#78: How To Structure Your Morning When Running Founder Sales

Read Time: 2.5 min

Today, I will discuss how you want to structure your morning to ramp up sales efforts. If you follow these principles, they will prove fruitful and continue to pay dividends over time.

Once your MVP is built or close to shipping, you want to focus 80% of your effort on dialing in customer acquisition channels and sales and 20% on products, especially if you have zero customers. Sales is very similar to learning a new language, and if you don’t speak it, it’s difficult. You have to keep pumping out the reps, and you will start to gain confidence and tailwinds.

Don’t quit before you even start. I’ve seen this frequently. Are you really too early? Do you really need to figure out more or shift gears into design, etc, or are you just afraid? Only you will know the answer. Don’t lie to yourself because when the time comes to tell the truth, and it will come, if you don’t have a foundation built on rock things can go south very quickly.

Anxiety, fear, and all of its relatives fester in inaction. That’s where the dragon grows. The antithesis is to go all in. Burn the boats! Let’s go!

In the end, a vision without the ability to execute is probably a hallucination.

~Steve Case

You can use numerous customer acquisition channels, but for simplicity's sake, I’ll limit myself to four. When you begin prospecting, do the most challenging and uncomfortable thing first.

Here’s an example of how you might structure your day to maximize sales efforts:


6:30 AM – 7:30 AM: Morning Routine

I recommend starting your day with activities that engage your brain and body—exercise, meditation, prayer, or reading. A powerful morning routine begins the day with stacking Ws. I start my day with prayer and exercise, followed by reading something that will give me truth and direction as I understand it. Four wins before 7:30 a.m.!

7:30 AM – 9:30 AM: Prospecting

Dedicate the first 120 minutes of your workday to prospecting. This is huge because this is when your energy and focus are at their peak, making it the ideal time to reach out to prospects. Start with cold calling (if applicable) because it’s typically the toughest for most people.

• Call block: The best time to cold call is when you have the highest chance of connecting with your buyer first thing in the morning. I closed my biggest deals in my career through cold calls early in the morning. You should be able to make at least 30 calls in an hour. That should be your target. 150 calls a week. Your connect rate with DMs on calls should be around 30% (9 convos), and schedule a demo with 5% (2 scheduled demos) of them. That’s two meetings booked by 9 am—ten meetings booked for the week—just through cold calling
  

• Identify Leads (targeted list): Research and compile a list of potential clients.
  

• Emailing: If you don’t have Clay set up yet, add new leads to the drip campaign and check for any positive responses from outreach.
  

• LinkedIn: Send connection requests to your ICP (sales navigator) and respond to any positive response from your LI outreach.
  

• Content: You should write at least three pieces of LI content to post weekly. If you’re adding potential buyers to your network with connection requests, it’s critically important to position yourself as a thought leader. Educate and write about what keeps them up at night and what you see working. Don’t pitch your company; educate them, and they will draw their own conclusions and start coming in.
  
  Content is the number one customer acquisition channel right now. We provide this service for our clients. Our numbers are loose because there are a lot of variables, but for every 19 posts we set up for our clients, we see roughly one deal closed or, at minimum, one paid POC closed, which has about a 94% conversion to customer. That’s insane. As your network and influence grow, the numbers will get better. Adam Robinson is an excellent account to follow on LinkedIn who has scaled to $3M in ARR within 7 months, primarily through posting content as a customer ac.

9:30 AM – 10:00 AM: Review and Plan

Review the outcomes of your prospecting efforts. Analyze what worked and what didn’t, then adjust your strategies accordingly. Based on these insights, plan the rest of your day/week.

• Here’s a cool doc with built-in formulas that can help you keep track of your prospecting efforts.
  

• Book your discovery and demos from this time onward. Try not to interrupt the first couple of hours of your day for your focus work. Don’t schedule meetings during the 8-10 a.m. time frame.
  

• From here on, focus on prod dev, customer requests, etc. Throughout the day, as long as you win the first 3.5 hours, I promise you it will pay off hugely. The most fundamental part of your business is having people to sell to. Without that, all your worst fears will be realized. Focus on the biggest needle mover at the beginning of your day, and the day will take care of itself. Control the things you can.

That’s it for today!

See you all next week.

Darren

P.S. If you’re interested in coaching, you can book a call with me here

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