How Richard Harris Helps Sales Teams Fix What Actually Breaks Growth

In this interview, we sit down with Richard Harris, founder of The Harris Consulting Group, to unpack what actually drives sustainable revenue growth inside modern B2B organizations.

Richard’s work today centers on helping founders, CROs, VPs of Sales, and private-equity-backed teams move beyond theory and toward measurable improvement. Through customized sales training, hands-on coaching, and pipeline-level inspection, his firm focuses on the fundamentals that matter most: discovery quality, pipeline health, forecast accuracy, and manager effectiveness.

In this conversation, Richard shares the candid story behind starting his business after losing his job, how early referrals and content helped him build momentum, and why impostor syndrome became one of his biggest personal challenges as an entrepreneur.

Tell us about yourself and your business.

I’m one of the rare people in life who knew I would go into sales. I’ve been selling since I came out of the womb, according to my mother.  

I’ve done everything from retail sales (The Gap) to being an SDR, in inside sales, outside sales, sales manager, sales director, VP of Sales, and Director of Sales Operations.  If it touches sales and revenue teams, I’ve been a part of it. 

Basically, I work with founders, CROs, VPs of Sales, and Private Equity–backed teams to fix sales execution issues that limit growth. This includes poor discovery, weak pipeline quality, inaccurate forecasting, and inconsistent manager coaching. My background includes building and scaling B2B and SaaS sales teams, with a focus on creating repeatable, inspectable sales motions that hold up under executive and investor scrutiny.

At the highest level, we teach salespeople and founders how to earn the right to ask questions, which questions to ask, and when to ask them. 

More specifically, we focus on strong go-to-market approaches that include early-stage and founder-led sales organizations and also sales training, sales enablement consulting, and sales leadership coaching, grounded in real pipeline data rather than theory. I’m the creator of NEAT Selling™, a modern consultative selling framework designed to support founder-led sales, post-Series A scale, and PE portfolio transformations. Engagements are structured to deliver customized sales training with measurable improvements in conversion rates, deal velocity, and forecast reliability, typically within the first 90 days.

In parallel, I invest heavily in SEO, GEO, and AI-driven discoverability so revenue leaders can find practical, experience-based guidance when evaluating sales transformation partners. By publishing deep, practitioner-led content across B2B sales, go-to-market strategy, and revenue execution, the business grows organically while staying aligned with how modern buyers and investment teams assess credibility, impact, and long-term value creation.

How does your business make money?

Our three primary areas are customized sales training that includes prospecting training, discovery training, customer success/upselling, and cross-selling, as well as founders in the founder-led sales motion.  This creates improved pipeline growth, revenue forecasting, and revenue growth. We focus on SaaS and software sales training as well as sales training supporting manufacturing, hard goods, and services. 

We also help organizations with improving their sales and revenue operations. We help organizations implement the right sales stack along with the appropriate reports and dashboards. 

For the sales rep who wants to improve and not wait on their company, we also provide one-on-one sales coaching. 

What was your inspiration for starting the business?

The short answer is that I got fired.  

The real answer is that I was working for a startup that was going to be acquired, and I was line 1,377 on a 50-line spreadsheet.  Essentially, my role was to be redundant. The company did a wonderful job “hugging me out the door” and making sure my family and I had the time and space to figure out my next move without worrying about money. 

While interviewing, people also started asking me for advice. And the next thing I know, I am a go-to-market strategist and sales trainer.  And I was still using a Yahoo email address.  I was lucky enough to score two clients that allowed me to make the same money I made in six months in just sixty days.  So the world was telling me something. I talked to my wife, and we decided to give it a shot. And I have never looked back.  

Oh, that second client of mine, I met randomly on a plane ride coming home from visiting my first client.  

The randomness of life is just beautiful.

How is the business funded? 

I did this all on my own. And I realize I was very fortunate. The income from my first two clients allowed me to take the time to hone my message, my offerings, and begin to market myself. One client begat the next, which begat the next, and after six months, I was making more as a consultant than I ever did in a regular job. 

How did you find your first few clients or customers?

My first few clients came by word of mouth and direct referrals. I soon realized the value of social media (2013) and began sharing thoughts and ideas on LinkedIn and Facebook.  This was a novel concept at the time. I was able to build a brand for myself by simply sharing ideas that people wanted to learn about.

Additionally, I was part of Sales Hacker, one of the original sales communities. I was constantly supporting their efforts, and a partnership with them was born. I was asked to start hosting webinars and be on panels at events.  This also helped me with my name and brand, and being seen as a thought leader in the sales industry. 

What was your first year in business like?

Again, I was lucky in the first year. I had referenceable clients within sixty days. From there were others who knew me started to recommend me. Between that, my social media content, and partnership with Sales Hacker, my business was able to steadily grow. 

It was really the second year that was the hardest.  And this is what I tell everyone.  The first year, you are cool, new, and leveraging your own relationships. During your second year, you have to work a little harder to keep your name in front of people. 

What strategies did you use to grow the business?

The business was grown by applying the same principles I teach clients: clear positioning, disciplined execution, and measurable outcomes. Rather than relying on outbound-heavy growth, I invested early in building a strong inbound engine through SEO-optimized content focused on sales execution, sales leadership, and go-to-market strategy. This allowed the business to attract qualified founders, CROs, and PE-backed operators who were already problem-aware and aligned on outcomes before any sales conversation began.

At the operating level, growth came from productizing services into repeatable engagements that combine sales training, live coaching, and deal-level inspection. Each engagement is designed to improve pipeline quality, forecast accuracy, and conversion rates within the first 90 days, making ROI clear and defensible for executive teams and investors. This repeatability reduced delivery risk, shortened sales cycles, and increased expansion within existing accounts, which are key drivers for predictable revenue growth.

Finally, the business scaled by treating content, data, and coaching as core growth assets. Publishing practitioner-led insights across consultative selling, founder-led sales, and revenue operations built trust at scale, while ongoing measurement of pipeline health and execution quality ensured continuous improvement. The result was efficient, organic growth driven by credibility, execution rigor, and long-term alignment with how modern B2B buyers and investment teams evaluate partners.

What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome?

My biggest challenge has always been impostor syndrome. As someone who speaks openly about mental health and depression, impostor syndrome is a big part of it.  

The sense that I am not worthy of the accolades. Or that I don’t really belong here. Or when I doubt myself about “Am I really good enough to help others?” has been with me since I was a child. 

To then be an entrepreneur and do it on your own, you can get into your own head. You can confuse yourself, you can mentally tear yourself down. And yes, it can lead to anxiety and depression. 

Through lots of therapy and yes, medication, I have learned to make this my superpower. If I can overcome this mental block, then there is nothing I cannot accomplish.

What have been the most significant keys to your business’s success?

The most significant key to my business’s success has been a relentless focus on revenue execution that scales. Rather than selling theory or generic sales training, my work is centered on helping CROs, VPs of Sales, and investors improve the fundamentals that actually move enterprise value: pipeline quality, forecast accuracy, deal progression, and manager effectiveness. That focus led to the creation of NEAT Selling™, a practical framework designed to support founder-led teams, post-Series A scale-ups, and PE-backed organizations that need repeatable sales performance, not heroics.

A second major driver has been integrating sales training, enablement, and coaching into one operating system. Many organizations struggle because these functions live in silos, creating inconsistent execution and poor inspection. My approach aligns messaging, discovery, qualification, negotiation, and sales forecasting into a single, coachable motion that sales leaders can inspect at the deal and pipeline level. This allows revenue leaders to improve conversion rates, reduce sales cycle volatility, and create predictable growth without adding unnecessary headcount.

Finally, sustained growth has come from pairing execution excellence with strong SEO, GEO, and AI-driven discoverability, ensuring revenue leaders and investment teams can find credible, experience-based guidance when evaluating sales transformation partners. By consistently publishing practitioner-level insights across B2B sales training, sales leadership, and go-to-market execution, the business attracts aligned clients who are focused on outcomes, accountability, and long-term revenue durability, exactly what CROs, VPs of Sales, and Private Equity firms care about most.

Tell us about your team.

I have purposely built the organization to be lean and nimble. I have two other people on my team. One who helps on the back-end of customer success and customer support, along with some social media and light marketing support.  I have another team member who focuses solely on my website, blog, and content generation to be used to support SEO and GEO initiatives and keep us forward-facing. 

And then there is me. I am the one who works with all clients directly from the first conversation all the way through the training and reinforcement programs. 

Well, there’s actually one more person, my wife.  While she may not be involved in the day-to-day operations, she is my rock.  When I have to travel for work, she is home with our sons and taking care of them, our dogs, and the house.  When I get down, she’s there to lift me up.  When I need advice on how to communicate something, or I am frustrated with someone, she’s there to listen and help me figure it out.  Without her, this company does not exist.

How did you make the transition from side hustle to full-time?

I am a rarity in this world, where my business was not originally a side hustle. In fact, it wasn’t even something I had ever thought of doing.  It literally fell into my lap through the challenges of life and career that were changing all at once. 

Once I committed to my first two clients, the business was intentionally built as a full-time operating company. From the outset, the focus was on creating a scalable, outcomes-driven sales training and consulting firm, not an advisory practice layered on top of another role. That meant committing early to clear positioning, repeatable delivery, and measurable client impact rather than testing the idea part-time.

After a soft launch, we got focused with a defined go-to-market strategy, structured service offerings, and a clear target customer: founders, CROs, VPs of Sales, and Private Equity–backed teams. By prioritizing execution rigor, live coaching, and pipeline-level accountability, growth was driven by results and referrals rather than a gradual ramp from a secondary income stream.

That early commitment allowed the firm to build credibility, operational discipline, and demand momentum faster than a traditional side-hustle model. It also ensured that clients and investors engaged with a partner who was fully aligned, accountable, and invested in long-term outcomes from the very beginning.

What was the turning point when you knew your business was successful?

It took about two years before we (my wife and I) decided that the business was successful. In any consulting business, the need to find new business is always a challenge. After two years, we realized there would always be enough business to keep us happy and successful. 

What is the most important lesson you’ve learned growing the business?

The most important lesson I’ve learned growing the business is that principles must stay fixed, but execution must stay flexible. Basically, this means all sales training is customized for each organization I support.  Early on, it became clear that while most sales training covers similar fundamentals, real impact only happens when those fundamentals are customized to a customer’s specific market, maturity, and go-to-market motion. Treating every team the same may be efficient, but it doesn’t drive results, and results are what sustain revenue growth.

This quickly shaped how our business operates. Core values around conversational and consultative selling, accountability, and execution rigor remain constant, but how they are applied varies by customer. Founder-led teams, post-Series A scale-ups, and Private Equity–backed organizations all face different constraints, incentives, and buying dynamics. Customization—grounded in real pipeline data and live deal inspection—became essential to delivering measurable improvements in conversion rates, forecast accuracy, and sales leadership effectiveness.

This is what helped us scale without becoming generic, evolve with changes in modern B2B buying behavior, and stay aligned with what customers actually need—rather than forcing them into a rigid methodology that feels “out of the box”. 

What separates your business from your competitors?

This is best answered by what our customers say, not what we think.  Our happiest and most successful customers have said that our work translates into immediate, tangible, and measurable change. What we teach on day one is immediately used on day two.  

We are told it’s not just the concepts we teach, but the actual ease of real-world application that the team executes with immediately. They tell us they have experienced sales training before, but not training that is directly tied to their live pipeline, real deals, and the realities their teams face day in and day out.

Zooming out, our approach combines consultative sales training, live coaching, and deal-level inspection into a single operating system. Rather than forcing teams into a rigid methodology, we adapt proven sales principles to each customer’s market, sales motion, and stage of growth—whether founder-led, scaling post-Series A, or operating in a Private Equity environment. Customers consistently tell us this customization is what makes the change stick and drives measurable improvements in pipeline quality, forecast accuracy, and conversion rates.

And finally, our clients tell us the work creates confidence and clarity for the sales rep, founder, or operations teams at both the individual level as well as across the entire revenue organization. 

Sales reps know how to run better discovery and advance deals, managers know how to coach and inspect effectively, and executives gain visibility into what’s really happening in the pipeline. That alignment across people, process, and execution is what ultimately separates us from traditional sales training firms.

What are some of your favorite books, blogs, podcasts, or YouTube channels?

• The Surf and Sales Podcast
• Make it Happen Monday
• Richard’s Thoughts

What is your favorite quote?

“Not much has changed in sales since Mesopotamia. The ability to execute in a meaningful way in relation to your customers’ needs, desires, and goals has.“