If your company’s revenue depends on you closing every deal, you do not have a scalable business… you have a bottleneck.
In this episode, Mike Huey, author of Make Your Company Scalable and Saleable, reveals how founders and CEOs can break free from founder-led sales, install a repeatable sales system, and build a high-performing team that drives consistent revenue without relying on you.
This is a must-watch for business owners, CEOs, and leaders who want to scale efficiently, improve operational performance, and increase company valuation.
What You Will Learn
• The hidden signs your business is trapped in a founder-driven sales model
• How to build a scalable, repeatable sales system that drives predictable revenue
• The right way to hire, train, and develop high-performing sales managers
• Why most sales leadership transitions fail and how to avoid costly mistakes
• Proven coaching strategies that actually improve sales performance
• How to use AI to eliminate non-selling tasks and increase productivity
• The role of accountability in building a winning sales culture
• How systemizing sales directly increases your company’s exit value
Key Takeaways
• If you are the only one who can close, your growth is capped
• AI should support your sales team, not replace it
• Real leadership begins when you step out of the sales role and into the CEO role
Episode Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Scalable Sales Solutions
02:39 Identifying Bottlenecks in Founder-Led Sales
05:12 Building a Scalable Sales System
08:09 Mistakes in Sales Leadership Handoffs
10:46 The Role of Sales Managers
13:23 Coaching and Accountability in Sales
16:02 Leveraging AI in Sales Management
18:45 Creating a Culture of Accountability
21:20 The Importance of a Documented Sales Process
24:16 Increasing Exit Value through Scalable Sales
26:53 Transitioning to Disciplined Sales Execution
29:31 Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways
🌐 Connect With Workforce Alchemy
Website: https://workforcealchemy.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReverseRiskConsulting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workforcealchemy/
X / Twitter: https://x.com/WorkAlchemist
Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/WorkforceAlchemy
Dailymotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/WorkforceAlchemy
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WorkforceAlchemist
🔗 Connect with Mason
Website: https://masonduchatschek.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonduchatschek/
Why This Episode Matters
Scaling a business is not about working harder. It is about building systems that work without you. If you want predictable revenue, stronger leadership, and a business that is actually sellable, this episode gives you the blueprint.
#SalesLeadership #BusinessScaling #Entrepreneurship #CEO #SalesStrategy #RevenueGrowth #LeadershipDevelopment #AIinBusiness #ExitStrategy #SalesManagement
In this episode, Mike Huey, author of Make Your Company Scalable and Saleable, reveals how founders and CEOs can break free from founder-led sales, install a repeatable sales system, and build a high-performing team that drives consistent revenue without relying on you.
This is a must-watch for business owners, CEOs, and leaders who want to scale efficiently, improve operational performance, and increase company valuation.
What You Will Learn
• The hidden signs your business is trapped in a founder-driven sales model
• How to build a scalable, repeatable sales system that drives predictable revenue
• The right way to hire, train, and develop high-performing sales managers
• Why most sales leadership transitions fail and how to avoid costly mistakes
• Proven coaching strategies that actually improve sales performance
• How to use AI to eliminate non-selling tasks and increase productivity
• The role of accountability in building a winning sales culture
• How systemizing sales directly increases your company’s exit value
Key Takeaways
• If you are the only one who can close, your growth is capped
• AI should support your sales team, not replace it
• Real leadership begins when you step out of the sales role and into the CEO role
Episode Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Scalable Sales Solutions
02:39 Identifying Bottlenecks in Founder-Led Sales
05:12 Building a Scalable Sales System
08:09 Mistakes in Sales Leadership Handoffs
10:46 The Role of Sales Managers
13:23 Coaching and Accountability in Sales
16:02 Leveraging AI in Sales Management
18:45 Creating a Culture of Accountability
21:20 The Importance of a Documented Sales Process
24:16 Increasing Exit Value through Scalable Sales
26:53 Transitioning to Disciplined Sales Execution
29:31 Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways
🌐 Connect With Workforce Alchemy
Website: https://workforcealchemy.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReverseRiskConsulting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workforcealchemy/
X / Twitter: https://x.com/WorkAlchemist
Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/WorkforceAlchemy
Dailymotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/WorkforceAlchemy
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WorkforceAlchemist
🔗 Connect with Mason
Website: https://masonduchatschek.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonduchatschek/
Why This Episode Matters
Scaling a business is not about working harder. It is about building systems that work without you. If you want predictable revenue, stronger leadership, and a business that is actually sellable, this episode gives you the blueprint.
#SalesLeadership #BusinessScaling #Entrepreneurship #CEO #SalesStrategy #RevenueGrowth #LeadershipDevelopment #AIinBusiness #ExitStrategy #SalesManagement
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:05welcome to the mason dukacheck show and before we jump in this episode is brought to you by
00:11workforcealchemy.com helping leaders uncover hidden profit leaks inside their workforce
00:17mike huey helps founders stop being the bottleneck as founder of scalable sales solutions
00:24he works with b2b companies on scalable sales systems leadership development and exit readiness
00:31he's a certified exit planning advisor and he's the author of make your company's company scalable
00:37and saleable and the leadership blueprint accountability in action thanks so much for
00:43joining us we're glad to have you today oh mason it's my pleasure i'm really excited about this
00:47time i've been looking forward to it ever since we got this on the calendar me too you talk about
00:52founders needing to take off the sales hat right what are the clearest signs that a business owner
01:00has become the bottleneck in growth yeah great question uh you know one of the quotes i like
01:05that i i created a little while ago is when when everything's dependent on the founder sales has a
01:11ceiling and so it really is when you start noticing that we're starting to level off i can't keep
01:17growing i've tapped my potential and or i wish i had more time for sales but because i'm the founder
01:24and i'm wearing other hats operations finance hat this hat you know marketing hat you're getting
01:29stretched and so you're noticing you're not being able to spend as much time with sales and so
01:34therefore you're we're starting to plateau or even possibly decline those are great indicators that
01:39you're not you're having some problems one other thing that i see sometimes is man when we create a
01:45business we want to conquer the world we want this big business all over the nation you know making
01:50buku dollars and then after time we start realizing i'm not on track to reach my goal and dream and
01:57it's
01:57because i'm having to do all this stuff so those are a couple indicators that the sales system is
02:01really too dependent on the owner so when a company is stuck in founder-led sales what usually breaks
02:08first is it pipeline team accountability forecasting or leadership capacity yeah yeah good question
02:14what breaks first yeah usually what happens i think is that founders start shifting to just
02:21trying to take care of their book of business and so now there's not any prospecting going on
02:26they're not putting a lot of money into a marketing we have an assessment system that looks at 42
02:33different areas of sales and marketing and one of those is how much are you spending on marketing
02:38generate leads and most people most people that we assess are less than one percent and we we tell
02:44you got to be spending seven percent of gross revenue or you know or a little bit more or
02:48something to do that business owners don't want to spend that money they're starting to notice there's
02:52less and less new accounts coming in it's usually the prospecting because we got to just take care of
02:57the money that's coming in while we're doing all these other activities well you know there's an old
03:01saying inspecting and marketing it's not everything but it does rank up there with oxygen yeah
03:06exactly i mean if you don't have it you don't have leads if you don't have leads you don't have
03:10sales if you don't have sales you don't have a business for a b2b company in this let's say maybe
03:15the 2 million to 20 million dollar range what does a truly scalable sales system actually look like
03:21in practice yeah no that's great question thanks for asking it mason i would say the first thing we
03:27usually do and we have a roadmap it's it's not where we don't wing it it's all pre-done and
03:32modularized
03:33systemized usually we have to get what's between the owner's ears out onto paper so creating a sales
03:41process the playbook similar to that i bet you that owner if they're a i don't know manufacturing
03:47company they probably have playbooks on how to run machines and how to run the the operation side of
03:52their house if they're a service industry same thing but very few document a sales process with
03:57a playbook so that you could literally hire a new salesperson and say hey here's the playbook
04:03here's what you do here's the links all that stuff so usually that's first then we also look at how
04:08we're generating leads are we getting enough leads in because if we're going to eventually build out a
04:13sales team they want to know that leads are coming in and it's not just dependent on them now i
04:18know
04:18some business owners are thinking well i'm hiring the salesperson to generate leads into prospect well
04:22i'm telling you when you get to the point where you have a high octane sales force most of their
04:28time
04:28is in front of buyers face-to-face closing deals and you've got another system just generating leads
04:34to the generating leads to them so you got to look at leads then from there we got to also
04:39look at do
04:39you have a crm a customer relationship management software package so that we can have a history of
04:46what conversations have happened with the customers all that kind of stuff but it also gives us a dashboard
04:52about how the sales force is doing we've got to have that i think sales people are like fishing when
04:59you go you get a fish and it comes in your boat they're slippery they're really hard to pin down
05:03that's your sales force and so you got to have a good crm system that tracks that good compensation
05:10plan and then you have to have a strong recruiting and onboarding plan once you have the ability to have
05:15a compensation plan that attracts a players refusing to hire b or c players you got a recruiting system
05:22that gets a players and an onboarding system that can get them up and going in less than 90 days
05:26and
05:26i mean not less than 90 days we've done it for aerospace and we've done it for chemical manufacturing
05:31really technical stuff but now you got it now you got a system of being able to completely replace
05:36yourself all the way from the sales process all the way to onboarding new sales people the last kind
05:41of step we'll maybe talk about later is sales management how do you manage them and that's another skill
05:46set too cool that's a long answer mason hopefully no no that's too much that that that so what are
05:53the biggest mistakes that founders make when they try to hand off sales leadership for the first time
05:58uh if they're trying to handle hand off sales management you know a lot of uh like i said sales
06:04people are slippery fish and managing sales people is completely different than managing someone on i don't
06:10know the shop floor um they're they're just really different skill sets so one of the things that that uh
06:16owner usually does is they um you know i don't know it's kind of sales managers operations managers
06:23in my personal opinion probably less than half really know what they're doing and so
06:29what's that what separates those who know from what they're doing from those who don't say that again
06:33what separates those who know what they're doing from those who don't based on your observations
06:37oh that's a great question that's a great question i got to think about that one
06:40the great the people that know what they're doing can look at systems systemize it and make everybody
06:48accountable to it poor sales leaders are ones who they think they're getting paid to generate reports
06:54on pipelines and forecasts and and have kind of a fun sales meeting and that's what they think sales
07:00management is great sales managers great sales leaders are like how am i going to take this force
07:06and make it grow grow the territory how can i work with each of the individual players as an example
07:12if you think of a bell curve of sales people you've got you know draggers you've got the center of
07:18the
07:18bell curve and then you've got your really leading people most sales managers who are not that great
07:24they they do one of two things they hang out with their rock stars because it's just fun and their
07:28compensation is probably connected to total revenue sold or they're working on the trailers and they're the
07:34people that are really struggling and that's what average sales managers do great sales managers
07:40let the rock stars go and they work on the center of that bell curve that's where they move because
07:45if they get that center of bell curve just to move over two three four percent they're making a
07:50substantial difference in the total revenue of that organization and in order to do that great
07:54sales managers literally spend 25 to 40 percent of their time out in the field watching and coaching
08:01their sales team or if you're inside sales or on the phones listening to what's happening they're not
08:06closing deals they're coaching their sales people i had a guest on who actually he's a co-author of a
08:12book we wrote recently called built right what it takes to build something that lasts and we were
08:16listening about this offline i think you're right when sales sales managers tend to spend time with
08:22their superstars because they're the ones that right now are producing the revenue or the majority of it
08:28and what bryant did that was amazing was he coached a high school cross-country team to 13 state
08:35championships in missouri eight in a row and in the last 17 years his boys haven't finished worse than
08:40second in the state in 17 years so what he built was incredible and and what he told his people
08:45was you talked about the bell curve that 20 percent of your people produce 80 percent of your revenue
08:52he's like he tells his people you are all 20 percenters yep great you're all 20 percenters and you're
08:58yeah that's great act and work accordingly so he treats every single person as though they are the top
09:04performer and that is the standard and the other thing that i found interesting about his leadership
09:09style which i think would be helpful to to piggyback on what you're saying here is that he says a
09:14lot of
09:15times when sales managers are going to be able to relate to this that superstar sales people get
09:20preferential treatment they get less responsibility they get out of stuff and the cultural standard
09:25isn't what's written in the rule book it's right behind by what the sales managers put up with
09:30yeah and a lot of times it's a lot of nonsense i made the point in our conversation and in
09:35the book he
09:35said that his top performers didn't get relieved of responsibility they were given more to set the
09:43example and to teach the younger ones how to do things and why it was important and what work was
09:47involved and when you're talking about sales management i was just curious what your take on that was
09:50because he he was what he was talking about was very relevant to what you were describing yeah very
09:55much so you know sometimes sales people become prima donnas and there's a real responsibility when i
10:01don't i'm not a big fan of sales competitions but i am a big fan of having transparent scorecards
10:07where everybody sees everybody's numbers the leading indicators who's got more new meetings who's got
10:13more quotes who's closing quotes what's the percentages and those rock stars usually have
10:18got some things figured out that the others haven't and so they have a responsibility during a lot of
10:23sales management meetings of doing some training how is it you do you you negotiate a higher price
10:29everybody else is discounting all the time how are you doing that train the stuff but here's another
10:34issue or or thing i'm a big believer in a capitalistic society a lot of people do things based on
10:40what
10:40they're getting paid to do very few people don't do that right and so the compensation plan is really
10:45important and one of the mistakes business owners make when they get their first sales manager is they
10:51compensate the sales manager and this is going to go right back to your everybody's a 20 percenter
10:56you're going to like this business owners compensate the sales manager of a salary plus some kind of
11:03percentage of the total revenue that the sales force sold did we make did we make quota okay great
11:10you got your bonus well if that's your compensation model you are going to ride the pony of the
11:17sales people that are selling you're going to be really focused there and that's why you're going
11:21to spend more time there however if you change that compensation plan to say here's your here's your
11:26base salary and let's say i have i don't know five sales people working for me whatever my variable
11:32the bonus part that i'm going to have it's divided into five and for every sales rep that makes their
11:39quarterly goals and their revenue i get that percentage of the bonus so i'm really incented to make sure my
11:46whole team is performing not just one that's an example of one of the ways to compensate sales managers to
11:53be actually doing the right things i love what you're talking about here it because in my conversation because a
11:59lot of this is
12:00directly relevant to conversations i've been having with with with coach right and he would talk about
12:05goal setting and he's got some let's just say a chubby freshman who's never run before and that kid's
12:11new that kid could be the the most talented kid in the history of the program but no one knows
12:15it yet
12:15because he's a freshman who's never trained but instead of just setting these amazing goals out of
12:20thin air he would literally have these i'm not going to use the word prima donnas but i'm gonna use
12:24the word
12:24state champions because that's what they are sure these people that are juniors and seniors and setting records
12:29and getting written about in the newspapers and interviewed on tv he would sit down and say goals
12:34with them but he would have the freshmen and sophomores pay attention to that so that those
12:38freshmen sophomores not only did they see what the goals were but they saw what work was required to
12:44achieve those goals you're going to do these types of workouts at this pace and this type of mileage
12:48volume and if that sent the message to the freshmen hey this is what you're going to have to develop
12:54into if these are your goals and i can see the same thing being applicable in this situation you're
12:58talking about with sales top sales performers showing the work and the other thing i liked about
13:03what you said i'm going to take a step back you talked about systematizing and how top sales managers
13:10they understand the systems and they know what levers to move and to adjust to get the outcomes that they
13:16want in real time like oh we don't have enough leads we need to shift the marketing lever to get
13:20a greater number of high quality leads or hey maybe we're getting enough quality leads but we're not
13:25able to follow up with them fast enough so we need to shift the lever maybe we need to add
13:30some more
13:30additional people or maybe we need to get some customer service people to support some of the
13:34non-selling functions the sales people are doing now so they can spend more time physically engaging
13:39the act of selling with their prospects but when everything is systematized the good sales managers
13:44can understand which levers need to be pulled and know what reaction is going to come as a result
13:50of that versus herding cats and managing i use air quotes right hazard yeah yeah no that's right
13:57i think having that dashboard of the crm is really important because of that and now you can actually
14:02pull some levers and say you know sally over here she's really struggling she gets the meetings but she
14:08doesn't get them to to generate quotes and and bobby over here he generates quotes but he's really
14:13struggling closing you kind of see where they are i like what you're saying no doubt about it of letting
14:18the
14:19junior people see this is what's required to make the sales or the career i want they don't want to
14:24make sales they want to make a career in addition to that however the other thing i think great sales
14:29managers do is well let me tell you what poor sales managers do poor sales managers say okay sally and
14:35bobby
14:35you're new this to this organization you have to make 25 phone calls a day you have to do five
14:42meetings
14:43a week you have to do this you have to do that nothing's wrong with laying out the road map
14:47but
14:47what's really important people buy here's the problem if the sales people do what the manager
14:53told them and they don't succeed it's the sales manager's fault if on the other hand you say here
14:59here's what top performers do i'd like you to create your plan to get there and now of course i
15:05can
15:05have some veto power or some coaching and say well you know are you really pushing yourself enough or
15:10whatever but if we if we can get the sales people to create their plan now they own it and
15:17the sales
15:18manager's role is to just help keep them accountable to their own plan that makes a huge difference now
15:24there's buy-in it's their plan they're going to work with it and guess what if it doesn't work they've
15:30learned how to plan better and they say hey you know this was a flaw in my thinking and now
15:35i need to
15:36adjust here and adjust there and that's the same thinking patterns that business owners have so now
15:41your sales people are starting to think a little bit more like the c-level suite people or you know
15:46hey this is what we want this is i'm going to create the plan we we debrief after it and
15:51say yeah it
15:52worked or no it didn't or i can double down over here and we cut that so those are some
15:56ideas around
15:57what some good sales managers do with independent or individual sales people you're kind of getting me in
16:03the flow here because and one thing for those listening that i would add to that is i i i
16:08typically think of excellent sales managers have that mindset of i work for them i'm here to support
16:14you and what what can i do as a sales manager sales leader to eliminate obstacles or barriers that are
16:18prohibiting you or inhibiting your progress and it may be something as simple as analyzing the amount
16:23of time spent on non-selling activities if the sales reps struggle and they're spending a significant
16:28portion of their time doing things that are not physical actual selling they may be you're spending
16:34too much time on crm being overpriced data entry clerks yeah well you understand my point and but
16:40has the ability to fix those identify those obstacles and come up with other things that can basically
16:46shift that individual's time to make them more productive yeah i think at the time of this recording
16:52one of the things sales managers could do is really help sales people understand the role of ai to be
16:59able to automate a lot of their stuff you know ai can now put a lot of that your meeting
17:03notes or or
17:05stuff into the crm for you it can analyze your forecast for you out of crm there's so much tools
17:11um and so
17:12that's a differentiator you know i just did a linkedin event uh uh on my you know on my linkedin
17:17page
17:18yesterday on on the role of ai with sales people and i'm telling you there will be two people in
17:24the future sales people that use ai and sales people that don't and the ones that don't they
17:29are feeling like they're valuable because they're spending time doing the non-sales thing that you're
17:33talking about overpriced data entry clerks and that yeah they will be left in the dust and the ones that
17:39succeed five years from now they are the ones who really understand i need to be face to face with
17:45prospects i need to be closing deals i'm the one that that does things nobody else can do like ai
17:50i'm negotiating i'm closing deals i'll use ai i'll use inside sales people to do all my other stuff
17:56those are the winners in the future it's those sales managers that understand that their sales
18:01people need to be spending their time doing things that require their specific knowledge skill and
18:04experience i remember i remember a time when my son was was very young and he got sick and we
18:10had to
18:10take him to the hospital and and he was in there for three days and nights and we got a
18:14five thousand
18:14dollar bill of course interested but five thousand dollar bill i asked my wife i said after three full
18:20days and nights how much time did he physically spend engaged with a doctor there were three full
18:25days and nights it was about maybe 45 minutes total but the hospital had figured out that they wanted
18:30their doctor the person with that specific skill knowledge and experience spending their time
18:34doing things that required that specific skill knowledge and experience my son had three meals a day
18:39the doctors weren't preparing food or delivering it my son had a clean room but the doctors weren't
18:43sweeping the floors or taking out the trash his linens were changed but the doctors weren't doing
18:47laundry the doctors their time doing the things that required their specific skill knowledge and
18:51ability and i think a lot of executives and managers if they made the effort could find things
18:56that their sales people are doing that could be done by someone else better faster or much more
19:02expensively and would free them up to do more of what they do best and like to do most which
19:06is
19:06their specific they're the they're the doctors of their trade right right right absolutely well and
19:11let's apply that now we've been talking about sales managers to sales people now let's apply it to a
19:17business owner to a sales manager a lot of times the business owners think that the sales manager's job
19:22is to like i said before run a sales meeting periodically have one-on-ones or maybe an open door
19:28policy or
19:28something but give me my reports because i need to tell operations what our forecast is and so the
19:34sales manager thinks that that's their job and so you see sales managers sitting in their office
19:39running reports and looking at dashboards and they think that's the major part of their job it's not
19:44the major part of their job is coaching the sales team and having ai and the crm generate the reports
19:52for
19:52the owner and so when you know one of the flaws that a lot of junior sales managers do also
19:57is you
19:58know let's say mason i'm following you out on a sales call and and you're going out to some i
20:02don't
20:02know fabrication shop and i come in as a sales manager one of the big mistakes most sales managers
20:08make is i'm connecting with the the buyer and yeah mason's doing a good job but hey i'm here the
20:14sales
20:14manager and i'm going to help close the deal that's a big flaw you know what sales manager is supposed
20:20to
20:20do is say hey thanks for letting me join in i'm just here to to help mason continue to improve
20:26his
20:26skills so i'm just going to sit back take notes don't don't bother about me and and go and then
20:31i
20:31let you sink or swim with that account and when we come out um you know if you if you
20:38did it you did it
20:39and i can give you some coaching one of the if i can tell a quick story for that is
20:43that okay so um
20:44one of the things i did is i took a small business of like uh as an employee before i
20:49launched my
20:49consulting company of about seven employees we had 600 000 in revenue uh the business owner was
20:56a dow chemical engineer and he said mike i don't know really how to scale that well so would you
21:00i'll
21:01hire you would you scale our company and by the time we were done we had offices all over the
21:05eastern
21:05half of the u.s and half the big 10 schools were clients and i had offices all over and
21:09kind of
21:09basically built myself into the national director of sales so i'm out in dc i'm watching one of my sales
21:15reps and i said hey uh i forgot his name well i i have to change it i know his
21:19name but i said bobby
21:21i'm gonna watch you at this account and it was really clear he had been working for me for about
21:26four months i had not had as good of an onboarding system as i have today and so he gets
21:32into the
21:33meeting he starts and within three minutes he's looking for me to me to be his life preserver to
21:39save him from this account that he can't sell and i just totally let him sink i mean he bombed
21:47and uh i you know we walked out and now the only exception to that is if it's an account
21:53that is like
21:54this is a a company changing account we have to have it that would have been an account i would
22:00have
22:00jumped in but if it's just the sales thing uh it's recoverable and if it's not as what happened that
22:05night was he spent six hours that night working on his sales scripts working on everything so that
22:11the next day when we went to the next account he says mike i'm serious i've got this i really
22:15do
22:15and sure enough he just did great but i let him sink and if i wouldn't have done that he
22:20would have
22:21continued thinking that he's doing a great job so it's really important to let them sink or swim and
22:25just sit back and say hey what did you do well how can you improve what's the one thing you
22:29want to
22:30do the next meeting let me watch you on the next meeting and see how you apply it those are
22:32that's the majority of the time a sales manager should be doing not running reports it's i i
22:38almost think of it like disciplining a child in that it's like this may be controversial or some but
22:43i'm old school but i i when i was a kid i got spanked i did too and it hurt
22:49my butt was about as
22:50red as your shirt sometimes but i never got injured and so there's a difference between being hurt
22:55learning a lesson from that so like that was painful i don't want to repeat that i'm going to change
23:00my
23:00behavior or in this case i'm going to improve my skills because the hurt is instead of getting
23:04spanked is losing a deal versus injury that's hey i damaged the business i caused harm to the
23:09to the bottom line because i blew a big deal so i understand the distinction between hurt and injury
23:14and yeah i understand what you're saying what i hear you saying is that it's okay to let a salesperson
23:21hurt if that's the pain that's necessary to get them to adjust their behavior and step up
23:25you are also aware that injury is causing damn damage to your bottom line and that would be a
23:31separate area to step in exactly i i'm able to distinguish i just want to make sure that for
23:36those who are listening that that yeah that's a good call out amazing sheet of music yeah that's a great
23:40call up yeah so you emphasize systems that actually stick what separates a sales process that gets adopted
23:49from one that dies in a binder or a crm yeah great question because i'd hate for a company to
23:55come in
23:55and hire some consultant whether it's us or someone else and they they build out all the stuff and
24:00nothing happens to it and so the real key boils down to if it's the owner who's managing the sales
24:07people or the owners at a point where now they can have a sales manager it's really on leadership
24:11it's really it's it's on leadership to to push everything the values in your company you know if
24:16you're seeing somebody i've got a great story of a sales uh top salesperson who did not represent our
24:23values and we had to fire them so you know it really boils down to leadership are you enforcing
24:27values and the other aspect is accountability if you've got a system a one-on-one time clear
24:35metrics in your crm that you can sit down with the salesperson say okay you were supposed to do this
24:40this and this this many calls or this many meetings this is basically your plan how did you do you
24:46didn't
24:46do it what was the cause and we start diagnosing what the issues are and then we can pull that
24:50sales
24:50plan out and sales playbook and say okay here's where the thing is why don't you use this link or
24:55this script or something and you're using that you're keeping them accountable one of the best
24:59ways to do culture change people you know they write books and they go to conferences how can i
25:03change my culture it's simple it really is simple it's just two things values and accountability to
25:10actions if you you just manage those two things you can create whatever culture you want so i think it's
25:15really the one-on-one times where you're keeping people accountable to the plans they have and then
25:21you're coaching them in their skill set if they're falling behind and and what you use as your bible for
25:27the the coaching is your sales playbook so that's how you keep it live that is that answer your question
25:33mason it does so how does building a scalable sales engine increase exit value even before a company's
25:40ready to sell yeah that's a great question let's say i got two companies both have a million
25:45dollars in ebitda uh if you don't know what ebitda is basically it's earnings well we'll just call it
25:50net profit okay so we've got two companies million dollars in net profit one company the owner is doing
25:58a lot of the sales work he or she has the relationships with the clients we're not quite
26:03sure it's documented it's kind of a wing it but he's got a million dollars in profit we got this
26:08other
26:09company that's got a million dollars in profit the business owner is not doing the sales we actually
26:13have a three-person sales force and they're meeting with a variety of people and it's all documented
26:18where do you think i as a buyer am more interested in jumping in obviously the one where it's documented
26:25and i can come in and i don't have to be the salesperson so it's that alone just attracts them
26:30i'm telling you if you have an owner centric that the concept is called owner centricity if the owner
26:35is the centric part of the whole business it's not sellable because then whoever buys it all they're doing
26:42is buying a job there are some people that that's what they want but your pool of buyers is very
26:48very
26:49small so if you can get yourself to you the company can run without you the sales can run without
26:54you
26:54now you have an extremely attractive business and to give you an idea what that means let's take that
27:00same million dollar profit company usually the way they determine is a what's called a multiplier on it
27:06right when we're exiting is it a multiplier of three or four that's the value let's say the value is
27:11just
27:11four over here with the the owner that's centric which is high it's actually probably about one and
27:17a half to two but if i can move the value just to one multiplier just from four to five
27:23over here
27:23because i'm out of the way i just made a million more dollars in that sale price that's that's huge
27:30so that's that's why it's important so what what conversations should a founder have with their team
27:36when they're trying to move from informal hustle to more of a disciplined execution well i think uh
27:43one of the best ways to do that is to talk to the team about saying hey i know we've
27:47been selling this
27:47way and people don't like change a players like change b and c players do not like playing change so
27:53there's a little indicator right there do you have b and c players or do you have an a player
27:57a players
27:58are like yeah how can i how can i improve how can i go how can i make more how
28:01can i do this b and c
28:03players are like that's not how we've done it i'm you know i've got my comfort zone so just fyi
28:07there
28:08but if you position it and saying hey we've been doing okay here but i want to implement some systems
28:13that are going to help all of you sell more with less effort we're going to use ai we're going
28:19to use
28:19systems we're going to use processes we're going to use playbooks and i'm telling you we're going to
28:23pull the information sally over here is really smart at prospecting and joe over here is really
28:29good at add-on sales and and bobby over here he's really great at negotiating and not dropping the
28:34prices we're going to share all those best secrets of with each other into a playbook so everybody can
28:39have it and that helps get buy-in from people so that's that's my initial thought to that question
28:46does that answer it mason for you and one of my one of my favorite quotes is if you don't
28:52have a
28:52standard it's impossible to measure the deviation and if you've got a bunch of people out there
28:56doing random stuff versus following a playbook and if you're getting a bunch of leads and your
29:01sales force and you're tracking your metrics and your sales force can recognize hey we got x number
29:06of leads and we converted into y number of sales and y isn't very good and everyone is using the
29:12playbook then you know closing percentage of conversion rates not what it needs to be well at
29:17least you know what that standard is this is the playbook we've been using this is how we've
29:21been presenting and these are the results we're going to get so where can we adjust this or change
29:25this because it's not delivering the results whereas if you had people out there saying
29:28different things you don't know where the issue is or how to fix it yeah i mean you would never
29:32let that happen in your operation site you know to use an old school industry like manufacturing
29:37you would never say hey i don't care how you run the machines just kind of do it your own
29:43way
29:43and you know if it works fine if it doesn't forget about ocean safety forget about waste if if
29:49this person has has ten percent waste on products and this person has one percent not a big deal you
29:54would never do that and yet sales is the most important part of the business because without
29:58it you have nothing you know you could literally if you had sales and not operations you can have a
30:04business because you could just outsource it to someone else but if you don't if you don't have
30:09sales and you have operations you have no business you're you're having what they call an equipment
30:14liquidation sale that's what's happening so you know you gotta have your sales systemized also
30:20and have it running on best practices and it doesn't mean we're making a bunch of robots everybody's got
30:25their own personality but they're running the same first we do this and these are the things we use to
30:31check to make sure we're asking all the right probing questions to make sure we've got a good
30:36understanding of that prospect compared to our competitors because then we're going to come back with a
30:40solution or an idea or a challenge them that's going to really impact their business versus you
30:46know some sales people they're they think they're great sales people because they they're great at
30:51talking you know great sales people are great at asking questions right so if you have a sales person
30:56who's a talker and somebody else here is a great question asker this person's going to beat them all
31:01the time and if you have all these variety of people on your sales team you're going to have
31:04inconsistent sales and inconsistent branding really can i i just thought of one other thing that you're
31:10going to have the other thing you're going to have this happens some sales managers they're working
31:14with a key account and all of a sudden the key account calls them and says hey sales manager but
31:19you've assigned bobby to my account but every time he comes in man he talks and talks and i you
31:27know we
31:27don't really get what we want we're not giving so now i got to change sales people and say okay
31:32well
31:32let's try sally sally could in because we don't have consistency and we have to kind of play the different
31:37people with the different accounts hoping it's more of a personality match versus what the customers
31:41really need so i mean that's a that's a major problem for companies that do not have a systemized
31:46sales process and and playbook ready to go so i always save my this is actually going to be the
31:52second to last question my second last question i love saving for last with all the experience you've
31:57had and all of your knowledge if there was only one piece of advice that you could give to business
32:02owners right now what is the most important and valuable piece of advice you would give them and
32:07why you have to take off your sales hat you have to be willing to build a sales team because
32:13from there
32:14you can actually be a ceo great to be a ceo that means are we growing are we going to
32:21now focus on
32:22maybe mergers and acquisitions and we're going to start buying our competitors maybe we're going to grow
32:26organically maybe we're not going to do that and we're just going to increase the value and get out
32:30but you built or bought the business to pursue if you're in the united states it's called the
32:36american dream but you you have some financial goal and it will not happen if you're keeping
32:41the sales hat on you so if people want to learn more about you your books sure the type of
32:47work
32:47you do your company what are the best ways for them to learn more and connect with you sure well
32:51certainly the easiest way to connect with us learn a little bit more about how we help business owners
32:55take off their sales hat and then then we help them either scale or sale is to go to our
32:59website i'm
33:00sure that mason you're going to put that in in the links below but it's scalable sales solutions
33:06sales is plural scalable sales solutions.com you'll learn a thing you'll see videos you'll
33:11see testimonials feel free to link there happy to schedule a brief meeting with you that's not
33:16sales that we don't sell to our people we just find out if you fit our practice and you're finding
33:20out if we might have a solution that's all we're that's all we're trying to do that's one way the
33:24other thing is i have now five books my latest one just came out last week called the art of
33:30war
33:30for business leaders i'm a former infantry officer and studied military strategy and i took the art
33:37of war by sun tzu all of his writing is in my book and i give business strategy of how
33:41that applies along
33:42with the fun part is about a five to seven page military story illustrating a chapter and a five to
33:49seven page business story illustrating a chapter it's a fun read so that's all but there's you can
33:54go to amazon and just type up mike huey h-u-e-y and it'll take you to my author
33:58page you'll see all of
33:59our different books uh that we have so that might help you well i appreciate your sharing your knowledge
34:04your wisdom and your expertise thank you so much for joining us today let's do it again sometime soon
34:08yeah mason it's been my pleasure i really wish great success to you to this podcast and to all your
34:14listeners that you really really can accomplish your dreams if you are willing to do it smartly
34:19get wise counsel wise advice and put your money where your mouth is and make it happen you really
34:24can appreciate you thanks so much thank you
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