How to Know When to Stop Selling Yourself

0:00Right. I'll just go with that. [laughter] Okay. >> Next one. Yeah, sure. >> We talked shortly yesterday about the constraint, which is enough meetings, but I'm curious Leila and you were selling for a long time for Jim Lunch on the meetings which you set up for yourself. So, a little bit or Leila from 8 till 8, she was saying that she was having meetings >> Meeting when she was selling. >> Yeah, she was selling. So, firstly, why? If you recommend it to the owners to be closers because then you understand the sales process and the kind of like a philosophy behind of it and when to let it go like focusing more on let's say regeneration or just building the system. Let's say is it from 1 till 3 million turnover making sense to sell making it [music] understanding to it and then pass it more. Where is the

0:47>> So, when do you pass on the baton of sales? That's the question? >> Yeah, and why Leila was selling and for how long in a way? >> So, [snorts] this is a good question. So, I think it depends on the skill set of the founder. And so, let's say let's say you're an amazing product designer, you're really good at delivery in some way, then sales isn't even your strength and so I try and get somebody else to replace you as soon as possible cuz you don't like doing it and you're not good at it and somebody else could basically replicate your level of skill quickly.

1:12If you're just an absolute savage on the phone, I'd like the other extreme, right? So, let's say it's a let's say you're Okay, I'll give you two polar extremes and then you can just see the nuance between them. So, in the example I was saying earlier, let's say you're really good at product and delivery and you don't like sales, you're not good at it and you have a cheap price point. Okay, so the return on time is absolutely at its lowest in this one. So, you would want to outsource that as fast as possible. On the other extreme, you sell incredibly complex multi-million dollar per year contracts uh and you're amazing at it. Well, then you'd probably outsource everything except for that.

1:47And then at some point cuz everything just comes like I said this actually this is a really good question cuz it ladders up to a larger question, which is when do you get rid of anything? Which is if you think about I mean we have the whole talk on thinking like an investor because fundamentally >> [snorts] >> as entrepreneurs, as CEOs, whatever you want to call yourself, we get compensated for our ability to allocate resources. And so, strategy is the ability to prioritize limited assets against unlimited options. So, you have many things you could possibly do with your business, but only a few resources, time, money, energy, etc. And so, the people who allocate those resources most efficiently are the ones who get the best returns on them, in the business and outside of the business.

2:27And so, in that polar example, for this guy, for his assets and resources, he's going to get a really good return on it. For this guy, if he allocates it towards sales, he gets a very poor return on it. And so, fundamentally, every shade in between is what else could I be doing with my time, and will it make me more money than what I'm currently doing? And is the trade-off that I'm making bringing someone else in enough to make up the delta? >> [snorts] >> And so, fundamentally, if you have a business that requires somebody who's an absolute crazy maniac salesperson to succeed, either the business is wrong or you just It needs to be you, and that's just what you have to accept.

3:02For me, I like to expect that if I'm excellent selling, I have to be able to make this business scale at one half of my production or a third of my production with a normal employee. If it still works that way, then I can scale this without me. And so, fundamentally, your levels, especially if it's something that it's your core competence, like you're really good at it, then that's something that you want to build enough padding in. It's like, "Oh, yeah, we have to close 80% of these sales calls." It's like, they're not going to do that.

3:28>> [laughter] >> If you're priced appropriately, they're not going to do that. And so, we have to make sure that it makes sense based on what else you could be doing with your time. And so, if you can make an argument with the time that you save on sales, what you're going to do with it that's going to make more than what you would make selling, then you do it. And if you can't, then you look at everything else on your calendar, you say, "Is there something else on here that would make me more time more money than this thing and it's continually trading and that's all we and Leila and I do this every quarter.

3:57We look at our calendars, we say, what can we trade time-wise that we can trade up for higher returns. >> Actually, it's interesting because I have a closer which is let's say on my level or even better because he's doing it more than I do. >> Yeah. >> And so I don't need to do it. I just need to bring more meetings so that's most important >> Yeah. >> but I'm learning so much from it because I talked to the customers and I know where they are etc. So that's the reason why I want to jump into it more but that's one more reason to understand why Leila for how long Leila was doing it and when she kind of passed it or was it some other closer? So just want to understand from that perspective.

4:35>> I closed first. >> You closed it. >> And then I duplicated that with Leila and then she closed. And then she duplicated that with the >> Okay. >> And so I I don't know. I think I mean I want to say I mean we we scale so quickly that she couldn't have taken any more of the calls anyways. Like she was doing four on ones. >> So four people at once $16,000 a pop. >> I remember Jim Warner was like there's four of us on this call and I just saw you close three and she's like, yeah, I got 12 more calls today.

5:03>> He was like, I'll just buy cuz >> You're obviously doing something that's working. >> [laughter] >> Um but yeah, it was all it was crazy. It was awesome. Um but no, I mean fundamentally it's going to be based on on the demand flow that you can generate and if you can if you This would be my challenge to you is see if you can break the sales guy. See if you can give him so much demand that you need another one. And then that's your job and fundamentally that's always been my job in the business. It's like I want to break this thing. I want to see if I can get so much interest that we have to scale.

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