- Lazy Leverage
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- Good Salespeople Should Never Open CRM
Sarah was the best salesperson Northwest HVAC had ever seen (this is a parable, applies WAY beyond HVAC).
Her customers loved her, her colleagues admired her, and her sales numbers?
Off the charts.
But Sarah had a dirty secret.
Every night, after the appointments were run, Sarah would slink back to her desk.
She'd open her laptop, fire up the CRM, and start typing. And typing. And typing.
You see, Sarah was great at selling, but she was terrible at paperwork.
She hated it.
Loathed it.
But she did it because that's what good salespeople do, right?
Wrong.
Let me tell you about Bob.
Bob worked at Sagan’s HVAC Solutions, Northwest’s biggest competitor.
Bob was also a sales superstar.
But Bob never touched his CRM.
Never filed an expense report.
Barely even looked at his own calendar.
Was Bob lazy? Irresponsible? A maverick who played by his own rules?
Nope. Bob was just really, really good at selling. And Sagan’s HVAC Solutions was really, really good at leveraging talent.
You see, Sagan’s HVAC had figured out something that Northwest hadn't: Top salespeople are like star athletes.
You don't ask LeBron James to mop the court after a game.
You don't ask Serena Williams to restring her own rackets.
So why on earth would you ask your best closer to update a CRM?
Sagan’s HVAC gave Bob a secret weapon: Maria.
Maria was Bob's personal sales assistant.
She lived halfway across the world and Bob had never met her in person.
But every day, Maria made sure Bob's CRM was updated, his expense reports were filed, his calendar was optimized, and his presentations were polished.
All for $1500 a month.
And Bob?
Bob just sold.
All day, every day.
He was in front of clients, on the phone, writing proposals, thinking up new strategies.
He was doing what he did best, all the time.
The result?
Bob outsold Sarah.
Not because he was better at selling, but because he sold more. He had more time to sell.
He had more energy to sell.
He was, quite simply, unleashed.
Now, here's where it gets interesting.
One day, Sarah's boss attended a sales conference.
He heard about this concept of sales assistants. He heard about companies like Sagan’s HVAC that were leveraging global talent to free up their top performers.
He heard about the Bobs of the world.
And he had an epiphany.
The next day, he called Sarah into his office. "Sarah," he said, "I want you to meet someone."
He turned his laptop around, and there on the screen was Raj, Sarah's new sales assistant.
Sarah was skeptical at first.
She'd always done her own admin work.
It was part of the job, wasn't it?
But her boss insisted. "For one month," he said, "I want you to focus solely on selling. Raj will handle everything else."
That month changed everything.
Before Raj, Sarah was spending about 20% of her time on administrative tasks.
That's one full day a week lost to CRM updates, expense reports, and calendar management.
One day a week when she wasn't selling.
Now, Sarah wasn't just any salesperson.
Last year, she'd closed $2 million in sales.
That's $40,000 a week, on average.
So what happened when Sarah got that day back?
In the first month with Raj, Sarah closed an extra $50,000 in sales. That's a 25% increase.
Sarah's boss was ecstatic.
"This is amazing, Sarah!" he exclaimed.
"But I'm curious. Why didn't you just work longer hours before to make these extra sales?"
Sarah's response was illuminating. "I was already working 50-hour weeks," she said. "I could have worked 60 hours, sure. But I would have burned out. With Raj, I'm not working more. I'm working smarter. I'm spending my best hours with clients, not with spreadsheets."
The math was simple, but powerful:
Cost of Raj: $1,500 per month
Additional sales in first month: $50,000
Net gain: $48,500
And that was just the beginning.
As Sarah and Raj found their rhythm, the numbers got even better.
By the end of the quarter, Sarah's sales were up 30% compared to the same quarter last year.
That meant an additional $150,000 in sales. Per quarter.
Projected over a year? That's an extra $600,000 in revenue.
All from giving one top performer a little leverage.
Sarah's boss didn't stop with her.
He looked at his sales team and identified the top 20% of performers. There were five of them, including Sarah.
He got each of them an assistant like Raj.
The result? Those five salespeople, who were previously responsible for 50% of the company's $10 million annual revenue, increased their sales by an average of 25%.
Let's do the math:
Previous revenue from top 5: $5 million
25% increase: $1.25 million
Cost of 5 assistants for a year: $90,000
Net gain: $1.16 million
That's over a million dollars in additional revenue.
A 10% increase in total company sales.
All from an investment of less than $100,000.
Something else happened at Northwest, something that took Sarah's boss by surprise.
His top performers stopped leaving.
You see, before the "Raj Revolution" (as they came to call it), Northwest had a problem.
Every year, without fail, they lost at least one of their star salespeople to a competitor.
Exit interviews always cited the same reasons: burnout, too much paperwork, not enough time to actually sell.
Sarah herself had been on the verge of leaving. "I was this close to accepting an offer from a competitor," she confided to her boss months later. "I loved selling, but I was drowning in admin work. I felt like a data entry clerk who occasionally got to make a sales call."
She wasn't alone. Mark, another top performer, chimed in during a team meeting. "I used to wake up dreading the end of each sales cycle," he said. "Not because I didn't hit my numbers, but because I knew I'd be chained to my desk for days, updating the CRM and filing reports."
But it wasn't just about keeping people from leaving. The entire atmosphere of the sales department changed.
People were energized, excited. They were doing what they loved - selling - and leaving the rest to their assistants.
"I feel like I've fallen in love with my job all over again," Sarah told her boss.
The impact on the bottom line was significant:
Average cost to replace a top salesperson: $100,000 (including recruiting, onboarding, and ramp-up time)
Savings from retaining 5 top performers: $500,000
Add that to the $1.16 million in additional revenue, and the total impact was nearing $1.7 million.
The moral of the story?
Great salespeople are a rare and valuable resource.
They're the oil that keeps the engine of business running.
But too often, we throw sand in that oil.
We bog them down with administrative tasks, with data entry, with the thousand little things that eat away at their selling time.
It doesn't have to be this way.
You can free them from the shackles of administrative work.
You can unleash them to do what they do best.
And in doing so, you won't just improve your sales.
You'll create a place where your best people want to stay. Where they can thrive. Where they can remember why they fell in love with sales in the first place.
In a world where every sale counts and every top performer is a precious resource, can you afford not to?
Because in the end, good salespeople should never open a CRM.
Yallah Habibi,
Jon
Passage of the Week:
“Tiger, one day you will come to a fork in the road,” he said. “And you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go.” He raised his hand and pointed. “If you go that way you can be somebody.
You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments.”
Then Boyd raised his other hand and pointed another direction.
“Or you can go that way and you can do something–for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself.
If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors.
But you won’t have to compromise yourself.
You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference.
“To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision.
To be or to do? Which way will you go?”
Coram, Robert
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War