Bullets Before Cannonballs
Why Founders Should Test Sales Strategy Before Scaling
You have a whole list of strategic moves that could actually change the trajectory of your business. And finally—after months (maybe years) of grinding—you’ve got the momentum to start moving and making it a reality. But you can’t because sales keeps dragging you back.
You're still the one doing the follow-ups. Still chasing proposals. Still hopping on that "one quick call" to close the deal. And while none of it is broken, it’s starting to break your bandwidth. Sales is no longer the growth engine, it’s the bottleneck standing between you and your next big move.
So you start to think: Maybe it’s time to hire someone full-time. Someone who can finally take this off my plate so I can focus on the rest of the business.
But right behind that ambition comes the hesitation. What if it doesn’t work? What if you spend six figures on salary, bonuses, benefits and still end up with someone who’s not closing? What if the time and energy it takes to onboard them only slows things down? Or maybe you have already tried to hire, and the sales representative didn’t work out, which makes you more afraid to try again.
That’s why, at Altezza, we operate under a principle borrowed from Great by Choice by Jim Collins. In it, Collins outlines how great companies learn to fire bullets before they fire cannonballs. They don’t pour money, people, and pressure into unproven strategies. They test small. They measure impact. They refine the aim. Only when something has proven its potential do they scale it with confidence.
This is exactly what we help founders do through fractional sales. Before you build the entire sales infrastructure and make a full-time hire, fractional gives you a way to validate what works, identify what doesn’t, and build a process that’s grounded in reality—not assumptions.
When Hiring Becomes a Gamble
Hiring a full-time salesperson feels like the obvious next move when you're growing. On paper, it makes sense. If you bring in someone experienced, give them the reins, and let them sell, revenue will follow…right? But in practice, it's one of the most expensive and risky decisions a founder can make.
The financial side is the first thing most people see. A six-figure salary, benefits, onboarding costs, potential bonuses, maybe even moving an entire family. But the price doesn’t stop there. Every new hire comes with ramp time, and for sales, that ramp is steep. Most studies show that it takes a full-time salesperson anywhere from 9 to 12 months to become fully productive. That’s a year of learning the product, understanding the buyer, making mistakes, and swinging at deals they’re not quite ready to close. And all the while, you’re footing the bill in time, oversight, and the opportunity cost of deals that fall through.
Then there’s the emotional weight. We've seen founders hire someone, move them and their family across the country, and spend months trying to make the relationship work even when it’s clear it isn’t a fit. When someone’s livelihood, housing, and family stability are tied to your business, letting go becomes personal. So you double down. You give it more time. You take more meetings. You put off hard conversations. And in the process, you end up investing even more energy into something that was misaligned from the start.
This is the cannonball problem. You go all in on something untested, and suddenly you’re too deep to pivot without consequences.
Fractional sales flips that equation. You start smaller. You test smarter. And most importantly, you buy yourself time to learn without betting the entire business on your first shot.
Why What Works for You Might Not Work for Your New Sales Hire
For most founders, sales starts out as second nature. You know the product inside and out. You’ve lived through the pain points. You’ve talked to the customers. You’re not pitching a value proposition, you’re sharing something you genuinely believe in.
That level of trust, confidence, and authenticity is hard to replicate. And early on, it’s part of why deals close so easily. You're not just the salesperson. You're the founder. That title carries weight in a conversation that a new hire simply doesn't walk in with.
This is one of the biggest—and least talked about—gaps in sales hiring.
The belief that what works for the founder will automatically work for the next person in the seat. But it rarely does, at least not right away. A new salesperson, no matter how experienced, enters without the same credibility. They have to earn trust in real time. And that means the sales process that worked so well for you will almost always need to evolve when it's handed off.
That adjustment takes trial and error. And if you’ve already gone all-in on a full-time hire, that learning curve can be costly. You're paying for their onboarding while simultaneously figuring out how to reframe the way your business sells without even knowing what needs to change yet. It’s a risky way to scale!
How Fractional Sales Can Help
With fractional sales, the learning process is the strategy.
In a high-growth business, speed matters, but so does direction. The temptation is to hire quickly and go big, especially when sales feels like the bottleneck. But if you haven’t tested your positioning, your process, or how your product lands without you in the room, you’re making high-stakes bets with incomplete information.
That’s where fractional sales flips the equation. This model forces focus. You’re not filling a 40-hour calendar or throwing someone into a vaguely defined “sales” role. You’re starting with clear priorities, carving out your highest-return opportunities, and pressure-testing them with someone experienced enough to read the room and adjust as they go.
At Altezza, we help clients do exactly that. Find the low-hanging fruit, anchor into early wins, and see what actually converts when the founder isn’t the one doing the talking. With us the investment is smaller, and the feedback loop is tighter. You’re not locked into a long hiring cycle or watching months of salary vanish while someone “figures it out.” You get to pivot in real time, refining as you go.
We’ve followed this philosophy ourselves. A while back, we launched a certification pathway. It was a strong offer that drew in early interest. But it didn’t take long to realize the audience we were attracting wasn’t quite right. Rather than double down on the wrong fit, we repackaged the best parts of that program into a done-with-you service that actually aligned with our ideal clients. The offer evolved into a more successful version of what it was, and the business moved forward because we treated the original idea like a bullet, not a cannonball.
That’s what founders often don’t realize until it’s too late, when you go big too early, you don’t just spend money. You lose options. You spend emotional capital trying to make the wrong thing work and you miss the window to pivot while it’s still easy.
Fractional gives you the space to test, adapt, and build something worth betting on. And when the time comes to go all in, it’s not a risk. You have already pressure tested the process.
Before You Fire the Cannon, Test Your Aim
Big growth doesn’t have to mean big risk. In fact, the smartest companies know that restraint is a strategy. They fire bullets first.
At Altezza, we’ve built our fractional sales model on this very principle. We help founders test their sales motion in real conditions, with experienced professionals, before making long-term hires or committing to a strategy they haven’t tested yet. Plus, the full time cost of a salesperson will likely be more than you pay for fractional sales work!
If you’re thinking about hiring your first sales rep—or replacing a misfire—let’s talk. Book a call to chat more about how we can help you build something that hits the target before you load the cannon.
