Who it's for
An owner or head of sales whose revenue comes 60–80% from one or two people.
Key idea
A sales team becomes a system when a new person can reproduce the results within a clear time frame through a clear program.
Contents
- Why the hero appears
- Five elements of reproducibility
- How to take the process from the hero without losing the hero
- The reproducibility test
- The role of the head of sales
- What to do this week
Take the self-assessment
The sign of dependence on a hero is simple: if this person goes on vacation for a month, revenue drops noticeably. If they leave for good, it drops catastrophically. The company knows this and usually handles it through retention: it raises the commission, tolerates the behavior, agrees to the terms.
This works right up until it stops working. And the longer it works, the more expensive the ending.
Principle
A strong salesperson is an asset. Dependence on a strong salesperson is a liability. The difference is whether their results can be reproduced.
Why the hero appears
Not because they're talented, but because the system isn't documented. When there's no process, results come from whoever has built their own. They keep the qualification, their own sequence of touches, their own phrasing and their own customers in their head. It's their personal process, and it doesn't belong to the company.
This leads to a conclusion that's unpleasant to admit: the hero has no interest in documenting their process. Their value grows along with the lack of transparency. There's no malice in it. It's rational behavior within the structure you built.
Five elements of reproducibility
- 01
A definition of a deal
What counts as a deal, what counts as a lead, what counts as a qualified lead. Without these three definitions, any pipeline is a set of opinions and any forecast is guesswork.
- 02
Stage criteria
Moving between stages should depend on what the customer does, not on the salesperson's mood. "Sent a proposal" isn't a stage. "The customer named a budget and a decision date" is a stage.
- 03
A mandatory sequence of touches
How many contact attempts, at what intervals, through which channel. Deals are often lost simply because there was no second touch.
- 04
Material for the conversation
A conversation structure instead of a word-for-word script: which questions to ask in the first conversation, what information to find out, how to wrap up. A script makes the conversation lifeless; the lack of structure makes it random.
- 05
Reviewing lost deals
Regularly, with the real reason instead of "too expensive." "Too expensive" is almost never the reason. It's a way of saying no. The real reason is usually that value wasn't built before the price came up.
How to take the process from the hero without losing the hero
The direct route, demanding a written procedure, almost always produces a formal document and a damaged relationship. Three workarounds do work.
- 01 Listen to call recordings and document the process yourself. You describe what the person actually does. Their own account of their work may differ, and the difference is usually significant.
- 02 Give the hero a mentor role, with separate pay for their trainee's results. That changes their economics: now the lack of transparency costs them money.
- 03 Split the functions: qualification, first contact, closing, account management. The hero stays in the part where they're strongest.
What not to do
Sharply change the hero's compensation at the same time as introducing the process. They'll take it as a demotion, and they'll most likely be right. The order: process first, then compensation, with the logic explained.
The reproducibility test
The only honest test is a new person. Hire one and measure.
Metric What the result means
Time to first deal More than three months means there's effectively no training program
Time to 70% of the average salesperson's results The key metric of reproducibility. It should be known and stable
Spread between salespeople A difference of more than 3× means the person is doing the work, not the system
Share of deals with a full history in the CRM Below 80%, you can't build a forecast
Related service: Building a Sales Team
When these five elements need to be put together and tested with a new person.
Related service: Sales Audit
If it's unclear exactly where deals are lost, and you need a map of the losses before rebuilding.
The role of the head of sales
A common mistake is to promote the best salesperson to head of sales. These are two different professions. A salesperson wins deals. A head of sales builds a system in which others win deals. Combining the two usually means the person keeps selling and management gets whatever time is left.
If combining the roles is unavoidable, cap their personal quota with an explicit number and evaluate the two separately: the results of their own deals and the results of the team. Otherwise the first will always eat the second.
A sales team where the head brings in half the revenue isn't a team with a strong leader. It's a team with one salesperson and four assistants.
What to do this week
Questions to ask yourself
Check the structure, not the people
- 01 What share of revenue does your best salesperson bring in, and what happens if they leave?
- 02 Do you have three definitions: lead, qualified lead, deal?
- 03 How many touches are planned after the first "I'll think about it," and who tracks them?
- 04 How long does it take a new person to reach 70% of the average results?
- 05 When did you last listen to three call recordings in a row?
Materials that continue the topic
- Marketing stopped working: five real reasons
- A CRM people trust
