You'll never get out of sales

"How do I remove myself from sales?"

I hear this question constantly from business owners who are buried in their sales process. They're taking incoming calls, doing discovery calls, writing proposals, following up with prospects—all while trying to run their actual business.

I know all too well how grueling this can be.

And I know how tempting the thought of “escaping” sales can be when you’re spinning plates across delivery, operations, marketing, and sales.

“Removing yourself from sales” sounds like freedom.

I have good news and bad news.

Bad news first: You never really get out of sales.

The good news? You can evolve with sales as your business grows. And you can get your time back while keeping the sales engine running—if you reframe how you look at it.

Understanding how to evolve through sales—rather than trying to escape it—is the difference between building a growth system that scales and staying stuck doing everything yourself.

The Promotion Ladder

When you start a business, you are the entire sales organization.

If you mapped it out, you'd see three roles: the person prospecting (SDR/BDR), the person closing (AE), and the person managing it all (Sales Manager).

Early on, that's all you. You're at networking events, sending LinkedIn DMs, hopping on calls, writing proposals, following-up as best you can, and telling yourself you'll "update the CRM later" because you're too buried to actually do it.

It's chaotic. But it works—until it doesn't.

Because here's what happens: you start winning.

More clients means more delivery, more hiring, more processes to build. The more deals you close, the more jobs you create for yourself. And suddenly, the sales motion that got you here becomes impossible to maintain.

Most owners hit this point and think the answer is to “remove themselves from sales” so they can focus on everything else that's breaking.

Wrong move.

The answer isn't removal—it's promotion. You need to promote yourself through the sales process, one role at a time.

Step 1: Promote yourself out of lead generation first

Start by systematizing or hiring for the SDR/BDR/ISR role. Someone who's focused exclusively on booking you qualified appointments—not closing deals, just getting people to commit 15-30 minutes of their time.

Why start here? Three reasons:

1. It's the lowest capital requirement in sales hiring.
   

2. The payback period is short—you'll see results in 60-90 days if someone’s working out.
   

3. Success in this role supplies the opportunities and revenue you need to hire for future roles.

So whether it's cold calls, email, LinkedIn, or events, get someone filling your calendar with qualified conversations.

Step 2: Focus on being the closer and make sure the engine works

Don't move to the next step until this one is stable. Run the deals yourself. Tighten the messaging. Make sure the prospecting motion is actually producing qualified meetings, not just activity. Fix the handoffs. Document what's working.

Once the SDR function is consistently delivering, then you're ready to move.

Step 3: Promote yourself out of closing

Now hire an outside sales rep (OSR) or AE who can run discovery and close deals without you. Use the lift from Step 1 to fund this hire—new bookings and closed revenue should help underwrite the cost.

Hire the right person. Train them properly. Shadow calls. Don't just throw them in and hope it works. And when they're closing at or near target consistently, you've built a real motion: BDR feeding the AE, and deals closing without you running every call.

Step 4: Install proper sales management

Once you’ve made these two hires, sales management fundamentals become essential. A lot of owners simply ignore this function and wonder why everything went off the rails.

For your SDR, you need to review activity trackers, listen to calls, conduct training and drills, and run a couple huddles each week.

For your OSR, reviewing the business development activity and results, conducting pipeline reviews, and coaching discovery/proposal sales calls is critical for accountability.

Yes, this still takes time. But it’s less time than the entire process yourself, and you now have full-time people in those seats—which means more production than you could generate, even if they’re only 80% as good as you.

If you slack on accountability here, performance will slide fast. So lock these functions in, hire a sales manager, or look for a fractional sales manager to lead this effort. (If you’re an MSP, I may know someone who can help. 😉)

Step 5: Promote yourself to CEO

Eventually, when the team is humming and you have a manager/fractional manager helping you get predictable results, you formally step into the CEO role.

You can focus on the more strategic initiatives—big relationships, partner channels, pricing, enablement priorities, marketing strategies.

Even then, you're still involved in sales. You're just doing it at the CEO level now, not grinding through cold calls and proposals.

The Bootstrap Method

These 5 steps are a proven formula for winning your time back.

And it’s what I call the “Bootstrap Method” of creating repeatable revenue (also the name of my investment company) in your business. Bottom up hiring. Easy to cash flow. Success in one role funds the next.

It’s not the only approach and I’ll share another approach in a couple week. But it is the one that works for 80%+ of $1-10MM B2B service businesses.

The key is to address the primary constraint, ensure it’s fixed, then (and only then) move to the next constraint. It takes some time and patience, but it works.

The Reframe

So, the real question isn't "How do I remove myself from sales?"

It's: "How do I get my time back while keeping sales coming in—and what role do I play at this stage to help the business grow past me?"

That mindset shift changes everything. You're not trying to escape sales. You're building a machine where you play a different—and more valuable—role at each stage.

Lead gen first. Then closing. Then management. Then leadership.

You don't exit sales. You ascend through it.

Adios,

Ray