Hey, 👋 Scott from The Sales Mastermind here.

Today’s edition only takes 4 minutes.

Founder sales is simple, but that doesn't mean it isn't hard.

Simply meet with enough prospects, and eventually, someone will want to buy from you—then the hard part is maintaining your motivation and activity and improving win rates.

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Today, we'll cover:

• Sales Success is Simple, Sales Execution… Not so Much
• SMaaS
• What Does a Sales Leader Do? (Practical Steps)

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Sales Success is Simple, Sales Execution… Not so Much

Sales success starts with a measurable goal. Ideally, net new revenue closed.

Let's pretend your goal is $100k; each deal is ~$10k. Basic maths says you need ten average deals.

Simple.

Progression to your goal is clear and binary. Either you close the deal and get ~10k closer to 100k, or you don't.

The hard part is that sales is an outcome of a chaotic system. In isolation, no single activity directly moves you close to the $100k goal.

Therefore, sales is a balancing between new leads, warm prospects, qualified buyers, happy customers, and 100 other activities.

This is doubly difficult if you're inexperienced in selling AND you're the boss of the sales org. Many founders make basic mistakes that are not their fault. They literally do not know any better.

For example, a new client asked me, "Should we be emailing proposals or meeting with clients to present proposals?"

Any experienced sales leader will tell you:

It appears as a simple answer to what my client thought was a complex problem. It's only simple through experience.

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What is SMaaS

The client above and three others are case studies for my new product, "Sales-Manager-as-a-Service."

Essentially, founders who lead their sales efforts ask me to be their extra pair of eyes and lend my experience as a Sales Manager.

In practice, I provide leadership and accountability for all sellers and train founders to become the sales leaders they're capable of.

Some of the basics that often get missed are:

• Robust and effective pipeline review meetings - not another inefficient meeting without enough progress
• Accountability on every deal in the pipeline - not suddenly finding another closable deal (or five) has slipped through the cracks through lack of awareness
• Momentum with new leads - not getting stuck and forgetting to return to that hot lead because they asked an unexpected question

Sales founders (without a team) love SMaaS because they get an experienced and external nudge of accountability for efforts they know they need but probably won't do without said nudge.

Sales Founders (with small teams) love SMaaS because they get to learn what it takes to be a sales leader from someone with experience. The education is timely, practical, and specific, rather than book learning, which is often theoretical and vague.

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What Does a Sales Leader Do? (Practical Steps)

If you've read this far, let me walk you through the practical steps we take every week. The below is enough for you to self-manage, or if you want some support - let me know you're interested ;)​

Minimum Weekly Cadence:

• Activity Review
• Pipeline Review
• Call/Pitch/Meeting Review

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Activity Review

Ultimately, sales is a numbers game:

• An average seller will close 2 in every 10 deals.
• World-class inbound sellers will close around 3-4 out of 10 deals.
• World-class outbound sellers will close around 2-6 out of 10 deals.
• Notice that no one closes 100%?

Therefore, the most straightforward leadership job is ensuring everyone on the team has enough dials, emails, leads, and deals to achieve their goal.

I also suggest checking the quality of the activity. For example, is the seller:

• Using multiple channels? (email, call, text, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Maintaining appropriate momentum? (an inbound lead should get a touchpoint every day for the first 5, then spread out a bit more, and an average deal should get something every 7 days and should reply every 14 days)
• Concentrating activity, or is it sporadic? (are they calling 100 contacts 3 times a week or 300 contacts once a week)
• Logging real or BS activity? (do their emails get replies? Do their calls get answered? Are they calling the same people more than 5 times a week)

Lastly, over half a sales cycle or two, you want to track each seller's dials > meetings > deals > revenue ratio. Benchmark these and use them for expected activity KPIs.

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Pipeline Review:

High level: This is a weekly call to ensure all deals are being worked appropriately, nothing is slipping through the cracks, and every deal in the pipeline is real. I have spoken about pipeline reviews in more detail here.​

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Call/Meeting/Pitch review

Reviews are the main qualitative activity for sales leaders. We want to find out if the seller is effectively engaging with buyers and setting themselves up to have a chance of progressing every deal.

A leader reviews the pre- and post-meeting communication and the meeting itself to be effective. You must record video meetings and, ideally, inbound and outbound dials (pending local laws).

For video meetings I use Avoma.

Pick any active deal with an early-stage meeting (typically discovery and/or presentation) in the last 7 days. And:

• Watch the recording/s checking for pain discovery, tone, active listening, stakeholder qualification, etc.
• Check if the seller BAMFAM'd.
• Review any sales/pitch decks used for effective customization. Was it linked to pain and quantitative outcomes or irrelevant and/or too qualitative?
• Check if the deck template fits the purpose or needs an overhaul.
• Check that the meeting ends with the buyer moving closer to answering: Why anything? Why now? Why us? ​

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That's ~4 minutes of reading time; if you want more, either show your interest or reply with specific questions, and I'll answer them in future newsletters.

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Until next week,
Scott Cowley

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