Five signs
- Enquiries wait for a reply because you are busy with something else.
- You cannot say how many people went unanswered this week.
- You had a seller, they left, and everything came back to you.
- You do not know your conversion from enquiry to payment.
- You increased advertising and revenue did not grow in proportion.
The last sign is the most expensive: it means you are paying for enquiries that nobody handles.
What to do when there is no money for a team yet
- Count how many enquiries you failed to answer in a month, and what that is in money.
- Set one rule: a deadline for the first reply.
- Start a list of stalled conversations, a spreadsheet is fine.
- Start quoting price in the opening exchanges.
- Measure conversion by hand for one month.
Those five actions cost nothing and usually produce the first lift. Hiring makes sense after them: otherwise you are hiring a person into a process that does not exist.
How a build starts
- a review of your current calls and threads: where exactly the money stops
- a description of the process, and the written rules
- deal records and reporting
- hiring and onboarding
- a comp plan lined up with the plan
How long it takes
From three months to a fully working team. The first changes in the numbers show up earlier: response speed and the share of conversations quoting price move within the first month, because they are rules rather than skills.