And this one time... on the sales floor....

I fired myself. 🤔 

When leading sales teams, things aren't always Unicorns and Roses.

At one of the startups I was at, two previous heads of sales in 12 months, had built up a HUGE PIPELINE and upon which the company raised money. Whoopee!

But it was a shit show and those two guys got fired. I was promoted to lead sales and got filthy dirty and

➡️ went one by one into almost 900 "Opportunities" and determined that only about 90 of them were actually qualified Opportunities.

➡️ And also did some market research and interviewed peers of mine in a similar space and realized quickly that we were on a road to nowhere.

On a Friday night, I went to the two founders and told them that we weren't hitting our goals for the next 6 months. I recommended that we either pivot hard to another product offering or just shut the company down.

That Monday, the two founders brought me and my leadership team in and said that based on my feedback, they were shutting the company down and we were all out of jobs.

I had fired myself!

This was one of the best decisions in my entire career.

Founders WANT the good news AND the bad news to be able to run a successful business.

💡 Learning Lesson: As a sales leader at an early stage startup, it's your responsibility to

1️⃣ tell your founders the good news and the bad news AND

2️⃣ to come to the table with recommendations to help them through the next steps.

Has anybody else done that before?

Drop it in the comments