How To Free A Founder From A Sales Role

Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in business development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Anthony Coundouris, Founder of run_frictionless, located in Sydney, Australia.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

run frictionless helps founders of startups achieve predictable sales. Learn how to scale up a business with an easy-to-use framework called the 4Qs. The mistake founders and high-performing salespeople make trying to scale up the business by replacing themselves with another human being. Simply, there isn't another human like you looking for a job. Those who are good at selling are busy doing their own startup, not working for you. run frictionless presents an alternative – an option nobody is talking about. Scaling the founder and the business with a sales system. run frictionless helps founders scale out of a sales role, using a decision-making framework called the 4Qs.

Tell us about yourself

After writing the 4Qs framework, I wanted to put it into the hands of as many business owners as possible. I design and build sales processes, and when I need to show my client results in 90 days, I use the 4Qs. Today I have personally demoed the 4Qs 686 times, and I still enjoy watching the effects it has on my audience.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

I have built and sold two businesses. During the ten years it took to accomplish this feat, I wrote a book titled run frictionless, which documented how entrepreneurs can free themselves of a sales role using a decision-making framework called the 4Qs.

What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?

Deciding who you serve today, tomorrow, and never serve. Consider which profile of 🤔 customers you never serve from Quadrant 1. Examine deals that were signed but not completed. If you are unlikely to garner a positive review from a customer profile, reframe from serving them. Thin-slice ✂️ profiles until you find a variant whom you can serve repeatedly. Profile against asymmetric data points your competitors have not discovered.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

Begin sharing your beliefs with customers, staff, and shareholders earlier. There is no value in having a mission, a vision, or a belief if nobody else shares it. A belief is only valuable if it is 'shared.' Shared is the critical currency. Revenue is important, but striking a chord between your customers and beliefs which will prevent churn in your customer base.
Avoid copying competitors. Using value propositions or copying the way competitors built their businesses is not useful. This is because the way you built a company ten years ago is different from how you start a company today. Decide whether you will take customers from incumbents or create a customer that does not exist today.
Serve fewer customer profiles, and serve them better. Class more customer profiles as customers you serve tomorrow and narrow down who you serve today. Not until you dominate the profiles you serve today 👍, should you reposition to serve more customer profiles. By tightening who you serve, you can build a defensible product and better customer journeys. The improvement will increase positive reviews, which will increase your market share.
The product is the most expensive part of the business to iterate. It takes time and money to change a product or intangible product like a service. You could instead 'white-label' an existing product and focus on building market share by differentiating 'how you serve' customers. Customers who are delighted by the way they are served think the product will be better, even though the product, among all the competitors, maybe a commodity.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://runfrictionless.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/runfrictionless
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/runfrictionless/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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