And in that time I’ve seen the patterns.

The patterns of the most elite teams who hit 90-100% quota consistently, generate multiple 7-8 figures every month and so efficiently with low turnover…

And I’ve seen the opposite.

The teams who consistently miss quota, churn sales reps faster than TikTok trends and work so inefficiently the company is fighting to maintain a measure of profit.

And what I discovered will change how you think about building revenue teams forever.

Remember this…

In business and in life, we don’t rise to the level of our targets, we fall to the level of our systems.

In all of my work, the biggest mistake I see leaders making is an over reliance on talent.

Now - make no mistake, talent is important.

As W. Edwards Deming’s puts it:

You built your business by saying yes to everything. Every detail. Every deadline. Every late night.

But now? You’re leading less and managing more.

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The truth is organizational problems are primarily caused by flawed systems rather than individual failures.

The same is true for your team.

Think about it this way…

You wouldn’t expect a Formula 1 driver to win races in a Honda Civic.

Yet most companies hire A players, fully convinced they fixed all of their problems, and then wonder why they’re not hitting their numbers.

I have found this to be true every time - revenue teams understand something that average teams don’t…

Performance is a byproduct of systems, more so than talent.

And those systems are invisible to most leaders.

That’s what we’re going to unpack today.

In the 2015 biopic film about Steve Jobs, he’s having a heated conversation with his cofounder who has seemingly been abandoned by him, Steve Wozniak.

Jobs and Wozniak started Apple together in a garage, as ambitious friends.

But at this stage, Wozniak felt like Jobs had forgotten about him and pushed him behind the scenes.

Woz:

Jobs:

Wozniak wasn’t wrong, Jobs was a genius because he may not have been exceptional at engineering technology, but he was exceptional at engineering systems and teams.

First, I want you to start thinking of your team more like an orchestra and you’re the conductor.

Individual talent matters, but what creates magic is how all the pieces work together in perfect harmony.

Three years ago, I was brought in to fix a B2B consulting company that was burning through reps faster than they could hire them.

Classic symptoms:

It would've been foolish to impulsively go on a firing and hiring spree, so first I did a full audit of their entire vehicle.

A few observations:

Long story short, once we reengineered the systems (same people, same market, same product, etc)…

They had a record quarter, that same quarter and a steady 15-20% increase MoM.

This isn't unique, this is a classic example that I find is very commonplace due to these misconceptions that I'm talking about.

Each of these problems I listed above were fixed by installing proper systems…

…similar to an orchestra.

Remember, play the orchestra.

If you're in leadership, your job is more often than not, to develop people.

This requires accountability, but there are two types of accountability.

Tactical holds people accountable to specific activities. This is great, it's just not enough.

Developmental accountability holds people accountable to becoming and showing up as a specific person.

Usually this requires you having those conversations throughout the hiring, onboarding, and management process and you get agreements on that.

So you hold them accountable in their commitments, their language, how they show up, the skills they're learning, how they bounce back from failure, etc…

When accountability is developmental, people lean in.

They want feedback.

They share struggles because they know the system is designed to help them win.

When accountability is punitive, people hide.

They make excuses.

And they blame external factors because they’re protecting themselves from embarrassment.

I’ve seen teams where one poor performer could drag down everyone else.

And I’ve seen teams where peer accountability elevated everyone’s performance.

When your team knows the system is designed to help them succeed, accountability becomes a competitive advantage rather than a necessary evil.

I won't spend a ton of time on why culture is important, that would be too long for this newsletter.

I will say, it's absolutely critical to your success and the success of a team / company.

Culture is the invisible force that shapes every decision, every interaction, every outcome.

Most who ignore it, to their own peril, ignore it because they either don't understand it or don't understand how to systematize it and so they wing it.

Elite leaders understand that culture is a system that can be designed, implemented, and optimized.

They create environments where the best practices spread naturally and poor practices get corrected quickly.

This is done by…

It's not about reprimanding "bad behavior" and treating people like children, especially when the definition of "bad" and "good" are based on preference and opinion.

What I'm talking about is simply aligned behaviors with the vision, mission, and values of the company you're building.

That way it's all based on something everyone has agreed on, not preference or opinion.

When culture is systematic, it amplifies individual talent rather than depending on it.

In order to properly install this system, you have to track everything like we talked about earlier.

Once you do that you can properly optimize your sales process.

What I've seen from elite teams is they optimize two main metrics…

The reason why is because these two primary metrics dictate the entire economic model of the business.

CAC the cost required to get someone to buy from you.

LTV dictates how much revenue comes from a buyer on average.

When LTV increases, the acceptable cost to acquire a customer increases.

And when CAC decreases, the acceptable minimum deal value decreases.

If both are optimized, the system works beautifully (and profitably).

Essentially, these two levers are so key and they dictate how to acquire a customer, how much you can innovate, test, spend, etc.

Now - what does this have to do with sales teams?

First, too many times when CAC is too high, it's a lead efficiency problem.

Elite teams have high lead efficiency.

They make sure to squeeze as much juice out of the lemon in the system so to speak by nurturing leads, outbounding them, building and managing their pipeline.

Same with LTV.

Your customer success / product team is a sales team too.

Install systems to retain business and keep solving their problems.

These are all huge levers for profit, high performance, and this is what all elite teams do.

Elite teams understand that performance is predictable when you build the right architecture.

If I had to build an elite sales team from scratch today, I wouldn’t start with hiring the best people.

I’d start with building the best systems.

Because here’s the truth…

Great people in poor systems will underperform.

But good people in great systems will excel.

When you get the systems right, everything else becomes easier.

Every time.

Till next time,