Your new rep has a deal stuck at the proposal. So they come to you. You jump on the call, you rewrite the email, you close it yourself.

It works. The win tastes sweet this week. Next week there are three of those, and you're still the only closer in the company.

That's not a people problem. It's a meeting problem. The way the week is run decides whether your reps grow or wait for you.

I talked this through with Matt Tenney on the Inspire Greatness Podcast (May 2025). Watch the conversation: Simon Severino on Inspire Greatness

Micromanaging is stepping into their swim lane

Every person on the team has a swim lane. It's theirs, end to end.

Micromanaging is when I jump into your lane and start swimming for you. Leading is different. You keep your lane, and I ask you one thing: what's your plan?

If the plan is clear, you move on. If I hear gaps while you explain it, I ask more questions. I don't take over.

🐬 So your job moves. Less doing the work, more asking the question that makes the rep see the gap.

Start the week with wins, not problems

Every Monday we coach entrepreneurs for an hour. It's a high-energy, high-intensity hour, and it always starts the same way.

"What were your wins of the last seven days?"

Everybody answers. I closed the deal. I finally got back to that person who wasn't taking my calls. I wrote 600 words on an important topic. Whatever the win is, we start by harvesting wins.

You can feel the air in the room change. Say you're having a bad day. You hear four people before you, and it's win, win, win. You think, maybe I can have a win this week too.

Hope comes back. And with hope, confidence goes up.

🐯 Picture your Monday sales meeting. Does it open with the pipeline that's slipping, or with what went right? A meeting that opens on problems goes stale in five minutes. Your reps walk out carrying whichever one you opened with.

Don't bring an agenda. Listen for one.

After the wins, we don't have an agenda. "We listen for the agenda." The question is simple: what do you need to solve this week?

People expect a solution. They expect me to come in and tell them how to do marketing or sales. I refrain from that. A leader who walks in and presents is not leading. You listen.

Then everybody says where they're stuck, and I pull the right process. After 22 years, there are 274 of them to pick from. One of them fits.

One Monday it was: our website isn't converting. People visit, but they don't click the opt-in. So for half an hour we worked on the button, the language and the colors. At the end, feedback and next steps.

One hour. One real problem, worked on live, with next steps before anyone logged off.

Ask until they write the rules themselves

Listening matters most when someone is losing.

One Monday, a member had a new income stream that was losing money. He was discouraged. So I asked: which rules did you set up? Rules for what you pick, how much you risk, how big you go.

He hadn't set any. He'd been reacting to the news.

So I kept asking. If you created rules, what would they be? I stayed in listening. About 15 minutes later, he had written three rules for himself.

I knew which rules he could use the whole time. But handing him three rules is very different from asking him which rules he set up. When he writes them, he owns them. Next Monday we'll hear if it landed in the win column or the stuck column.

🌴 Your reps are no different. The deal that's stuck at the proposal? Ask what the buyer said doing nothing would cost them. Ask when the buyer committed to start. Let the rep find the missing step. Next call, they lead the conversation instead of chasing the buyer. That's how they learn to run the call without you.

One bottleneck a week

Zoom out from the Monday hour, and the rhythm is simple.

We work in 90-day cycles. That's 12 sprints of five working days. On Monday, everybody says what their focus is, so we know the priorities. On Friday, we learn from the week.

Each week solves one bottleneck. Not ten. One. Solve it, learn from it on Friday, and attack the next one on Monday.

And if the team experiments all week and brings results and learnings on Friday, you don't have to do much as a leader. You get to watch, and say, wow, amazing how you did that. That's your job, because on Monday they got direction.

People need three things for that. A quest. Real-time communication with each other. And the freedom to do it, resources included. That's the swim lane.

Three questions cover it. What are we doing? How can I quickly coordinate with you? And are we winning?

Your Monday, in order

1. Open with wins. Seven days, one win each. No exceptions.
2. Ask what they need to solve. No prepared agenda. Listen for it.
3. Pick one problem, work it live. Half an hour, real work, then next steps.
4. Ask, don't tell. Questions until the rep writes the rule or finds the step.
5. One bottleneck for the week. Friday, check it: win column or stuck column.

🐬 Try it this Monday with your sales team. Skip the slides. Start with "what were your wins of the last seven days?" and see who walks out with energy.

That's how you stop being the only closer. Picture a Friday where your reps close deals you never touched, and you hear about them in the scorecard, not on a rescue call. Your reps lead their calls, you lead the week, and the evenings come back. That's Sprintlife: control in sales, and the time to live the life you built the company for.

Watch the full conversation with Matt Tenney: Inspire Greatness with Simon Severino

Grab the free tools and join 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 🐬⚡️🐆