Your new salesperson starts Monday. You're the one they report to.

And the sales process? It lives in your head. Which leads to call first. What to say when the buyer asks for the price. When to send the proposal. All of it is yours, unwritten.

So you close the deals yourself, run the client work yourself, and at 9pm you're answering the new hire's questions. Again. The business can't grow past your calendar.

I talked this through with John Solleder on Leaving Nothing To Chance (June 2024). Watch the full conversation: How Strategy Sprints Will Help You Explode Your Business With Simon Severino

Who is solving your problems?

Here's the question I put to John: "if you work only on solving the client's problems who is solving your problems"?

As a founder you have a hundred problems every week. Pricing. Scaling. Hiring. Legal. Tech. If you spend eight hours a day on client problems, yours wait. And hiring alone is a full-time job.

The hiring problem has a nasty loop in it. You don't have time to hire because you're doing everything. You're doing everything because you haven't hired. Something has to break that loop, and it isn't working harder. 🐬

Take an hour of executive time

Often I block an hour in my calendar called executive time and go for a walk. On that walk I ask one question: "if another CEO came in and took over my firm what would they do"?

It works because you stop looking at the business from inside the daily noise. You advise yourself the way you'd advise a client. It's always easier to see what to change in somebody else's company. This question lends you that view of your own.

Write it down, then hand it over

The way out is boring, and it works. Two steps.

Step one: write your business down. How do you do marketing? Write it down. How do you do sales? Write it down. How do you deliver? Write it down. It doesn't need to be a manual. "maybe it's just five sentences but that's the first step."

Step two: give every part an owner who isn't you. Who owns marketing? Who owns sales? Who owns delivery? Start with freelancers if you have to. Because the process is written, people can come and go and the system stays.

That written process is exactly what your new salesperson needs on day one. Without it, they copy whatever you did last, right or wrong. With it, they run the same steps you run, and you stop being the only closer. 🐯

Where the 10+ hours come from

For me, delivery was the big one: "Ops alone in my case was 50 hours a week." Client spreadsheets, CRMs, sales material, prep, documentation, sometimes the commute.

So I started writing down what happens with a new client: week zero, week one, week two, week three. Then I handed it over and trained my colleagues on it.

The handover comes with feedback loops. First daily, then weekly, then monthly: How is it going? What's your plan to improve it? Do you need help? Do that for just one area and you probably free up more than ten hours a week.

I recommend starting with operations. If that isn't possible in your field, start with marketing or sales. Pick one, not three.

Find what to delegate in five minutes a day

Not sure which tasks to hand over? I use a simple tool I call the daily flow.

Every morning, the day is planned hour by hour. Around 6pm, before I close the computer, I answer two questions. One: "which of these tasks that you did today will you delegate next"? Two: if you lived more intentionally and freely, what would you do?

Five minutes. Do it for three days and patterns show up. For me the first one was bookkeeping. I'm not good at it, I don't like it, and it's not high leverage. I only saw how many hours it ate because I wrote it down.

A simple test: if someone else can do a task for a third of what your hour is worth, it's time to delegate it. Keep your superpower. Hand over the rest.

Let software hold the process too

Delegation isn't only to people. On my own sales calls, an AI tool with our 8 Steps of the Repeatable Sale built in coaches me live. It shows whether I'm talking more or less than 30% of the time (a good call is under 30%). And if I'm about to say the price at step two, it reminds me: price is Step 6.

A human coach can't do that live, and can't sit next to every seller on the team. Software can. That's how the process you wrote down keeps running when you're not in the room.

Start this week

1. Block one hour of executive time. Walk, and ask what a new CEO would do with your firm.
2. Write down your sales process. Five sentences is enough to start.
3. Name one owner who isn't you. Your new hire, a colleague, or a freelancer.
4. Run the daily flow for three days. Two questions, five minutes, every evening.
5. Check in daily, then weekly. How is it going, what's the plan, what help is needed?

Picture a Friday a few months from now. Your salesperson runs the calls from the written steps and closes one without you. Your evening is yours, and you walk out of the office knowing the pipeline still moves. As I told John: "you don't have to be amazing you just have to keep liquid enough to go one more round." That's Sprintlife: control of the sales conversation, and the time freedom it buys you. 🌴

Watch the full conversation with John Solleder: How Strategy Sprints Will Help You Explode Your Business With Simon Severino

Practice the 8 Steps and write your own process 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 🐬⚡️🐆