?? Breaking the Cycle: How Founders Can Move Beyond Founder-Led Sales

In the last three months, I've taken 92 calls with founders itching to break free from the sales cycle they've started.

Almost every one of these founders were in the same boat. They've got products and services that are not just good but groundbreaking, low churn rates, and a vision that's anything but small. Yet, they're all stuck trying to evolve past the founder-led sales model, without much luck in figuring out how.

Here’s the kicker: getting out of founder-led sales isn't a mystery. It boils down to a few critical steps:

1. Find a way to consistently book meetings with the people who are most likely to buy from you.
2. Make sure you're turning at least 30% of those conversations into cash.
3. Crank up the volume of those meetings by exploring new channels.
4. Get your sales and onboarding process down on paper so you can hand it off to new sales hires easily.

You're ready to build a sales team to close deals independently only when you can consistently secure 3 appointments per day and achieve at least a 30% conversion rate on offers to cold traffic.

A pro tip? Always have at least three months’ worth of marketing cash on standby. New sales folks need a bit to get up to speed, and you'll need to cover that expanded budget in the meantime.

But here's where I see the biggest hiccup:

Despite all these efforts, out of those 90 founders, most hadn’t managed to lock down a solid, dependable way to get sales appointments with their ideal clients on their own turf. I'm not talking about outsourcing to an agency, hiring a high-profile sales VP, or leaning on another rep's Rolodex.

I'm talking about you, directly, having an unbreakable, predictable system to fill your calendar with perfect-fit customers. This, my friends, is where the real game changes. It’s the cornerstone, the bedrock, the secret sauce to moving the needle in your business.

Creating a channel to predictably book new appointments should be at the top of your list for 2024.