Team numbers and a leader’s duties
Lesson 29 of 31 in the course “Million Dollar Sales Course”. Free, with animations and a quiz.
What you do and what you get
Last lesson Misha trained his helper to work from a checklist. Now he needs to know whether things are going well, without hovering over them. For this, Berman retells the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution. He honestly calls it one of the most boring books ever written, which is why he boils it down. The core idea: every job has two kinds of numbers. Lead measures are what a person does and fully controls: emails sent, calls made, proposals sent out. Lag measures are what comes later: sales, closed deals, how many people are close to buying. Lag numbers matter, but you can’t move them directly, they show up late. So Berman advises watching what you can control, and the results will follow. For Misha’s helper, a lead measure is, say, how many creators he messaged this week. A lag measure: how many of them agreed to a promo.
Benchmarks for each role
When the work is split into roles, like in lesson 27, each role gets its own numbers. Berman gives benchmarks for cold email at his B2B agency, meaning one company selling services to other companies. According to him, the person finding contacts finds about 200 a day. A personal first line takes 3–5 minutes. Of the emails sent, 4–8% turn into a meeting. The closer turns 10–25% of meetings with cold people into a purchase, and about 80% with warm ones, meaning people who already know the company and showed interest on their own. Why bother: if everyone has their own role and numbers, you instantly see where things break. And an important condition: Berman advises giving the team at least 90 days, ideally up to 180, before drawing conclusions. Misha has a different product, so for him these numbers are a guide, not a rule. He’ll find his own if he writes them down every week.
What one interested person costs
Hormozi measures a team’s return very simply. Take all the money you pay people and divide it by the number of interested people they brought in. An interested person, or lead, is someone who left their contact or responded on their own. The example from his book: $100,000 in payroll and 1,000 leads means $100 each. If one in ten buys, one customer costs $1,000. That number is called CAC, customer acquisition cost. If a customer brings $4,000 in profit over their lifetime (that’s LTGP, lifetime gross profit), you get 4 to 1. Hormozi says he himself spends about $100,000 a month on the team that makes content and gets about 30,000 leads, so roughly $3.33 per person. His rule is simple: if what you spend per customer is no more than a third of the profit from them, you’re fine. For Misha: a helper costs $150 a month and brings 300 people to the list. That’s $0.5 per person.
Ads or sales?
If customers cost too much, the first urge is to fire someone. Hormozi suggests asking one question first: do the people who responded have the problem you solve, and the money to solve it? If not, the wrong people are coming in, and that’s an ad problem. If yes, they buy, but there are too few of them, that’s also an ad problem. And if yes, and they still don’t buy, that’s a sales problem. Hormozi tells the story of a company he invested in. It spent 12 weeks and $150,000 on ads. The right people were getting on calls but not buying. The owner decided ads don’t work and gave up. But the ads worked great, it was the sales that were bad. Hormozi estimates this mix-up cost the company about $30M in business value. The lesson: don’t fire your ad person if the problem is sales, and don’t touch sales if the problem is ads.
A weekly meeting and a question instead of an order
Once a week Berman runs a sales meeting where everyone gets to speak. First, a few minutes of small talk so everyone tunes in. Then each person shares their numbers: what they did (lead measures) and what came of it (lag measures). That shows the whole team’s picture. Plus, nobody wants to be the one admitting they can’t keep up. Personal issues aren’t discussed at this meeting, they get a separate one-on-one talk. Berman advises against Monday morning. Midweek is better, like Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning. That keeps the start of the week free for work and lets people wrap up calmly on Friday. Another idea of his: ask instead of ordering. Not “1,000 emails by Friday,” but “how many emails is it realistic to send this week?” The person might name a small number, and then you discuss it. But a goal they named themselves feels like their own.
Value people: bonuses and growth
Berman retells advice from his mentor Tom Tancredi: people value a one-off bonus more than a raise. According to him, a person would rather take a $2,000 bonus than a $500 monthly raise, even though the raise adds up to $6,000 a year. Why: people get used to a raise quickly, but never to a surprise bonus. But the bonus has to feel real. One company Berman worked for tried to motivate staff with $50 Amazon gift cards, and he didn’t even claim his. He himself aims for about $1,000, adjusted to the company’s pay, so the person truly feels valued. And one more thing about valuing people. When Berman worked at an agency, he wrote in his goals for the year: manage a team of interns. The sales director joked that in five years they might trust him with one intern. That same day Berman decided to leave and build his own business. Now the opposite example from his team: Div Sharma joined as a virtual assistant from India, wanted to make videos, and Berman gave him that chance. Today Div manages Berman’s brand.
Your team has to believe in the product
Berman tells the story of a salesman, about 49, hired by the agency for a senior role. For the first two months he was on fire: he brought in an NBA star and several friends as clients. Then he suddenly stopped recommending friends, and his close rate fell from almost 100% to almost nothing. When Berman asked what happened, the answer was simple: he had stopped believing the agency would deliver what it promised. Berman’s takeaway: the best salespeople believe in what they sell. So a leader has two jobs. First: keep your promises to clients. Second: tell the team about it, so people see the product really changes lives. Berman himself sometimes calls his own sales team to see how fast they pick up. Not to catch anyone out, but to see the company through a buyer’s eyes: in his words, a business only exists in the customer’s mind. For Misha: forward his helper students’ reviews and their first edited videos. It’s easier to try hard when you see what it’s for.
Do it yourself: your team’s numbers
Make a simple weekly table. In the first column, each helper’s lead measures: what they did (messages to creators, subtitled videos, replies to comments). In the second, lag measures: how many new people joined the list and how many bought. Once a month, work out your cost per lead: everything you paid the team divided by the number of new people on the list. If sales are low, ask Hormozi’s question: are the right people coming? If not, fix the ads and creator promos. If yes but they don’t buy, fix sales: the webinar, emails, offer. Set a short midweek meeting where everyone shares their numbers. Ask for goals instead of handing them down. After a good month, give a one-off bonus that feels real, not pocket change. And forward students’ reviews to the team. If you’re under 18, discuss paying helpers with a parent. Next lesson: agencies, when to call them in and how to learn from them.
Check yourself
- Which of these is a lead measure?
Correct answer: How many creators the helper messaged this week. A lead measure is what a person does and fully controls. Messaging creators is up to him, whether they agree isn’t. - What does one person on the list cost?
Correct answer: $0.5. By Hormozi’s formula: everything you paid the team divided by the number of leads. $150 ÷ 300 = $0.5 per person. - What kind of problem is this, per Hormozi?
Correct answer: A sales problem. The people are right: they have the problem and the money, but they don’t buy. By Hormozi’s question, that’s a sales problem. So fix the webinar, emails and offer, not the ads. - What should Misha pick?
Correct answer: A one-off $100 bonus for this month. Per Tancredi’s advice, retold by Berman, a one-off bonus is valued more than a raise: people get used to raises fast, but a surprise bonus sticks. The key is that the amount feels real for this job.