The pipeline looks thin, so the answer seems obvious. More leads. More posts, more ads, more outreach 🐯

Before you add a single lead, read this story from my book. It's about a copywriter called Tom.

Tom had plenty of fans and not enough cash

In Chapter 3 of Strategy Sprints, Tom is "working his butt off creating authority content about copywriting on YouTube every day." His offer worked. Clients paid him "US $7,500 per month".

The problem: people "would faithfully watch his videos for eight to ten months before calling him."

Eight to ten months. Picture it. A loyal audience, a good offer, and still he "was running out of cash".

The obvious move in Tom's spot: make more videos. He did something else. He worked with a Strategy Sprints coach, and they looked at his numbers first.

What they found: his sales calls closed at low rates for people who hadn't watched him for long. The new viewers. The ones not yet sold before they got on the call.

So the coach went into Tom's sales call script and "gave careful feedback on every word". Tom got better every day at closing his Zoom calls.

The result, as printed in the book:

"His conversion rates went from 13 per cent to 47 per cent. Also, the timeframe from people watching his videos to hiring him went from eight to ten months to three weeks."

Same videos. Same offer. Same audience. A better call 🐬

The sentence I'd put on every founder's wall

Right after Tom's story comes the line I come back to more than any other in the chapter:

"Often, when clients think they need more leads, what they really need is to improve their sales systems for the leads they already have."

Think about what more leads do to a leaky call. You pour more water into a bucket with a hole. You get busier. You don't get richer.

Fix the call and the opposite happens. Every lead you already have is worth more. And the sales cycle shrinks, because buyers don't need eight months of videos to feel sure. The call does that job.

The four questions that find the leak

Chapter 3 calls this Growth Lever #2: sales time and sales rate. It comes with four questions. Answer them with real numbers, not gut feel:

1. "Do your customers hear your offer and immediately want to buy?"
2. "Do you know the time it takes from when someone finds you to when they hire you?"
3. "What percentage of your sales calls become clients?"
4. "Why aren't more of your calls converting?"

If question 2 makes you shrug, that's your first job. You can't shorten a sales cycle you've never measured.

If question 3 is low and question 4 has no clear answer, the leak is the call. Not the leads.

What changes on a better call

In our method today, the call follows the 8 Steps of the Repeatable Sale, in order. Two of them do most of the shortening:

• Step 4, Cost of Inaction. The buyer says out loud what happens if nothing changes. Now the decision has a clock, and it's their clock.
• Step 7, Starting Date. A real date, agreed on the call. Not "let's talk next month".

When those two happen before any proposal goes out, deals stop drifting. New viewers who "weren't already 100 per cent sure" (the book's words about Tom's calls) get sure on the call, instead of after eight more months of watching.

The other three levers, in one line each

Chapter 3 has four Growth Levers. Lever 2 is the one above. The others:

• Lever 1: Price and packaging. One clear offer, charged upfront.
• Lever 3: Systemizing. Processes and people, so the business runs without you in every task.
• Lever 4: Exponential productivity. How you lead yourself. "You cannot lead anyone if you cannot lead yourself."

Pick one per quarter. When the pipeline feels thin, try Lever 2 first. It's the cheapest lever, because the leads are already there 🌴

Run this with your team this week

Block 45 minutes. Founder plus anyone who takes sales calls. Pull your CRM up on the big screen.

1. Answer the four questions above with numbers from the last 90 days. Write them on the whiteboard. The bitter part: real numbers, no rounding up.
2. Measure your cycle. Pick your last 5 clients. Count the days from first touch to signed. That's your real sales cycle.
3. Split your close rate. Warm, long-time followers vs new leads. If the new ones close much lower (like Tom's), the call is the leak.
4. Listen to one lost call together. Stop it each time the buyer goes quiet. Ask: did they say what doing nothing costs them? Did we agree a start date?
5. Change one thing in the script before next week's calls. Just one. Then measure again on Friday.

You move what you measure. The book says it in exactly those words. And a fresh number every Friday keeps the whole team honest.

Where this comes from

This is Chapter 3, "Your Growth Plan", of my book Strategy Sprints: 12 Ways to Accelerate Growth for an Agile Business (Kogan Page). The chapter also walks you through a 90-Day Growth Plan with three goals and weekly KPIs your team can own. Teams read it together, one chapter a week.

Get the book: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Strategy+Sprints+Simon+Severino&i=stripbooks

Do it together

A leaky call is hard to hear from the inside. Easier with founders working on the same thing. Sprint Club is where they do it, with the tools and AI skills we use ourselves. 7 days free: https://www.strategysprints.com

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

Happy hunting.

Simon & The Sprinters 🐬⚡️🐆