By Michael K. Adonteng
July 8th, 2025
In the early days of building a business, it’s natural for founders and early revenue leaders to take on everything. From writing pitch decks to closing the first deals, most businesses grow through sheer involvement and intensity. That hands-on approach often lays the foundation. But as the business scales, the same approach can start to hold it back.
As teams grow and revenue expectations increase, leaders often find themselves spread thin. The workday shifts from building strategy to reacting—managing proposals, reviewing outbound sequences, replying to customer emails, and putting out fires. Progress slows. Energy gets drained. And the broader commercial ambition gets stuck in the details.
This isn’t a matter of effort—it’s a question of direction.
Time Is a Finite Asset, and It Needs to Be Protected
As your pipeline builds and your go-to-market strategy matures, your role as a founder or revenue leader should evolve. The focus needs to shift from managing tasks to creating systems, from chasing opportunities to developing repeatable motion. Too often, leaders stay tied to commercial delivery far too long. Sales strategy, outbound orchestration, and demand generation remain founder- or VP-led because it feels risky to let go.
The cost? A lack of structure, inconsistent results, and a growth ceiling that hits sooner than it should.
What Delegation Looks Like When Done Well
Delegating isn’t about stepping back—it’s about stepping into the right role.
The most effective leaders build strong support around them. They bring in experienced specialists to manage critical commercial areas like outbound strategy, lead generation, and sales operations. It doesn’t dilute your vision. It gives it structure.
What it looks like in practice:
- Qualified conversations on your calendar without needing to chase prospects.
- Your outbound system runs daily, tracked and improved over time.
- You focus on partnerships, decisions, and scale—not email flows and CRM dashboards.
Why External Sales Support Delivers Results
Whether it’s an outsourced BDR team, a demand generation partner, or a sales strategy advisor, the right external support creates momentum. And that momentum shows up fast.
- Focus: You reclaim time for high-impact work—raising capital, expanding into new markets, building products.
- Experience: You get access to people who’ve done this before, in markets similar to yours, without trial-and-error.
- Consistency: Prospecting and outreach become systematic, not dependent on who has time that week.
- Clarity: Delegating tasks clears mental space. You make better commercial decisions when you’re not buried in execution.
If You’re Still Doing It All, You’re Likely Doing Too Much
Most founders and revenue leaders wait too long to hand off sales execution. The hesitation is understandable—commercial performance is high-stakes. But when you’re still building prospect lists, managing outreach, and chasing leads yourself, it’s a sign that your structure needs to evolve.
That shift doesn’t need to be massive. It could start with support in outbound, pipeline development, or sales enablement. The point is to stop being the engine—and start building one.
This applies whether you’re operating in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, London, New York, Paris, or Amsterdam. The need for structured commercial delivery cuts across markets. The businesses that grow predictably are the ones where leadership stops running the play—and starts designing it.
At Africa Sales Academy, we work with founders and revenue teams at this exact moment. The ambition is clear. The product is strong. But the structure needs tuning. That’s where we step in—helping businesses build commercial engines that drive results, not just activity.
We’re launching our sales BPO service—more to come on this when the partnership is finalised.
Michael K. Adonteng
Founder, ASA
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