Salespeople are on the front lines of customer interaction and are the first to feel a degradation in product-market fit. When they start leaving in numbers, it's a powerful leading indicator that the company is in trouble, often preceding departures in other departments.

Founders often hire their first sales leader to solve the problem of selling, which they haven't yet cracked. This role requires an entrepreneurial "renaissance rep" to discover the sales motion, not someone with a big-company resume to simply execute a known playbook. This mismatch in expectations is a primary cause of high turnover.

The ultimate signal of product-market fit is when your go-to-market strategy simplifies to 'get a customer in a room with a prospect.' When customers become your most effective sales channel, you have found it, and your team can 'walk away'.

When a company has a highly effective sales team, it can consistently hit revenue targets despite having a weak or nonexistent product strategy. This success masks underlying issues like the lack of a clear vision or a reactive roadmap. The deep-seated problems only become apparent when sales inevitably get tough.

Many marketing failures aren't the marketer's fault, but a result of joining a company that lacks true product-market fit. Marketers excel at scaling demand for something with proven value, not creating demand for a vague idea. It's crucial to verify PMF before accepting a role.

The ultimate test of product-market fit for an enterprise startup isn't the founder closing big deals. It's when the value proposition and sales process are so clear and repeatable that an average salesperson can successfully sell the product without the founder's presence in the room.

If your win rate drops despite consistent effort, the market has likely shifted, rendering your current value proposition obsolete. Instead of selling harder, you must re-diagnose your customers' new challenges. Your sales process must evolve with the market; a static process is an outdated one.

Counterintuitively, the best sales leaders often come from companies with mediocre products. Their ability to hit numbers despite a weak offering demonstrates exceptional sales skills, which are then amplified when they are given a great product to sell.

When a company struggles to sell, sales leaders shouldn't just push the team harder. They are uniquely positioned to diagnose product-market fit issues by conducting their own customer development interviews, gathering direct market feedback to bring back to founders and product teams.