You have grip on almost everything, except where your new customers come from

You never know how next quarter will go

You don't know if the next big customer will sign. You don't know if your best people will stay, and you don't know what your revenue will look like in six months. Whether you're a business owner, a major shareholder or a commercial director: you look for something to hold on to. I call that grip. The strange thing is that you find that grip almost everywhere, except in how new customers come to you.

That's why you started for yourself

You wanted to organise your own time, you felt you had more to offer the market, or you weren't being seen inside an organisation. Having your own business was your answer, and with it your first bit of grip on your own life. Research among people starting a business shows that autonomy is the main reason to start for most of them. Anyone who wants to decide for themselves how things go can still run into all kinds of uncertainty as a business owner.¹ That's why, at every step of your growth, you keep looking for grip.

Everyone you hire gives you grip

Take your first HR employee. You don't hire them because you want a Chief Happiness Officer. You hire them for the payroll, the days off and the rules that have to be in order, because it takes too much of your time and other people's time. That's how it goes with everyone you take on: you let someone take over work you can't handle yourself any more.

If your business runs on hours, like in consultancy, accountancy, at a bookkeeping firm or in construction, then someone like that also earns you more than they cost. You pay them a fixed amount per month, and your customer pays for their hours, say 120 to 200 euros. You can get on with other things, and work that used to be a side issue can be done by someone else. If you bring in someone for something you're not so good at yourself, like sales, you buy grip on a part where you can't manage it yourself.

Until you can't manage them all yourself any more

It doesn't stay at one or two people. At some point there are 10, 15, 20 of them, and you can't manage them all yourself any more. Are they productive? Are they doing the right things? Is the quality holding up? Then you're in what Greiner calls the leadership crisis: you need a real manager.² You hire one, again for grip.

If you keep growing, a second, a third and a fourth manager come along, and you want someone who manages the managers. Somewhere along the way you also write down how you do things, with processes and manuals. That's grip too, and it gives you calm instead of unrest. Coincidence doesn't go away. But you build something around you so things go wrong less often.

Your grip sits mostly with the customers you already have

Look at where all that grip sits. In the people, the capacity, the processes and the quality. All on the side of the work you do after the customer has come in. You probably grew because you're so good at what you do. In your product or your service, and in the way you deliver it, you put so much energy and passion. You went for an 8 or a 9, and actually you wanted a 10.

You probably thought: if I put my customer first and do everything for them, I can be proud of my work. Recommendations and word of mouth followed by themselves. That was never your plan, you just couldn't help going full speed. That deserves respect. But the part before someone becomes a customer, that customer journey, is a black box. Which customers come, when, how big and for what kind of assignments, you don't know. Still it works out every month, every quarter, until it almost doesn't. You never had to build there. And that's exactly where you have little grip.

The bowtie: a customer journey with two sides

Let me add the model you probably know, the bowtie by Jacco van der Kooij of Winning by Design.³ It draws the customer journey as a bow tie. On the left is everything you need to win a customer, in the middle is the deal, and on the right everything that comes after: onboarding, impact and expansion. It comes from the world of recurring revenue, but in my experience it's also very usable outside SaaS. Your right side is probably in excellent shape.

The sales manager you're looking for is a unicorn

You want grip on the left side too, and the type of manager you need for that is, in my experience, not easy to find. You have the people managers, who are good at coaching and developing. You have the managers who are strong in spreadsheets, forecasting and structure. And you have the commercial managers, who succeed because they close the gaps where the team lets things slip and lead by example.

But for a sales team of three you need a mix of those three, and something extra. Someone who is good at strategy and vision, and who knows how to set up and fine tune a sales process, so you don't lose time. Who sets up a pipeline well, qualifies it and weights it.

Who can also forecast well, runs a good 1 on 1 and a weekly rhythm that works, and who brings strategy, tactics and operation together. Someone like that is a self starter, almost an entrepreneur, and you rarely find them on a payroll. Good managers are already scarce, and this type even more so. That's why I started Inspire Growth: I do that part together with you and your team, and sometimes temporarily myself, until you have the right manager.

Imagine you do the front end just as well

The market is often already convinced that your product or service is good. What you don't have then is a sales process you can scale. I see that gap again and again, and I'd gladly build that with you.

Imagine you pick up the left side just as well as the right side. That you build the way new customers find you with the same passion and the same craft. For me that's Inspire Growth: grip on the front end, with the right manager and a few other things. I wrote earlier about why I love doing this: Grip on sales starts with a spark.