run frictionless helps founders scale out of a sales role, using a decision-making framework called the 4Qs. The mistake founders and high performing salespeople make is 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. Scale up a business and free the founder of sales role There are a few things you can try to free a founder from a sales role. One. Don't worry, keep growing. Two. Stop growing the business. Or three, hire a replacement. These are not effective! Over time they will fail you. run frictionless presents an alternative – an option nobody is talking about. Scaling the business with a sales system. A sales system spells out the formula required to make a customer, in a clearly understood sequence. It is similar to a sales funnel or sales process, only more comprehensive. It will tell you the precise number of interactions required to make a customer. If you serve small businesses, this could be 15 interactions. If you serve enterprise forms it could number 25 or more interactions. Predict sales. Distill a sale process to a handful of customer interactions you can teach the whole organization. Win a customer, and know why you won that customer. Get more leads. The book offers several pre-designed customer flows to improve sales you can use right away. Imagine how much business you’re turning away, simply because you’re not starting conversations with customers the way they want. Better decision-making. If you are going to free the founder, staff have to learn to think like the founder. Make everyone accountable with an easy-to-use framework called the 4Qs. Sell 24/7. Automation moves the customers through a sales system even when the salesforce or founder is not at their desk. Scaling up the startup with a sales system A sales system is key to scaling up a startup. If staff follow the formula, you can predict the odds of creating a customer. Imagine a sales system as a series of dials. Turn the dials and you make an improvement. It is not uncommon to improve sales by 25 percent just by turning a dial. You didn't re-engineer the business or substitute staff. Building lasting sales teams Another benefit of a sales system is it augments your workforce. The best people are working on the highest value tasks, and other tasks can be carried out by less experienced folk. The intellectual property of how a customer is made is in the sales system. Each salesperson needs only understand the part of the system where they contribute. Design your own sales system run frictionless will teach you how to design a sales system, using a framework called the 4Qs. It doesn't matter if you are a fintech startup or a traditional medical practice operating for five years. The 4Qs will take what you know intuitively and organize this knowledge into four powerful quadrants, making it easy to run frictionless.
The idea of friction was something new to me when I read this book, and Anthony explains this in a very interesting way with great examples and a few entertaining stories. The 4Qs is a great framework for understanding sales as a system instead of something that just happens naturally. This is essential reading for any founder who wants to get the most out of their salesforce.
This book goes way beyond sales though and looks at how a sale is just the tip of the spear and your product, brand, and internal systems all play an important part in getting the sale. How to get there is the crux of the book and illuminates the different ways to get that done.
A must-read for any startup founder or business owner who finds themselves being the sales champion way too often.
Run Frictionless..." by Anthony Coundouris is the recipe for business success for a new founder that wants to grow their organization without friction or for one that is still driving sales after many years and can’t let go.
This book was especially meaningful to me because I have been fortunate to have been the CEO of three start-ups during my career. One was a Long -Term Acute Care Hospital and the other two were medical service companies. In each organization I was heavily involved in Business Development to drive revenue. In each organization as revenue increased, often at unpredictable and variable rates, there was friction and dysfunction with operations. Although each start-up was successful, keeping the balance between executing our sales process and providing quality and timely services was often a challenge. I wish that I would have had “Run Frictionless” as a roadmap for decision making during these adventures.
What Anthony Coundouris has provided the reader with is a sales system that serves as a “compass” for navigating business growth without friction.
The author describes a four-quadrant approach that reduces friction and builds out a system of shared beliefs and activities on which to scale up sales efforts and grow a business. Ultimately the system allows the founder to step away from the daily grind of driving sales.
The four quadrants are: Who we serve i.e., the customer What we serve i.e., the product Who we are i.e., our organization How we serve i.e., our differentiation
Under each quadrant are several statements of work that needs to be done, how to do it and why you should do it. One of my favorite portions of the book was the case study at the end that illustrated the principles in action.
The book is concise, easy to read, practical and it illustrates what to do and what not to do. As I read the book, I had several lightbulb moments going off in my head.
Startup founders or those who are still driving sales after many years will find this a useful book that will be read and be kept within easy reach for reference.
In the world of Lean, there is an over focus on the supply side of a business and very little attention to the demand side of the equation. Run frictionless takes the Lean idea of reducing pain points that are internal to an organization and applies them to what is most important, the customer experience.
The 4Q framework is something all businesses could benefit from in startup mode as it starts with who is the customer, then designing a product and sales process to service them. This is the opposite of most startups who make a product and either try to sell to everyone or then look for who it will suit. When businesses get this first part wrong, they will never reach their potential as it does not matter how well you do something if it is the wrong thing to do. The 4Q’s shows them a simple framework to success.
I found the book easy to read as it was not too jargon heavy and had good examples as well as explaining the journey in how the author got to his conclusions. The Q1 target for this book is clearly tech startups though the book does reference the 4Q’s being applied across industries.
I look forward to the application of the 4Q principles from this book to my own startup in the manufacturing sector and working with the Run frictionless team to build the business
The 4Q framework created by Anthony Coundouris is an excellent blueprint to enable not only startups but all organizations to not only drive sales but overall business growth in a customer-driven and cross-functional manner. The 4Qs are simple but compelling questions that when answered (using input from across your organization) provides a clear roadmap as to your company's priorities, whom it will serve and how it will do so. What I really love about the book is that throughout the discussion of each of the 4Qs, Anthony provides very practional and actionable tips which he calls them as reducing friction when in fact I would argue they are critical now more than ever to succeed in a highly competitive and challenging B2B markets. For instance, the customer "variants who welcome change" that you should consider when answering "Who You Serve".
This powerful, actionable framework that can also be used in conjunction with other frameworks and approaches to drive your sales and business growth initiatives.
An absolute must read for Startup founders, Business Owners and CEOs of SME and Mid Market companies in particular who struggle with business growth challenges. Do yourselves and your companies justice and get your copies today!!
An impressive and concise guide to answering lots of the questions that businesses face with actionable ideas.
Anthony has a very simple way of breaking down the relationships between 'who we serve', 'what we serve', 'who we are', 'how we serve' systematised into the 4Qs.
Despite the subtitle being very heavily directed at how to free the founder from sales, as a creative director I found the concepts extraordinarily easy to grasp and apply to everything my marketing agency does.
In particular, it made me focus on processes to reduce friction in our internal systems and most importantly try and make the customer experience more enjoyable.
I think the book also helped me consider brand positioning because of the questions posed around who we are and who we serve - and most importantly how we interact with our clients to provide them with the most enjoyable and fulfilling experience, so they return time after time.
The 4Qs help remove bottlenecks inside (colleagues and partners) and outside my company (leads). It makes sure that everyone is on the same page. The 4Qs help align the internal workings of my small company so that we don't create a product that no one wants. It helps us figure out who we want to serve (because we make the best of their investment in the services we provide), and who is not a good fit for our business.
The read is fast, but it is foundational information for anyone that is starting a company or scaling a company. It's all about focusing resources where they are best deployed. I love the way it makes all people in a company a stakeholder in its success!
Product management now has a clear direction, as does the product marketing team. These are both intrinsically combined with product sales such that all parties can see the benefit of each other's work. Fantastic!
The book called out many truths to my businesses operating, shining a light on the inefficiency we may unintentionally be creating in our sales process.
I am not a Founder, rather a sales person in a SME and found every chapter relevant to my business and role.
I would describe the book as intuitive, easy to understand, and easy to apply. As I find with any good business book the concepts are not complicated, they are well thought out and logical with many broad applications. The long list of notes I wrote through the entire book is a good sign of that.
I look forward to removing friction from out sales process!
Read this book ....in 1 night and loved it , so much so, that I am getting involved !
I am happy to spread the idea of Running Frictionless.
Anyone who has a business and is interested in ironing out bottlenecks OR understand the reason why people are not buying from you OR just to implement a new more effective process to optimise revenue ....NEEDS this book .
My only mistake is "lending" it out to someone else...so I have to buy another copy.
The second great thing about Running Frictionless is you get to meet the author and talk to him about how it can all work for you ! Get onto it folks !
What a refreshing way to look at how to communicate the sales strategy in a way that integrates across the product/marketing and sales functions of an organisation. Many businesses focus on how to improve processes within their organisation but forget that the impact the business has on its customers is what matters most. The four Q's gives a useful framework on how to view the business from the customer's perspective.
Run_Frictionless is a gamechanger in the way it provides a simple to understand model on how to scale sales and business growth yet the 4Q model is very comprehensive and very robust. I like the way the 4Q model works allowing you to focus on one quadrant or all four. My favourite quadrants are 3 , Who we are and 4, How we serve. The book is clearly written by someone who understands sales, start ups and how to scale a business and most importantly for me, understands leadership is what removes friction in a business.
In an era when most business books convey simple messages more appropriate for a blog post, Anthony has produced a well written comprehensive guide to design, document and implement a frictionless sales process in any business. This book is one I know recommend to all of my clients and colleagues without any hesitation or stipulation. I am working through the four quadrants in my business currently to adapt to current and future changes in the world of work and sales. Every one of the four quadrants has been of immense value. Among my startup and early stage clients, quadrant one is sometimes avoided for the rigour and discipline it demands. Quadrant 2 and ‘future selling’ was a trip down memory lane for me in one of my previous software companies. Buy the book, apply the tools and insights and you will come out with a sustainable competitive business.
The author's book approaches the pervasive challenge founders face when trying to boost their business development productivity. Growing a business is more than just hiring staff. This book provides advice on how to introduce and launch selling process. The process is based on what he calls the 4Q framework. Actionable advice and relevant examples.
This book was instrumental in rethinking my business and the approach. There are lots of great nuggets in the book set up in a framework that is easy to understand and execute. I had the most impact from the the Q1 and Q2 - This made me hone in on the idea of who we serve and how we serve. Having this clarity reduced the chaos and made me more focused
I am working for a marketing agency and the co-founder introduced this book to me. From a business background, I thought that run_frictionless would repeat the same things in business books. But it isn't at all.
The 4Qs framework in this book opens up a whole new perspective on a company's product, identity, target customers and processes. It helps to establish a mutual language for all departments in a company. Hence, encouraging better communication and reducing frictions.
The book also shares how to combine the Qs together to find "fits". That can result in better decisions being made and consistency within the company
While reading the book, I found out that my company was having lots of the frictions mentioned. There were actionable solutions for these frictions and we are looking forward to applying them.
TLDR; A great read for any small business founders and staff.
Fantastic. This book really resonates with what I am going through with my business right now. Refreshing ideas for startups and old age businesses. One key takeaway for me is "decide to serve a single customer profile, and dominate this profile"
A well thought through, practical guide to help founders get off the tools and focus on growing the business
Run Frictionless is a practical, instructional manual that takes you step by step through the process of putting responsibility where it belongs, and releasing the founder and leadership team to do their real job, which is to grow the business. Building clarity and systems around Who We Serve, What We Serve, Who We Serve and How We Serve, removes any ambiguity within your organisation about who does what and how we do do it, for whom.
I interviewed Anthony Coundouris on my podcast to get under the skin of the system and had him take me through the 4Q framework with one of my companies. He gave me instant clarity and helped me identify bottlenecks I and my leadership teams are creating that are limiting our potential, identify what can be delegated and to whom, and ways we can better serve our customers, our people and our partners
Working as a product manager in a large Australian Telco corporate, it is safe to say that Anthony's book, run_frictionless has not only enhanced how I think about product development but how the many layers and components stitch together to provide customers with a great experience. In an environment where friction is everywhere, run_frictionless has challenged how I think about friction, how I approach it and mostly how I overcome it.
Anthony's writing approach is engaging, insightful and most importantly applicable to almost all start ups, mid size & large scale corporates. The 4 Q's helped me round out my understanding of the end to end product life cycle and the importance of interplay within all 4 quadrants.
The 2nd quadrant, what we serve has served me extremely well over the last 6 months. Anthony's insights into the detrimental impacts of future selling, the importance of workarounds and avoiding customisation wherever possible have helped inform our product roadmap and where we focus our attention.
This is a must read not only for start ups, founders and CEOs but for anyone looking to round out their understanding of the sales cycle and how different areas work successfully together.
This book is refreshingly free from the buzzwords you often get in a sales book. The content is fresh, challenging and confronting, it's also accessible and highly actionable. As a SaaS company founder, I have little patience for books that peddle abstract theories with little real world application. Instead Run Frictionless helps you map a prospect's journey to success (sale) and pinpoint aspects of the journey that need improvement in order to win more deals – whether it be a website contact form, chat bot, or sales call. Anthony's book and 4Q's framework is helping us win a greater number of 'ideal customers' and in a scalable way. In addition, his practical advice on how to involve my team in the rollout of the 4Q's was an unexpected bonus, most books leave you to figure out the implementation - which is where they fall short on delivering the promised gains. Totally impressed and unreservedly recommend Anthony and this book.
I had no idea what a light bulb moment this book was going to have on my business.
The great thing is that this book is not telling you what to do it is more about getting you to think differently about your current and future ways of creating sales. This book is not only for internet retailers, it provides great reference tools which are designed to be effective.
Anyone trying to get and close sales in any industry will get something out of this book. I purchased a few extra copies for some friends and clients.
I have set aside some time each week to remind myself of the sales journey and the book is the first thing i pick up.
As a visionary leader who has led teams internationally, my struggle has been to inculcate and ensue accurate embodiment of the corporate vision. Anthony’s work presented us with visual, succinct corporate language that I can only describe as quintessentially minimalist. Anthony’s work is the absolute Swiss air packed in a yellow paperback (or even better, ebook), so bl#@dy refreshing In the current suffocating smog of corporatese, The concept of running frictionless, pierces right through cumbersome bs of corporate culturalisation and unites the team in the essentials to focus on growing exponentially.
If you've struggled with sales, this book is for you. The author lays out a revolutionary concept around frictionless sales, which is a sales system that makes sales easy. Not only that, but the author shows you what causes an existing sales system or lack thereof to have friction, thereby providing you a way to fix your sales system and grow your business. Reading this book helped me look at my current business and recognize something on a conscious level that I had figured out unconsciously from my previous businesses. Recognizing it consciously is helping me up my business game and get more sales.
Whether you’re a start-up founder or the owner of an established business, you will probably have two priority tasks which are always near the top of your ‘to do’ list - finding more customers (the right kind), and improving the customer experience. But where do you start? The options on where you can spend your time and money are constantly increasing and forever changing.
The answer is to stop what you are doing right now, and spend the next few hours reading RunFrictionless. Once you understand the 4Qs framework and get to the final chapter, it will all make sense on what you need to do next. Read it before your competitors do.
I've been with companies that could've been more successful if they had the insights from this book.
In this book, Anthony shared the hidden pitfalls that startups and seasoned enterprises have that impede them from having a frictionless sales process.
Most importantly, he shared how to fix those gaps by adopting the principles behind the 4Qs, Anthony's secret sauce to a higher and successful sales conversion.
Relatable, easy to read and absorb with a non-fluffed, and yet entertaining, narration of real-life accounts and concepts.
I've always been a fan of processes and automation, his book has made me realize that it is a company effort that most often overlooked by stakeholders. Anthony has educated me on how to build a sales system that can effectively boost a company's approach in the market and how to be ahead of the game. If you are an experienced or non-experienced sales professional I highly recommend reading getting this book. It will change your perspective and help you get out of the ineffective practices that impede businesses from succeeding in sales.
There are so many practical guidelines in this book but as someone who makes a living building brands I am especially appreciative of the acknowledgment of brand consistency and experience in the sales process, e.g., “Customers yearn for predictability and they are prepared to pay a premium for it.” This is such an important yet overlooked element of sales yet without it, sales teams often unknowingly dilute their own company brands. This is just one of many practical applications that the author provides to remove friction and fuel sales. A great read.
As someone who works closely with the founder since the inception of his company, I can say that Anthony is spot on in his understanding of the problems a sales team and their founder face.
Having experienced some of the pitfalls and being guilty of introducing friction in our own sales processes, our company is now applying what we’ve learnt from this book and putting it into practice.
Needless to say, the principles outlined in his 4Qs are not just guidelines but actionable steps one can take articulated in digestible bits.
I would recommend this book to anyone who’s planning to put up their business or has an existing business - the book can provide good insights on how to make your processes work efficiently.
If you have been to a start-up, you can easily relate to most things written on this book and you would definitely tell yourself,” i should have been told these things early on..” :)
I was opening a new boutique spa in Vietnam when I read run frictionless. Starting a new business, it's hard to know what to focus on. Run frictionless gave me a framework and sequence for how to plan and start a business. We all know what has to be done, but not how to think about business. It helped me manage my ideas.
Run Frictionless was an eye-opener for me! It made me realise the mistakes I was making and how I could improve the way I run my business. I especially enjoyed section of the book about Q4 (how we sell), and picked up a few areas that I'm doing right, and where I can change the way we sell our product to customers. Would 100% recommend for anyone running their own business!
Concise and well written, this book offers a very clear framework to building a sales system. Combining lean and agile principles, indeed very timely in this age of business agility.