If you’re the founder of your MSP, chances are you are also the top salesperson in your company. You’re the one closing the biggest deals, hitting the sales targets and bringing in the majority of the revenue. And if I asked you how many new salespeople you’re currently recruiting, onboarding and actively developing, the answer would be… crickets.
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This is the exact growth trap Jack Daly — one of the most respected sales trainers in the world — has been talking about for decades. And here’s the hard truth: as long as you remain the top (or only) rainmaker in your company, your business will stay capped at your own personal bandwidth.
Jack says it perfectly:
“A sales manager’s job is not to grow sales. A sales manager’s job is to grow salespeople in quantity and quality.”
Read that again. If your focus is only on making sales yourself, you’re working in sales. If you want to scale, your job is to work on building a sales team that can sell without you.
The Hard Ceiling Of Founder-Led Sales
Here’s what I see in so many MSPs doing $250K+ in revenue:
- The CEO is the chief rainmaker.
- The CEO is also the sales manager.
- Oh, and the CEO is the actual CEO — responsible for operations, finance, marketing, client management and 147 other “urgent” things.
Jack is blunt about the problem with this:
“Every moment you’re overdoing one role, you’re not doing the other two.”
Even if you’re the best salesperson in your market, you only have so many hours in a day. There’s a limit to the number of calls you can make, meetings you can take and proposals you can write.
Jack shares this example: If you hire five salespeople who are only half as good as you, that’s still 2.5x your personal production. If you had 10 salespeople operating at just 20–25% of your own level, your company’s revenue could skyrocket.
This is math you cannot ignore.
Why Most Owners Don’t Make The Shift
So why don’t more MSP owners step out of the rainmaker role?
Some tell themselves “Nobody sells like I do.” Others quietly worry about the cost or risk of hiring the wrong salesperson. And some simply don’t know how to recruit and train salespeople effectively — so they avoid it.
Jack calls it for what it is: you’re stuck. You haven’t made the move because you haven’t fully embraced the mindset shift from doing sales to building a sales force.
The Sports Team Model Every MSP Should Copy
One of Jack’s best analogies is that sports teams are run better than most businesses — and for three very specific reasons:
- They Have A Playbook
Teams don’t reinvent plays every week. They have a documented system that works, and they run it consistently. In your MSP, this is your sales playbook — the exact steps, language and process your salespeople use to move deals forward. Don’t hire people and then let them make it up as they go. You’ve already figured out what works. Document it and make it non-negotiable.
- They Recruit Constantly
Winning teams never stop looking for talent. Even if they’re fully staffed, they’re scouting, networking and building a bench. In your MSP, recruiting should be an ongoing process, not something you do only when someone quits.
- They Train Relentlessly
Sports teams don’t just “wing it” on game day. They practice the fundamentals over and over. In your MSP, training should be continuous — role-playing sales calls, reviewing objections and sharpening skills weekly.
Jack sums it up:
“Somebody has to be recruiting all the time. Somebody has to be training their people all the time. Is that you? And if not, who?”
The Playbook For Scaling Past Yourself
If you’re serious about getting out of the bottleneck role and building a business that can grow without you, here’s where to start:
- Document Your Sales Process — Write down exactly what you do to move a lead from first contact to closed deal. This becomes your sales playbook.
- Hire Before You’re Ready — Waiting until you’re “too busy” means you’ll make rushed, desperate hires. Build your team before you’re underwater.
- Invest In Training — Don’t just throw new hires into the field. Train them like a sports team — drills, role plays and ongoing coaching.
- Measure & Manage — Track activity and results. Sales is a numbers game, and you can’t improve what you don’t measure.
Final Word
If you keep telling yourself “I’ll just sell it myself because I’m the best at it,” you’re capping your own company’s growth. As Jack Daly says, the key to scaling is growing salespeople in both quantity and quality. When you master that, the sales take care of themselves.
