About
Why Scaling Up Sales exists
Scaling Up Sales grew out of a simple conviction: entrepreneurs should know how to build companies with client money before becoming dependent on investor money.
The conviction
Customers do something investors cannot.
Investor money
Investment can accelerate a company enormously.
Client money
Client money however validates that a company creates value people are willing to pay for.
A company that knows how to find customers, win business and build a repeatable sales organisation has more choices.
- 01
It can raise money from a position of strength,
- 02
grow more independently
- 03
and retain greater control over its future.
How we got here
From programmes to Scaling Up Sales.More than a decade of working with founders and sales leaders on the same underlying challenge.
2012
It started with entrepreneurship
We created and managed the CTI/Innosuisse Business Creation and Business Growth programmes at the EPFL Innovation Park in Lausanne, working with ambitious technology entrepreneurs learning to turn innovation into companies.
We repeatedly saw the same challenge: founders could build remarkable products and win their first customers, but building a sales organisation was another challenge entirely.
How do you turn founder-led selling into a repeatable process? Recruit and manage salespeople? Build a pipeline? Forecast, set targets, coach teams and expand internationally? These are not simply selling skills. They are Sales Management skills.
2015
The Sales Angels programme
We created the Sales Angels programme, bringing experienced sales leaders alongside founders and management teams to help structure sales organisations, establish management routines and solve real commercial challenges.
The objective was never to sell for a company, but to transfer the capability into the company.
2018
Fast Track Sales Academy at EPFL
We launched the Fast Track Sales Academy at EPFL, giving startup founders more structured education to turn early commercial success into scalable sales organisations.
Over the years, hundreds of founders and business leaders went through these programmes. One pattern became clear: at a certain point, the biggest sales challenge is no longer how to sell. It is how to manage sales.
2022
Sales Angels joins Scaling Up Sales
Sales Angels became part of Scaling Up Sales, supported by the Canton of Vaud's SPEI.
2024
The Sales Management Academy
The EPFL Sales Academy became the Scaling Up Sales – Sales Management Academy.
Today
Capability and application, together
The two activities work together: the Sales Management Academy develops the knowledge, frameworks and management skills, while Sales Management Angels help leaders apply them within their companies.
Because knowing what a good sales organisation should look like is not enough. Someone still has to build it.
Autonomy is the objective
We are deliberately not trying to make companies dependent on us.
Our role is to make the people we work with more capable of doing without us: developing internal competence, building management routines and challenging decisions rather than making every decision for them. The measure of our work is whether a company becomes capable of finding customers, generating revenue and managing its own growth.
Build a company customers are willing to finance. Build the capability to manage its growth. Then decide how much outside capital you actually need.
That is why Scaling Up Sales exists.
MEET THE TEAM BEHIND THE GROWTH
Experts with the experience to turn sales into scaleMeet the experienced sales leaders behind Scaling Up Sales, bringing strategic insight, hands-on expertise and a proven understanding of what it takes to build sales organisations that scale.
Benedict Stalder has spent more than 35 years working alongside companies to build, lead and scale their sales organisations. Drawing on decades of entrepreneurial, executive and board-level experience, he brings a practical understanding of what it takes to turn sales into a structured and scalable engine for growth.
As the founder of Scaling Up Sales, Benedict focuses on a critical challenge for growing B2B companies: moving beyond founder-dependent sales and building a sales organisation that can scale. He helps founders and leadership teams establish structured sales processes, strengthen pipeline management and forecasting, and build teams capable of generating growth without everything depending on the founder.
Through Scaling Up Sales, Benedict helps ambitious founders and leadership teams build sales organisations that are more structured, more predictable and ultimately less dependent on the founder.
With more than a decade of experience in sales, Ben Theiler brings a hands-on commercial perspective to his role as a Sales Management Angel at Scaling Up Sales. His background spans B2B sales, account management, sales development and sales leadership, giving him a practical understanding of what it takes to build and manage sales as a company grows.
At Scaling Up Sales, Ben works directly with startups and SMEs to turn commercial ambition into a structured, scalable sales operation. His role covers sales strategy, customer acquisition, value proposition development, pipeline management and sales organisation, alongside the implementation of the management routines and tools required to run a professional sales function.
At Scaling Up Sales, Ben’s focus is on creating the structure, discipline and repeatability that allow sales to move beyond founder-driven momentum and become a genuine engine for sustainable growth.
What is your sales management challenge?
You do not need to know what solution you need. That is where we start.