Your Sales Team Isn’t a Growth Hack

Here's what nobody tells you about scaling sales teams: Your reps can't manufacture demand that doesn't exist. They can't fix broken messaging. And they definitely can't turn bad leads into good ones faster by sheer force of will. A startup I know (and shall remain nameless learned this the expensive way. They hired aggressively, missed their numbers, then hired more aggressively. The spreadsheet said it would work. Reality disagreed. They ended up spending $2 to make every $1 of ARR. When the money ran out, they blamed sales. Turns out they were asking sales to solve a marketing problem. This made me think about what actually needs to be true before you scale a sales team. It's not about pipeline coverage or activity metrics. It's about whether you're burning capital or building a real growth engine.