Hey, 👋 Scott from The Sales Mastermind here.

Today’s edition only takes 3 minutes.

“(Salespeople) do not rise to the level of (their) goals. (They) fall to the level of (their) systems.” James Clear

Today we’ll cover:

• Storytime
• Leads and Pipeline
• North Star
• Examples

Storytime

A non-sales friend of mine is about to go on maternity leave and has been responsible for finding and onboarding a contractor to cover her leave.

Her employer (a global, multi-billion-dollar behemoth) has been completely absent whenever she has asked for training, templates, or structure to support learning how to vet and train her maternity cover.

And when she finally sat down to write up an onboarding plan, the blank Excel spreadsheet staring back at her kept sapping her spirit.

She’d told me the blank sheet had been haunting her for over a week.

Luckily for her, I regularly support my clients with hiring and onboarding. So I have a process relatively well documented (reply “Onboarding Plan” if you want a copy of the template I use).

So I mentioned the template, and my friend jumped at the chance to see how someone else does it.

Walking her through my Onboarding Plan, and I explained how each step worked, including:

• The joint 30-60-90, with KPIs
• Hyperlinks for all relevant software/tools
• Planning Day 1, Week 1, Month 1, with specific expectations
• Creating mini-tests/exams to confirm comprehension and accountability

We both knew she wouldn’t use all of it, since her maternity leave starts next month and she works in a different field (not sales).

But at the end of my explanation, my friend asked me to send her the document so she could use it for inspiration.

Ironically, considering the lack of support from her company, her corporate email anti-virus actually blocked the email when I sent her the plan. I had to send it to her personal email address.

Leads and Pipeline

Sales don’t happen without leads to meet and meetings in the calendar.

However, most businesses treat sales similarly to the above company; they know someone has to do it, yet even when a seller forces time to “find some leads”, they’re forced to reinvent the wheel.

And in the case of onboarding a new team member - that happens a few times a year - it’s understandable not to document the process, but “finding leads” is something that needs to happen every month, if not every day.

So, it’s inexcusable not to have at least a structure.

North Star KPI

Generation leads starts with a focus, the North Star that you’re going to chase every day/week/month as long as you’re a seller.

Typically, this is either an input you 100% control, an output you influence, or somewhere in between:

• An input might be 40 dials, or 20 LinkedIn connection requests sent
• An output might be 1 meeting booked, or 3 LinkedIn replies
• In between might be 5 conversations over 2 minutes, or 8 new LinkedIn connections

It doesn’t really matter what you set as the North Star; it also doesn’t matter if it’s one hyper-specific thing or 2-3 semi-connected things.

Just remember the most important part of your North Star is that, if you do it regularly, it’ll eventually lead to success, however you define success.

Systems

Generating leads is one of the most important, yet least urgent jobs in sales. So just like our Storytime, without some systems in place, it’s easy to delay or avoid it.

So, once you define the activities, it’s time to lock in exactly how and when you’ll get them done.

While there are infinite ways to reach your goal, there are three that I talk about most of all, and they can be done individually or in combination:

• Eat the KPI Frog - Do it first thing in the day, or first thing when back from lunch and don’t stop until you’re done.
• Tactile Tracking - Use a physical journal, notepad, or post-it note to track your achievement through the day and share with an accountability partner
• Day Before Planning - Do any required prep the day before (e.g., list building or writing templates). You’re always more ambitious the day before, and it means you can hit the ground running when it’s time to take action.

Skipping

Lastly, as simple as it sounds, never skip two days in a row to maintain momentum.

It’s ok to reevaluate the North Star, or change when/how you’re going to do it, but make sure you don’t skip two days in a row.

Ultimately, having a plan, a system, and/or a template is the difference between getting a task done and procrastinating.

Until next week,
Scott Cowley

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