And if I’m being honest, I made every mistake you can possibly make when I first started.

The most notable was when half my team quit on me in the span of three days.

I covered that whole story and the learning lessons in last weeks newsletter.

You can check that out here 👉 The Day Half my Team Quit (And Why I’m Grateful)

I've made the classic mistake of over indexing on talent…

I hired the “experienced” reps who said all of the right things, but couldn’t close.

I threw leads at people and hoped they’d figure it out.

I focused on talent first and systems last.

This is a common pitfall I learned the hard way.

Talent is crucial and not to be ignored, but it's an issue of sequence.

Cause and effect.

For example my current team is made up of absolute A players that I've cherry picked myself.

But I've had good team before, so what's different?

Building a great sales team means creating a system that is attractive to the best talent whilst creating a vehicle in which great talent no only want to be a part of but equips them to perform at a high level.

And also keep performing, for a long time.

But this is easier said than done.

Most companies I talk to have normalized hitting 60-65% quota.

This is considered "pretty good".

Even if a company finds great talent, it takes an average of 10 months for a new sales hire to reach full productivity.

I talk to a lot of founders and execs and although this is normalized, they don't know why or what to do about it.

And I get asked very "loaded" questions like, "how would you build this from scratch?"

Or, "what would you do step by step if we had you take over the whole department?"

That's exactly what I'll try to answer.

I'm going to share with you the exact blueprint I’d use if I had to build a sales team from scratch today.

Seven phases that build on each other.

How I’d Build My Dream Sales Team Today

I know it's tempting to skip the sharpening phase and go straight to chopping.

But again, sequence and emphasis matters.

Each one of these seven phases create the foundation for the next phase.

Do you want a quick win or do you want to win for sure?

They say a fence that goes up fast, falls down fast.

Don't rush it.

So let's get into phase one…

Phase 1 - Define Your OSS (Optimal Selling System)

Before you hire a single person, you need absolute clarity on who you’re selling to and how you’re going to sell to them.

I'm not necessarily talking about "buyer personas", that's part of it.

This is about developing surgical precision around your ideal customer profile (ICP).

This includes:

Demographic is essentially the hard facts about your target audience:

Psychographic however is more subjective, but more targeted

This seems like a lot but it saves you time and energy down the road.

Your ICP should be so precise that your sales team can immediately…

1- identify qualified prospects and disqualify everyone else

2- know how to talk to them because they understand them

Which leads me to the next step in this phase.

Develop your core sales story.

This isn't your pitch or offer stack.

What I mean is a NARRATIVE that connects your solution to your prospect’s most pressing problem in a way that creates urgency and desire.

Your story should follow this structure:

This is powerful.

Because this builds a logical and emotional case for your solution.

Now - if you can't do this effectively then you need to keep researching.

Talk to your market, do competitive analysis, etc…

UNTIL, you can craft your story.

When every rep tells the same compelling story, your close rates become predictable.

This becomes a foundation / blueprint that you build your entire sales process from.

Including your marketing message.

I could go on a tirade as to why most "sales processes" are a joke.

They are, but I'll spare you the rant.

Look - A real sales process is DESIGNED.

It should serve as map that leads your customer to buy in to your way of thinking from stranger to customer.

This is why we started with the story, that in order to craft you must know your customer.

There should be BELIEFS along the journey and a clear process at each stage to anchor those beliefs.

If this isn't making sense, just stay with me and you'll get it.

Here's how to build one:

Most people think customers buy linearly.

They don't…

They buy in cycles.

They research, get distracted, come back, compare options, seek validation, rinse, repeat, and eventually then decide.

Your job is to map this journey by answering:

You need to write this down.

If you can't, I recommend interviewing 10-15 recent customers and asking them to walk you through their entire buying process from initial awareness to final decision.

You'd be surprised, customers are happy to do that if you just ask.

You'll start to see patterns emerge.

Step 2: Design Your Framework

Once you understand their buying journey, you can engineer your sales process around it.

Your stages should reflect your customer's actual progression and what they need at each point.

For example, instead of "qualifying," you might have:

For each stage, define:

What the prospect NEEDS to BELIEVE to move forward

If you like movies, watch Inception.

It's a great film and also shows this group of professional specialists in the field of dream extraction and inception.

They have to get their subject to believe something on his own and there are domino beliefs they have to plant first.

It's a good watch and will help you understand this point.

In order to do this, the customer will need information.

What information do they need?

All of this is case by case, that's ok.

The key is to be ready for it before going into the sales call.

AWARENESS in other words.

A little preparation goes a long way.

If you've done this, you're ready for an actual sales call.

When I say this, too many people assume I mean to "pitch" and I want to make it abundantly clear that this is NOT what I mean.

The first part of this sales process is to focus solely on the customer.

How do we do that?

With questions.

Great sales processes are built around strategic conversations (aka questions) that move prospects through the buying journey.

So make sure the first 1-2 calls (depending on what market / product) is solely focused on asking strategic questions.

Again, this is not necessarily for YOU.

You may already know all of this. It's for them (to raise problem awareness) and for you (to make your business case / pitch hyper unique to them).

To uncover the problem

To quantify the problem

Keep in mind, best practice is to ask this in the least invasive way by doing the math yourself.

For example…

Let's say you're a marketing agency and they're not seeing the lead to demo rate they're like.

What's their current lead to demo rate?

What SHOULD it be?

What's their current demo to net new sale rate?

Do the math and say…

For competitive situations:

Once and only once you have a CLEAR understanding on…

Then you can pitch them.

And it needs to be hyper personalized to them and their situation.

It essentially will be the story you put together already.

Then simply walk them through your product / service in a punchy, easy to understand way.

This might be a 4 step process or a one step process.

Doesn't matter.

Now - if you're selling to company with multiple decision makers, then you'll present this in a soft way and simply ask for feedback.

The key is to get whoever you're talking 100% bought in and then COLLABORATE on how to get this across the line with the other key stakeholders.

How do we do that?

Again, questions are your best friend.

Because even if you do a great job up to this point and you don't have a process for identifying and overcoming THEIR internal obstacles, you'll lose the deal.

If their are other stakeholders, the key isn't to try to get the deal across the line right then and there.

It's to get everyone on the call and aligned.

Once you do this, you're looking for signal that they're ready to move to the next stage.

Few examples…

These are all great signs.

Pro tip:

Real quick, I want to talk about a concept called BAMFAM. it stands for "book a meeting from a meeting.

Throughout this sales process, until you have a signed contract, you must ALWAYS have a meeting on the calendar.

This mitigates chasing them down, which easily will kill too many deals.

So if you need to book another meeting with other decision makers then book a tentative time.

Have them add them to the meeting time and if that time doesn't work, then just tell you'll update it no problem.

Keep doing this until you have a signed contract.

Objections:

So let's say you've done discovery, got everyone aligned, pitched, and then you get hit with an objection.

That's normal.

Document every objection that comes up and create frameworks (not scripts) for addressing them.

Common objections:

The key isn't to give them some canned rebuttal.

Instead, ask question to truly understand the REAL objection.

Because the truth is, it's most likely not exactly what they're telling you.

You simply want them to admit what their real concern is.

It COULD be the price, it could be a timing thing, or they're just concerned it won't actually work.

Flesh it out with them, stay curious, and once you understand them then find a solution.

Sometimes after talking it through they want to move forward.

Other times, you may need to break up the price into payments or figure out a success based agreement.

Next, let's talk about pipeline and follow up.

Step 5: Pipeline

This is what separates amateur sales processes from professional ones.

You need clear, objective criteria for moving prospects through each stage.

Not "they seem interested" or "they said they want to move forward."

Specific evidence like:

Stage 1 → Stage 2:

Stage 2 → Stage 3:

This prevents reps from the all too common “wishful thinking” and gives managers clear visibility into real pipeline health.

As I'd build my team, I'd go over this on a daily sales meeting and collaborate on moving deals forward.

As you do this, you'll collect more and more data.

That's the key.

Your sales process should improve over time based on what you learn.

Track conversion rates between stages to identify bottlenecks.

And if you're losing 60% of prospects between discovery and proposal, dig into why.

Record sales calls and analyze what top performers do differently.

Survey lost prospects to understand why they chose competitors.

Use this data to continuously refine your frameworks and touchpoint sequences.

I did an audit for a b2b company not long ago…

They had a very complex sales process and I identified exactly where deals were dropping off in their sales process.

It was right after the first demo.

We made some changes and demo to close rate went from 11% to 28%.

That one change added over $15M to their business.

And that's without any increase in lead volume.

So keep in mind this is important.

The goal is to create a repeatable system that any competent person can execute successfully, while still allowing for personalization and relationship building.

When done right, your sales process becomes a competitive advantage that's nearly impossible for competitors to replicate.

Once you have a validated sales process, it's time to build the team.

I wanted to make sure I broke this edition up into sections because, I believe it is super important to masterfully diagnose these previous steps before diving into discussions of hiring.

I would advise any leader to go through and read this article one more time through to properly identify key areas in your current business/strategy.

Till next time,