The 7 Systems Series | Part 3

Your Sales System Might Actually Be You

You may be making sales. That does not automatically mean you have a sales system.

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Let me ask you a question.

If you stopped handling sales for the next 30 days, would your business still know how to turn an interested prospect into a paying customer?

Not, “Would somebody figure it out?”

Not, “Could I explain it to them before I left?”

I mean, could your business keep moving without you stepping in?

And for a while, that works.

You know which leads need a call back.

You know which estimate needs another follow-up.

You remember who said, “Call me next month.”

You know which prospects are serious and which ones probably are not.

The problem is that all of that knowledge is sitting in one place.

Your head.

So How Do You Know If Sales Still Depends on You?

Start paying attention to what happens when business gets busy.

• Do leads get handled differently depending on who answers?
• Do estimates go out and then sit there without consistent follow-up?
• Do you personally know which opportunities need attention because nobody else does?
• Does sales activity slow down when you get buried in operations?
• Would someone taking over tomorrow need you to explain the entire process from memory?

If several of those made you a little uncomfortable, good.

That discomfort is information.

Sales Is Only One Place the Owner Can Become the Bottleneck

This is why I started this series.

Growth starts exposing the places where the business still depends on the owner instead of a repeatable system.

Sometimes that shows up in sales.

Sometimes it shows up with employees.

Sometimes it shows up in customer service, communication, scheduling, money or production.

And usually, the owner has gotten so used to compensating for the missing system that it just feels like part of running the business.

It does not have to stay that way.

One Question Before You Go

Think about the last five sales opportunities that came into your business.

Did they move through a system, or did they move because you made sure they did?

There is a big difference.