The Founder Bottleneck: More Leads Make Your Pipeline Worse

Nate Grossman: Alright, so here is a pattern I keep running into. a founder tells me their client acquisition is inconsistent. One month the pipeline is full, the next month it's a ghost town. So they do what almost everyone does. They go looking for more leads. New channel, new campaign, maybe a new agency.

Simone Henry: And ninety days later, they are right back where they started.

Nate Grossman: Every time because the leads were never the constraint. the for example, I was just thinking about this. I had a a client who's in the kitchen bathroom on the industry actually. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about this later on too, but you know, it's not the There's a saying in the marketing industry that you bet you you better be able to deliver on the promises that your marketing has made. And if you can't do that, then you know, that leads to problems with your future pipeline, right? but not only that, you know, if you are the one who is doing the work itself, as is the case with a lot of home service businesses, then you don't have time. To be the one who's also gener getting the leads, right? And working the leads and actually doing the work that is in that is required for the delivery. so yeah, that's that becomes a a a real problem really, really quickly. And that's kind of gives you a an idea of what we're what we're talking about here.

Simone Henry: So here's the part that nobody checks. They open the CRM and look at when deals actually move. In most of these businesses, they move on the days the founder was selling. And they sit still every week the founder was delivering. The pipeline has one engine, and it's you.

Nate Grossman: Yeah, you sell, you close, you deliver, and while you're delivering, nobody follows up. You know, this is this is the roller coaster. Nobody's advancing the deals. There's no acquisition so your acquisition ends up resetting to zero and everyone reads that reset as a marketing problem. But underneath it sits a dependency problem.

Simone Henry: So that means that more leads just gives the same bottleneck more to drop.

Nate Grossman: And that's what we're taking apart today, why your acquisition resets every month, why more leads will not fix it, and what a pipeline that moves without you actually looks like. I'm Nate Grossman, she is Simone Henry. This is the Grow Ceiling, and we're going to work through it piece by piece. Okay, so let's frame the topic here and and set out the stakes. Basically, what we're talking about here, service businesses, they're are doing between one million, ten million, and their acquisition is swinging month to month. You know, it's it's the the shark tooth, right? Up and down, up and down. Or the roller coaster, how whatever you know, clever metaphor you want to use. You have a strong selling month, and then you have to go and deliver on what it is that you sold. where in between you're not acquiring the next the next set of batch of leads for your next projects. And so that goes cold. And then once your delivery ends, then you're scrambling trying to find new leads to keep things going. And and this is like especially bad if a company has payroll, right? They have people on the payroll that they need to pay consistently. And oftentimes what there's what the the business owner says is that we just need consistent lead flow. That'll you know that will fix the problem. but really you know that is actually more of a misreading than anything. So those those the the problem is that those swings tend to track the business owner's calendar and not necessarily the market. Okay. So when you look at when the pipeline activity drops, it usually drops when the founder is heads down doing the thing, just like I talked about earlier, right? And so that correlation is the is basically the whole diagnosis. And most founders never check it because they're inside it. They're so they're so caught up doing the thing that you know they can't take themselves out of it and you know have that 30,000 foot view and see what's really going on, right? So what ends up happening here and what's you know costing them every every time this pipeline resets, it costs a full sales cycle. So let's say, you know, for a major purchase, you know, especially if you're in the home services business. That could be tens of thousands of dollars, depending, right? or, you know, for any type of professional services even, where it's it's a complex, you know, long-term situation where you're delivering over a period of months or something like that. you're not you're not just losing that slow month, you're losing the next 60 to 90 days Because you still have to rebuild that momentum, you know. And somebody somebody told me one time that basically the actions that you take now are gonna affect you about two to three months down the road, right? So that's what we're talking about. so if you are not taking the action that you need to take to keep that pipeline going, because you are in the thing delivering, then you're setting yourself back, you know. the equivalent amount when it comes to actually trying to build that momentum back up again. If you compound that over the year then the the reset cycle your cap caps your revenue well below what the same business could do with a pipeline that kept moving. And that cap is about it is the growth ceiling that we that we often talk about here on the the podcast.

Simone Henry: that whole idea of of starting back at zero every single month or every single quarter. So You know, in this it shows up as say you are you're using a CRM and your CRM is full of deals with last activity dates that cluster around when whichever weeks the founder is in sales mode. And your tool will record that problem perfectly. It's gonna show you, hey, look at look at when things are actually moving and when they when they tend to drop off. wow. it correlates with our founder's calendar. But you know, most of the time we don't read it that way.

Nate Grossman: Hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So all right, let let's talk a little bit about why you know the idea that we need more leads is the wrong the wrong idea and the wrong thing to focus on. So okay, you have inconsistent months. Understandable, a lot of a lot of businesses have them, and I think it doesn't really matter what industry you're in, that's gonna happen, right? but it's when you have that revenue that's saw too. So like we like I talked about earlier. It goes up and then it's comes down and then it goes up again, comes down. You know, that's that's where you know you start the quarter, you have a lead generation initiative. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna bang out, I'm gonna get 30, 30 new leads this month, and we're really gonna work these leads and have you know, our our pipeline's gonna be filled and we're gonna have projects to work on. but what ends up happening is you feel like okay the acquisition part of it only works when I actually make it work, right? and What it what the business owner l thinks is going to fix it is I need to fix that top of the funnel. I need to fix the acquisition, right? I need to acquire more leads. And so they go out there, they generate more content, they're maybe even choosing a new channel. you know, Facebook didn't do so well last month, so let's go over here to to Instagram, right? Or let's let's try out what was it? What was t tic tac? yeah. And maybe we need to buy some ads, of course. You know, that's that's often sort of the default. That's why when you ask people, hey, what does marketing mean to you? 90% of people are gonna say ads, right? and maybe we'll go out and actually purchase a lead list, even. And you know what, we better go hire a marketer. Help us figure this out, or even better, because we have some cash left over from our last you know couple months of jobs. Let's hire an agency to do it right, you know. And all of that is aimed at putting more leads into the top of that funnel, okay. But I'm here to tell you that that is wrong, okay. not in every situation, but for the most part, it usually is so. If you have new leads that are entering that same pipeline with the same single point of failure, what do you think is gonna happen, right? If if nothing advances a deal without the founder, then having more leads just means more deals are gonna stall, right? At the same choke point. yeah, right. It's not solving anything there. the conversion generally depends heavily on your response speed. Speed to lead, as they say, right? And your ability to follow up consistently. And both of those are collapsing, they end up collapsing during those delivery heavy weeks. And so the months where you paid for extra leads are often the months where you were at least able to actually work them. Ironically. You know, the I I I and I get it, like, okay, I'm I'm working on this over here, so I need to pay for leads so that they're ready when I am when I'm ready for them, right? but unless you have some type of a system in place in there to work those leads, buying more leads isn't really going to help you much. And here's here's the math that tends to get skipped. So raising lead volume, if your follow-up is broken, raises the cost of every closed deal. And you end up taking less home for every closed deal, even in that case. You're paying to acquire those leads. and then, you know, just like a just like a sieve, you know, it's just leaking out everywhere, all the place. I think I talked about, I mentioned earlier. About a client of mine who was in the kitchen bathroom modeling industry. He had this exact situation. You know, he would continue to pay for lead generation specialists to get him new leads. And, you know, meanwhile, he would, you know, try to concentrate on delivering on the leads that he was able to close. But, you know, it it was never very consistent. And he went through in the time that I was working with him, he burned through at least three different lead specialists, quote unquote, that I knew him. During that time that I knew him. And I was just like, you know, fine, you know, do do what you gotta do, I guess. But and I understand it's it's one of those chicken of the egg situations. Like, you know, I have people on staff I have to have people on staff to deliver on this. And so I need to have projects for the staff. And then I need to have revenue coming in so I can pay that staff. And so it's like, which do you do first? Right. it's a situation that I would not wish on my worst enemies, honestly. But not not fun.

Simone Henry: running a home care services company, you know, and she's like, Okay, as soon as I get a client, I need to have I need to have a staff member to to go and service that client. you know, if I but if I get the the staff member first and I don't have the client, well then my staff person is gonna leave because they wanna get started working right away. So it's like okay, which which do you do first? It's it's very

Nate Grossman: Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Henry: Yeah, it can

Nate Grossman: Yeah, yeah.

Simone Henry: be a very chicken and egg situation.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. And you know, at at one point I got to look at the leads. well, I I I said to my client, I was like, Hey, you know, you've been paying these guys to get you leads, right? What are they doing with the leads that aren't converting? Right? You've already paid for them. Where are those? Okay. And and he's like, Well, they have them. because I don't have a CRM, right? I'm like, okay, well, can we get them? You know, and so and so we got them and we start, you know, I was like, hey, let's let's build an outreach, let's try to reignite these leads, you know, stay in touch with them. Maybe they weren't ready at the time, you know, given the fact that it's you know a high dollar, high-ticket type of a sale, but maybe if we get back in touch with them, maybe they're ready now, right? And so we started putting a map through looking at the leads like he was already sitting on like five hundred leads. Like that had that had been generated. Like you know, meanwhile he's continuing to pay for more. It's like, man, you know, that's that's pretty wild.

Simone Henry: to convert, right? And to make good money being such a high opera and high value service.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and we got we we ran him through a reignite campaign and we got at least two jobs out of that, which is totally makes up for it, you know. so anyway, like pretty pretty wild. all right. Anyways, continuing.

Simone Henry: So so we talked about the inconsistent months and why like why that whole diagnosis is wrong about well I need more leads, I need more leads, I need more leads. Well that isn't necessarily isn't necessarily the problem. Right? So operationally, you know, it could s it could show up as like a stack of half implemented tools, right? Like a C R or or like your client not having a C R at all. Well You know, and I've seen this happen a lot too. I have this very powerful CRM but I have no idea how to use it and so and and it just kind of sits there abandoned and there's you know, I may have put an email in it or one sequence in it, but like the numbers that it's showing me have no idea how to read it, anything like that. So

Nate Grossman: yeah. Yeah.

Simone Henry: Yeah, so so these can be other other issues too, like okay, You have the tool, but how do you use it in such a way that it shows you what your pipeline is looking like, where the bottlenecks are, and how people are moving through your your pipeline, your system, right? Are people getting stuck in one place or are they being are they converting and they moving are are they moving over to that next the next offering that you're making? are they being upsold? Are they just kind of sitting there? Are they being nurtured when they're not ready to buy? You know? you're you should be able to do all of this in in your CRM, right? So yeah.

Nate Grossman: Yeah, and the more the more high value, high ticket complex the thing it is that you are trying to sell, the longer it takes for people to actually buy, right? I I made this point earlier where we were talking about something, and you know, we're there's a huge difference between what a someone who in the home services business, for example, is doing versus like a dentist, right? Or someone in the IT industry who is like an IT MSP provider, that's a more bit high-ticket, usually a high-ticket, more complex purchase than, you know, do you want at a dentist office, for example, do you want fluoride today? You know, the speed right there is very different between the offer and the the purchase, right? It it can be as simple as, hey, yeah, you know what, I I will take some fluoride today, you know, and it's done. whereas, you know, someone who is thinking of implementing and making big changes to their entire IT system, for example, or installing a whole new brand brand new kitchen in their house, that's a much bigger process and and it takes a lot more energy and thought and research. And so, yeah, it it behooves you to have sort of a longer term outreach there in that case.

Simone Henry: It's true.

Nate Grossman: And you know, if if you look at the CRM and you see that deals were only moving on the day that the founder was the one doing the selling, then that is like we talked about earlier, that tells you right right there in numbers what's what the problem is. you know if if the calendar you know, of the business owner and the pipeline's activity are the same document. You know, that's a problem. all right. What okay, so again Thinking about this from the point of view of the V3 growth system, right? We have visibility, viability, and value in a business. And visibility is something that we want. Don't get me wrong. You want to be seen in the right place and the right time by the right people. Okay. But all too often, I think, you know, the business owners, the founders are reaching for that visibility and that lead attraction. And thinking that that's going to solve the problem for them. When in reality, the problem is really in that viable portion of the business, right? The ability to convert on quality leads, the ability to follow up with those leads until they're ready to convert, and you know, just managing that pipeline, thinking about it from that perspective, okay. This is not me needing more leads. This is not me needing to show up in the right place. This is me having to have the systems and processes in place that are gonna allow me to actually capitalize on what I've, you know, already paid for, you know. That's that's the trick. All right. Yeah. So that that get that gets to the heart of what we're talking about today, I think. you don't have a a a pipeline with a bottleneck necessarily. It's more a a pipeline with exactly one worker. Okay, think about it like that. And every stage advances only when that one person is the one that who is touching it, okay. That's an acquisition. that's that is the acquisition framework problem in one sentence. The framework is you. Okay, that's the problem. So oftentimes the reason that this happens is because the founder was the first and best salesperson, right? They're the one who built the business, they're the one who acquired the first customers. And so, you know, sheer force of will and luck, every every pipeline habit, you know, whatever was formed during that those formative that formative time of of the of the business, involved the founder's judgment and the founder's follow-up and whatever they were able to do at the time. And the business ended up growing, you know, against all odds, right? Like

Simone Henry: lady last week actually she she made over a million dollars in her business but she hadn't she had no idea about creating systems sh it was she her business was successful through sheer will and and her own hustle and grind really You know, but then she comes then she comes into a room with with different people and they're talking about putting systems in place and, you know, automating and having you know and having a pipeline that you can see the numbers and see what's what's going on with your business and she had no idea about that. It was the whole different world, a whole different language for her that she now had to learn. Cause, you know, for her, she's just hustling, right? This is just what I do. I'm gonna go out there, I'm gonna get the clients. And then I'm gonna do the thing and then get more clients and then do the thing and then get more clients and then do the thing, you know. and it's so amazing how some people will they will do that and they will get a some measure of success. But it it really does lead to burnout ultimately.

Nate Grossman: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's Yes. Yeah.

Simone Henry: And and you know, when you think about my gosh, okay, how am I gonna grow this business and get to beyond a million dollars? I wanna I wanna get into the eight figures now. my gosh, well I can't do that because that just means more hard work. When actually it doesn't

Nate Grossman: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's I think we talked about this a couple couple episodes ago with Aaron Morrison. But Tony Robison said that you know, business is psychology. There's a lot of psychology. It's like eighty percent psychology, he says, right. And then, you know, twenty percent strategy. So And and I was reading an article in the the Harvard Business Review not too long ago that said basically that you know they did a study, they they researched talked to business owners and found that almost every business owner they talked to, strategy was very important, very, very crucial to the business. And so when they asked them, well Why aren't you doing strategy in the business? Because I'm too busy was the answer. And and it's like in I I don't know if it's the American thing or what, but you know, it's that psychology. Like I need to feel and I guess it's like an equ they're they're equating busyness with importance, you know. If I'm not busy, then that must mean I'm not important for the business, you know. And A lot of times it's just like being busy just for the sake of being busy, just so they feel important, you know, unfortunately. So yeah, it's a real it's a really bad place. But if if you're if you're if if part of that being busy is you actually being the one who is is the one who's delivering, who is also, you know, acquiring new leads, following up with those leads, converting them.

Simone Henry: Place.

Nate Grossman: And doing the the delivery, that's a whole lot of business that could be avoided potentially, you know, with as you said, systems and processes, right? And it's that feast or famine cycle, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. People I I think there's like like the psychology, like you you get that you get you get addict addicted to that, you know, like I gotta, I gotta sell, I gotta close, I gotta, I gotta deliver.

Simone Henry: Yeah. And don't get it to other people. Yeah.

Nate Grossman: you know, because I don't want to starve. You know, like and that's that's how yeah, well that's how businesses get started. You know, that's that survival stage, you know, that survival mentality. And that is the thing that that keeps them, drives them and and g and keeps them going and gets them to a certain level. But at some point it's like they realize I can't do all this. You know, that realization has to come, you know.

Simone Henry: Hands on me. Yeah. And they can't stay they can't stay in that mode for forever because ultimately, you know, time runs out, your energy runs out, your life happens, things happen that takes you out of it. Actually Noah, her business basically stopped because it all depended on her. She had no systems in place. And when her her father got sick or was diagnosed and with dementia and then she had to pretty much drop everything to go and care for him.

Nate Grossman: Yes. Oof. Yeah.

Simone Henry: And because of that her business stopped, you know.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. Yeah. Yikes. man.

Simone Henry: Yeah. Life is gonna happen. Mm-hmm.

Nate Grossman: Life happens. Yeah. So you have, you know, you have your good selling month that creates a a delivery month. Delivery pulls you out of the pipeline. Your pipeline decays. Or in the case of, you know, your client that you were talking about, life happens and pulls you out of that pipeline, your revenue dips, and then panic sets in again, right? So this is like this is why so many business owners burn out. I think, you know, I mean, who can put up with that for how long? You know, that's that's insanity. and so each time that happens, you know, the it kind of reinforces unfortunately the idea in the in the founder's mind that that acquisition only works if they're the one that does it personally, which ends up deepening that dependency, you know.

Simone Henry: Yeah. It it's yeah, it's it's this false I guess they're they're getting you know, because they hustled and because they grinded, whatever, as the founder, they got they get some sales, they get some success. And that's a that's what do you call it? negative reinforcement. It just reinforces bad habits.

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Simone Henry: at that point. 'Cause they were rewarded for for that. They think that that's

Nate Grossman: Yeah. It's almost like it's almost like Lucky Rabbit's foot, you know, superstition. Like it happened when I had this in my hand, so it must be the thing that caused it, right? But so unfortunately, like this situation tends to disguise itself as a time problem. I just I just need to block more selling time.

Simone Henry: Right.

Nate Grossman: Or a it's a consistency problem. You know, quote unquote, we need we need to stay visible even when we're busy. You know, we need to be we need to be out there, we need to be on the social medias, et cetera, and all that, right? And those busy months feel productive, so nothing about the experience really signals a structural flaw. You know, when you're in the thing doing the thing, everything feels great, right? Like this is exactly what we should be doing. I know I love doing this. But, you know, again, like we talked about earlier, that CRM, if you have a tool that's tracking this information, that's gonna show that activity whenever you look in it, right? But that's maybe because you're the one who's looking at the activity, right? So it's like, Imagine like you're sitting there, you're you're going into the CRM, you look at the pipeline, right, in the in the CRM, and everything looks healthy, generally speaking. But if you really drill down on it and you and you realize that every advanced deal actually traces back to your personal outreach. And if you also then look at the close rates during the weeks when you were in delivery, you know, if if that is showing a clear pattern, then that needs to be dealt with. You know, you need to really take that into consideration. You you can't always be the one who's doing all the things, in other words, that's the idea.

Simone Henry: So then we have to start looking at like, okay, so we know we wanna have a functioning, you know, CRM that's gonna give us the numbers, show us, show us these patterns. so what does it look like when when your business is advancing without the founder, right? What is that even what does that even look like? Say you have 10 to 25 employees that, you know, and and what if you don't have a sales team? You know, where where do those how does it how does your pipeline move without the founder, right?

Nate Grossman: Yeah, yeah. Basically it means that, first of all, your your the speed delete and then and the and the necessity for that being being there and responding doesn't go away. It's just a matter of like who does it, right? Who's handling that? And In the case where the founder is not the one handling that, it means that you know, that first response, the follow-up after, you know, a proposal is given or after the meeting or whatever with the individual, with the the client, the prospect, and then the check-in when the when the it when and if the the deal stalls, all of those have defined triggers. And there's a defined executor. Whether that is a person, maybe that's a person in another seat in the CRM, you know, whoever that may be. It could be a contractor that you work with. Maybe you have a VA, you know, who who handles that. Or it's an automation. all of which are are viable. The key though is that the the founder is the they stay in the conversations that need judgment, that require their strategic input. Everything else is based around is trigger-based, right? You know, after a certain amount of time, a lot of it's based on time, right? Speed delete, like follow up with them as as soon as possible for for that initial, you know, response. And then make sure that you're ha setting regular intervals for follow-up and check-ins and things like and things like that. But having it, having it laid out in a in a system, in a process is is crucial because that way everybody can stay on the same page and it takes a lot of the effort and worry off the mind of the the founder so that they can actually think about more strategic things, right?

Simone Henry: yeah, so then you end up having a more predictable, repeatable sales cycle.

Nate Grossman: Yeah, exactly. That's what we're going for, precisely. you're and and I think, you know, speaking about automation, you know, which you you know a lot about, we're not necessarily automating the relationship, right? We're automating the trigger. You know, that's that's the difference.

Simone Henry: Yeah, I'd like to tell people like automation is kind of like the the train that carries carries your messages or carries carries the data from one one point in your system to another point, but it doesn't necessarily it's not doing the interaction with your clients, your p or your prospects. That's that's up to you and your employees and your team. You know? And if the messages the automation doesn't make doesn't make your messages robotic. If your messages are robotic it's because you wrote them that way. or you're saying them that way, not because or you directed your or that you didn't train the AI properly to to you know, to write messages that sound more like you than than like a computer, right? But automation can be can be set up to be very personal, actually.

Nate Grossman: Yeah, yeah.

Simone Henry: where when people get messages, it feels very personal and feels like you're right there in the room talking to them. Or you or like you wrote this email yourself. You know.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. And a lot of that comes from the founder's experience over the years with their clients. Maybe they have recorded conversations that they can, you know, incorporate and use. But knowing the things that people actually say, you know, and using that to your advantage, I think is key there. all right. So here is a 60 second test for our listeners out there. You're gonna count your open opportunities. Open up your CRM or wherever it is that you're tracking your your pipeline. You're gonna count your open opportunities, and now after that, you're gonna count how many of them moved in the last two weeks because of something that you personally did. If those two numbers are the same, voila, you have the constraint, right? Which is the thing that we're talking about in this episode.

Simone Henry: It's for you.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about reframing this a little bit. So we talk we at the top when we talked about, you know, client acquisition and how can I get more more clients? Stop thinking about it in terms of I need to get more leads and instead think about What do I currently have? How can I optimize it? How can I optimize my systems? How can I implement systems that are going to help me capitalize on what I already have? And start designing those systems for what is going to move people through that pipeline. And in when you boil it down, being consistent about acquisition. And acquiring new clients is a design job, really. It's not it shouldn't be more about having more effort, it's about designing the systems correctly or in such a way that you have predictability around your conversions so that you know it's less of a stress, you know. basically the the question. That should be in the top of your mind when you're thinking about this is always gonna be the same. What advances a deal when I'm not looking? You know, thinking about that? What is the thing that's going to keep this thing moving if I'm not able to do the thing, right? To to be there constantly hand holding, watching it move through the pipeline and making sure that I'm I am personally being involved, right?

Simone Henry: Right, so then you want you want look at it looking at it on the ground practically, there are three shifts that should follow, right? That you should be paying attention to, right? So you look at every pipeline stage, each pipeline stage should get an owner and an exit condition. Who is who owns that stage? When somebody gets to it? then that stage is not designed yet. There should be a set owner. is it the operations manager? Is it the salesperson? Is it the you know the marketing manager? Is it, you know, one of your is it one of your customer service team, right? Who owns that stage? And then that person should know what the condition is that moves that person out of that stage and into the next. Right. And then, you know, at first your everything is falling on the founder and everything is founder dependent, but ultimately you want it to be either automated or delegated. Right. And so that's when that response time for for those for all of your decision points just stops depending on the founder. Right. And then it's a good idea to have a weekly pipeline review. So, and answer questions like, you know, how much is in the pipeline, what moved this week, and who moved it? And if you have a lot of totals, they're looking, it's a lot of dependency. But movement exposes exposes that that total.

Nate Grossman: Yeah, and and so the the the the business owners shouldn't think that they are firing themselves from selling necessarily. they're still in late stage conversations and high stakes deals. I think that's gonna be crucial. And also involved in in the relationships that got them there. To where they're at, you, the business owner, you're removing yourself as as the trigger for everything from the before that point. That's that's what we're talking about. You're not necessarily taking yourself out of the room completely, and you're not abandoning those channels that actually work. it's not the channels aren't the problem, right? so when When your pipeline, if we're if we're talking about going back to thinking about this from the perspective of the V3 growth system, right? When your pipeline moves without you, then that those delivery months stop draining your your revenue in the next quarter. If you have predictable acquisition that makes you know capacity planning a heck of a lot easier and more and actually possible, right? That's going to improve your delivery quality. Right, because you're going to know how much work you can actually take on, because you know how much you can actually deliver on. And that is going to l feed into retention and referrals because you're going to have clients who are very happy with what you've been able to deliver for them because you've thought this through and you've you've been you know this is. This is systematized. This is well thought out. You know what your capabilities are. have the and then that's where you start thinking about that valuable pillar, right? That starts to work on its own. And it ends up being the difference between having a tactic in such as lead generation, right? And actually s a system. Because a system ends up paying you more than once and and in the long term rather than maybe the short term. All right. So let's get into a little bit of back and forth here. We're we're gonna we'll call this the rapid application segment. all right. So for number one, you're going to this is audit your deal movement, not the deal volume necessarily. What is actually moving? You're gonna find out what your pipeline does when you are not in it.

Simone Henry: sweep of the CRM. Look at every open deal. They get they each get three fields filled, filled. What's the next action? What's the who's the owner and what's the date? Any deal you can't write a next action for goes to nurture or gets closed out. The pipeline you finish is with your is your real pipeline, right? You don't want people just stuck in the pipeline, they're not moving.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. Your real pipeline. okay, next up. Make the first response founder independent before you touch anything else. So this is the first step. You're gonna take yourself out of that speed delete situation. You're not going to be the one who follows up immediately. it ends up being the highest value handoff, I think, in the whole system.

Simone Henry: So pick the first two touches a new inquiry gets and take yourself out of both. Template them, then either automate them or send them to a named team member with a response time standard. Two touches, not the whole sequence, just those first two touches, and start small. Small enough to actually sh make this ship this week.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. Yeah, so you don't get bogged down.

Simone Henry: Yeah. We're taking small actions first.

Nate Grossman: Exactly. And now, next up, you're gonna change what you measure. the number that matters most here is movement. Again, we've been talking about this, that did not require you.

Simone Henry: add one line to whatever weekly review you you already run. Deals advanced this week without founder involvement. Week one, the answer will probably be zero. That number going up is the whole project.

Nate Grossman: All right, so the acquisition framework that we've been talking about and that most founders actually need is not a new lead source. It's a pipeline designed to move without them. This is this is the new the shift in thinking, right? That's via that is the viable work in that visible, viable, valuable framework, right? You're looking at converting, transitioning, and then pipeline management. And having the systems and processes documented so that you can actually hand them over to somebody. if you get it right, and lead generation finally has something worth feeding, you know, and the business stops resetting every time you do your job. So you're gonna get rid of that peace or famine cycle, you're gonna get rid of that up and down, the sawtooth, right? Your visibility is gonna get you leads, yes. That's great, fantastic, but you need to have something in place to work those leads. That viability is gonna get you out of the weeds, and then of course value is gonna set you free in that case.

Simone Henry: Thank you for joining us. If this episode made you suspect that your real constraint is not what you have been treating it as or what you're thinking it is, then book a growth clarity call. 45 minutes, no pitch. We will map your specific situation against the V3 framework, and you'll leave with a clear view of what to focus on next.

Nate Grossman: Yeah, and if if you're not ready to talk yet, then sign up for the newsletter. Each week I break down one real growth constraint I'm seeing and how to spot it in your business, give you some ideas on how to improve and actions to take. If you want to subscribe, it's in the it's in the link below. In the notes.

Simone Henry: Absolutely. And subscribe to the Growth Ceiling Podcast wherever you listen. And if this episode names something that you had not been able to put words to, send it to a founder who really needs to hear it. And if you're on YouTube, make sure you subscribe to the channel. And in the comments, let us know what was your biggest takeaway. And we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. And thanks for listening.

Nate Grossman: Take care.