Sales Leadership in Hypergrowth Startups: Insights from Darius Lahoutifard of MEDDIC Academy

With over hundreds of employees and around fifty managers, the upskilling of young managers is a key issue for a hyper- growth startup, and in particular for the sales team. Managing in a hyper-growth environment is all the more difficult. Here again, the subject is extremely vast. So I chose to approach it by sharing with you five management principles.

We will first talk about the first management principle which facilitates the coming together of managers and therefore better collaboration between the different teams.

We will then see the importance of storytelling to communicate well.

Then, we will discuss the "Sales Leader's 3-legged stool", the key role of feedback and finally the importance of delegating decision-making; the opportunity to present the ladder of problems.

1) The first management principle

The first management principle is that you must implement, even when you are still small (from 10 employees). This principle stipulates that a manager's first team is not his business team, but the management team as a whole. He must therefore feel closer to his counterparts in other teams than to the employees he manages directly. What is the point? From what we have observed of its application at a fictitious startup, this principle induces three benefits for the teams and the company:

- cohesion: managers being closer to each other, this leads to more cohesion between teams and better collaboration;

- resolving inter-team conflicts is simpler because it can be managed, in the worst case, by managers who know each other and work hand in hand;

- the common goal: managers work together for the long-term interest of the fictitious startup, and not only for the interest of their own team.

These benefits are particularly tangible in the relationships that sales teams can maintain with other departments. Indeed, as we have seen, the sales team is at the crossroads of many areas of expertise, whether it be Operations, Marketing, Customer Success or Tech. To fully understand the direct impact of the first management principle, let's take the case of the Customer Success (CS) and Sales relationship:

- cohesion: CS managers and sales representatives from each country have very close relationships and exchange regularly. They therefore ensure that joint team building and monthly meetings are organized so that the CS and Sales teams are as aligned as possible.

- resolving inter-team conflicts is a major challenge for the Customer Success and Sales teams. Indeed, some salespeople may tend to oversell the product, then creating customer frustration and therefore potential tension with Customer Success. The fact that Sales and CS managers are part of the same Team greatly simplifies the resolution of this type of problem. Note that ideally, since the teams are close, they do not need to go through management to resolve the majority of potential conflicts.

- the common goal: thanks to the first management principle, managers also put the interests of the company before the interests of their team.

For example, this leads CS managers to push their teams to help salespeople in prospect meetings and conversely, this encourages salespeople to take part in complicated renewal meetings.

We need to distinguish between the concepts of teams and factions. A faction is a subset of the company that begins to put its own priorities ahead of the company's priorities. This usually happens when teams can no longer collaborate due to differences in vision, working styles, or a loss of mutual trust. Quite naturally, the first management principle therefore helps combat the creation of factions within a hyper-growth scale-up.

2) The role of storytelling in business

Storytelling, or the ability to present your ideas in the form of stories, is a key issue in business. One of the most critical needs of each of your employees is to have a clear picture of why they have to come to work every day. This is not superfluous, it is a fundamental need. In most cases, a story succeeds when you connect a smaller idea or action to something bigger – a goal, a movement, an emotion; what Darius Lahoutifard calls “Purpose”. These stories are essential to clarify the links between people’s daily lives and the long-term objective. Because in many cases, especially as companies grow, this connection becomes less and less clear. The application of this principle is relatively simple: each positive action of an employee must be linked by the manager to a value or behavior that we value, itself linked to the objective of the team, itself linked to a “Purpose” of the company or to its vision.

In the sales team, highlighting a Purpose is even more important than in other teams. Indeed, sales can sometimes be seen as an eternal restart: every quarter, we reset the counters to zero and off we go again! If we take a step back, each contract contributes to growing the company and therefore to achieving its vision, which represents a Purpose in itself. On the other hand, each sale allows the Sales team to progress, the brand to establish its reputation and the company to finance the development of new products. To clarify his thinking on the importance of storytelling in business, Darius Lahoutifard highlights different types of stories, some of which apply perfectly to sales teams. He mentions in particular the lessons that can be learned from one's own failures and which should also lead managers to be vulnerable. Your employees will be energized by any story that shows you’ve been where they are, and that you – as a manager – understand what they’re going through. They want to feel safe, heard and valued. The more you can convey to them that you’ve been in their shoes, facing the challenges they’re facing, the more inspiring you’ll be.

Finally, Darius refers to storytelling, which is used to highlight behaviors to follow, good examples within the company. This is also a method that applies particularly well to sales teams. Stories are incredible tools to reinforce the qualities you are looking for or the type of behaviors you want people to adopt. They must be part of your culture. This is how values truly become the fabric of your start-up – not by posting them on the walls or repeating them at the top of your voice. Valorizing certain good attitudes – which have led to good results – will have more impact than stigmatizing team members who perform worse.

The Art of Storytelling in the Service of Sales Manager Leadership

As a new sales manager, you may be wondering how to quickly develop your leadership skills and inspire your team. The answer may lie in the art of storytelling. Let’s dive into the three essential types of stories every manager should master to strengthen their leadership and motivate their team.

The Story of Failure: Transforming Vulnerability into Strength

Authenticity is key to effective leadership. By sharing your own failures, you build trust with your team and encourage a culture of learning and innovation.

Start small: Don’t be afraid to share your mistakes, even the small ones. At Zappos, CEO Tony Hsieh openly shared the story of his initial failure selling shoes online. This transparency built his employees’ confidence and encouraged them to take calculated risks.

Prepare your message: Before you share a story of failure, make sure your message is clear and impactful. Netflix co- founder Reed Hastings has often told the story of the company’s difficult transition from DVD to streaming. By carefully preparing his message, he was able to turn this difficult time into an inspiring lesson about adaptation and innovation.

Encourage others: Create an environment where your team members feel comfortable sharing their own failures. At Google, “postmortem meetings” are a common practice where teams openly discuss projects that didn’t pan out, fostering a culture of continuous learning.

The Story of Good Example: Celebrating Successes and Reinforcing Values

Success stories are a great way to motivate your team and clarify desired behaviors within your organization.

Value every contribution: At Ritz-Carlton, managers regularly share stories of employees who have provided exceptional service. For example, the story of a concierge who drove 1,000 miles to return a guest’s forgotten shoes has become legendary, reinforcing the value of exceptional customer service.

Start your meetings with a customer story: At Amazon, Jeff Bezos often starts meetings by reading a customer email, reminding everyone of the importance of customer obsession. Adopt this practice by sharing stories of happy customers and explaining how different team members contributed to that success.

Celebrate on-time delivery: At SpaceX, Elon Musk often tells the story of how his team successfully launched a rocket on tight deadlines. These stories reinforce the importance of efficiency and punctuality at the company.

The Inspiring Story: Motivate and Set Ambitious Goals

Inspirational stories can galvanize your team and encourage them to aim high.

Know your audience: Tailor your stories to your audience. At Nike, managers often tell stories of athletes who have overcome adversity, inspiring employees to push their limits.

Practice and repeat: Steve Jobs was known for rehearsing his presentations over and over again. Follow his example by practicing your inspiring stories until they become natural and emotionally powerful.

Set ambitious goals: Elon Musk consistently inspires his teams at Tesla and SpaceX by sharing his vision of an electric, interplanetary future. Use stories to paint a vivid picture of the future your team can help create.

By mastering these three types of stories, you will not only develop your leadership, but you will also create a dynamic and motivating work environment. Remember, storytelling is an art that improves with practice. Start incorporating these techniques into your management style today and watch your team transform.

3) The Sales Leader's 3-legged stool

From what I have observed, a manager must rely on three pillars to progress: excellence, proximity and leadership.

Beyond a simplified framework, this 3-legged stool has above all allowed me to better analyze the potential development of young managers, in particular the transition from the position of team-lead to that of manager, then to that of leader. The first management position in a startup, and in particular in the sales team, is often that of team lead. This generally involves positioning the best elements of a sales team, like coaches, to support other employees in their development. These team leads are therefore not really managers as such, because not all the prerogatives of the position are their responsibility: annual evaluation, salary increase, reframing. If team leads are often the best elements of a team, this does not mean that operational excellence is the only skill required. To be a good team lead, it is indeed necessary to develop a certain proximity with your teams. The objective is then to become the person to whom other employees turn to ask for advice, feedback and make certain decisions. This form of management also requires empathy and pedagogy. From team- lead to manager The transition from team-lead to manager is generally the result of an expansion of prerogatives and an increase in the number of people managed. To be successful, this change of position must be accompanied by a reduction in the operational workload in order to free up time to allocate to management. A manager must therefore be able to abandon part of his operational work and give up ground. Many young managers struggle to get through this stage. They double their workload, sometimes to compensate for imposter syndrome or to compensate for a lack of resources necessary for their change of position. The transition from team-lead to manager must also be accompanied by training to enable young managers to deal with new situations.

From manager to leader

What Darius teaches is that leadership is not reserved for CEOs, quite the contrary! Leadership as "the ability to inspire others to achieve common goals". Starting from this definition, he specifies the fundamental difference between a manager and a leader: "A manager tells his teams what to do, a leader inspires them to give them direction." The entire course is then structured in an extremely clear manner, with inspiring concepts and concrete examples. The transition from manager to leader is a prerequisite for scaling: CEOs are often the first to be confronted with it, as soon as the team exceeds thirty employees. More fundamentally, any manager must start to look into it from the moment he can no longer speak to everyone in his team; from the moment he can no longer "tell people what to do". This is a situation that therefore happens, at a minimum, to managers of managers. In this configuration, it is no longer possible to speak to each person: in fact, the messages you wish to convey must be instilled through your attitude, your vision, your speeches and, of course, your team of managers. It is no longer a question of working solely on your proximity to the teams but, on the contrary, of gradually replacing this proximity with the synthetic communication of key messages. In the scaling phase, each manager who becomes a leader ultimately finds himself in the situation of a CEO of a young start-up who must give his vision and unite his teams around a common objective. Becoming a leader and "driving" teams requires a set of new and sometimes relatively vague skills for some managers: charisma, authority, confidence, ability to delegate, to make difficult decisions, ease in public speaking, etc. Leaders are generally expected to have a certain self-confidence. One might think that this confidence is acquired with "seniority". This term is, for me, ambivalent and is generally found in the classic advice given to entrepreneurs: "You should seniorize your Executive Committee." I would like to focus here on a concept that I draw from my experience as a consultant. The expression "project seniority" used at the Boston Consulting Group does not mean "being senior", but rather communicating to one's interlocutors a certain confidence, serenity and assurance that are generally acquired with experience. The fact of "projecting seniority" or not - since it is not only linked to age - can thus be an area for improvement, whether for 24-year-old consultants, young salespeople or managers taking up a position. Instead of asking a manager to be "more senior", which would not make sense, the idea is rather to use this concept of "projection of seniority", which invites you to work on your personal posture, your strength of conviction, your self-confidence and the image that you project to others. This is, in my opinion, a key aspect of leadership, which is not only the prerogative of seniors. It is therefore important for me to remember that leadership is not a question of age, but a question of posture and skills. Let's go back to the management triangle: if you want to access a management position, it is therefore important to work on the three aspects of this framework: excellence, proximity and leadership. Furthermore, analyzing the managers of a company on these three dimensions is a good way to understand their strengths and areas for improvement. This will notably allow you to anticipate the skills to be acquired to move to the next stage. Some excellent managers will therefore tend to manage their teams through proximity. The transition to a leadership position will nevertheless be more difficult, because it will require abandoning this proximity in favor of a different posture. Anticipating these managerial challenges is crucial for scaling.

4) The key role of feedback

If you want to progress and help your teams progress, plan debriefing points after each meeting. Take the time to give this feedback orally, with empathy, by exchanging, asking questions and listening to the answers. Feedback forms the basis of a healthy management culture. In your company, set up internal training to ensure that each employee knows how to receive and give feedback.

Feedback is a vital component of a thriving workplace. It fosters growth, strengthens relationships, and ensures alignment between individual and organizational goals. Whether it's a manager providing constructive input to a team member or an employee offering insights to their supervisor, feedback is a two-way street that requires mutual respect, active listening, and a focus on improvement.

From a manager's perspective, feedback should be clear, actionable, and supportive, aimed at helping the team member develop their skills and overcome challenges. For team members, responding to feedback with openness and a growth mindset is key to maximizing its value. Similarly, when employees provide feedback to their managers, it should be delivered thoughtfully, addressing specific issues or opportunities for improvement while maintaining professionalism and respect.

An effective feedback exchange creates a culture of trust, transparency, and continuous learning. Both parties should aim to approach feedback as a collaborative tool to drive performance and build stronger working relationships.

5) Delegate problem solving and decision-making

The fifth and final management principle is based on the six levels of behavior that a startup employee can adopt when faced with a problem.

1. Address the problem.

Level 1 is telling your boss there is a problem. Then you walk away, leaving him to deal with the problem. This is the least helpful thing you can do. Your boss probably already knows about the problem. Even if he doesn't, he already has 30 other problems to deal with. This is not helpful at all. You are only increasing the stress level of an already stressed boss.

Let's take an example: you signed a new client. At level 1, you would tell your boss that you are short-staffed for this project and leave.

2. Trace the problem and identify its various causes.

Then there's level 2: you tell your boss that you found a problem and you've been investigating the causes. So you've taken the initiative to do some research. This is a little more helpful, but it's not great. You're still dumping the problem on your boss's lap.

For example, you inform your boss that his job offer for a salesperson did not produce good results and that this is mainly due to the text of the advertisement which is not attractive and competitive enough compared to other job advertisements from competitors.

3. Identify the problem, identify its causes and propose solutions.

Level 3: You tell your boss, "Here's the problem, here are some possible causes, and here are some possible solutions." But then you let your boss decide what solution to adopt. NO! Don't stop there!

For example, you inform your boss that his job offer for a salesperson has not produced good results and that this is mainly due to the text of the advertisement which is not attractive and competitive enough compared to other job advertisements from competitors, and you would suggest that the company use a recruitment agency to rewrite the job offer (not a good idea).

4. Identify the problem, identify its causes, propose solutions and make a recommendation on the preferred solution. Level 4 is: "Here's the problem, here's what I think caused it, here are some possible solutions, and here's the solution I think we should choose." Okay, you're getting better.

In our example, this is where you suggest to your boss that he should rewrite the message himself (a false good idea).

5. Identify the problem (and describe the negative consequences of the problem), identify the causes, propose solutions, make a recommendation and implement it to resolve the problem.

Level 5 is where you really want to be. This is where you tell your boss, “I identified a problem, I found the cause, I figured out how to fix it, and I fixed it. I just wanted to keep you updated.”

It is at the top of the hierarchy that you can be most useful. And that is when the right CEO (or Manager) will tell you, and how did you do it? And you will answer for example, that you challenged the CMO or the Brand Manager of the company to help you find the right words to rewrite the ad.

This ladder thus invites each employee or manager to take responsibility for the problems they encounter and possibly resolve them at their level. To absorb hypergrowth, it is therefore necessary to locate problem solving at the right level of the company. CEOs and managers must learn to delegate their work and responsibilities very early on. Managing in a hypergrowth phase requires constantly reviewing your job description to delegate an increasing part of your tasks and therefore your decision-making power. Each job change thus goes through a certain period of anxiety: out of fear of change, each employee will tend to want to keep their prerogatives and fight unconsciously or consciously against this change by sticking to the established situation. This behavior can be compared to that of children: “The scaling phase of a startup is extremely difficult… and the emotions you feel when new people join the adventure and take over part of your work are not so different from what a child feels when they have to share their play with the arrival of a new little brother or sister. Hiring new employees does not necessarily imply a decrease in the work of current employees. It just means that the company can do more. Accepting this change and embracing it is a constant job for managers. For the past six years, my position at a fictitious startup has been in constant evolution.

Let's reach Level 5!

As a Sales Leader, it's your duty to empower your team members, helping them to achieve a high level of self-confidence and autonomy, enabling them to take ownership of their work and drive results.

This December 17, in the next episode of my LinkedIn Live, my Guest is the legendary Darius Lahoutifard - MEDDIC Academy, the man who has transformed over 100,000 individuals into Sales Machines!
Would you like to get answers from one of the best BtoB Sales educators in the World about any point that worries you?

Join us LIVE 👉 https://lnkd.in/eER49gmq