# Sales Discipline

#concept #sales #outbound

## Summary

The execution layer: consistency over intensity, follow-up past the point most people quit, and a founder who does the selling. The primary source is now [[2026-06-15-17-ways-first-client]] (AB Analytics), with [[2026-06-15-rodenko-selling-development-expensively]] for the founder-led-sales claim. This is also where the vault's sharpest disagreement lives — not merely calls-vs-chat, but whether *any online channel works at all* ([[sebastian]]: "Big zero").

## Current Understanding

**Consistency beats intensity** — 30 minutes a day beats 5 hours once a month ([[2026-06-15-selling-development-services-in-the-ai-era]]). The corollaries:

- **5 touches minimum.** ~80% of deals close after the 5th contact; most people quit after the 1st.
- **3 channels × 90 days.** Don't add new methods until these are mastered. Channel-hopping = zero.
- **Ask for [[referrals]] immediately after delivery.** 91% of clients are willing to refer; only 11% are asked. The enthusiasm window is short — "waiting for the right moment" loses it.
- **Customize every first touch.** A template exists to be adapted, never mass-mailed — the concrete instance is the [[2026-06-15-linkedin-mail-template]].
- **Cold-email subject lines carry 47% of open rate** — spend 50% of your time there. Specific beats generic: *"Quick question about [Company]'s checkout flow"* >> *"Ideas to improve your site"*.
- **Follow-up cadence:** Day 0 → 3 → 7 → 14 → 30 (break-up email) — the concrete schedule behind "5 touches" ([[2026-06-15-17-ways-first-client]]).

These figures now trace to a named primary source ([[2026-06-15-17-ways-first-client]], AB Analytics) rather than only the distillation — but that source is promotional (accelerator-member examples), so the numbers are attributable, not independently verified; see Contradictions.

**Measure reps, not results — and budget the lag.** [[2026-07-20-referrals-will-sink-your-business]] ([[dan-martell]]) reaches consistency-over-intensity independently, from the content side rather than outbound, and adds the two pieces this page lacked:

- **The metric substitution.** Not *how many views / did it convert* but *am I getting better / how many reps this week*. Outcomes aren't controllable; rep volume is the only input you own. *"Most of you get bored with your marketing before the market ever does — and you just stop."*
- **The time budget — six months before a marketing system produces leads.** Stated up front precisely so the operator doesn't quit at day 60. The vault's other discipline claims prescribe a cadence (90 days, 5 touches) but never say how long before the cadence pays; this supplies that number, albeit unsourced. See [[marketing-system]].

Two unconnected traditions — a US content coach and a Russian-language outbound practitioner — landing on process-metrics-over-outcome-metrics is the strongest support this page's core discipline claim has. Neither offers data; the convergence is the evidence.

**The closing playbook at volume** ([[2026-07-23-make-my-first-100k-in-month]], [[dan-martell]] — added 2026-07-23). Two closing channels for a $0 operator, chat first:

- **Sell by chat:** every new follower gets "are you here for [content] or [help growing your business]?" (second option last — primes the yes) → pain-awareness questions → offer-doc link → Stripe payment link. He claims 8 figures sold this way.
- **Cold call:** the call's job is **not to sell** — qualify and book a meeting from a meeting. The opener is a curiosity question in the prospect's world plus an explicit "I've got nothing to sell."
- **Objections vs. obstacles** — the most portable tool here: concerns raised *before* the offer are obstacles, *after* it are objections; **surface them up-front so they become obstacles** ("do you have a budget to solve this?"). If they arrive after the pitch, you're playing defense. This is the vault's first concrete principle for the "objection-handling script" gap flagged by [[2026-06-15-meta-analysis-selling-dev-in-ai-era]] — a principle, still not a script.
- **Volume rules:** first 5 calls are throwaways — don't self-judge on them; no answer → **call back within 30 seconds** (second ring reads "urgent"); feed call transcripts to AI to find where you stumble; target **100 no's per day**; **spend nothing** (tools, equipment) until customers have paid.

"100 no's per day" is reps-not-views pushed to its extreme — the metric is rejections collected, an input, not closes, an outcome. Same author as the reps-not-views paragraph below, so consistency rather than corroboration.

**Founder = head of sales.** If you haven't locked in the next level, that's normal — the founder goes back to selling. There is no stage at which this delegates away cleanly ([[2026-06-15-selling-development-services-in-the-ai-era]]). **A third tradition now states it as an investment criterion** ([[2026-07-26-how-to-build-a-billion-dollar-company-2027]], [[oskar-hartmann]], added 2026-07-26): "I'll hire a salesperson" is "a childish idea"; in every large company the founder personally broke through the first customers "like a vacuum-cleaner salesman" — uncomfortable and necessary — and Hartmann says he **does not invest** where the founder doesn't sell. Founder-led first sales is now the vault's most broadly converged discipline claim: RU dev-sales (Rodenko), US coaching (Martell's blueprint has the founder cold-calling), and the VC/product world all state it independently.

**"A year of repackaging is for people afraid to pick up the phone."** Real feedback in a week beats a year of planning. This is the distillation's central discipline claim and a direct rebuke to offer-polishing — worth holding against [[offer-ladder]] and [[productized-service]], both of which are offer-design activities that can absorb unlimited time. **Cross-tradition convergence (2026-07-26):** [[oskar-hartmann]] states the same claim as an investor's red flag — "we've been working on this since 2016, no revenue yet" is "the fattest minus"; duration without revenue is absence of evidence, and he'd "rather talk to a team that started a week ago" ([[2026-07-26-main-principle-of-successful-business]]). His corollary discipline: **endure the pain of reality early** — willingness to launch ugly and look stupid is what separated his two portfolio teams ([[sell-before-build]]). Rodenko's phone-fear diagnosis and Hartmann's duration red flag are the same claim from opposite sides of the table (seller's coach / investor screening pitches).

**Deal psychology** ([[2026-06-15-selling-development-services-in-the-ai-era]]): the client is not a prize — a deal is expertise exchanged for money, neither charity nor a favor. Professionals choose which fights to enter: an athlete doesn't "participate", they go to **win**; a commander doesn't enter a battle without seeing the conditions for victory. Practically, this licenses disqualifying prospects — which is what makes the filters in [[pain-discovery]] and [[ai-market-shift]] usable rather than merely clever.

## Evidence

- **Primary (AB Analytics):** consistency>intensity ("30 min/day beats 5 hours once a month"), 5 touches / ~80% after the 5th, 3 methods × 90 days, referrals 91% would / 11% asked, subject line 47%, Day 0→3→7→14→30 cadence, webinar 60/20/20 → 15–25% — all in [[2026-06-15-17-ways-first-client]]
- **Primary (Rodenko):** "Founder = head of sales"; "a year of repackaging is for people afraid to pick up the phone" — [[2026-06-15-rodenko-selling-development-expensively]]; the athlete/commander "choose your fights" psychology — [[2026-06-15-konspekt-aphorisms]]
- **Independent corroboration (content side):** reps-not-views, "bored with your marketing before the market", the six-month lag before a system produces leads — [[2026-07-20-referrals-will-sink-your-business]], [[marketing-system]]
- Same claims, condensed, in the distillation [[2026-06-15-selling-development-services-in-the-ai-era]]
- Chat DM flow, cold-call qualify-and-book, objections-vs-obstacles, 100 no's/day, 30-second callback, spend-nothing-until-paid — [[2026-07-23-make-my-first-100k-in-month]] ([[dan-martell]])
- Founder sells first, always — as an investor's screening criterion — [[2026-07-26-how-to-build-a-billion-dollar-company-2027]] ([[oskar-hartmann]], third independent tradition)
- Duration-without-revenue red flag; launch-ugly / endure-reality-early — [[2026-07-26-main-principle-of-successful-business]] ([[oskar-hartmann]])
- Chat-first counterposition: "the market is fatigued by sales calls" — [[2026-07-17-design-the-perfect-offer]]
- In-person-only counterposition: online outreach is "Big zero" — [[2026-07-06-sebastian-interview-ai-and-software-engineering]]

## Related Pages

- [[client-acquisition-channels]] — *where* to fish; this page is *how* to work a channel once chosen
- [[marketing-system]] — *whether the machine exists*; shares the reps-not-views discipline and supplies the six-month lag
- [[referrals]] — the channel the follow-up discipline unlocks (ask-immediately, be-specific)
- [[relationships-as-moat]] — the in-person pole of the channel disagreement below
- [[pain-discovery]] — what the touches are actually for
- [[niche-selection]] — discipline against the wrong audience is wasted effort
- [[cloning-over-originality]] — discipline is precisely the "boring part" to clone
- [[outcome-based-selling]] — case studies are the follow-up's ammunition
- [[overview]]

## Contradictions / Uncertainty

**Calls vs. chat — the two sources disagree.**

| [[2026-07-17-design-the-perfect-offer]] | [[2026-06-15-selling-development-services-in-the-ai-era]] |
|---|---|
| The market is fatigued by sales calls | Founder is the main salesperson; a year of repackaging is for people afraid to pick up the phone |
| Educated buyers often know more about what you sell than you do — forcing a discovery call is friction, not qualification | 5 touches minimum, 3 channels × 90 days, customize every first touch |
| Default to selling in chat; escalate to a call only if the buyer asks | Webinar formula 60/20/20 → 15–25% conversion (a synchronous, call-like motion) |
| "You can literally make a million dollars a month over chat" | — |

Partial reconciliation: these may be about different *stages* — the video is about the closing motion (a buyer who already knows what they want shouldn't be forced onto a call), the distillation about the prospecting motion (nobody comes to you at all without consistent outbound). They're not strictly incompatible; a chat-first close is compatible with disciplined multi-touch outbound. But the postures genuinely differ in spirit, and the "million dollars a month over chat" line is unsupported motivational framing rather than evidence.

**Update (2026-07-23): the split softens further — one source now prescribes both.** [[2026-07-23-make-my-first-100k-in-month]] runs chat-DM *and* cold calls side by side as the two closing channels, chat as the easier start. And if the chat-first 07-17 speaker is Martell too (plausible — see [[dan-martell]]), then the "market is call-fatigued" pole and the "100 cold calls a day" pole are the *same person* addressing different buyers, which would dissolve calls-vs-chat from a doctrine dispute into channel-by-context. Unconfirmed.

**The deeper split — does online outreach work at all?** [[sebastian]] rejects the whole apparatus: sales agencies, cold calling, email, LinkedIn campaigns, content, SEO = "Big zero"; only in-person builds the trust that closes. That is a flat contradiction of the 3-channels/cold-email discipline above, not a stage distinction. Best current reconciliation is **audience** (enterprise buyers ignore cold outreach; SMB/startup buyers still convert on it) — see [[client-acquisition-channels]] and [[relationships-as-moat]]. `Status: tentative` — genuinely unresolved.

**The statistics are now attributable but still not verified.** They trace to [[2026-06-15-17-ways-first-client]] (AB Analytics), a named primary source — an upgrade from "uncited via distillation." But that source is promotional (its success stories are paid-accelerator members), so treat the figures (80%/5th touch, 91% vs 11%, 47% subject line, 15–25% webinar) as one practitioner's marketing-flavored claims, not independent data.

## Next Questions

- Is the online-vs-in-person split an audience difference (enterprise vs SMB), or does Sebastian's "Big zero" generalize?
- What are the 3 channels for this vault's owner ([[eugene]]) specifically — and does his buyer type favor in-person per Sebastian?
- Do any of the cited percentages have a source beyond the AB Analytics video?
