Built to Sell Chapter 6: Finding the Right Buyers

Chapter 6 is called “The Candidates” and despite what the title might suggest, it’s not about buyers yet. It’s about something even more fundamental. Who should sell your product? And should you be willing to burn 40% of your revenue to build something real?

Let me explain.

Cleaning House

Alex starts this chapter by doing some painful but necessary work. He fires Tony the copywriter (who he doesn’t need anymore since they’re focused on logo design) and lets Dean go too. Dean doesn’t take it well. Nobody likes hearing they don’t fit anymore.

He also decides not to replace Sarah, who left earlier. All together, these cuts save about $195,000 per year. That’s enough money to hire two salespeople without increasing his costs.

So here’s what happened. Alex just restructured his entire team around the Five-Step Logo Design Process. He kept the people who fit (Rhina and Chris) and let go of the ones who didn’t. That takes guts when you’re running a small company and you know these people personally.

A Thank You That Actually Matters

There’s a small moment in this chapter that I think is really important. Alex gets a thank-you email from Ziggy, the client they did the Natural Treats logo for. But here’s the thing. The email doesn’t praise Alex. It praises Rhina and Chris.

For someone who’s been the center of everything in his business, this is huge. For the first time, the client is happy and Alex wasn’t even the one doing the work. That’s when you know you’re building a real business, not just a job with extra stress.

I’ve seen this pattern many times in IT. When the team gets the credit instead of the leader, it means the system works. When only the boss gets praised, the bus factor is one person and that’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Blake vs Angie: The Real Lesson

Now we get to the main event. Alex needs to hire two salespeople. He interviews several candidates but two stand out: Blake and Angie.

Blake is the polished guy. Cornell degree, fancy cufflinks, Rolex from daddy, two years at a big advertising agency. He knows the creative industry. He speaks the language. He talks about brand attributes and integration and TV reach. He interviews beautifully.

Angie is completely different. State school, started selling mobile phones at a retail store. Then moved to selling yellow pages advertising. Top 10% in the country. When Alex asks what makes her professional, she gives him exact numbers. How many meetings to close a sale. How that rolls up to weekly, monthly, quarterly goals. Everything is a system.

Alex is impressed by both but for different reasons. Blake is comfortable. Angie is strange to him, like “peering at an exotic animal at the zoo” as the book puts it. Alex has spent his whole career around creative people and has never met someone this disciplined.

Ted’s Counterintuitive Advice

When Alex describes both candidates to Ted (on a sailboat, because Ted apparently makes all important decisions while sailing), Ted doesn’t hesitate. “Avoid Blake like the plague. Hire a team full of Angies.”

Why? Because Blake is a consultative seller. He asks open-ended questions, finds out what clients want, then customizes the solution. That’s great for a traditional service business. But Alex isn’t running that anymore.

Product salespeople like Angie do something different. They take a fixed product and figure out how to position it to meet client needs. They can’t change the product every time a customer asks for something special. They work within constraints. And that’s exactly what Alex needs for the Five-Step Logo Design Process.

This was a genuine “aha” moment for me. I’ve worked in IT companies where the sales team would promise anything to close a deal. Custom features, special integrations, whatever the client wanted to hear. Then engineering would suffer trying to deliver something that was never part of the plan. I’ve seen entire products collapse under the weight of custom work that was supposed to be a “one-time thing.”

So Ted’s advice is really about protecting the process. Hire people who sell what you have, not people who will promise what you don’t.

The Hardest Part: Dropping Your Biggest Client

Then Ted drops the real bomb. He tells Alex to stop doing all other work and only focus on logo design. That means telling MNY Bank, which accounts for 40% of revenue, that they can no longer do their advertising work.

Alex almost falls off the boat. Figuratively. Maybe literally too, given how fast Ted was sailing.

Ted uses a great line: “You can’t be half pregnant.” If Alex keeps doing custom work on the side, he sends mixed messages to everyone. His team, his clients, the market. The Five-Step Logo Design Process never gets a real chance to succeed because there’s always an easy fallback to doing things the old way.

This is the scariest advice in the book so far. Walk away from 40% of your revenue on purpose. Most business owners would never do this. But Ted’s argument is solid. If your biggest client only works with you personally and you keep serving them, then when you try to sell the business, you’ll be locked in for years. The company stays dependent on you, which is exactly what you’re trying to fix.

The Sailing Metaphor

Ted ends the chapter with a sailing metaphor that actually works pretty well. He does a jibe, which is a sharp turn where the sail swings violently from one side to the other. There’s a moment of chaos, a moment where you feel out of control. But if you don’t commit fully and pull the tiller all the way, you never complete the turn and you end up in the water.

“I’m asking you to jibe the Stapleton Agency.”

Good line. And it captures what this whole chapter is about. Half measures don’t work. You either commit to specialization fully or you stay stuck where you are.

My Takeaway

Two things from this chapter stuck with me. First, hire for the process you have, not the process you wish you had. If you sell a standardized product, hire product salespeople. Don’t hire service sellers who will want to customize everything.

Second, the courage to cut revenue that doesn’t fit your strategy. In science, we call this pruning the hypothesis. You have to let go of the branches that don’t lead anywhere, even if they currently produce fruit. It hurts, but the tree grows stronger because of it.

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