How to figure out stuff

(what to do when you don't know what to do)

Hi all —

Reminder → all my startup playbooks + writeups are here, totally free.

Quick reflection this week.

One of Reframe’s portfolio companies has been struggling getting their sales hires to create their own pipeline.

They tried a bunch of things, and weren’t able to figure out how to make this work. They could get pipeline in other ways, but not with their AEs self-sourcing.

We hit our head against the wall for a while… and then did something different:

We wrote a ~5 page brief on everything we’d tried.

We then went on a listening tour - we’ve talked to ~15 different founders, sales consultants, and sales leaders to try to understand what’s probably not working, and what we should do about it.

We know what we need to do, and where exactly we need external help. We will likely work with a consultant as a result of this listening tour.

This process took a few weeks - and leveled up the team’s knowledge by a few years.

So if you find yourself hitting a wall trying to figure something out:

• Write a brief about what’s going wrong

• Schedule 10-15 conversations with founders, consultants, etc.

  • Why 10-15? Because it takes 5 just to figure out which questions to ask & how to think about things… after 10 you understand what the solution looks like… by 15 you know who’s the best to help.

• Use those conversations to try to understand what’s really not working, how to fix it, and who to work with

If you’re struggling with something, try this! LMK if I can help.

PS - I just moved to New Hampshire this week! If any of you are around here, or know anyone I should meet (in Southern NH west of Nashua), I’d love to meet up for a coffee or beer!