Friday morning. An email lands. One of your closers quits.

If you have three closers, that's a third of your sales team gone before your first coffee. The deals they were carrying go quiet. The new hire you just brought in now has nobody to shadow. And the plan you wrote in January ("double revenue this year") suddenly feels like a joke.

What you want is simple: a sales team that keeps closing when someone leaves, without you jumping back in as the only closer. This is the week that shows whether you have one.

I talked this through with Mike Malatesta on How'd it Happen? (June 2024). Listen to the full conversation: Simon Severino - How to Live an Agile Life

The morning a closer quit

This happened to me. Back then our marketing team was six appointment setters and our sales team was three closers. One closer emailed: she's leaving.

I sent a short note to the team and went for a run. A long one, I was training for a race. I was sad, and I needed to digest it.

Three hours later I came back. Michelle from my team said: "I have three new people."

I asked her where she found three people in three hours. Her answer: "From LinkedIn, Simon. I used our LinkedIn process, our hiring process."

I had forgotten we even had it written down. She hadn't. That same afternoon I onboarded the next three people. We didn't just fill the gap. We grew. 🐬

Goals will never help you when you need them

In that moment, did it help me to have a goal like "double revenue every six months"? Not at all. I didn't even believe it that morning. A goal is like an espresso. A little energy, a little excitement, and then it's gone.

A goal points at the future. A system is what you can actually ship this week, even on your worst day. You don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

And there will be bad weeks. A key person leaves. A big deal slips. The market turns. Think back to the pandemic shutdown: how much did anyone's annual goals help that spring? Zero. What helped was a team that sat down together, looked at what was real, and decided the next step, week by week.

What you need in a tough week is "Resilient systems and people on the team who use those systems". People who know where the systems are and use them fast, without you.

Systems don't kill your freedom. They give it to you

Most founders I meet resist systems at first. They're half artist, half business person (so am I). The word "process" sounds like a cage. It sounds like the end of creativity.

It's the opposite. I have three kids. Without rituals and fixed times, family life is chaos and nobody knows when anything happens. My first two hours of the morning, before the kids wake up, are mine. I don't negotiate with myself about when to run. That fixed slot is exactly what makes me free.

I'm putting it on a postcard for our merch: love plus systems is freedom.

Your sales team works the same way. When the steps are written down, a new seller can pick them up on day one, and you stop being the only person who knows how a deal gets closed. That's what control of the sales conversation looks like at team level: the steps stay in the right order, whoever runs the call. 🐯

You don't have to write a manual

Here's how a system actually starts: with a checklist. Just the things you need to remember. That's the minimum viable process.

I'm not a natural process person. I start with an idea, I build it, I try it, and I think later. The game is simple:

1. Explore. Try something new on a real problem.
2. Keep what works. When something works, ask what exactly worked.
3. Write it down. That becomes the next checklist.
4. Hand it over. Then move on to the next bigger problem.

Don't try to write a process for something you've never done. You'll freeze. Do it first, then capture it while it's still fresh.

And if writing feels boring (it is), skip the writing. The way we teach it: you just do you and you record it. Record your screen while you do the task. Give the recording to an AI with a good prompt, and it writes the steps for you. You do your normal day, and by the evening three or four processes exist that didn't exist in the morning.

Three habits that keep it alive

A written process dies if nobody looks at it. In a Strategy Sprint we keep three habits.

Daily: how did I spend my time today, and what will I delegate tomorrow?

Weekly: what's our current reality? Our marketing number, our sales number, our operations number. Not what should happen. What is happening. We set the week on Monday and score it on Friday.

Monthly: look at the goals. Which activities matter most? How do they build on each other? How do we see that we're moving in the right direction at the right pace?

Notice the order. Goals come last. The daily and weekly habits are fully in your control, and your team can run them while you're out running.

Let software take the boring 85%

In the first month of a 90-day sprint, the aim is to free up 10 to 14 hours per person per week by letting software do the boring work. Looking up a LinkedIn profile, copying it into the CRM, moving data from spreadsheet A to spreadsheet B. None of that is human work.

Human work is connecting, listening, deciding, negotiating, building. And leading the sales conversation. That's the part you keep.

Start this week

1. Pick the one process that would hurt most if a person left tomorrow. For most founders it's how a deal gets closed.
2. Record yourself doing it once. Let AI turn the recording into steps.
3. Hand it to one person who isn't you. Your new seller, a colleague, a freelancer.
4. Ask the daily question tonight: what will I delegate tomorrow?
5. On Friday, score the real numbers. Marketing, sales, operations. No wishes.

Picture the next Friday a seller quits. You read the email, you go for your run, and when you come back the team has already started the hiring steps without you. The deals keep moving because the process lives on paper, not in your head. That's Sprintlife: control of the sales conversation, and the time freedom it buys you. 🌴

Listen to the full conversation with Mike Malatesta: Simon Severino - How to Live an Agile Life

Build your sales systems with other founders 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 🐬⚡️🐆