Scaling
As a young Scout, I remember selling tickets to a spaghetti dinner in the neighborhood. It was for a fundraiser to raise money for camp. The houses were spread out, so I had to walk a distance in between each one. It took the better part of an afternoon to ring each doorbell and ask for their business. Even though I enjoyed it, it was labor-intensive. It wan’t difficult, but it took quite a bit of time. Also, no one was home at many of the houses, so a lot of the effort spent canvassing the neighborhood was in vain.
I think about a Boy Scout selling popcorn door to door. A Brownie selling Girl Scout cookies. An agency cold calling prospects. All of these are one-to-one interactions. The drive and tenacity required for this is admirable. It takes a willingness to face rejection in order to succeed. This is fundamental sales training that every great closer seems to undergo. It takes a strong will, coupled with a lot of effort, to test your resolve and glean wheat from the chaff.
While this effort is laudable, there is a limiting factor. In order to increase your sales, you must put forth an ever increasing effort. Let’s say you can visit 100 homes per day. If you need to get to 200, you would have to hire another person to duplicate your efforts. Without constant a effort to go out and beat the pavement, your sales will stop.
As we grow, we need to unlearn some of the beliefs we take for granted. Getting in front of more people isn’t about walking more neighborhoods, it’s about finding better ways to get in touch with them.
Scaling is about decoupling the effort you put forth with the results you get. Instead of making the same pitch in person 100 times, could you record this pitch once and present it to prospects later? Could you send them a postcard with the same information, eliminating the need to visit them? Could you hop on a video call, eliminating the need to travel? Could you present the same information in a webinar, so clients can learn about you at the time that is most convenient for them? Can you collect their email to follow up with them later, and send them follow up sequences?
It’s all about thinking, “how can I build equity today”? It’s about building assets that improve productivity today and in the future. It’s not about eliminating the human element of talking face to face. It’s about using tools and automation to find the best prospects. Then you can give your best prospects greater focus and attention, because you’re not wasting time with lower yield activities. Ask yourself the question, “what tedious task(s) do I find myself doing repeatedly?” Once identified, that becomes a good starting point for analyzing the process, and putting tools in place to automate the work.
As you scale, your systems and processes become more important. Your tools allow you to reach a thousand people at once. This is a double-edged sword. If you make a horrible presentation at one house, it’s not a big deal. We examine their feedback and make an adjustment for the next time. By the way, this a great way to test new approaches in a low-stakes environment. In contrast, a small mistake will be broadcast to many people at once — which makes verifying everything works correctly a critical part of the process.
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It’s like using power tools. If you move something heavy by hand, the consequences of dropping it are probably small. If you drop something with a crane, which can lift 1,000X that of the strongest human, you can wreck an entire house.
With that caveat, scaling is the most important growth lever that you can have in your business. Here are some of the benefits:
- Eliminate manual effort (you create systems instead)
- Eliminate tasks (you examine tasks and remove low-value activities)
- Increased productivity (you perform more high-value tasks)
- Standard Procedures (you define processes that clearly explain tasks)
- Delegation (you create unit-of-work checklists that anyone can do)
- Reference Library of Materials (you don’t have to recreate them each time)
- Clarity (you have a single source of truth, eliminating confusion)
- Compound interest (do a thing once, get a recurring benefit)
- Control (you initiate things happening, instead of reacting to events)
- Time Management (you possess mastery of your calendar)
Don’t be afraid of doing things by hand — fundamentals matter. But as you grow, you should examine how you do things. Consider that a shift in perspective can lead to a new process that will give you a 10X return! How? Find and model the best practitioners in the field. Ask questions to uncover deeply held assumptions. Examine assumptions and get creative with problem solving. Listen to growth minded people and try to emulate them whenever possible. Read the 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch.
Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth. Give me a fulcrum, and I shall move the world. Give me a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth — Archimedes
