Grow, grow, grow. A sales machine is an entrepreneur who views IT as a commodity. Highly focused on recurring revenue and aggressive growth.
What they look like: They have a polished "vCIO" presentation, professional marketing materials, and a dedicated sales team.
Strategy Status: Very proactive regarding growth, but often strategically shallow regarding technical depth.
Strengths: Rapid customer acquisition and high valuations. They are excellent at "painting the vision" for the client.
Major Gaps:
Service Delivery: There is often a disconnect between what sales promises and what the engineering team can actually deliver.
Technical Quality: They may prioritize high-margin, "cookie-cutter" solutions over what is actually best for a client's unique security needs.
Staff Churn: Technicians often feel undervalued and overworked in a "sales-first" culture.
Clients judge you hardest right after they sign. Run structured onboarding processes that are on brand, professional and consistent — so the experience you promised in the sales meeting is the one they actually get.
Don't split your team, The COOP can run a dedicated onboarding tech team for members, including traveling onsite tech's.
High-growth businesses lose institutional knowledge fast. Build and maintains run books, client environment documentation, and standard operating procedures — so your delivery team isn't starting from scratch on every job.
A shared resource focused on getting these tasks done and keeping them updated.
Run structured check-in touchpoints with your clients — getting satisfaction signals and surfacing concerns early. You get a clear view of account health before it becomes an account cancellation.
QA is a resource underpinning your consistent quality.
Projects are one of the most difficult things to deliver, balancing costs, expectations, delays and scope creep.
Put systems in place so everyone, including the client knows where they are.
People who excel and reach the top get training and coaching to help them improve.
Getting sales training from seasoned professionals in invaluable.
As part of the COOP membership you get access to sales training.
#1. Objective - knowing technology continually changes and develops, so will the COOP resources - enabling members to stay ahead of competitors.
The more we share and get involved, the more value we create for ourselves and others.
The following situation is common.
The business had been going for around 5+ years and had got some early traction. In the early days the owner was hungry, hustling and had enough clients to go it alone. Eventually they added tech's and kept winning more clients until it kind of dried up.
Around the 5 year mark, they were hitting a wall. Revenue wasn't growing much, the tech stack was getting more and more expensive each year, clients were questioning costs and new prospects were putting them through more and more hoops to win work. Everyone was working hard and it was a pressure cooker environment at times. The owner was barely paying themselves a working wage.
Even with this going on, the owner felt that things were strong in the business - if only they could get more customers.
Current state:
The painful reality: They're not dying, but they're not growing either. Just... stuck.
Important: whether you're a start-up or reaching $3m, the journey is similar for everyone. The specific time and situation will be slightly different but getting from A to B is nothing new.
Expect to make more than $500k take home profit per year - action the Solutions (you don't need more advice).
Surface diagnosis: "We need more clients / leads"
Actual issues:
The real problem underneath it all:
You're too close to see it clearly + too busy to fix it yourself + can't afford to hire the help you need.
Knowing the 80/20 rule vs (prepared to apply the rule)
The 80/20 works. A few small changes move the needle — fast — in the right direction.
Start with clarity, then you can make informed decisions with quantifiable results.
How do you get clarity? You start to measure everything.
Benchmark your business today - see where you end up tomorrow.
Get real about where you are right now
Most owners know something's off. But they don't have clarity on what or how much.
The problem: not everything is quantifiable at first.
For this owner, they scored it like this:
Sales process: 8/10 (really good at sales) vs reality
Operations: 7/10 vs reality
The founder's gut feel: "We're around 7/10 overall"
Reality: More like 3-4/10 once you measure it.
That gap? That's why they were stuck. It's important to remember, this is good news - because every incremental improvement from here is positive.
• Average client value: $2,500/month
• 3 new clients = $7,500 MRR = $90k ARR
• CO-OP membership: $24k/year
Payback period: 3.2 months
The full year's investment is already recovered, and we haven't even touched marketing yet.
• Proposal turnaround: 2-3 days (deals stay warm)
• Win rate tracked and improving (67% on qualified opps)
• Pipeline visibility (owner knows what's coming, can plan)
• Staff utilization up to 58% (better workflow)
3 new clients closed (vs. typical 0-1 in a quarter)
From stuck at $200k to growing 40% in 12 months, with the same team size.
But more importantly, they got back what was lost:
Financial ROI:
The ripple effects:
This is the CO-OP model working: One member's transformation creates assets, knowledge, and capabilities that benefit everyone.
Most small business owners, know what to do and those that don't can learn quickly. Ask yourself, if I know what to do, then what's stopping me?
The short answer; a lack of time and money.
The next step you take can change your life. Small steps before you start running.
"put the rocks in first"
The Big Rocks that build the foundations are the #1. priority. What matters to your business might be different from the person beside you but those big priorities are the same.
Sequence matters because diverting valuable cashflow to unimportant or right thing at the wrong time will hurt.
Small improvements stack up.
80:20 cleanup creates disproportionate positive returns.
Some quick research will illustrate a common thread when it comes to the #1 most important thing. I like the one below.
“revenue you can keep.”
That’s the overlap of:
Sales (create demand + close + repeat)
Delivery (build + retain + expand + repeat)
Or Happy Profitable Clients + Happy Efficient People Doing Great Work.
The COOP membership enables your business to put it's best foot forward.
Growth Blueprint:
focus on - customers
focus on - delivery
optimal outcome = balanced resources.
