Sell For Scale - B2B Sales Systems to Scale Revenue Without Hiring Rockstars

Double Your B2B Sales Velocity Without Chasing New Leads or Reps

• Dylan Starr • Season 1 • Episode 17

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Want to increase B2B sales without constantly hunting for new leads? In this episode of Sell for Scale, I’m breaking down exactly how you can double your B2B sales pipeline velocity — without hiring more sales reps or pumping more budget into ads.

Most founders think scaling B2B sales means adding more leads to the funnel. But what if the real problem isn’t lead flow — it’s friction inside your sales system?

In this episode, I’ll show you how to shift from volume to velocity. You’ll learn how to fix your sales pipeline, unlock higher conversion rates, and drive more B2B sales using the leads you already have.

Here’s what we cover:

✅ The 3 levers that instantly improve B2B sales pipeline velocity
✅ How to reduce friction in your sales system and stop losing deals
✅ How to use “BAMFAM” (Book a Meeting From a Meeting) to keep deals moving
✅ Why “thinking it over” is where B2B deals die — and how to control the frame instead
✅ My 5-day Pipeline Velocity Audit — the exact checklist I use with clients
✅ The soft accountability script that reactivates ghosted leads
✅ How to build a follow-up system that moves deals forward without being pushy

If you lead a sales team or manage the sales process inside a growing B2B company, this episode is for you. You'll walk away with a crystal-clear view of how to optimize your sales system, reduce drag at every stage of the pipeline, and start closing deals faster — without hiring superstar closers or hoping your team figures it out on their own.

If you’ve got no-shows, stuck deals, and proposals that never get reviewed, you’re leaving money on the table. This episode will help you fix that — fast.

▶ BONUS: I also walk you through a 5-Day Pipeline Velocity Audit you can implement this week to boost your B2B sales conversion rate by 40-60%.

Liked this episode?
Make sure to check out Episode 14, where I break down why most B2B offers can’t scale — and how to fix them before you waste time on lead gen.

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Want to close more deals with less resistance?
Download the Ultimate Agenda Formula — the same framework that helped Malick close $54K in his first week and Jason Capital scale to $1.3M in just 4 months.

If this episode hit home, subscribe to Sell For Scale — the sales podcast for B2B founders and sales leaders who want to build predictable systems, close high-ticket deals, and scale without hiring rockstars.

Learn more: https://dylanstarr.com/
Follow Dylan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-starr-a07698110/

PS: If you're ready to build a sales machine without relying on superstar closers, DM me and let's talk frameworks.


#B2BSales #SalesPodcast #HighTicketSales #SalesTraining #AppointmentSetting #OutboundProspecting #SalesFrameworks #ClosingDeals #ScalingSalesTeams #SalesSystems #FounderLedSales #PipelineGeneration

In today's episode, we are covering how to double your B2B pipeline velocity without even needing to double your lead flow. You can actually scale revenue faster if you just fix how deals move through your pipeline instead of this constant need and urge to chase new leads. My name is Dylan Star and I've worked with multiple seven and eight figure companies. I'm talking agency owners who leverage things like cold outreach and cold outbound going from zero to a hundred K plus months, and. Founders like Jason Capital, who wanted to go from B2C to B2B launch, a brand new offer from scratch who did zero to 1.4 million in as little as four months leveraging paid ads. And anytime I'm talking to other founders, executives, or sales leaders, they always tell me the same thing. The number one problem they tell me when I say, Hey, what's the biggest challenge you're facing right now? They always say, well, well, Dylan, I, I need to add more leads to the equation. I need to bolt on, a cold calling team, or maybe we need to bolt on, putting ads in place so that we can increase leads. this is the main problem that I see in B2B sales. It's that Most founders believe they need more leads to grow revenue. But what if that's not the real bottleneck? Think about it. If you have a busted pipe that is clogged and water's moving through slowly, or even worse, maybe there's holes in the pipe and water's leaking, does it really make sense to bolt on another avenue to increase lead flow into a busted pipe? Well, no, of, of course not. And right now, if you're listening to this, you may have a CRM. With tons of leads from the past 3, 4, 5 years, or a pipeline of deal stages of people sitting in no shows, who've never showed up for a call or past proposals that have been sent out to prospects over the years that you've never followed up with. Tons of deals are staring you at the face right now in your pipeline, and you just need to know how to move those deals through each stage in an effective way. Fix that, and then everything else will fall into place.'cause when you focus on velocity rather than volume. You create the foundation for predictable and sustainable growth without this constant need to chase new prospects. And that is exactly what we are gonna cover in today's episode. So we are gonna break everything down in today's session into three parts. Number one, the three levers that you can pull to double pipeline velocity. These are powerful strategies that you can use to accelerate deals without requiring additional lead generation efforts. So if you're listening to this and you're super stressed out about how to get more leads, but you know you have a pipeline for old deals or maybe you have an old lead list that you can go use and you can test, pay close attention. I promise you this episode's gonna help you out tremendously. Number two, eliminating drag at every deal stage. These are gonna be practical techniques to identify and remove the friction points that are causing deals to stall in the first place. And finally, number three, a five day pipeline velocity audit. This is gonna be a step-by-step framework to diagnose and fix your slow moving pipeline in as little as less than a week. And my commitment to you in today's episode is that by the end of this presentation, you will have actionable strategies that you can implement immediately for faster revenue growth. Let's get into it. Velocity lever number one, reduce friction in the pipeline. The key insight here is every stall deal, costs, time, and it can also be costing you trust with your prospects. Now when you think about pipeline in B2B as a a macro level, okay, you start prospecting, you wanna bring leads through a qualification process, then you wanna do as many demos as possible because you know, the more demos you do, the more proposals you get out and the more proposals you get out, the more deals you close. Right? We all know this in B2B, that's common sense, but what most people don't realize is that you wanna have a five day maximum stage time. When I say stage time, I mean the stages of your pipeline, like Nohow show demo. Proposal, follow up, whatever it is, think about each one of those as a stage. How can we make this effective to where no deal remains in a single pipeline stage, longer than five business days without any kind of movement or, or. Any kind of clear next steps. If they're sitting there for five days and you have next steps, like your notes or, or a task reminder for something coming up, that's completely fine. But we wanna make sure that there's action and, your deal stages are moving fluidly and they're never just sitting there and getting clogged up, or even worse sitting there for months on end. That is just not an effective process. And then. The next thing you wanna focus on is a same day proposal turnaround. Okay? It's very important that you have prepared templates for your proposals, whatever that may be done in advance. You wanna be able to deliver them immediately when the prospects are ready, okay? Instead of doing this custom stuff where it takes time to go and make a new one every single time, it sounds like common sense, but you would be very surprised. How often it is that people do custom work and have to give that over instead of just making it simple and having the process into templates. And finally, always schedule next action. Never end a meeting without a concrete scheduled. Next step on both parties. Calendars, there's a term in B2B. You may have heard this before, and it's called bamfam. It stands for. Book a meeting from a meeting. This means when you're talking to prospects, no matter what stage it's at, it could be a follow up, it could be your first interaction. It doesn't matter. You always want to try to lock in when that next interaction is gonna be right then and there. Now, this is a skill, okay? This is very important to train yourself and your team. You must realize that this is a skill because sometimes prospects are gonna come up with the most outrageous excuses that they can to be like, oh, well, yeah, I'll get back to you, or. Or, oh, no, no, no. I, I need time to go and look at my calendar and I'll give you, I'll give you a quick tip on, on how to handle that. I like to just tell people, Hey, you know what? No worries. I know you're busy looking at your calendar. What I like to do is just, I just wanna lock in a, a day if you're super busy, just where I can reach out to you for like 15 minutes. So at least we know on that day that, that we will be in contact. So. at a minimum, even if you can't lock'em into a specific timeframe, you can at least go and put a note and and a time that they know and expect that you're gonna go and give them a call for 15 minutes as a last resort. But the key here is that they know and understand that on a specific day, even if the time's not included, you are going to be reaching out to them. That is very, very important.'cause if you don't do this, then it's gonna take. A lot more time to try to follow up with them and reengage them. So it's better to always just lock that in in place. Now, could they still cancel the call? Of course. the important thing is you already have it locked in. Velocity Lever number two, controlling the frame. If you have been listening to this show. At all for the past plus months and episodes. You know, I talk about frame control a lot. This is super, super important and the key insight here is that thinking it over. For prospects, this is where deals die, and you wanna use the right frame. And what we use is something I call the qualify frame. This. What this does is it keeps urgency focused on their problem and not just the sale. This is where you ask questions like, what happens if this problem isn't solved by X date? Okay, if there's a major problem going on, you wanna tie timeline to it and literally ask the prospect, well, what happens if this problem continued? What is it gonna cost them? And that is very, very key because once you know the cost, you can actually anchor to the cost. And when you tie timelines to the ongoing cost of their problem. Not to things like arbitrary discount deadlines, that's gonna diminish your value. Okay? This is what a lot of people do when they make a mistake. they want to say, oh, as time goes on, let's just push the deal through by, by discounting and lowering our price. No, no, no, no, no. You wanna tie timeline to the cost that they give you so that they're made. Very much aware that every month that goes by is going to cost X amount of dollars. Very important. And finally. You wanna have your proposals with booked calls, okay? Never send a proposal without a confirmed follow-up call already scheduled to discuss it. I cannot highlight this enough. I see this mistake so many times with other businesses, okay? What they'll do is you'll just, okay, yeah, here's a proposal. I'm gonna send it over to you. go ahead and review it. and just get back to me if you have any questions. Now, we've all been there. What happens whenever you do that? Well, typically they don't have questions and you have to now go and call them or email them or send them this awkward, message like, Hey, just, just checking in. Right. Did you get a chance to look over the proposal? Anytime a prospect has questions, you want to be there to address the questions, a, k, a, the objections while you're there with them. It's okay to send the proposal out for them to review before your next call. Totally fine, but don't send out a proposal without having a call locked in. This is going to kill all the momentum in your process, and it's no wonder why some people have a 3, 4, 5, or even six plus months long sell cycle because they're making very, very key mistakes that has costing 'em a ton of money. Velocity lever number three, follow up that moves deals forward. You gotta have the right follow up process in place. Okay. The key insight here is that most follow up is either too soft or it's too pushy. Now we don't wanna seem desperate, of course. We wanna have a a fluid follow up process, and I wanna break this down into actual days so that you can use these days to help you out if you have no follow up process in place whatsoever. Okay? Days one to three, this is what we call a value added follow. You wanna do things like Send Loom video that's personalized, just recapping key points from your last conversation. This is super easy to do. You can just go through your notes that you have and it's just a recap, just letting 'em know that, hey, we remember the problem, we remember what's going on, and it just lets 'em know that you are actually listening. Then you also wanna share any relevant case studies that will address their specific challenges. Again, the the key here is relevant. Every business and business owner wants to know that you have worked with people that are just like them. this is the, the objection that's always going through their mind is, can they actually help someone like me? Have they worked with somebody in my industry? Have they worked with somebody that has had my specific problem? And if the answer to that is yes, then. You wanna make sure you're organizing all your testimonials and case studies in a way that is easy to understand what that problem is so that you can send that to specific people. So make sure you are organizing all your case studies. Don't just have an elaborate, document or thing in place where it's just a ton of videos that aren't actually labeled accordingly. Make sure you're labeling case studies the right way You wanna focus on providing new insights, okay. Not just checking in. Don't do this cringe. Follow up process that a lot of people do where like, Hey, it's me. We're, we're just checking in. Right? that doesn't work. Just give them value and keep them up to date. My favorite thing to do, especially during the first three days, is if I have a recent win from my program, I love to take that win and make that the new insight. Imagine combining it, saying, Hey, here's a, here's a a client that we're working with right now that just got this key result. That you know they're looking for and, and then, and giving them an insight on how they did it. You're giving them value on something that you implemented with that client that's gonna get them excited to have that implemented in their business, especially if they have to go back and talk to their team. That's super, super powerful because when you're dealing with other businesses and there's other team members that are in place, you gotta understand that their. Excited to work with you, but they also have to convince their team to be excited as well. So I think of follow up as ammunition. How can I be on that person's side and give them as much ammunition as humanly possible to help convince their peers, right? So make their life easier by giving them as much as you possibly can. Days four to five. This is what's called soft accountability. You wanna just ask 'em directly if you haven't heard anything back. It's very simple. You just say, Hey, do you want me to keep this opportunity open? Typically when you do this, most people will be honest with you and they won't waste your time. They'll tell you yes or no. Most people will be like, oh, hey, sorry, we got caught up. I was trying to bring this over to X, y, Z in our company, but they've had tons of meetings. You know, I'm, I apologize. totally fine. And if they're not interested or something came up, or there's an issue with, let's say the proposal, then they will get back to you and hopefully let you know. you wanna create a gentle decision point. At this part of the process that that's not being pushy. Okay. That's very, very key. And provide an easy out that often prompts honest feedback. Okay. Lemme say this again. Provide an easy out that often prompts honest feedback. most people, if they're prideful or they have a big ego, Even if it's something to do with pricing, they don't wanna feel less than, and their ego won't let them actually come to you and be honest with you and tell you what's going on because they're prideful, right? So anytime you can structure this in a way that gives them an easy out to where it's not gonna affect their pride, Then they will more than likely take that out, especially if you know that they're on the fence and they're probably not gonna go and move forward. So make it easy for them. But the goal here is to make it easy in the way that they give you feedback. Okay. We wanna always ask about feedback. Lemme give you an example. I have a client right now who. Had a prospect who was in their pipeline since May. Okay. And this lady spoke to someone on the team and she didn't feel like, she was being understood and she was being heard. And again, this was back in May. So that's, June, July, August. So three months ago, so this is about three months ago. Time. We're recording this. She gets a message from this prospect who thankfully, without us asking, wanted to give her honest feedback because she's like, Hey, I've been seeing your content and I love it. It really resonates with me and I know I need help, but can I please give you some feedback? So naturally, the business owner was smart and said, yes, absolutely. We love feedback, okay? Because feedback not only helps us improve the process, but it also gives us the opportunity to still close the deal. So while she got the feedback on how the prospect was really feeling and opened up, she was also able to understand her needs and save the deal from where the previous rep, the sales rep, actually dropped the ball and the business owner was able to go and close the deal herself, which by the way was a paid in full. So feedback is great to improve process, and it's also great to get them onto a call and still gives you an opportunity to understand their needs and hopefully bring the deal home. So huge win. Very, very proud of her for, for doing that. days six plus. This is what we call strategic escalation. You wanna share a new resource or insight that wasn't previously discussed, okay? Because think about it, that we're going on Around a week or even longer, and we wanna keep them in the loop. So if your organization is always creating new lead magnets or resources or any type of value stuff that you're testing, it's really, really good to help reengage deals by sending those resources out to people who are a little bit colder or. Or have been in the pipeline for longer than a week. Okay. They're gonna be grateful for it, hopefully, as long as it's a good resource. consider appropriate escalation to leadership if warranted. Okay? So if somebody's on the fence and depending on, who you have in your organization, if you have to get anyone involved on your team that is in leadership position, let's say it's the business owner or your sales leader, whoever, then this is a good time to go ahead and do that. See what they can do, how they can get involved to help you push over the deal. And finally create a closing window of opportunity that drives decision. Okay. having deadlines in place for when you're going to move your pipeline stages to loss is super, super important. I like I. Leveraging pipeline to where we have lost and abandoned. And the way we do it is lost means if they've been sitting in the pipeline for longer than 15 days, and this is a qualified prospect. Okay, lemme say that again. Qualified then. That means they could have closed. So lost means a qualified prospect for whatever reason didn't close. So we're gonna mark it as lost. Notice that I didn't say delete it from the pipeline. I said mark it as lost 'cause it's still gonna be there.'cause you can still follow up with lost as you filter your pipeline. Like you will have a filtering stage in pipeline that says. View as open, which are all open deals. Abandoned, which is all abandoned deals and loss, which is gonna show all loss deals. You still can follow up with loss, which are qualified prospects. Okay? Abandoned means that they are disqualified. This is a prospect who, for whatever reason. Whether it's a mindset issue or a business situation issue for timing or whatever, whatever your qualifications are, if they did not meet those qualifications, you simply marked them as abandoned. Now. I always recommend people follow up with abandoned every quarter. So while you're going through and filtering out your pipeline, you're moving deal stages over. You're hitting your lost once a quarter. It's good to reengage your abandoned and send something over. Get in contact because their situation could have changed. Whatever that thing was that made them not qualify then could still change. And you never know. Sometimes deals will move forward three or even four years later, and I'm assuming if you're listening to the show, you are in it for the long call, which is good. We're not in it for short term. We wanna be in it for 10 plus years, and you will still close deals that are from one to even three years ago because timing always changes. Alright, number three, the five day Pipeline velocity audit. So you guys notice on the show, I love, giving you guys ways to audit every part of your process as a bonus. It's fun and, super important because. It's hard as a business owner to really know what it is that we need to fix or know when it is the right time to scale if we don't know what to look for. And so here's how it works for your pipeline. Number one, you wanna identify anywhere there are stuck deals. Find all opportunities that have been in the same stage for more than 10 days, and list out whatever you think it is that is blocking that from moving forward. Okay? 10 plus days. Write this out. Number two, audit pending proposals. Review all sent proposals that you've ever sent out that is awaiting action and implement the day four and five accountability strategy. Okay? You want to go ahead and, and use that to reach out to everything that is pending. Proposal review Number three, check discovery to proposal lag. Measure average time from discovery, call to proposal delivery, and identify ways to reduce it. Okay, this is super important. You can simply just go into your CRM and look at the dates. What day did they have? Their very, very first. Interaction discovery call. If you have a discovery call process, most people do. If you don't and and you do discovery through things like chat and you have a strategy call, that's okay too. You can start it from the strategy call, but typically most B2B companies have a discovery call process. What's the length of time from discovery call to. The proposal delivery and average that out. Is it one week? Is it two weeks? Is it a month? Great, whatever that is. Now we wanna focus on making that a KPI and seeing how can we reduce the time that they go from discovery call to proposal being sent out. Because you already know you're gonna have follow ups. That's the majority of the revenue. The faster we get through the process, the faster deals are going to, close, and the faster you collect cash. Number four, evaluate your follow-up cadence. It's crazy to me how many. Businesses and organizations don't even have a follow-up cadence and the surprise on, on people's faces when deals move over and they're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that we were sitting on on this many deals this entire time, and we didn't even change our leaf flow. The answer is like, yes, that's the entire point, because follow-up is absolutely crucial. Growth and in sales, and you wanna review your team's follow up scripts and their timing and ensure that it's being followed so that they are driving momentum. So anything you can do and anything you test, list it out into a script. Okay. Give it to your team and have everyone following the same process so that you know they're doing the same thing, so that you can actually drive momentum and make changes if you just make follow up a free for all. It's really, really hard to know what's working, what's not working, because most people on your team aren't gonna know what to do. So just be the leader. Create the script lead by example if you have to. But put a process in place that you can go and test, and then keep revising that process for follow up. And I promise you it's gonna be a game changer. And finally, number five, eliminate or escalate dead deals. Make final decisions on stall opportunities. Okay? You gotta make a final decision. Either close them or escalate them. And finally, number five, eliminate or escalate dead deals. You wanna make final decisions on stalled opportunities, okay? You either wanna close them out and get them completely out of the pipeline, or you wanna escalate them with a completely new approach. Now, why is this super important to eliminate or escalate? Because it gets. Very overwhelming very quickly, if you just let an, uh, abundance of deals just sit at every stage and pile up in your pipeline, that's gonna just cause stress for you and stress for your sales team. So you wanna get them out of the way. You want a very clean and. Easy to digest pipeline. And I also recommend that whatever deal stages need to move over, make sure you're putting this as part of your end of day process for your sales team. Whenever they go and put their numbers and KPIs for the day, that should be an indicator as like a timestamp. So when people post their end of day numbers and report, I see that as them clocking out. And that's what I tell my team. I said, Hey, if you go and you put your end of day. Report in that is you telling me that, Hey, we have done everything on our checklist for the day, right? We're done with work. We are mentally checked out. we don't need to work anymore. And so essentially that means that they've marked all their stages correctly in the pipeline. They've followed up and cleared out all their unreads, they've done everything they're supposed to do, so they don't have to play catch up the next day because that is what the stamp of approval actually means. So what's the big takeaway here? The biggest takeaway is that Velocity comes from movement, not from pressure. Okay. A fast clean pipeline produces more revenue without adding lead volume. When deals move efficiently through each stage, your team can handle more opportunities with the same resources, the better your stages move. The less you have to rely on the constant chase for more leads, which allows you to focus on quality over quantity. And remember this, companies that optimize for pipeline velocity typically see as high as 40 to 60% higher conversion rates from their first meeting to close deals. That is a significant increase and also shows why focusing on pipeline is way more valuable to growing your revenue instead of just trying to increase lead flow. So, what are next steps? If you are a founder, executive, or a team lead, then make sure you're subscribed to the show. Every episode is gonna include actionable templates and frameworks that you can implement immediately into your business. The goal here is to scale revenue without scaling. Chaos. And if you like the show and you wanna go deeper into related resources, then make sure you go back to episode 14. This is where we cover why most B2B offers can't be scaled, and how you can actually fix your own offer. This will show you how to structure your offers for maximum scalability and even faster closes. Remember when you have a clear offer that gives you faster velocity, and when you have faster velocity, it gives you more closes. I hope you found today valuable and I'll see you on the next episode.