run_frictionless by Anthony Coundouris

run frictionless helps founders scale out of a sales role, using a decision-making framework called the 4Qs.

The mistake founders and high performing salespeople make is trying to scale up the business by replacing themselves with another human being. Simply, there isn’t another human like you looking for a job. Those who are good at selling are busy doing their own startup, not working for you.

Scale up a business and free the founder of sales role

There are a few things you can try to free a founder from a sales role. One. Don't worry, keep growing. Two. Stop growing the business. Or three, hire a replacement. These are not effective! Over time they will fail you.

run frictionless presents an alternative – an option nobody is talking about. Scaling the business with a sales system.

A sales system spells out the formula required to make a customer, in a clearly understood sequence. It is similar to a sales funnel or sales process, only more comprehensive. It will tell you the precise number of interactions required to make a customer. If you serve small businesses, this could be 15 interactions. If you serve enterprise forms it could number 25 or more interactions.

• • Predict sales. Distill a sale process to a handful of customer interactions you can teach the whole organization. Win a customer, and know why you won that customer.

• • Get more leads. The book offers several pre-designed customer flows to improve sales you can use right away. Imagine how much business you’re turning away, simply because you’re not starting conversations with customers the way they want.

• • Better decision-making. If you are going to free the founder, staff have to learn to think like the founder. Make everyone accountable with an easy-to-use framework called the 4Qs.

• • Sell 24/7. Automation moves the customers through a sales system even when the salesforce or founder is not at their desk.

Scaling up the startup with a sales system

A sales system is key to scaling up a startup. If staff follow the formula, you can predict the odds of creating a customer. Imagine a sales system as a series of dials. Turn the dials and you make an improvement. It is not uncommon to improve sales by 25 percent just by turning a dial. You didn't re-engineer the business or substitute staff.

Building lasting sales teams

Another benefit of a sales system is it augments your workforce. The best people are working on the highest value tasks, and other tasks can be carried out by less experienced folk. The intellectual property of how a customer is made is in the sales system. Each salesperson needs only understand the part of the system where they contribute.

Design your own sales system

run frictionless will teach you how to design a sales system, using a framework called the 4Qs. It doesn't matter if you are a fintech startup or a traditional medical practice operating for five years. The 4Qs will take what you know intuitively and organize this knowledge into four powerful quadrants, making it easy to run frictionless.