Winning by Design helps scaling companies define and deploy go-to-market strategies. Their clients need to grow revenue from $1M to $100M fast and efficiently. And big companies — like Uber Eats, Adobe, and Asana — have leveraged their services to make it happen.

Thanks to the great need for their expertise (and their unique approach to sales), founder and former CEO Jacco van der Kooij grew the firm to over 90 employees in just a few years.

So, we invited Jacco on the Fastest Growing Companies podcast to talk about his experience and share the secret sauce for scaling Winning by Design.

Here’s Jacco’s recipe for scaling fast:

Hire passionate people who are experts at what they do

First and foremost, Jacco says that behind every great business is a great team. And by great, he means two things: having passion and expertise.

“What makes any business great is passionate people who are experts at what they do.”
<blockquoteauthor>Jacco van der Kooij, founder and former CEO at Winning by Design<blockquoteauthor>

According to Jacco, if someone is passionate but still lacks the skillset to execute the job, they’re like “Wednesday night entertainment.” What he’s implying: when someone can sing with heart but without skill.

“Heart can go a long way,” Jacco shared. But he also believes you can’t charge someone money for passion alone, which is why he wants employees who are both passionate and experts at what they do.

And while Jacco suggests hiring these passionate experts right from the beginning, he does mention that it creates new challenges for managing and leading people. “[Experts] have a particular nature where they don’t want work for a boss,” he explained. AKA, experts might be harder to lead.

“They don’t want to work for a company because they’re so good at what they do,” Jacco continued. “They’re kind of like artists.” And sometimes, he has to reel in their inner artist — by reminding experts to follow a process or system instead of creating something new.

But even with these challenges, Jacco says it’s better to hire experts than take the other route (which would mean not hiring experts at all).

All that’s to say: If you can spend more to hire for both passion and skill, you’ll get a return on your investment. Because even though you pay upfront for experience and knowledge, experts will multiply your business in the long run.

Pay employees based on the revenue they generate

Jacco believes in paying for productivity, not activity. Meaning, you pay employees based on the revenue they generate. And while it doesn’t apply to every role, their sales reps decide how much they make by what they put in. And, as a result, the business reaps more revenue.

It’s a lesson he learned early on. “When you pluck strawberries as [a teenager] in the Netherlands, you get paid by how much you pluck,” he shared.

“The beautiful thing [about this strategy] is if you pluck twice as much, you get paid twice as much,” Jacco explained. So, instead of being paid by how old you are or the quality of your harvest, you get paid for your work output. Which he believes is a better compensation alternative to capping income or paying based on tenure. Everyone gets back what they put in.

“If [an employee] is getting married, having a baby, or buying a house, why wouldn’t they want to work twice as hard in the year leading up and make twice as much money?”

While compensation pay may not be the best option for every business, if you can pay for productivity by compensating your employees based on revenue, it can be a crucial strategy for increasing sales. That way, you have more cash flow to put back into the business and build sustainable growth.

Accountability maintains quality 

According to Jacco, the most challenging part about adding people to a scaling business is maintaining quality. The best strategy? Share and set expectations, which comes down to having and managing accountability.

“[Accountability] is tough for anyone, but we need to manage it.”

For example, Jacco suggests checking in on employees to gauge their execution. Ask them if they delivered what the client expected. And when the client is unhappy, have a conversation about where they could improve and who pays for the time it takes to correct the mistake.

“The [employee] doesn’t necessarily pay the money back,” Jacco explained. “In most cases, we just ask somebody else to do it, or we ask the first person to do a better job.” But either way, he lets employees know when they didn’t meet expectations (as well as the repercussions).

“We just want people to know [the mistake] happened,” Jacco said. That way, employees can align their actions with how you run the business. And you see which employees have the right skill set over time.

Add the right mix of people (and let them make mistakes)

For Jacco, his business really took off when "exponential people" joined. “Certain people have an additive impact, a multiplication impact, and an exponential impact,” he told us. The problem is, you can’t have too many exponential people because “they’ll bite each other.”

Instead, Jacco recommends adding two exponential people at most. The new CEO, Dominic Levin, and CLO (Chief Learning Officer) Dan Smith, are those two people for Winning by Design. By introducing them to the team, Jacco could delegate his responsibilities as a CEO and step away to reinvent what he brings to the company.

According to Jacco, “you need [to look for] a partner that knows where your [business] is going and not where you’re at right now.” But having the right mix of people isn’t enough. You also have to actually delegate your work to them and allow them to make mistakes. Otherwise, you’ll never grow because the experts you hire won’t have a chance to make an impact.

“CEOs have a hard time delegating and stepping away because they are unwilling to see whoever picks up the task make a mistake.”

Jacco says the number one task for the leader of any growing company is delegation. And that means you have to find the right team, let go of responsibilities, and give your people a chance to run their roles. In most cases, the figure-it-out stage won’t be fatal to the business.

Jacco never intended to start a fast-growing company. He simply found a need, added the right people, and maintained quality with accountability instead. And now, he looks forward to watching the great leaders he put in place continue to scale the company.

(After you've read this blog, go on and watch the podcast — from his magnetic personality to a never-heard-before truth that we won't spoil here, Jacco is someone you need to see for yourself.)