From intuition to instruction
Every now and then, I like to share a story from “the real world” that shows how our work at Untangled actually plays out with clients.
This is a perfect week to do that as I prepare to break away from the bi-polar weather in my hometown of Nashville and spend 2 more days on site with Elevate Financial, the team I’m spotlighting below, in sunny California.
I met the Elevate team last November when our work began. Since then, I’ve taught them a thing or two about knowledge transfer within their firm, and they’ve taught me a thing or two about their KILLER sales process. (My favorite thing about what I do is that I’m constantly learning from my clients and applying it to my own business. It feels like cheating!)
I hope you learn a thing or two, too.
Case Study: Your “Process Problem” Might Actually Be a Knowledge Problem
A lot of businesses hit a ceiling when they try to scale expertise.
Not because they lack talent or opportunity. But because what actually makes them successful lives in someone’s head.
This was the case with Elevate, a financial services firm based in California.
Here’s a quick peek into the situation, what they thought the problem was, what we discovered was actually true, and what we did about it.
The Situation
The founder of the firm, Stephen, had spent years honing his craft.
Like many top performers, he didn’t learn it from one place. It came from:
Experience inside and outside his industry
Pattern recognition over time
Trial and error
The result? A highly effective—and highly personalized—method for selling their signature life insurance product. The fact that it's so personalized, is—of course—the very reason why it's so successful.
And that’s where the challenge showed up.
Stephen was best-in-class, outselling his competitors at nearly every opportunity. But even experienced financial advisors weren’t able to easily replicate his method.
Even if a new advisor had years of financial services experience under their belt…they wouldn’t know how to sell financial services the way Elevate does it.
What exactly was Stephen doing that was so special?
What They Thought the Problem Was
At first glance, this looks like a hiring or training issue.
“Maybe we just need better people.”
“Maybe they need more time.”
So the default approach became:
Train on the job.
Watch and learn.
Hope for the best.
This training method, what I would call the apprenticeship style, can work. But it comes with real tradeoffs:
It happens slowly, usually over years
Success is unpredictable
It’s inconsistent
Stephen and his team wanted to take charge of their training and make it more proactive and predictable, so they could get new advisors matching Stephen’s sales much more quickly.
What Was Actually Going On
This wasn’t a people problem.
It wasn’t even a traditional training problem.
It was a knowledge transfer problem.
Stephen’s expertise—the thing that made Elevate successful—was never fully externalized. It all lived in his head, in his intuition.
So there was nothing to consistently teach, reinforce, or improve.
What We Did
We built a sales playbook to capture and teach The Elevate Way.
Because there might be a million firms selling life insurance…but only one that sells it exactly that way.
Through a series of interviews, we:
Brain dumped Stephen’s full approach, got it all out on the table
Identified every step he takes with a prospective client, even the ones he didn’t realize
Surfaced his instincts, dug into why he made the intuitive decisions he made
From there, we separated two critical components:
The Process
The steps that happen every single time. The clear, repeatable sequence advisors can follow.
The Decision Frameworks
Guidance for the moments that aren’t predictable, because no sales conversation is identical.
Take objections, for example. It would be impossible to script every single scenario, because they’re infinite. But you can:
List the most common objections (and strong responses)
Provide principles for handling the rest
So instead of “just figuring it out,” advisors have a tried and true way to think when uncertain.
What Changed
Instead of hoping new hires swim instead of sink, Elevate now has a clear path to competence.
Instead of relying on instinct, they can learn, practice, and improve intentionally.
And instead of Stephen being the bottleneck, the expertise that used to live rent free in his head now belongs to his company, not just to him.
The Takeaway
Many companies in the business of providing expertise to their clients think they have a process problem. But in reality, they have an un-captured knowledge problem.
If you’re relying on a few key people to “just know how to do it”…
It’s time to capture what they know.
That’s how you turn individual expertise into something your entire team can execute.
Want tips for turning your works into documented playbooks your team can actually use?
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Hi, I'm Elizabeth
After growing and selling my first business in the food industry, I started Untangled to help other business owners scale their business without losing its soul.
I've been working with fascinating, smart, growth-minded entrepreneurs ever since. Most have rapidly growing small businesses where it's challenging to get everyone aligned around doing things the same way.
Curious about working together? Reach out here: elizabeth at untangleyourbiz dot com or contact me here.
