These guys were drinking the haterade [5 of 7]
Ready to ramp up your startup’s sales efforts? Then DON’T hire a salesperson.
That’s strategy #5 in our 7-Day Sales Challenge. And when Justin Roff-Marsh, founder of Ballistix, shared that strategy on Mixergy, it got some blowback. The haters showed up.
One person called it “bad advice.”
Another said, “Perhaps this guy has just been burned by crappy salespeople in the past.”
However, during this challenge, the goal is to ignore what the haters say, suspend skepticism, and think about how it could work for you.
Because it does work. It’s how Justin has helped clients double their sales…sometimes almost immediately.
So…think you’re ready to hire salespeople? Don’t post that job ad just yet…
“If you are a startup, then by definition you’re going to be small,” says Justin. “It makes no sense whatsoever to employ full-time salespeople.”
But Justin admits that there aren’t enough hours in the day for you to everything by yourself.
So instead, he says to recognize the difference between critical sales conversations and hustling (the time-consuming paperwork and scheduling tasks).
“People conflate the two and they call it selling,” he says. “But the reality is that the hustling is just hustling, and anyone can do it.”
Justin uses systems and assistants to handle the hustling part, which frees him up to handle the critical selling conversations.
“Someone else has scheduled it,” he says. “All you have to do is put your headset on, sit down at your desk at the scheduled time, dial a number, have the conversation, and then tell someone what the outcome was so that they can take it and do whatever needs to be done next.”
Your challenge right now: In your notebook or Google doc, brainstorm about how you could systemize the ‘hustling’ parts of your sales process so you could focus on just the critical sales conversations.
If you HAD to use this technique, what are the steps you’d need to take? Who would handle the hustling part? What systems or software would you need to automate some of the sales process?
Take five minutes and write down your answers now, while you’re still thinking about this technique.
And when you’re done, check out the way Justin responded to one of the haters in the comments:
“I’m frustrated by this kind of incredulity. I don’t understand why some respond to this contentious content by disputing whether or not it is possible. A more fruitful line of questioning, IMHO, would be to accept it’s possible in some cases and then try and understand the boundaries of the new theory: what are its limits? It’s at the boundaries where new knowledge is most likely to be created.”
Boom. That’s the Founder’s Mindset in action.
-Andrew
Founder, Mixergy