Contributed by SBOC Member:
Founder of the Small Business Owners Community
You enjoy creating your products and helping your customers, but you don’t enjoy the effort it takes to sell and attract new clients. In June, I’m leading the Small Business Owners Community on a 30-Day Sales Sprint. The Sprint began with a series of exercises to get ready for an intense selling period. I went through the exercises, too…here are four things that I learned about my sales (or lack of sales) activity:
I carry a perceptual scoreboard for money in my head at all times. It’s a feeling of how I think it’s going versus where I want to be. My feeling was that things were “just ok,” and I really needed to kick my sales activity into high gear in order to “catch up.” It turns out that after analyzing my 2025 revenue, I’m ahead of plan and way ahead of last year. That’s NOT a flex, but rather an invitation for you to check YOUR numbers. You may think you’re behind but you’re probably in a similar spot. I default to “behind,” or “meh,” even when I’m right on plan for where I want to be. Check your numbers and see if that holds true for you, too.
After reviewing their financial picture, I had the group do a time audit. Boy, was that eye opening. Over 50% of my time was spent on administration in the business and I was spending six times as much time on admin as I was on content creation – NO WONDER I COULDN’T FIND TIME TO START MY PODCAST?!?!? The other eye opener was that I was spending 20+ hours per month in email. Disgusting. FWIW, I’ve found a tech stack that has solved email for me. I’ll share it in a future Summary newsletter – but, WOW, it works. By delegating a few things and dropping some low-performing tasks nobody will miss, I’ve opened up time for sales and my new podcast – coming soon.
Imagine going through high school expecting to learn chemistry and you didn’t have it on your schedule. That’s what was happening with sales in my business – I didn’t have ANY time allocated each week! Embarrassing. I’ve now got five hours each week hard wired on my calendar and protected from meetings. It gives me space to reach out to prospects and close deals. It feels like I’m cheating against my other priorities when in reality it’s giving me the time I need for one-on-ones with prospects, outreach, and follow-ups. Do you have time on your calendar (not your to-do list) for sales?
In the exercise, we created our target list and I had more qualified leads than I thought. As I looked through past clients, power partners, and qualified businesses in my network, the list kept growing and growing. You’re in the same boat. You’re carrying a mixture of inactivity, fear, and doubt that stops you from asking someone who is perfect for your product for money. What if you got over that and just asked for the business?
The community and I are now deep into the actual sales activity where we’re reaching out to clients, offering them the opportunity to work with us, and asking for the business. By the end of the month, we’ll have actual data to see if the sales sprint helped our members make more money. But, it helped me reflect on the activity of sales and how I can make it a part of my daily work.
It’s been a great exercise, and I’ve decided to keep the 30-day sales sprint up inside the SBOC as a class that’s ready for you when you join. We’re open to small business owners only (no managers, business development folks, or employees) and we specialize in helping driven, borderline-obsessed solopreneurs and small business owners break through their plateaus and keep growing. This group is right for you if you’re looking for a place to be surrounded by peers that want to win as badly as you do. We’re not playing business. We’re building our dream and supporting one another as we do it. It’s unlike any other group and I’ve got the door wide open for you with a 2-week free trial. Just click here and let’s get to work.
Pat spent two decades in broadcasting management and hosting. After leaving the radio industry, he spent time consulting small businesses and realized the support system for entrepreneurs was broken. Where could you find help for improving small businesses and building real connections with other like-minded people. In June of 2020, the Idea Collective Small Business Community was born.
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