In every company that sells well there’s someone who does it better than the rest. Sometimes it’s a salesperson; often it’s the owner. They do well and even they can’t quite explain why: “I just know how to connect with the customer,” “I’ve got a knack for it.” That instinct is real and worth its weight in gold. The problem is that, as it stands, it’s no use to anyone but that person.
Systematizing is the process of getting that knowledge out of one head and turning it into something the whole team can follow. It’s not about taking the magic away from a good salesperson: it’s about cloning what they do well. And it’s not as hard as it sounds — it just takes discipline to observe and write. Here’s how I do it.
Step 1: observe what they do differently, not what they say they do
There’s a trap here. If you ask your best salesperson how they sell, they’ll give you a generic answer: “I listen to the customer,” “I give good service.” That’s no use. Instinct is precisely what a person does without realizing they’re doing it.
That’s why the first thing isn’t to interview: it’s to observe. Listen to their calls, go with them to a meeting, read their messages. Pay attention to the specifics:
- What do they ask at the start that others don’t?
- At what exact moment do they send the quote — right away, or after understanding something first?
- How do they handle “let me think about it”?
- How often do they follow up, and what do they say in that second touch?
Step 2: write down the pattern, not the anecdote
When you observe several interactions, you start to see a pattern. That pattern is the gold. Your job is to write it down as steps another person can follow.
Don’t aim for a perfect manual. Aim for something as simple as:
“On the first call, before talking about price, I ask three things: what problem they want to solve, what they’ve tried before, and when they need it by. I don’t quote until I have those three answers.”
That’s a systematized step. It’s concrete, it’s replicable, and anyone can follow it tomorrow. Do the same with each key moment: the first contact, discovery, the quote, follow-up, the close. In the end you have a playbook — not a treatise, a practical guide to “this is how we sell here.”
Step 3: turn the pattern into stages and criteria
A loose playbook gets read once and forgotten. For it to live, it has to be tied to your process: the stages I talked about in another post in this series.
The idea is for each pipeline stage to have a clear criterion that comes straight from what your best salesperson does. For example, if they never quote without understanding the need, then the team’s rule is: a deal doesn’t move to “quoted” until those three questions are answered. That way instinct stops being a piece of advice and becomes part of the path everyone follows.
Step 4: make it easy to follow, or it won’t be followed
This is the step almost everyone skips, and it’s where 90% of attempts to systematize die. You write a beautiful playbook, present it in a meeting… and two weeks later no one uses it. Why? Because following it was more work than ignoring it.
Discipline isn’t sustained by willpower; it’s sustained by making the right path the easiest one. If following the process means the salesperson has to open a document, remember the rules, and note everything separately, they won’t do it. If instead the process is inside the tool where they already work — the stages are there, the system reminds them to follow up, the next step is obvious — then following it costs less than not following it.
That, deep down, is what a well-used CRM like Mexus is for: not to police the team, but to make the good process — your best salesperson’s — the path of least resistance for everyone. The tool doesn’t create discipline; it makes sustaining it not depend on anyone’s memory.
The result: talent that gets inherited
When you systematize, something happens that changes your company: the good salesperson stops being a fragile asset and becomes a standard. You can hire someone new and in weeks they’re selling much like your best person, because you didn’t ask them to guess — you gave them the map. And your best salesperson, far from losing value, becomes more valuable: now they’re the one who designs and improves the system, not just the one who executes it.
That’s the point where an SMB stops having luck and starts having method. And method, unlike luck, can be scaled.
Systematizing doesn’t take value away from your best salesperson: it makes them the standard for the whole company.
Frequently asked questions
Won’t my best salesperson resist “revealing” how they sell?
It can happen, especially if they feel you’re taking away their edge. The way to avoid it is to make them the protagonist of the process, not its object: they’re the one who defines the standard and whom you recognize for it. When systematizing turns them into the architect of the method — and not just one more executor — they almost always get on board.
How long does it take to systematize the sales process?
The first useful version takes days, not months: observing a few interactions and writing down the pattern. Don’t aim for the perfect manual up front; aim for a practical guide you can improve as you go. A living, imperfect process is worth far more than a perfect document no one uses.
Do I need a CRM to systematize my sales?
Not to get started: you can write the playbook today in a document. But for that process to hold up with several people and many deals, you do need a tool that keeps it alive and visible. Without that, the playbook gets read once and forgotten; with it, it becomes the team’s natural way of working.
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