Picture it. The goal is to double revenue this year, so you push. Discovery calls go from two a day to four. The team is busy, the CRM is busy, and the big deals still wait for you to close them.

And revenue barely moves.

That's the trap of the old way of growing: more activity, same result. Everybody is running. Nobody checks the direction. More calls with the wrong people, about the wrong problem, at the wrong price, are not progress. They're just a faster way to stay where you are.

I talked this through with John Lee Dumas on Entrepreneurs on Fire (we recorded it in 2022, and John re-aired it as an EOFire Classic in June 2025). Listen to the full conversation: 3 Levers to Double Revenue, on Entrepreneurs on Fire

Speed is not velocity

In normal conversation, speed and velocity mean the same thing. In a business they don't.

Here's how I put it to John: "imagine you are running a marathon and you are running fast but you are running in the wrong direction." How cool is that? Not so much. 🐬

"Velocity is speed plus direction."

Speed is the number of discovery calls this week. Velocity is whether those calls are with people who can actually buy, about a problem they'll actually pay to fix.

Most sales teams only measure speed. It's easy. It's on the dashboard. It goes up when you push harder. Direction is harder to see, so it gets skipped, week after week. Meanwhile the pipeline looks full and quietly goes stale.

The two sets of questions

So split your weekly numbers into two kinds.

Speed questions (every week):

• How many discovery calls did we get? Two a day, three, four, five?
• What's the running average of the last four weeks, compared to the four weeks before?

That tells you if you're accelerating or slowing down. You want that signal every seven days, not in a quarterly report.

Velocity questions (from time to time, on purpose):

• "are we selling to the right people at the right place at the right price and are we solving the right problem"

That's the line I gave John, word for word. Teams don't ask it enough. Skip it, and all you get is more sales calls with the wrong people about the wrong solutions.

🐯 Picture the Friday review where your best rep proudly reports nine calls. Then you ask: how many of the nine are founders who own the budget, feel the problem right now, and have heard what it costs them to wait? If the honest answer is two, that's a bitter number to chew on. You don't have a pipeline problem. You have a direction problem.

Why direction is where control lives

This is the part no dashboard shows you. When you talk to the right buyer about the right pain, you lead the conversation. You ask what happens if they do nothing. Then you go quiet, and you hear them say the cost out loud. The price lands next to their number, not in a vacuum. Buyers can tell who is leading the call, and they lean toward that person.

When you talk to the wrong buyer, you chase. You send another proposal, another follow-up, another "just checking in." That's speed without velocity, and every extra follow-up makes the next one sound a little more needy.

🌴 The effort is the same. On the call, it feels like a different job.

Rigid teams can't change direction

John asked me about agile versus rigid companies. The difference is simple: how long it takes you to notice something changed, and then to act on it.

A rigid team has planning systems, reporting systems and meetings that take longer to change than the market does. By the time the quarterly numbers show a slide, the slide is three months old.

An agile team gets a few numbers every seven days. When sales dip 2%, they know this week, while the rigid competitor finds out next quarter. And they don't hide it. They bring it straight to the people who can help: tell me what's not working, and let's fix it.

That's what the weekly rhythm buys you: you turn the ship in days, while the rigid team is still booking the meeting about it.

Sprints are not marathons

People hear "Strategy Sprints" and think: run flat out, all the time.

That's not a sprint. That's a marathon at the wrong pace.

A sprint is intentional. Short bursts of high intensity, then low intensity. "when you go all in you go all in." I compared it to water hitting a rock. Water doesn't stop, hold a meeting and write a plan. It goes around the rock, all in, and keeps moving.

🐬 That only works if you've already cut the list. My one tip to John's listeners was to cut the number of projects, activities and to-dos in half, because you need to find the right ones first. Then you go all in on those. Same with your calls: fewer, better aimed, all in.

And "a fool with a tool is still a fool." We have 274 templates and tactics. None of them help if they point the team in the wrong direction.

Your velocity check for this Friday

1. Write down last week's discovery calls. That's your speed.
2. Mark each one: right person (owns the decision), right pain (they said it out loud), right price (the problem is worth more than the fee).
3. Count the marks. Three out of three is velocity. Anything less is speed. Seeing that number in black and white on a Friday is the moment the fog lifts.
4. Fix one thing next week. If it's the wrong people, change who you prospect. If it's the wrong pain, change the first question you ask. If it's the wrong price, ask what doing nothing will cost them before you talk money.
5. Repeat every Friday. Speed weekly, direction on purpose. After a few weeks it stops feeling like a review and starts feeling like a scoreboard you want to beat.

🐯 You don't need more calls. You need more calls that point the right way.

🌴 That's Sprintlife. Less running in circles, more wins that compound, and evenings that belong to you again.

Listen to the full conversation with John: Entrepreneurs on Fire 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 🐬⚡️🐆