You still close most of the deals yourself. Your evenings go to proposals 🌴. And the sales process that was supposed to free you keeps growing new steps.

There is a simple tool for exactly this. It is the Elon Musk 5 step algorithm, and its source is Walter Isaacson's 2023 biography Elon Musk. Here is where it comes from, what the five steps are, and how you run it on your own sales process this week.

The source: where the Elon Musk 5 step algorithm comes from

In Elon Musk (2023), Isaacson describes a short set of rules Musk kept drilling into his teams at SpaceX and Tesla. Musk called it "the algorithm." He repeated it again and again in production meetings.

Five steps. Always in this order:

1. Question every requirement. Every requirement needs the name of a real person who owns it. Not "legal." Not "the department." A name. Then question it, especially if it came from someone smart.
2. Delete any part or process you can. Musk's rule of thumb: if you are not adding back at least 10% of what you deleted, you did not delete enough.
3. Simplify and optimize. Only after steps 1 and 2. The classic mistake is polishing something that should not exist at all.
4. Accelerate cycle time. Speed up what survived. Do it earlier and you just reach the wrong answer faster.
5. Automate. Dead last. Always.

The order is the whole mechanism.. Musk has said openly that he learned this the hard way at Tesla, where heavy automation on the production line had to be pulled back out. Automate a step you should have deleted, and you have built expensive machinery around a mistake 🐯.

Why your sales process needs the algorithm

Picture your sales process drawn on a whiteboard. Every step from first reply to signed deal.

Most founder sales processes were never designed. They piled up. A call script from your first hire. A CRM stage from your second. A 20-slide deck because one big buyer asked for it three years ago. A "just checking in" email that nobody remembers adding.

The buyer feels every one of those steps. And the real cost is not time. It is control. When the process is a pile, you follow the pile instead of leading the conversation. That is when deals go quiet and you start chasing.

So run the algorithm on it. Here is how that looks in sales.

Step 1: Question every step in your sales process

Take that whiteboard. Next to each step, write the name of the person who added it. "Best practice" is not a name. "That's how we've always done it" is not a name.

Then ask one question of every step: does this move the buyer closer to a decision? Say the answer out loud. If you hesitate, you already know.

Step 2: Delete what doesn't move the buyer forward

Cut hard. The second deck. The recap email that repeats the call. The internal approval nobody reads. The generic "any questions?" follow-up.

It should feel a little too aggressive. That is the point. If a week later you add back one or two things, good. That means you cut deep enough.

Step 3: Simplify to the 8 Steps of the Repeatable Sale

What survives should fit on one page. For us that page is the 8 Steps of the Repeatable Sale:

1. Visualize. Picture what the buyer describes, mirror, pace, then lead.
2. Frustration. What is not working, and what have they already tried?
3. Importance. How important is this, in the context of everything else going on?
4. Cost of Inaction. What happens if they do nothing? Let them say it. Then stay quiet.
5. Deliverables. Success, defined in the buyer's own words.
6. Investment. Time, people, then money. In that order.
7. Starting Date. A real date. Not "soon."
8. Statement of Work. Written in their words, ready to sign before the next meeting.

Notice where price sits. Step 6. After the buyer has already said, in their own words, what the problem costs. Doing the right things in the wrong order is how good founders end up chasing. The right order puts you back in control 🐬.

The full breakdown of each step is here: https://www.strategysprints.com/blog/how-to-win-more-sales-deals-the-8-step-control-framework

Step 4: Accelerate with a weekly rhythm

Speed in sales does not come from rushing buyers. It comes from a rhythm that makes you learn faster than the market moves.

Monday Strategy: set the week. Which deals, which step each one is at, and the one priority that matters most.

Friday Learnings: score it. What moved, what stalled, what to double down on, what to drop.

Fifty-two loops a year. Each one makes the process a little tighter, and a little lighter to run 🌴.

Step 5: Automate with AI, last

Now, and only now, bring in AI. Research before every call. A first draft of the Statement of Work in the buyer's own words. Follow-ups that fire at the right step. The Friday scorecard, filled in before you sit down.

AI running a clean 8-step process is a multiplier. AI running a pile of unowned steps just sends more noise, faster, to more people.

This is also how a new sales hire finally performs without you. You are not handing them a pile. You are handing them one page, in the right order, with the busywork already automated. That is how you stop being the only closer 🐯.

Get the algorithm free

We turned the method into a free, open repo you can run on any workflow, sales or not. Paste in a process and it walks you through Question, Delete, Simplify, Accelerate, Automate, in that order:

https://github.com/SimonTheSalesBooster/the-algorithm

More than 2,400 B2B founders have gone through our programs. Before Strategy Sprints, I coached 2,000+ teams, including Google, BMW and Airbus. The lesson that keeps coming back: cut first, then build.

Control first, then time

A lean process gives you back control of the sales conversation. Control gives you back your evenings. That is Sprintlife: control in sales plus time freedom, and it comes back as money, thank-yous and purpose 🐬.

Want the tools, the AI skills and a room full of founders running this loop every week? Start your 7-day free trial of Sprint Club: https://www.strategysprints.com

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

Happy hunting.

Simon & The Sprinters 🐬⚡️🐆