You can’t buy, hire, or staff your way out of a revenue problem
If growth still depends on you running every deal, you’ve probably tried to get out. Most founders reach for one of three exits: new software, another sales hire, or more people. Each costs real money, and each leaves the cause where it was. The cause is behavior: what your team actually does every day, and what the business rewards them for.
Who it’s for
Founders who are still the revenue engine
Sidehill works with founders and CEOs of growing businesses whose revenue still runs through them: their relationships, their instinct, and their time in every deal.
- You’re in every significant deal, because nobody else closes them the way you do.
- Growth slows the moment you step back, even for a few weeks.
- Marketing, sales, and customer success each chase their own number, and you’re the one holding them together.
- You’ve spent real money trying to fix it, and you’re still the one carrying it.
This isn’t sales training. It’s for the person who owns the business and the revenue system behind it, not for individual reps or sales managers.
If that’s you, you’ve probably tried one of three exits. Here’s why they don’t work.
Sound familiar?
Three exits that lead back to the same place
Every founder still running every deal has tried at least one of these to get out. They feel like progress because they’re visible, fast, and easy to approve.
Buy the software
A new CRM or sales platform promises visibility and discipline. Six months on, the dashboard is full, nobody trusts the numbers, and the team works around the new tool the way it worked around the last one.
Software records behavior. It doesn’t change it.
Hire another sales leader
You hire someone to own the number. They inherit a system that was already broken, miss the target, and leave within a year or two. You’re on your third or fourth, and the problem hasn’t moved.
A leader hired into a broken system inherits the break.
Add more people
More reps, more marketers, more account managers. Headcount grows faster than revenue, margins thin, and the same gaps between teams reappear at a larger, more expensive scale.
More people in an unclear system produce more of the same.
loop
Each exit treats a symptom. Missed targets, churn, and teams blaming each other all sit on a behavior, and every behavior sits on a belief or an incentive. Until that changes, the loop keeps running.
Where revenue problems live
The headache is never the diagnosis
Every revenue problem has three layers. The exits all work on the top one, because it’s the one everyone can see. Lasting change only happens at the bottom.
SymptomsWhat everyone sees
Missed targets, clients who leave soon after signing, teams blaming each other, a dashboard nobody trusts.
Software, new hires, and headcount work here
BehaviorsWhat people actually do
Skipping discovery to close faster, passing on leads that aren’t ready, each team reporting its own number.
What Sidehill measures
Beliefs and incentivesWhat the business rewards
Close speed over customer fit, activity over outcomes, three teams measured on three different goals.
Sidehill starts at the bottom layer and builds up.
What Sidehill does
Sidehill creates the revenue strategy, structure, execution, and leadership foundations that drive faster and more consistent growth.
Strategy
Revenue goals built on your actual numbers, and a clear view of who you serve best and why you win.
Structure
Marketing, sales, and customer success run as one connected journey, with clear ownership and data-gated hand-offs.
Execution
Measure the behaviors that predict results, then run a rhythm that keeps the plan and the daily work in step.
Leadership
A founder who leads the revenue system instead of carrying it, and a team that can run it without you in every deal.
Who you’d work with
Jon D. Anderson
Founder and Fractional CRO, The Sidehill Group
Jon works with founder-led companies on the gap between the plan leadership believes in and what the team actually does every day.
Every engagement starts with diagnosis, not prescription: conversations with leadership and the frontline, a clear read of the revenue data, and an honest separation of the symptoms from the behavior underneath. The fix follows from what that finds, not from a template.
Where to start
Two ways to fix it at the cause
Most founders can get out without hiring an expensive consultant. Jon built the course so you can do it yourself, with your own team. For companies that want him in the room, the same method is available as a fractional engagement.
Run it yourself
Revenue Is a Behavior
The way out you can take yourself. Jon’s full method as a self-paced course, so you can diagnose what’s really broken, rebuild the revenue system, and hand it to a team that runs it without you in every deal.
- 8 modules and 37 lessons, worked in order
- Fieldwork between lessons, done with your own team
- Workbooks and templates for every deliverable
- Notes adapting each step for professional services firms
Bring Jon in
Fractional CRO
For founder-led companies that want Jon inside the business, leading the diagnosis and the rebuild alongside your leadership team.
If you’re not sure which path fits, start a conversation. Jon will tell you plainly whether the course is enough on its own.
Talk to JonStart with the diagnosis
Tell Jon where revenue is stalling and what you’ve already tried. You’ll get a straight answer on what’s underneath it and the most sensible way to fix it.