Founder-led selling works… until it doesn’t.

0:06Claus Klein‑Ipsen:Welcome back to the Mastering Sales and Negotiations podcast. I'm your host, Robin Hoyle. This week on the podcast, we were joined by Claus Klein-Ipsen, Chairman of the Board at Peak Systems and a long-time advisor to founder-led startups and VC-backed scale-ups. In fact, he's an investor himself. In our conversation, we explored what really breaks when organizations move from founder-led selling to repeatable, scalable sales. And today, I'm joined by former podcast guest Will Ockenden to unpack the key takeaways from that discussion, including how founder passion can quietly undermine customer discovery, why VC pressure often leads to process without progress and how treating sales as a craft rather than a personality trait creates sustainable performance.

1:00And why Will?

1:01Claus Klein‑Ipsen:He's a founder himself. He's experienced this firsthand and he now also works closely with sales leaders and organizations as they're navigating growth, helping those teams turn startup passion into methodology and from there into everyday commercial behavior. In short, But Will's right at the sharp end of this challenge. Let's dive in.

1:33Claus Klein‑Ipsen:So, Will, a slightly strange set-up today because Rachel can't be with us. So we're doing the quick wins with you as Joint Managing Director of Prohibition PR, one of our former guests on the Mastering Sales and Negotiation podcast. So I'd like to reflect because you've been in the shoes of some of the organizations that Klaus was talking about there as a founder of a business. When you first started the Prohibition, when you first, you and your colleagues, first got the idea of going it alone, so to speak, what were the challenges then in terms of selling? And how much did your enthusiasm and passion for what you could do kind of carry you through that phase?

2:13Yeah, it's an interesting challenge, really. I mean, I think certainly when you're a small business, you can get that face time with prospects and a lot more face time with clients. And naturally, you're subject matter experts. You're super enthusiastic. And that enthusiasm can be really infectious. And that's great. You know, you're of a size five, six, seven people. But you get to a stage when you start to scale as a business when it's just not possible to be doing all the selling in that way. So you need to start teaching those techniques. And that's a challenge, really, because obviously your team don't necessarily have the expertise and the same kind of shared passion for the business.

2:49Claus Klein‑Ipsen:So Klaus talked a bit about that challenge of building what he called domain expertise amongst the people who were brought into the business as it started to scale. How did you go about that? Because obviously you knew exactly what you wanted to do, what you could do, what you were passionate about. How do you enthuse those other people to take it into the wider market? Yeah, it's a good question. And I think if you get too obsessed with it, it's problematic because at the end of the day, people aren't going to share exactly your passion or exactly your knowledge of the business and of your products.

3:29But really, it's about creating processes and trying to teach things as much as possible. And I think without those kind of processes and without automating and systematizing things, there's no way you can possibly get a broader team to effectively sell. The other kind of game changer for us was really identifying the value that we actually bring our clients. So rather than just defaulting to selling products, albeit with passion, we actually looked at the value we brought our clients and the value we can actually do to their bottom lines at the end of the day. And by identifying that process, and obviously there's an element of teaching technical knowledge, but it's about identifying the value.

4:11And it took a bit of a leap of faith. You know, it's kind of letting go. It's letting go to a degree, isn't it? Suddenly, you know, doing something that I know I'm really great at and actually having to delegate that to a broader team. But to grow, there's no way you can, you know, you can't, you know, we're now a business of 30. We can't be doing all the selling.

4:28Claus Klein‑Ipsen:No, you can't be in every customer meeting. That's for certain, sure. And that idea of defining that value, the way in which that, to a certain extent, is adding your expertise within your area, your PR expertise in the broadest sense, and wedding that to that customer insight, which is about, well, what makes their business tick? What are they looking for? And recognizing that some of them won't be in marketing or public relations or product placement or any of those allied trades. They'll be the finance guy or the production guy or whoever it is within the business. So there's growing pains as a business as you move from a few of you working off somebody's kitchen table into something which is much more formal and established and has a budget to achieve in order to make sure everybody's mortgage gets paid at the end of the month or whatever.

5:26Claus Klein‑Ipsen:How does that growth affect you as one of the original founders? Do you get that sense that Klaus was talking about of wanting to share that experience, become more of a sort of teacher, a facilitator of continued development rather than just, you know, the guy telling people what to do? Well, it's exactly that. I mean, first of all, investment in skills and development is money well spent. You know, you can't expect your team to grow and flourish without any, you know, without an investment in that. You can't. There's no kind of shortcut to that. being comfortable at letting go a little bit is another thing.

6:05I mean, that's terrifying initially. But we believe, you know, you create the right culture, you treat people with respect, and then the company will flourish. People will naturally want to, you know, want to excel in their jobs. They'll take it upon themselves to do their own learning. So get the culture right and the scaling can, you know, and that can absolutely kind of support the scaling. But also getting those processes down as much as possible. So the sales process, a lot of it can be systematized and using appropriate sales methodologies and making sure we do it the same way, albeit within the parameters that we set.

6:40And that's the level of control we can have in the future. We set the parameters, but then we let people get on with it at the end of the day.

6:47Claus Klein‑Ipsen:And I think that ability to let people get on with it, as you described it, as a leap of faith, it is scary as, you know, just giving people that space to be able to do things. is there one thing that that you think organizations benefit from in terms of that freedom that they give people that that idea of being able to say look here's the framework work within the framework but you can do whatever it you you think is the right decision in in that framework what's what's the one thing that you would say you'd need to do well that again it comes back to the culture you know if you've got a culture where people can take risks people are not afraid to fail and people feel safe in making those kind of mistakes, making those mistakes once, can I add, you know, don't make the same mistake twice.

7:37But getting the culture right, the company will flourish. And you can't, I believe, you know, I think you can set expectations for the type of culture you want, but ultimately a culture becomes a kind of a living, breathing thing. And if you get that right, the sales team will flourish, the marketing team will flourish, people will be engaged and amazing at their jobs and clients will benefit. So for me, getting that right is the most important thing and that will support every other element within the business.

8:06Claus Klein‑Ipsen:So Klaus said, and I thought this was quite an unusual thing because when all's said and done, he's an investor. He's a guy putting some money into a business with an expectation that he will exit the business and his investment will have grown in time. he said that he actually goes along on sales visits with salespeople even though he's a member of the board he's not senior manager he's not a he's not sales leader or anything like that he goes along on sales visits and what's more he regrets that he hasn't taken to doing that earlier in his investing career you go along sometimes is is it possible for you to keep a third eye on the conversation and watch what's happening rather than get involved in the customer conversation how easy is that for you to be a little bit one step back from the conversation so you can look at it yeah i found that interesting that um when klaus was talking around that as well i think in a perfect world you would take a step back and you would be completely objective about it and you'd let the team get on with it it's really hard to sit in your hands though i'll be honest and i and i'm constantly tempted to again it comes down to the enthusiasm and the passion and the knowledge I'm constantly tempted to add my two penneth to the conversation.

9:22But actually, I always think if, you know, well, first of all, I love to do that. I love to go along and observe the teams and see how things are going. But the times when I can sit on my hands, it's great to see because you see the teams delivering things within the parameters we've set, but doing it in their own way. And it's a really effective way. so I would always try and support them and build on what they're saying rather than taking over and I think yeah like I said it takes a bit of discipline but I found that fascinating as well

9:54Claus Klein‑Ipsen:when he talked around that and that idea of it being scary to kind of let people go to give people to a certain extent it's also giving you that confidence that oh it doesn't all fall apart and that's what a business is isn't it a business is a machine that works and operates without you you know and I think that's it's great to see it's it's a series of cogs and wheels turning together and actually surprise surprise you're not that important and I think that's quite humbling actually but in most of the cases you know that's a successful business if you're not really needed yeah and it's also that sign of maturity in that journey that you've been on to be able to go do you know what if I fell under a bus tomorrow the organization would continue with that exactly and I'm worried about going out at lunchtime now yeah stay off the main roads