In January you set the number. Double it, break the next ceiling, finally stop being the only one who closes. By April you can't quite say the number out loud, the pipeline is thinner than it should be, the inbox has gone quiet, and the week is full of everything except deals.

Willpower isn't the issue. A goal twelve months away is too far to steer by. And while nobody is steering, the selling quietly slides to the back of the week.

I talked this through with Jason Duncan on The Real Jason Duncan Podcast (August 2024). Listen to the full conversation: 239: If You Can't Sell, You're Nothing!

Sales is oxygen

Jason opened with a blunt one: why do I believe that if you don't learn sales, you might as well go get a job? Three words: "Sales is oxygen."

Right now the buyer is cautious. If you don't have the tools to move a sales conversation forward, your sales velocity drops. And when velocity drops, it's "just a question of time before pipeline dries up."

Then the downstream problems arrive: cash flow, keeping people, cost cuts. A whole Pandora's box.

🐬 Jason put it in one picture: the pipeline dries up because we stop breathing. Revenue work slides behind admin. Nobody decides that. It just happens, week after week, when the goal is too far away to feel.

Why annual goals don't survive spring

I'll be honest. "I forget my annual goals, but I never forget my sprint goals."

I always have three sprint goals for 90 days. I never forget them because they're baked into every week's activities.

Ninety days is the right length for something that matters. Shorter, and you can't do anything important. Longer, and there isn't enough intensity and energy.

If you've ever trained for a race, you know this one. A first triathlon or half marathon usually comes with a training plan of around 90 days. Big enough to tackle something real. Small enough to remember and live every day.

Jason added the founder's math. A big annual target is too far away to grasp. Miss it in the first three or four months, and the whole year is shot. That bitter taste sticks around until December. So set your year up one quarter at a time.

He had already landed on this with his own team: one 90-day sprint, one thing to get really good at (his YouTube channel), then the next.

Seven-day sprints inside the 90 days

Every business has two big problems: what's the right thing to do, and what's the right way to do it.

The right thing is your strategy, which is more than a plan. It's your assumption about how and where you're going to win against the competition.

The right way? Most ways fail. The one that works: break the work into small bursts of seven days. In each sprint you solve one bottleneck, only one. Then you move on to the next.

🐯 Twelve of those weeks make one 90-day cycle. We measure every seven days, so that's twelve chances to check the number, instead of one surprise in December.

The focus card: one page from vision to this week

We put this on a single card, the focus card. Mine is orange.

• At the top: your three-year vision.
• Below it: five one-year goals.
• Below that: five activities for these 90 days.
• Attached: five numbers you measure every seven days.

That last line is where sales stops sliding. Say one of your five numbers is new sales conversations started (an example, pick your own). You see the drop in week two, not in quarter three. You fix it while the pipeline still has air in it.

That's control of the sales conversation, at the level of the week. No waiting for a quiet deal to come back by itself. On Friday you know the number. On Monday you know the next move. Every week starts fresh.

And we make the tools look good on purpose. If something doesn't look good, I stop using it. A card you enjoy looking at is a card you actually use.

Focus means saying no

Jason asked what my success comes down to. Focus.

In the first cycle of your life, say yes to everything until you find your purpose. Once you know what you're here to build, "now say no to everything." Everything else is a distraction from the three sprint goals.

A 90-day sprint makes that no easy to say out loud. The new idea isn't killed. It waits for the next cycle.

Start this week

Four steps. If you only do one today, do the first.

1. Write three sprint goals for the next 90 days. At least one about revenue, in a number.
2. Pick five numbers. Include one for new sales conversations, so a dry pipeline shows up early.
3. Score them every seven days. Same day, same time, ten minutes.
4. Name this week's one bottleneck. Only one. Solve it, then move on.

🌴 Picture the Friday in week twelve: the number is on the card, the pipeline is fuller than when you started, and the team knows exactly what the next sprint is for. That's Sprintlife: control of the sales conversation, and the time freedom it buys you.

My last words to Jason still hold: "keep rolling." You can win just by staying around longer than your competition.

Listen to the full conversation with Jason Duncan: 239: If You Can't Sell, You're Nothing!

You don't have to build this alone. Grab the free tools and join the founders working on the same thing in the Sprint Club: https://www.strategysprints.com

Ready to accelerate now? Book a Discovery Call: https://calendly.com/strategysprint/discovery-call

Happy hunting.
Simon & The Sprinters 🐬⚡️🐆