Kill Your Darlings

[0:00] Sales leaders, this is the last episode of Full Funnel Freedom, probably appropriately titled Kill Your Darlings. So I am ending the Full Funnel Freedom podcast after three years and a week because I am refocusing on supporting my clients who are seeking to sustainably scale their sales and eventually exit for their number, not the number they're told to take. I will continue to appear as a guest on other podcasts, and I certainly look forward to connecting with you offline if we are not already. So please share your biggest takeaways from the podcast in the comments, wherever you find it, and continue to create Full Funnel Freedom. Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom podcast. If you are listening to this, you are likely leading a team responsible for generating revenue. Purpose of Full Funnel Freedom is to support people like yourself and keep your.

[1:04] Music. Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Hamish Knox. Today, I'm going to advise you to kill your darlings. Some of you might be thinking, what the heck do you mean by that? Well, it's a William Faulkner quote specifically related to writing and advice to authors. However, it does apply in business. Back in 2016, I ended my most profitable service. In Faulkner's words, I would have killed one of my darlings because I discovered that it was taking up way too much time and I really didn't enjoy it. And in fact, one of the companies that I used to work with, they were a professional services firm who 9x their revenue over the four years that we worked together. During a strategic planning session that they invited me to be part of, we discovered that.

[1:04] Funnels consistently reliably full.

[2:00] They had a service that was contributing 65% of their net profit in the previous year that was frying their brains, and they ended up killing that service. As I just shared, their revenues went up significantly, as did their profits. So when we're talking about killing your darlings, there's really four questions that I would encourage you to reflect on on a semi-regular basis. Maybe it's once a year, maybe it's a couple of times a year. If you do this quarterly, you will see a massive acceleration in both your results and the success of your team. So here are the four questions. First of all, what are all the products or services you sold last year? Write them down. And whether you are an individual entrepreneur or whether you are a sales leader at a larger organization, these questions do apply. So what are all the products or services you sold last year or your team sold last year? When I say you, I'm including your sellers. Write them down. By the way, the key part of this exercise is you got to write it down. I'll explain why in a second.

[3:16] Question two, which of those services, Do you love delivering or producing the most or the least? Now, as your organization grows larger, you might want to say, which of those products and services are the easiest to deliver or produce? And then the second question to that is why? So which of those products and services that you just wrote down are the easiest to deliver or produce? And why is that? And if you are in a technical world, you may want to look at how much time your customer support team spent on each individual product with a client. That's something that several of our clients have done as part of their analysis on killing their darlings.

[4:06] Question number three, what percentage of revenue and profit did each of those products bring in last year? Fairly simple to analyze. to analyze. And we also want to take into account discounting and SPFs and other things that would affect that profit of each individual service. And then question number four is how much time does it take to sell and deliver or produce each of those products or services? Very, very critical to analyze the total sales time. And on a previous episode, I've spoken about your true sales cycle which is from the time that you or one of your sellers says hello to a buyer to the time that they've actually paid you for the service, which for some of my clients is significantly longer than they first thought because they estimated their sales cycle to be when the agreement was signed. Ultimately, the sale is finally closed when our buyer actually pays us. So questions again are, What are all of the products or services you and your team sold last year?

[5:15] Question number two, which of those products and services is the most and the least easy to deliver or produce? And if you're directly involved in delivery or production, add in the layer of how much do you love delivering or producing each of those services? And then answer why. So you've got a bit of a matrix set up right now. You've got all your products and services listed in one column. You're going to have this which is the easiest or to deliver produce which do you love to deliver the produce in the next column and then why is that in the next column question number three next column what percentage of revenue and profit did each of those products and services bring in last year so you may have a revenue and a profit column and then the last question is how much time does each product or service take to sell, true sales cycle, and then deliver and produce?

[6:12] Once we go through this exercise, we will have a very clear picture of what products and services are actually contributing the most to our results. And what we may discover is that there are some darlings that we have that need to be killed because they're taking up way too much time either on the selling side, the delivery side. They're very, very difficult to produce. They're not really contributing a lot of revenue and or profit to us. And quite frankly, us or our teams may be just completely burnt out on pushing literally this product or service that our buyers have shown through their behavior that they don't really want to buy. Now, The reason why we want to write this stuff down is because as humans, we're all emotional and we get attached to certain products and services, certain individuals on our team who may have got us here, but they're not going to get us there.

[7:18] And that was talked about on a previous episode as well. So when we write things down, then we can look at it relatively unemotionally. There will always be a little bit of emotion, but it's relatively unemotional. It gives us that third-party perspective that we need to make those decisions. Going back to the partners in the professional services firm who were looking at this service that brought in 65% of their net profit in the previous year, and they made the decision to terminate that service the following year. And of course, lots of really cool things happened to them revenue-wise, profit-wise. They had way more time back. They felt more energized.

[7:58] Now, it may be that we can't kill one of our darlings for whatever reason. In that case, what I have coached other leaders to do is create processes and systems that take most of the mental and emotional energy out of that producing, selling, or delivering that product or service. So, while it still may be slightly frustrating to sell, deliver, or produce that product or service, it's going to be less burdensome on our sellers and our after-sales support people and us because we can pretty much set it and forget it. Not literally. We have those systems and processes in place so it reduces the mental and emotional friction that we might feel around that product or service. Now.

[8:51] You may be thinking that this title of this podcast is a bit prophetic, and it actually is because this is the last episode of the Full Funnel of Freedom podcast. We celebrated our third anniversary last week with a great podcast with Phil Putnam talking about his book, Desire-Based Leadership. And I am incredibly grateful for all of you who have listened, who have commented, who have written amazing five-star reviews and given us amazing ratings. I am so grateful for all of you, and I am so grateful for all of my amazing guests.

[9:36] Going back to Tom Short, who was the very first guest on the Full Funnel Freedom podcast, all the way up to Phil Putnam, who was the last guest on the Full Funnel Freedom podcast, and only our second two-time guest appearance, Milena Palmer being the other one around the launch of her most recent two books. So as I have been hosting this podcast and I've been working my way through my own analysis of what are my darlings in my world, I realized that the podcast was something that was not getting me to becoming my future self. I've been doing some work with dr. Benjamin Hardy and he's got a book called be your future self now And i'm i'm currently working in a in a q4 intensive course with him That is built around.

[10:32] Changing my frame. So what is possible? Raising my floor. So saying no to more things and lasering in on my focus and fact matter is it is very difficult for me to say no to things I have.

[10:45] A pleaser personality and I want to support as many individuals as I can. In fact, my North Star is to create generational wealth for my daughters, my partner, and myself to enjoy now and support as many sales leaders and sellers as possible. So that is what I am lasering my focus in on is supporting our clients who are seeking to sustainably scale their sales and eventually exit for their number, not the number they're told to take. So I will continue to be a guest on podcasts. So you will still hear my voice out there. I am going to continue producing content because part of this program that I'm working on through Dr. Benjamin Hardy, one of the frames that I have set for myself is to be recognized as a world leader in sustainably scaling sales and supporting organizations exiting for their number, not the number they're told to take.

[11:48] So I am very grateful again for all of your support. And I certainly look forward to continuing to connect with you offline and through the other content that I produce through Sandler Calgary. We are currently looking to engage with.

[12:07] 20 organizations who have at least a seven-figure annual revenue growth potential, and they're just not necessarily sure how to access that, and they're willing to invest somewhere between $275,000 and $325,000 in local currency annually for at least three years in order to realize that growth. And we are currently working with companies in Canada, the U.S. And actually overseas now as well. So the wrong type of buyer is going to hear that and say, wow, that sounds like a lot of money. And the right type of buyer is going to hear that and say, wow, that first of all sounds like a two to three X return on my investment. And I believe that growth is not linear. So I might think I have a seven figure annual growth and that could turn into a eight figure or nine figure annual growth. And that's going to get me to eventually the exit that I want.

[13:05] So once again, thank you for listening over the past three years. These podcasts are going to continue to live wherever you find your podcasts.

[13:17] We've got a bunch on YouTube and fullfunnelfreedom.com will continue to exist. So until we connect offline, and I encourage all of you to connect with me on LinkedIn, especially if you want to be one of those 20 organizations that we are going to support. And whether you've got a sales team of yourself and yourself, or you've got a sales team of yourself and a leader and 20 other, revenue generating individuals on your team, I would love to have a conversation with you. So reach out and until we connect offline, go create full funnel freedom. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Full Funnel Freedom podcast. You can continue to support us by leaving us a review and a rating, sharing this episode with a couple of sales leaders in your network who you care about. I'd love to connect with you. I'm easy to find Hamish Knox on LinkedIn. Also, if you'd like a free 15-minute call with me, go to www.hamish.sandler.com forward slash how to Sandler. Until we connect on the next episode, go create full funnel freedom.

[14:33] Music.