Check sales is the constraint and fix the worst part first

1. Two words, kept apart

First, separate two words.

• Follow-up. After an opt-in there is a brief window. Follow-up is how you make a purchase in that window as likely as possible. A second description: the work that follows an opt-in and comes before the sale, aimed at getting the person onto the call or into the meeting and, after that, getting paid.
• Nurture. This is for people who did not buy in roughly the first seven days ("seven days-ish"). Nurture is how you make a purchase over the long term as likely as possible.

A second gloss on nurture. In the list of areas a sales process can be improved in (section 9), long-term nurture is followed by "After you've made the transaction." Read that way, nurture comes after a purchase, not after a week without one. This page does not settle which reading is right.

SOP 89 — Run the seven-day follow-up cadence works through a first week of attempts on a lead and then moves anyone still silent into long-term nurture, which matches the first reading.

2. Why you close too few

This is the hard truth. You close fewer leads than you want for three reasons, called here the big three:

1. Leads are curious, and you are not speaking with them while they are. This one is called speed.
2. The reason to buy you give them is not clear enough.
3. Once they have decided they want to buy, you make buying hard.

Turn each one around and more people will buy: reach them at the moment they are curious, give them a clear reason, and make buying easy.

3. First, make sure sales is the problem

Before any of that is fixed, make sure the right problem is being solved. Sales work still sits inside the larger working of the business, and your resources have to go where they bring the highest return. If sales really is the bottleneck, working on it will grow the business a lot. If it is not, the encouragement here is still to learn some of it; but where something else comes first (the examples are a decision on a price rise, more outreach attempts, more content), do that.

Finding the one thing that holds the whole business back is SOP 184 — Find the one constraint with six questions. Putting your time, money and people behind the constraint once you have it is SOP 185 — Allocate resources to the constraint and use leverage.

The questions, in order.

Order	Ask	What the answer tells you
1	Can you handle more customers?	If you can, good: go to the next question
2	Can you afford to get more?	You might not be able to; find out. If you can afford more and can handle more, go and get more and change nothing
3	If you cannot afford more	Sales might then be what constrains you; or the cause could be leads that cost too much. Is your lead cost below, at or above the industry average?
4	If your cost is above the industry average	It could be your selling, and it could be your lead generation as well. To find out, ask whether you convert too few (section 4)

SOP 196 — Answer the money question, starting with acquisition cost asks the same questions in the same order in its section 8, and its section 3 is where to look up your industry's average acquisition cost. The ways to work on closing too few are gathered in section 3 of SOP 197 — Solve a leads, sales or profit-per-customer problem. What this page adds is the benchmarks offered here.

4. The benchmarks

This is probably the hardest one to give, because this is where recognizing patterns is worth so much. Everything kind of depends on which benchmark fits you, since selling takes so many different forms. Maybe you already suspect you are selling fewer than you should.

How you sell	The rate	The reading offered
A brick-and-mortar business providing a service, with leads from Facebook	Closing 15 percent of them	That would count as doing great
E-commerce, measured on the clicks that arrive	Closing 15 percent of them	A god-tier page: leave everything alone. And it is probably not even true
A webinar, measured from opt-in	Converting 2 percent of opt-ins	Doing great, and probably a good benchmark for webinars. The 2 percent is of opt-ins, not of those who schedule or show
A webinar, measured on the people who show	Typically 5 to 15 percent of those who show	Closed live, on the webinar itself
Conversations one-on-one, in person, for most of you	About 35 percent of the people you talk to	Above it, you might want a higher price. Below it, fix the sales process
Sales by phone	About one in three	The same as in person

Beside SOP 224. Section 6 of SOP 224 — Set fractal price tiers and read price off the close rate measures the close rate from offer to close, not from leads, and its band that takes in 35 percent reads as probably priced about right, a price to hold. The figure above is of the people you talk to, and above about 35 percent it says a higher price is something you might want. For a rate a little above that line, the two point different ways. This page does not settle which reading is right.

Beside SOP 225. Section 6 of SOP 225 gives other figures for the same check: in person, 30 percent of the people who come through the door as the norm, by a good guess; on webinars, 10 to 15 percent, as long as the attendees are good. What each costs: by this page, a webinar selling 5 percent of those who show is inside the usual range, where SOP 225 would send you to work on conversion; by SOP 225, an in-person team closing 30 to 35 percent is at the norm, where this page would have it fix the sales process. This page does not settle which reading is right.

5. Any step raises what comes out

Though the subject is selling, it is, in the view here, really a matter of conversion: how you convert more of what you already have. As long as supply does not limit you (there is room for more customers today: if, say, twice as many arrived, you could cope), raising any part of the funnel raises throughput. These steps are offered as ones that could raise it (of the last, it is said that it would):

• reaching your leads faster;
• rewriting your sales script;
• better nurture, so that more people schedule and show.

The gains add together. The same point, with worked figures, is section 10 of SOP 196. When you cannot take on more customers, the constraint is on the supply side, and that is SOP 200 — Treat a supply constraint as demand for talent.

Which one first. The right one is the worst part of your conversion process. One practice here is to go after these, typically, from the lowest rate up to the highest. Taking 1 percent to 2 percent doubles it. Taking 80 percent to 90 percent is roughly ten points, and that might cost far more effort than the move from 1 to 2. That is how the work typically runs in one practice, not a rule set here.

6. Many ways up

The steps in section 5 are, as put here, equally effective ways you could lift your sales conversions, and there are many ways up the mountain. The list: you could call leads faster; make scheduling easier for them; have a better follow-up sequence to get them to show, giving them several reasons to; once they are on the call, preframe it better; and add a video sales letter to the process. Ask which one to do and the answer is that all of them will work. The real question is the order, and the view here is to start with the one you think brings the highest return for the least cost.

Pick the route with the best return for its risk, given the skills and resources you already have. Weighing routes that way, and why many routes can reach one goal, are sections 3 and 4 of SOP 186 — Pick the path up the mountain that fits your skills.

7. The short summary

Summed up in about five seconds: you probably just need the following right now. This is probably the work in front of you, and, detail aside, it is more or less the whole of it.

What is listed	Where it is covered
Add a video sales letter	Building one: SOP 207 — Build a video sales letter. Where it goes in the process: SOP 247 — Put a video sales letter before every conversation
Phone your leads sooner	SOP 90 — Reach a new lead fast
Make more call attempts	SOP 89, from section 1
Work from a clear script	SOP 238 — Open every call the same way and keep the script short, and the pages after it, to SOP 242
Drill the script every day	SOP 108 — Drill a team on closing
Know how to train salespeople	For closing, SOP 108 as well. That selling can be learned at all: SOP 243 — Control the conditions, keep every step congruent and clear
Send more emails afterward	SOP 254 — Nurture by email and book the next meeting months out

8. If nobody buys, look at the offer

For many of you, if you close at, say, 15 percent, the selling can be improved. If you close at zero, the offer is what is wrong, and you might want to fix it. Working on the offer itself is not covered on this page; it is the ground of SOP 2 to SOP 10.

Urgency and scarcity. These are left out as a little outside of sales. The view here: functionally, all of it comes down to deprivation, which is basically pressing harder on the pain. You make plain what not acting costs them, and that pain gives them a reason to act today. Urgency and scarcity are not covered on this page; SOP 9 — Split scarcity from urgency keeps the two apart. Money-model integration, counted here as more of a marketing matter, and self-checkout are not covered on this page either.

9. Where to look, then pick one or two

These are the areas named as places to improve a sales process, in this order:

#	Area	Note
1	The avatar	Not covered on this page
2	The offer	Section 8
3	Video sales letters	The view here: many either lack one or run it badly. SOP 247
4	Preparing for the calls	The view here: many people do not even do it. SOP 248
5	Follow-up	Section 1; SOP 89
6	Scripting	SOP 238 to SOP 242
7	Team training and culture	The principle is on SOP 243; training is SOP 255 and SOP 256; culture is SOP 257
8	Long-term nurture	Section 1; SOP 254
9	Getting more salespeople	SOP 252
10	Sales process flows	Added tenth, after the list of nine

Not all of it. The aim is not that you take on every one of these; working through all of them will take a while. Go through the areas and ask yourself which you are absolutely worst at, and do that one first. Any or all of them can improve your business, but the ask here is to pick one or two.

10. The pages around this one

Related pages: the thinking behind selling is on SOP 243 — Control the conditions, keep every step congruent and clear, and on SOP 244 — Sell to what the buyer knows and lengthen the runway. Several fixes have pages of their own; you can pick them from the areas in section 9. SOP 246 — Write a why-people-buy document from the calls that closed turns the calls you won into the words you sell with. SOP 247 — Put a video sales letter before every conversation places a video ahead of each talk. SOP 248 — Prep every call with notes and proof matched to the prospect deals with getting ready for each call.

11. What this page does not decide for you

• Which gloss of nurture is right. Section 1 gives both. This page does not settle which reading is right.
• Price at a rate above about 35 percent. This page's figure and SOP 224's band are set side by side in section 4. This page does not settle which reading is right.
• Other ways of selling. This page gives no figure for close rates on any way of selling not in the table in section 4.

12. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	Keep follow-up (the short window after an opt-in) apart from nurture, as section 1 sets out
2	Check the three reasons: are you slow to reach curious leads, is the reason to buy unclear, is buying hard?
3	Ask whether you can handle more customers
4	Ask whether you can afford more; if both answers are yes, get more and change nothing
5	If you cannot afford more, set your lead cost against the industry average
6	Set your close rate against the benchmark for the way you sell
7	If you close nothing, look at the offer
8	Go through the areas in section 9 and pick the one or two you are worst at
9	Among the ways up in section 6, start with the one you think returns the most for the least cost

13. What this page does not cover

Emailing leads more times afterward, and long-term nurture in detail, are SOP 254 — Nurture by email and book the next meeting months out. Getting more salespeople is SOP 252 and SOP 253. Training and managing a sales team are SOP 255 and SOP 256. The avatar is not covered on this page.