go from a 0/10 to a 3/10 in an area, but a year to go from a 9/10 to a 10/10. This is another reason why prioritizing V1s in multiple areas beats chasing perfection in one.

Some early quick wins I love typically come from RevOps. There’s typically a lot of manual operational and administrative tasks that salespeople need to do at early-stage startups. Automating and improving these are huge and produce wins almost immediately. 

Returning to the example of the post-Series A startup I joined a few years ago, by my 2nd month (August), we set a company record for most revenue closed in a single month. There was no additional headcount (I actually fired my most senior AE at the start of August), no additional spending, etc. This was achieved through prioritizing V1s and quick wins.

Start at the Top of the Funnel

When deciding where to begin, I almost always start at the top of the funnel and work my way down. This may actually seem counterintuitive to some because usually when you come on as the sales leader you feel a strong sense of urgency (usually internal and external) to increase revenue which could naturally lead to prioritizing the later stages or things like “fixing the closing issue”. Here’s why I start at the top of the funnel first: if your top of funnel is broken, everything else you build is constructed on a weak foundation. 

Think of it like building a house. If you have a mud foundation, it doesn’t matter how beautiful the rooms are, the whole structure is compromised. The same is true for your sales process. If your BDR/SDR process is a mess, fixing your AE sales process won’t solve your fundamental problems.

Fixing the foundation often improves the entire house without even directly touching the upper floors. When you dramatically increase the volume and quality of pipeline entering the system, downstream metrics naturally improve. AEs close more deals not because you changed their process, but because they have more at-bats with better-qualified prospects. For example, your close rate might improve simply because speed-to-lead got better. Win rates can increase because prospects are more engaged when contacted quickly.

This means you can get revenue wins without directly intervening in the more complex, sensitive later stage sales process.

Fixing the top of funnel first has other benefits as well:

• Created predictability: With a process in place, I knew that X number of leads would convert to roughly Y number of Demos, giving us visibility and the ability to forecast.
• Bought me time: While implementing the BDR V1, I could observe and understand the AE side before making changes there.
• Built momentum: When you almost immediately double or triple your Discovery Calls or Demos, you create immediate credibility and excitement.
• Lower resistance to change: BDRs are relatively junior and tend to be more open to change and the AEs are thrilled to get more qualified meetings.

Discovery Calls and Demos are the lifeblood of a sales team. Getting that flow working creates energy and optimism across the entire organization. Start there, get it working, then move down-funnel.

Prioritize Mindset and Behavior Over Sales Skills

When you’re assessing your team and identifying what needs to improve, resist the urge to immediately jump to skills training.  Most sales leaders default to this thinking: “we need better discovery training,” “let’s work on objection handling,” “they need to learn our pitch better.”

This is usually the wrong place to start.

In reality, sales performance rests on three pillars, in order of importance:

1. Mindset (most important)
2. Behavior
3. Skill (least important)

Here’s why mindset and behavior matter more: if someone on your team is struggling with something like setting upfront contracts, it’s rarely because they don’t know how to set them (skill issue). It’s usually a mindset challenge like fear of rejection, and they’re worrying about being too pushy and concerned about losing the deal. Even if you teach your salespeople the perfect technique, they won’t execute it if the underlying mindset issue isn’t addressed.

The same is true for behavior. When you inherit a mess, you need your team operating with urgency, increasing activity levels, and actually following the new processes you’re implementing. A BDR might understand why speed-to-lead matters and know how to respond quickly (mindset and skill), but if they’re not exhibiting the behavior (e.g. if they’re still letting leads sit for hours or skipping steps in your new BDR process) nothing improves. Behavior is about execution and consistency. You need people who will actually do the work, not just nod along in meetings.

This is actually good news for your overwhelmed, under-resourced situation. Mindset and behavior changes don’t require elaborate training programs or expensive consultants. They require coaching conversations, creating the right culture, and reinforcing the right thinking patterns. These are things you can start influencing immediately through how you show up, what you celebrate, and what you coach to in the moment.

Skills training can come later, once you have people with the right mindset showing up with the right behaviors consistently.

Build a Winning Sales Team Culture

While you’re working on processes and prioritization, don’t wait to start transforming your sales culture. This is one area where you can create change overnight. A winning sales culture isn’t something that evolves slowly over time, it’s something you actively create through the rituals, norms, and energy you bring to the team every single day.

If the sales culture is low-energy and undisciplined, I don’t wait months to address it. For example, I’ve immediately implemented daily 15-minute sales team meetings at the same time every day. Monday icebreakers, Tuesday kickoffs to review metrics and celebrate wins, Wednesday objection handling practice, Thursday learning sessions, Friday demo watch parties. Two companies ago, I got a lot of initial resistance to this. They thought it would be a waste of time. Within weeks, these meetings became their favorite part of the day. I’ve written extensively about how to build a winning sales team culture. I’ve broken down the 7-step playbook for winning sales cultures on the SellMeThisPen Podcast (Youtube and Spotify).

Start Your V1 Today

Inheriting a sales mess is overwhelming but it’s also a huge opportunity. The framework is straightforward: embrace the V1 mentality, prioritize strategically using your scorecard, start at the top of the funnel, focus on mindset and behavior over skills, and build culture from day one.

You don’t need perfect systems or unlimited resources. You need speed, focus, and the willingness to iterate. Build something good enough to learn from, get quick wins to build momentum, and trust that fixing the foundation will improve things downstream.

By my second month at that post-Series A startup, we’d set a company revenue record. Not because I had all the answers or built perfect systems, but because I moved fast, prioritized ruthlessly, and got the team aligned and energized around what mattered.

The mess you’ve inherited isn’t permanent. Start with your V1 today.