Another Sales Update

We hit a major setback today in my infinite quest to build a sales team.

One of my reps put in his two weeks. I saw it coming. He’s been great. He gave it his all. In truth, I was the one who let him down.

We are parting ways as new friends and I appreciate all the hard work he put into it. He was super cool and honest about his experience and I learned a lot.

Here’s what I am doing to get better.

1. The system is the sale: My failure was that I hired a sales rep before I had a system in place. I truly underestimated how much work it was to build out the process. The problem was that I didn’t know what the process was until I started experimenting. The good news is that I’m further along now then I was.

2. Taking a step back: Now that I have built some of the process, I can see the breaking points in it. I realize that the reason it was so difficult for me to create a process was because I never documented anything I’ve learned over the last ten years. My entire sales process was in my head. I don’t even know how to teach what it is I do, because I’m the only one who has ever done it. This will be an opportunity to refine the process myself AND document everything I learn while I create it.

3. Knowing the right software: One of the time consuming aspects was knowing what tools I needed to use. There are so many. There are tools for …

   1. Email scheduling

   2. Cold calling

   3. Data scraping

   4. Customer relations

   5. Transactions

   6. Scheduling

   7. You name it, there is a tool for it.

      • It was very hard to know what I needed until I tried them all. Now that I have my tech stack solidified, I think this next phase will be much faster.

4. Building a company encyclopedia: Every day for the last two weeks, I have been looking for weak points in our system so that I can build something robust and then write down exactly what needs to happen for the system to function properly. I’ve been building a company encyclopedia. I feel like this might be one of the most important creations of my career so far. Click here to read what I have done so far.

Overall: I’m a bit discouraged. Nothing comes easy to me. I’m complaining because I’m blessed beyond belief. God wants me to be a grinder. I will embrace the gifts that were given to me.

I know I will figure this out. Jules says I should to talk to an expert or possibly hire a sales consultant to tell me what I’m missing. Maybe he or she can help me see the things I don’t know I can’t see.

I’m discouraged, but optimistic. I’m not losing money. I’m slightly profitable on my expenses in building this team. I know more today than I did yesterday, and I’m not going to give up.

Yes. I will keep you posted.