I've had two entrepreneurs I know in the last week come to this same conclusion. Despite the fact that they're great sales founders, selling isn't actually their job. Being the sole salesperson on your team, no matter how good you are, isn't scalable. You need to figure out what it is that you do to sell, the scripts you know by heart that you never wrote out, the way you get a feel for which customers are warmer than others, and find a way to teach it to others. That's the way you build a real business. When you reach product/market fit, companies scale as sales teams scale.
Scaling a sales team is a completely different challenge than being a good salesperson. It's about establishing process, tracking metrics and creating a supportive learning environment. Some people will tell you that half your salespeople won't work out--but that feels a bit like conceding defeat to me. Ideally, I think it's worthwhile to try to build the kind of sales environment where anyone could be successful--where it's about process and learning.
When you're a startup founder, taking your foot off the gas when you know you have something that customers want is incredibly hard. Cash is a drug--and it's hard not to make another customer call to get another hit. You do that and you're taking time away from recruiting and training a team, or figuring out the right individual salesperson economics and incentives. Carefully constructing the onboarding process and incentive structure of your first give salespeople has ripple effects that will be felt for a long time in your company (or a short time if you mess it up.)
I'd love to hear about tips, good resources, and experiences from early sales team members of startups. Who is in the process of building a sales team now? Who has built the best sales teams in NYC? What did things look like for the first three salespeople?