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Episode 145 –How Life Gets in the Way of Scaling a Professional Service Firm and What to Do About It – Member Case by Matt Jenkins and Nick Moretta

The personal lives of the Founders evolve as a firm advances. And the professional lives of the Founders morph as a firm matures. How can partners stay in harmony with themselves, and with each other, along the entrepreneurial journey? This session shares how partners work well together and use a tool called The Commitment Letter.

TRANSCRIPT

Greg Alexander [00:00:10] Hi, everyone. This is Greg Alexander, the host of the Pro Serv Podcast, brought to you by Collective 54, the first community dedicated to the boutique professional services industry. And on today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how one’s personal life and professional life change as a firm goes through its natural evolution and how critical it is for partners co-founders to. Change with the times, so to speak, and how to keep those things in harmony. And if they’re not in harmony. Bad things can happen. And if they are in harmony, wonderful things can happen. And we have a couple of collective 54 members with us today, Matt Jenkins and Nick Marella, and they are someone who’s taught me quite a bit about this subject and I thought it was worth them sharing what they’ve shared with me, with all of you. So with that, guys, it’s good to see you. Welcome to the show. Why don’t I let you introduce yourselves and maybe, Nick, I’ll start with you and then Matt, we can hear from you. 

Nick Moretta [00:01:22] Hi, I’m Nick Moretta. I’m a founding partner here at Other and I oversee a couple divisions of the business and they’re my very proud  Collective 54 member and father of two. Yeah. 

Greg Alexander [00:01:33] Thanks. 

Matt Jenkins [00:01:35] And my name is Matt Jenkins, one of the other founding partners here at Other. I oversee sort of the operations, service delivery and the business oversee a little bit of client services as well. And I am a father of one right now. We’ve got three partners in the business, so two of the three of us are here today. 

Greg Alexander [00:01:53] Okay, very good. And for the benefit of the audience, tell me what other is. 

Nick Moretta [00:02:00] Yeah, sure. I’ll take that one. So we’re a 40 person performance marketing firm. We have clients in Canada and the US, and really what we do is we help our clients derive the most value from their paid media investments using our proprietary methodology and channels like paid search and paid social. That’s really what we do as an organization. 

Greg Alexander [00:02:16] Okay, very good. Perfect. All right. So let me start with the first question, which is how have your personal lives changed, you know, since the founding of the firm until now? And, you know, maybe I’ll air traffic control this. Nic, why don’t we start with you? Because you just told me. Just add your second kids. So lots of change in your life right now. So this is a timely question. 

Nick Moretta [00:02:39] Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah, I think I think so. Like, you know, when we started the business, we were super young, right? We were, I think around 25 years old. And, you know, life has changed a lot. When we started the business, there were super long hours, you know, we were coming home at 11 p.m. or midnight. We were starting at 8 a.m. in the morning. You know, very exciting time in the business to sort of build and get off the ground. But we didn’t have a lot of commitments. We didn’t have mortgages at the time. We didn’t have children. And I think over the past few years we’ve really seen that shift a little bit. You know, all three of the partners at our firm have young kids. I have two kids. Matt has one, Catherine has one. So we’re just getting used to that change and making sure that we stay disciplined with creating or integrating both our personal lives that are in our professional lives. 

Greg Alexander [00:03:28] So, Matt, in terms of the professional life, we just heard from Nick how the personal life had changed over time from, you know, being young and full of energy and being willing to burn the midnight oil to a time of adulthood and having obligations which we all eventually mature to. How has the the professional life, Matt, changed since the founding of the firm? 

Matt Jenkins [00:03:53] It’s not dissimilar to the personal side. If you think about your team in the context of being like your business family. And we don’t necessarily refer to our our team as a family, there’s a very different dynamic that happens with your your team than with your family at home. But know, in the beginning I think we spent a lot of time, Kat and myself, doing the work we spent. We would go on, we would we would find a client and we would bring them on board and come on board. We were the same people sitting there that needed to do the work and actually service what what we’d sold in. And so we spent a significant amount of time doing that. In the early days, and then he sort of move on and realize the need to bring on your first team member and and bring them all in and you can offload some some work, but then you need to mentor them and you need to take care of them, need to look after them, to train them and to create exposure and upward mobility for them. And then he starts to extrapolate that among the larger group of people, and that becomes you get some time back because you’re not doing the work yourself so much anymore, but you’re managing and mentoring these people and there’s time associated with that. But it frees up some time to be able to grow the business as well and for myself to start to build some business infrastructure. And so today we’re about 40 people and we’re across two offices. We have one in downtown Toronto, we have another one in Ottawa. We work on a principally hybrid model and we have a couple of different layers of management. And so things change remarkably. We’re not really the ones doing too much of the the actual client work anymore, really spending the majority of our time growing the business, continuing to augment the the operating infrastructure and processes and spending a lot of time mentoring and helping our people to grow. So it’s a very different vibe today than it was it sort of responsibility today than it was then. Yeah. 

Greg Alexander [00:05:52] That’s a great illustrative example for sure. And sometimes people struggle when that happens because they actually enjoy doing the work. And then, you know, I once learned in my life, you know, you go into business for yourself and you think you’re working for yourself, but one day you wake up and you realize you’re not. You’re working for your clients. Then one day you wake up and you’re not just working for your clients, you’re working for your employees for the reasons that you all just mentioned. And then eventually you wake up one day after you exit and you realize you’re not working for your clients, your employees, you’re working for your investors. So it changes kind of as you go through time. But, you know, you have to go through it to learn it. There were a few things that that you all shared with me that I wanted to pick on as examples, because I think our members would be particularly interested in this. So you went from a period of time where you were focused on salaries to now where you’re focused on distributions, and that is a big mental model shift. So tell us a little bit about that. When did that happen and kind of what caused that and how are you dealing with it? 

Matt Jenkins [00:06:56] Sure. I think there’s also an important stage actually prior to that, which is the pre salary stage, which is at the early days where we didn’t make any money. So it took some time. It took some time. At the beginning we only had $150 each into this business at the beginning, which was not enough for any sort of payment. And we took some risk and we started to build it organically. And at the beginning, yes, it’s it’s salary from a taxation perspective, It’s salary, but it’s it’s significantly based on what we are bringing in on the top line and what we’re able to take home and obviously a function of our cost base. And so in some respects it’s in some respects it’s performance based. And then as we’ve grown over time, we have to keep our salary structure commensurate with the work that we might be paying somebody else to do a similar job inside of the organization. So if I’m acting as a lead of operations, how much would a lead of operations cost in the marketplace and structure the compensation around something similar? But at the same time, we’re still owning the company and our responsibility is to the overall financial performance of the company. And so there starts to become an element that is outside of that, that’s performance based distribution. And so that’s the sort of middle stage is that when there’s a balance of those two things. And now as we think more about ourselves as the founders of the organization and the owners and are less in the work, it’s it’s becoming more on the performance compensation side and less of the day to day compensation of somebody who might be, you know, might be available in the market to occupy that same kind of role. So from sort of nothing to the small salaries and the salaries and distributions. And then we’re sort of off in the future looking at probably a larger portion of distributions and less salary. There’s also the elements of taxation that’s important along the way, which is having a good partner to help you navigate that and making sure that you’re you’re earning efficiently is also really important. 

Greg Alexander [00:09:12] You know, And someday if you do exit your firm, it’s going to make it a lot easier for somebody to buy your firm because they’re going to understand what the true cost of operating the businesses, which is your salary, reflective of what the going rate would be for somebody to perform that job. And then they can separate that from the distributions of the excess profits that you’re distributing to yourself right now, which is how an owner would get paid. So you’re balancing the two hats of owner operator extremely well. So that’s a lesson for all of our members is that, you know, those those things are separate. You know how you’re compensated as an operator, what should be market based and how you compensated as an owner? What should be distribution based, based on excess profit? Okay. Let me go to the next one, which was the shift from focusing on utilization, you know, as a measurement of yourselves to focusing on profits, you know, as a measurement for yourself. It’s kind of related to what we just talked about. But the way you run your firm and like the KPIs you look at, Accenture might be slightly different. So maybe I’ll direct this one to you, but how did that evolve inside of your firm? 

Nick Moretta [00:10:23] You know what, Greg? I think actually Matt could provide a probably better, more concise answer for this one. 

Matt Jenkins [00:10:29] Sure. Yeah. To be completely transparent in looking at utilization in the organization is not something that we’ve always done. It’s not something we were taught to do in previous lives. We haven’t run professional services business before and so we were coming into this and we were really focusing our our time and effort in the earlier stages of the business around some of our traditional business metrics. What does top line look like? What is profitability look like, and are those things growing? And we didn’t look a whole lot at the science behind what makes the inside of the engine actually work. And in the last several years, we’ve spent a lot more time on that. I think there’s also a lot more time on that, and we’ve re-engineered the organizational KPIs around that. They’re certainly still top line and profitability at a board level. But when we look inside and think about how to manage resources, it’s much more focused on target billable gaps and utilization rate and and things like that. But I think there’s also a mental shift, which is at the beginning, kind of like Nick was saying, we’re spending until midnight. We’re not going and tracking that time and time tracking system and making sure that the profitability get there. It’s a it’s a do whatever you need to do, whatever cost to make this client happy so that you can continue to build and grow that relationship. And that worked really well for us in the beginning. It’s obviously not sustainable strategy over a long period of time. But I just want to speak to there’s there’s kind of the size part of it, but then there’s also the mental shift that we’ve had to go through to say, okay, how can you manage this really effectively? And I think one of the things that we actually look at that’s a big topic in our category is that traditionally in advertising and marketing agencies, the notion is that people are overworked, that they come in very early and they stay until very late and they work too much. And I look at that as if there’s something broken in your business model, if people are doing that. And so if we see somebody in the office at 630, 7:00, I look at that as actually poor management and not somebody who is going above and beyond because our economic model should work and our operating model should work such that people can be in the office for the hours that we’ve allotted to that. So, yes, it’s shifted in a couple of different places. That’s a. 

Greg Alexander [00:12:51] Great synopsis. All right. So we’ve talked a lot about how the business has changed and the professional lives have changed. Let’s come back to the personal for a moment. You all have this wonderful tool that you called the commitment letter. And I thought it was it literally blew me away. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I love the symbolism of it, the wet signature. And it’s so relevant to our community because like you, that’s there’s three partners. Most processor firms are partnerships. Partnerships need to work. They’re kind of like marriages. There’s got to be compromises. People need to understand where everyone’s coming from. So why don’t you tell me about the commitment letter, how it originated, how you’re using it today, and maybe at the end of that explanation, give some advice to our listeners as to how they might copycat you on this. 

Nick Moretta [00:13:43] Sure. Yeah, I can definitely elaborate on that. So, you know, earlier I would say earlier this year, late last year, you know, we were approaching, I guess, you know, we’re approaching nine years now. We’re at eight and a half years old, our firm. And, you know, we’re feeling tired. You know, we had all young kids. We’re feeling a little bit beat up. And we know that in order to preserve your, we have to stay resilient. And part of the idea behind it was how can we have a commitment letter where we make commitments to each other? Because I think a lot of us and a lot of the members here, maybe they make commitments to themselves, maybe they’re around physical health or mental health, and maybe they’re commitments around business or family. And sometimes it’s difficult to live up to the commitments that you make to yourself. But when you make a commitment to your business partner, you make a commitment to a family member. I always find that, you know, brings a little bit more skin in the game and you want to make sure you live up to your commitments. So the idea was, we’re in a sit down. We’re going to make, you know, a series of commitments around different areas of life. So how do we we want to commit to becoming better executives? Part of that was actually setting up for collective 54 so that we could learn we can educate ourselves on how to become executives. We want to be more accountable to each other. We want to make sure we show up prepared to meetings. We want to make sure we, you know, allude a certain preparation to the rest of the organization. Personal and mental health, you know, physical health and mental health. These are important things. Commitments to exercise, commitments to seeing coaches. So we wanted to make sure that we just had a shared set of principles and commitments that we put down on paper. And then symbolic, like you mentioned, you know, how can we sign this document off? It’s not like a legally binding document. You have your shareholder’s agreement, but it’s more around saying this. And we sat down and we committed to these things. So we’re going to make sure we remain a. And, you know, if I needed to to give any advice on how someone could get started, you know, perhaps we could share the template with you, Greg, and you could put it into the portal. But I really think you have to sit down with your business partners and find out what are the things that are, you know, you’re struggling with both personally and professionally and how can you how can you commit to resolving some of those things? So are we operating at peak performance as a partnership group? If we’re not. Why not? Is a personal is a professional. List those things down and then put those series of commitments together and just put a signature against it and say, we’re going to commit to this for a year, which is what we did. 

Greg Alexander [00:16:12] It’s a fantastic story. I’m so glad that you guys have brought this to us. I would very much appreciate the template, if you wouldn’t mind. Couple of quick follow up questions on it. Are the three founders all approximately at the same stage in life in terms of age and things like that? 

Nick Moretta [00:16:30] Yes. Yes. We’re all three of us are at very similar stages. 

Greg Alexander [00:16:33] You know, that’s often overlooked. But it’s it’s mission critical because imagine a commitment letter, you know, if you have one partner in their sixties, one in their forties and one in their twenties, I mean, you just you just life is different. So it’s hard to make, you know, mutually reinforced commitments to each other. So something to think about there for the members. As you were going through the commitment letter, was there a negotiation? You know, were you horse trading in any way or was it not Was that not the spirit of the document? 

Nick Moretta [00:17:03] I think, you know, negotiation is more of a hostile word, right? I think it was more around making sure that they were realistic commitments for everybody. So, hey, listen, we’re going to commit to these things if we do. You realistically think you’re going to be able to live up to this commitment. So one of them is we need to exercise at a minimum 1 to 2 times per week. Do we think that this is realistic? You know, yes, this is realistic. If we came over at four or five times per week, maybe not. So it was really around are these realistic commitments that we can make to each other less around negotiating over the specific thing? 

Matt Jenkins [00:17:40] And I will add there that one thing that did have some meaningful discussion around it was actually making it time bound because when we originally put it together, it was put together with no end date on it. It was just, here’s the commitment from now until forever. And I think in some ways that when we were trying, it took time. It seemed a little bit daunting. It’s like we’re going to commit to this now and then. And then what? And so what we decided we were going to do is we’re going to put a time frame of a year on it. And it also helped us to narrow in and say, okay, what is truly important if we want to get where we want to be in one year, what is truly important between the three of us and let’s narrow in some of the language around that. And then we signed it off for one year. And so when we get back to the end of this year, we’ll revisit it and say, you know what was helpful? What wasn’t helpful? What do we think is a priority for next year? And we’ll we’ll do a fresh one or well, at least do a version of this year in a modified way. So the time bound piece I think has been helpful for us, and that was probably the thing that we discussed the most throughout the process. Yeah. 

Greg Alexander [00:18:46] The thing that I love about it the most is that to Nick’s earlier comment, you know, I mean, I am a habitual offender of commitments to myself. I oftentimes blow them off and because, you know, I’m not letting anybody else down other than myself. So therefore I tolerate it when I make commitments to my team. I mean, I have a tremendous sense of obligation and I don’t want to be that guy, you know, that guy that let down everybody else. There’s just something about our human psychology that that that’s part of who we are. And if you’re structured in a partnership and you really have partners, then it’s intensified because, I mean, the last thing you want to do is let your partners down. So I think it’s such an effective tool. Well, listen, we’re at our time window here. We try to keep the podcast short. We’re going to go into this much greater depth when we have our private member Q&A session with you all. But on behalf of the membership, it’s just wonderful having you guys in the community. This contribution to the body of knowledge is particularly fantastic amongst many others that you’ve made over time. So thank you for being here. 

Nick Moretta [00:19:47] Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate you having us on. 

Greg Alexander [00:19:50] All right. I’m going to give the audience just three quick calls to action. So members look for the invitation to attend the Q&A session with Matt and Nick. If you’re not a member, you want to become one. Go to Collective 54 dot com and fill out an application. We’ll get in contact with you. And if you’re someone who just wants to learn a little bit more directly to our book, you can find it on Amazon. It’s called The Boutique How to Start Scale and sell your professional services firm. Okay, guys, we’ll talk to you soon. Take care.

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Episode 144 – Revenue Mix: Balancing Staff Augmentation, Advisory, and Managed Services to Drive Margins – Member Case by Ryan Buell

Boutique service firms often confuse staff augmentation work with advisory work and with managed services work. These are three different types of services that are marketed, sold, and delivered differently. Each has its own margin profile. Balancing the mix of these three correctly can be the difference between running a firm with good margins or a firm with poor margins. Attend this session and get clear on how to manage the revenue mix.

TRANSCRIPT

Greg Alexander [00:00:10] Hi, everyone. This is Greg Alexander, the host of the Pro Serv Podcast, brought to you by Collective 54, the first community dedicated to the boutique professional services industry. On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about finding the right revenue mix, the balance of revenue to hit your profit targets. And there’s different types of revenue that happen in services firms. And sometimes we don’t think about the mix. And that’s what we’re going to discuss today. And we’ve got a collective 54 member with us. His name is Ryan Buell, and Ryan has several types of revenue in his firm and we’re going to ask him to talk about those and discuss how he handles the balance of them to try to hit his targets. So, Ryan, it’s good to see you. Thanks for being here. Please introduce yourself to the audience. 

Ryan Buell [00:01:08] Yeah. Thanks, Greg. I appreciate you having me. My name’s Ryan Buell and I’m the founder and CEO of Save US Solutions. We’ve been around for about nine years and obviously professional services firm, we kind of have three main services that we offer consulting, recruiting and managed services, and we specialize in finance and accounting, tech and h.r. And we’re located here in sunny san diego. 

Greg Alexander [00:01:37] Okay, so, very good. So i’m going to ask you to kind of give me three definitions and then we’ll kick that around a bit and then we’ll have the conversation around mix. So give me your definition of staff augmentation work. 

Ryan Buell [00:01:51] Yeah, sure. So, you know, staff augmentation, at least for us, it really means that we’re providing specialized resources to support project execution or interim needs. You know, our consultants may own certain aspects of the project or provide some strategic guidance, but ultimately, we do not own the outcome. We’re typically operating under the guidance of the client and helping them with the execution of the project. So they’re especially with our enterprise level clients relying on us to provide specialized resources to really come in and complement their team to help get the work done. 

Greg Alexander [00:02:31] So maybe give me a sample use case just to let me sink my teeth into it a bit. 

Ryan Buell [00:02:37] Yeah, sure. So we have, you know, as an example, we have some clients currently transitioning to the new S4 Hana SFP product, and it’s an extremely large undertaking and these are large multibillion dollar global public companies and they’ll come to us to bring in project manager or Scrum Masters to to really help complement their existing team. And they’ll leverage obviously all the background and experience of our team to help because the resources we’re providing have a lot of experience in that technical space. But ultimately they have somebody there as part of the PMO that really is owning the strategy, and then they’ll also have an external third party implementation partner. Really, our role there is, is to be kind of the interim interim communication between the implementation partner and the client to help make sure that requirements are defined, that the outcomes are consistent with the expectations that have been set with the implementation partner. We’ll help with testing and change control and some other areas, but all of it’s really under the guidance of the project champion there within the PMO. 

Greg Alexander [00:03:54] Okay, perfect example that that brings great clarity to that. Okay, let’s move to the the second type of work that you do, which is advisory work. So please explain that and then maybe give us an example of that. 

Ryan Buell [00:04:07] Yeah. So the advisory work that we do is and this is probably more just a function of San Diego, but typically those are going to be with more small to mid-market clients. You know, the difference there is really we have full ownership of the project and outcomes. So typically, you know, the work’s very specialized. There’s going to be a proposal upfront with a clearly defined scope of responsibilities, estimated costs, and then, you know, the costs may have, you know, various deliverables or performance milestones associated with it. So although a lot of times we’ll still bill time and materials for advisory work, not always, but but typically we will there’s there’s usually a lot more work upfront to set expectations with the client so they know what they’re getting. 

Greg Alexander [00:04:57] Okay. And an example of that would be. 

Ryan Buell [00:05:01] So a lot of the companies here in San Diego are small to midsize tech and life sciences companies, just as an example. So as part of their IPO prep, they might come to analysts to implement technical accounting standards. Okay. They may come to us to help with some sort of a system implementation or change control. We’ve had companies come to us to help stand up an integration management office for a company that was looking to become very acquisitive as part of their growth strategy. So, you know, there’s there’s different examples. But for us, it’s it’s typically all going to be under that that finance, accounting or maybe tech. 

Greg Alexander [00:05:45] So yeah so the IPO prep great example that that helps us understand the difference between advisory work and staff legwork. Okay. So let’s go to number three, which is the MSSP or managed service provider space. So what’s your definition of that? 

Ryan Buell [00:06:00] So the MSSP is where a company typically a small to midsize business is going to completely outsource all or certain aspects of their business functions to us. So for us, again, those those functions on the on the managed services side are finance and accounting in h.R. And so we typically have full ownership of the function with the ability to implement our best practices, systems, tech stacks and other strategies that we believe are going to really help the customer be in the best position for for growth. You know, billing for that can be fixed fee or we’ll sometimes do essentially a consolidation of timing materials, but there’s always a very clear scope of responsibilities. And for us, a monthly cost kind of do not exceed amount without approval arrangement with the client. 

Greg Alexander [00:06:51] Okay. And an example of that might be what? 

Ryan Buell [00:06:55] So, you know, a good example would be, you know, we have a collective 54 member as a client. We’ll work with a lot of VC backed companies. Usually what they’re coming to us, maybe they have a bookkeeper or CFO who’s maybe not quite what they’re looking for. We will provide a team, a dedicated team, a department, so to speak, to that client. And each client receives a CFO control or accounting manager, an accountant in the works, then fractionally allocated based on scope and workload to the appropriate level to provide a kind of a more cost effective solution. So really, it’s you know, it’s any company, usually less than 100 million is going to come to us to outsource either all or part of that function. 

Greg Alexander [00:07:44] Perfect. And I think the key word there is outsourcing. That helps us to distinguish between the other two. Okay. So so with that, that’s a great distinction. And I know this sounds basic, and for you, maybe it is, but for some of our members, these terms tend to get blurred. And we really don’t know the differences between the two. And it’s important to understand the differences between the three. Excuse me. So right when you think about it from your perspective, the founder and CEO, you know, do you have an optimal mix you’re shooting for and if so, why? And how do you manage to that? 

Ryan Buell [00:08:18] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we’re actually working on that right now. I mean, we have found that because we also provide recruiting services as well. And so, you know what? We have found that if if we can get to right around a 90% or more of the recurring revenue and maybe 10% on on some of the recruiting side, that’s that’s been relatively optimal. The obviously, from an enterprise value perspective, the managed services piece is going to be going to be the highest just due to the nature of the client outsourcing the work to us and the stickiness of the work. And it’s usually a much longer term duration, but. You know, I would say right now about 90 about 90%. Consulting and consulting advisory and staff augmentation compared to the recruiting side is the mix that we’re shooting for. 

Greg Alexander [00:09:20] Okay. And I understand why, because you want recurring revenue as opposed to kind of one off projects. That makes a lot of sense. Are there any other considerations? Like in my experience, the advisory work tends to have the highest margin. MSP work would come in second and then the staff augmentation work would come in third. That’s a generalization, but there’s a margin profile of the services come into play, or is it just focused on as little project work as possible and as much recurring revenue as possible? 

Ryan Buell [00:09:55] I mean, the margins definitely come into play. I think on the staff augmentation side of the House, we will sometimes get more pricing pressure, which can lower margin. So although the volumes there, the margins may suffer, especially if things in the economy shift like, you know, things have softened a bit recently, although we’ve stayed relatively busy on the advisory side, it’s a lot more specialized. And so if the needs are truly there, although budgets always a piece of the fact, you know, a piece of it, you know, usually they’re they’re looking for the right partner that truly specializes in that area and can deliver value. Mm hmm. The managed services piece, the margins are definitely there. I think the challenge there is it’s a full bench model. And so with us being in high growth mode, it’s always the balance of, you know, how how much do we want to get ahead of the demand for service to have a strong bench available as we bring on clients? Because we, you know, we never want to you know, we never want to have quality suffer. And we’ve heard feedback from clients in the market that some of our competitors had tried to grow too fast. So they struggle with continuity and quality. And so, you know, we’re trying to find the right balance of aggressive growth with quality and not sacrificing the culture. 

Greg Alexander [00:11:17] You know, and you brought to my attention and I had forgotten about this, but you have a fourth service as well called recruiting. So how does that compare on these dimensions? 

Ryan Buell [00:11:26] Yeah, I mean, the recruiting piece, it’s it’s a nice piece of the puzzle because, you know, at the end of the day, it’s pure gross margin. So from a business perspective, it’s great for the business. The downside is it doesn’t really add much to enterprise value. Yeah, because there’s nothing about it that’s recurring. So, you know, it’s nice for us to be able to offer it because clients need it and ask for it. And there’s a lot of synergies from a recruiting perspective when we’re out in the market bringing in more consultants or internal employees to our practice, we obviously come across individuals looking for full time opportunities. So it’s easy for us to be able to provide that service, but we have to be careful that we don’t emphasize it too much. And so, you know, we’ve done that through how we structure comp plans and we’ve implemented a very specific sales strategy, you know, which has helped. So I guess the short answer is we want it to be part of the business, but we have to be careful about the mix of of revenue and how how we strategize how we’re going to achieve the right mix to optimize profitability and enterprise value. Yeah. 

Greg Alexander [00:12:38] Okay. Very good. All right. My last question would be, you know, for service lines, for different staffing requirements, for different margin profiles. It sounds complex to manage. Is that true or not true? 

Ryan Buell [00:12:54] Yeah. I mean, you know, there’s good and bad everything. And I think, you know, the good is that we never lose clients. We work with them through every stage of growth and they essentially graduate from one service to the next. The challenge can be. I think sometimes market confusion on maybe what we do or to be able to answer that question in a simple answer. I know there’s a lot of companies out there that have a lot more complexity than we do, but that but that’s a bit of a of a challenge. The delivery models, the nice thing is, is we’re able to leverage our internal recruiting team to feed the other lines of business, which is another another kind of competitive advantage. So anytime we’re hiring on the managed services team, the same recruiters that are working for these large multi, you know, helping support these large multibillion dollar public companies that have the highest standards you can imagine are the same people that are filling our positions. So we’re able to scale with quality. But but yeah, it creates challenges. There’s different business needs, different systems. So we essentially run run two different businesses. We have a managed services business and then the consulting, recruiting and advisory side of the business as two separate business entities. We have separate budgets by service and different leaders for each service just to ensure that someone’s accountable for the growth and strategy because, you know, they are they are different with different challenges. 

Greg Alexander [00:14:23] And is that distinction between Mr. MSP and the rest of it because of the full bench model? 

Ryan Buell [00:14:32] Well we have is what distinction that the. 

Greg Alexander [00:14:35] So between the MSRP business that’s one line of business and then you grouping the other businesses together. As I understand what you just said and I’m wondering why you’re running those as two separate businesses. 

Ryan Buell [00:14:47] Well, the the MSP we originally set up as a different business because we wanted to bring in leadership to really be incentivized to grow and scale the managed service side of the business. So I have a different cap table, different systems, different budget. Um, and, and it’s really a, it’s a different delivery model and in a lot of ways. 

Greg Alexander [00:15:08] Okay, Very good. All right. Well, listen, you know, this was good old fashioned one on one education distinguishing these things. And as Brian and I just demonstrated even amongst us and we know each other, you know, clarification was required. Put yourself in the shoes of a client, you know, who might not know the difference between these things. And then you submit a price and they react to it because maybe they don’t know. So having clarity around these different types of services and when clients should leverage one versus the other, when it’s appropriate to use one versus the other, how the other cost benefit analysis might be thought about as a really important thing for all of us to keep in mind. 

Ryan Buell [00:15:52] Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Revenue mixes is definitely something that we’re focused on right now. And you know, with the market shifting and us trying to continue to work on our ongoing growth strategy, it’s it’s something that is top priority. 

Greg Alexander [00:16:05] All right, listeners, I’m going to give you three calls. Action. So if you’re a member, watch for the meeting invitation. Well, you’ll get invited to Ryan’s Q&A and you can ask questions directly for him. If you’re not a member and you want to become one, go to collect 254 dotcom and fill out an application. We’ll review that and get back in contact with you. And if you just want to learn more directed to Amazon in our book, it’s called The Boutique How to Start Scale and Sell a Professional Services Firm. But Ryan, thanks a bunch for coming on the show today and making a deposit into the collective body of knowledge. I enjoyed listening to you and we’ll talk to you again. 

Ryan Buell [00:16:41] All right. Thanks, Greg.

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Episode 143 – The Basics of Doing Business with the Government – Member Case by Frank Tsamoutales

Uncle Sam is the world’s biggest client. Yet, many boutique service firms do not do business with the government. This session is for firms who do not do business with the government but wonder if they should. We will cover the basics such as why elections matter, understanding legislation, and partnering.

TRANSCRIPT

Greg Alexander [00:00:10] Hi, everyone. This is Greg Alexander, the host of the Pro Serve podcast. Brought to you by Collective 54, the first community dedicated to the boutique professional services industry, and on today’s episode, we’re going to talk about doing business with the government, and the reason why I picked this subject is most of our members are focused exclusively on the private sector, and there is an opportunity potentially to grow their firms by learning how to do business with the government. And on this episode, we’ve got a role model and expert in this area. His name is Frank. Frank, I always mispronounce your last name. Would you pronounce it for me, please? 

Frank Tsamoutales [00:00:58] Tsamoutales. 

Greg Alexander [00:00:58] Tsamoutales. I don’t know why I can’t get that, but I’ll commit that to memory. So. Would you please introduce yourself and your firm to the group? 

Frank Tsamoutales [00:01:08] Sure, Greg. Thank you very much. Before I introduce myself, I just want to say I’ve always been a huge fan and believer in mastermind groups and collaborating with people that bring different frames of reference to the conversation. And I just want to congratulate you on the team on collective efforts. In the short time we’ve been involved, we have picked up many gems that are already having greater moments for our firm’s growth and value. And I want to thank you and everybody, a collective, collective 50 for including all my fellow members who have been very open and candid and provided a lot of those gems along with yours. So thank you for this opportunity as well as in terms of an introduction, we we are a government relations business development firm. We’re unique in a couple of ways. And I know that sounds probably a little maybe not so authentic of a statement to make, but but I’ll explain why we feel that way about it. But we really focus on solving problems that keep leaders up at night, whether it’s a founder, a CEO, CFO, or even government officials or community leaders. And we’re pretty open minded about the range of those kind of problems. But what we’ve learned time and time again throughout our 40 years of doing this, the intersection of business and government can have a tremendous positive and negative impact on a business. So we try and avoid those pits involves for our partners and clients and at the same time are available to them when in fact they do get blindsided that there’s an issue they just can’t quite tackle, whether they’re regulated or whether they are selling goods and services to the government or exploring opportunities in that regard as you as you opened up this podcast. 

Greg Alexander [00:03:14] Perfect. Well, again, thank you for being here. You’re going to be a wonderful guest today in preparation for our time together. I spoke to some members and I asked them, you know, what they would want to hear about. So I’ve got a few questions and I’m going to jump into those. And these are going to be in the category of kind of the basics, the starting point for our members, as is. Many of them don’t even know, you know, how do you even get started? The first question that I had from a member was, you know, what does a advocacy group or a lobbying firm actually do? And is it wise for somebody in our community, which is, you know, the founder of a small services firm, is it wise for them to, you know, approach one of those firms and and ask to partner with them? 

Frank Tsamoutales [00:04:03] I think that’s a good question. And I’m going to I’m going to just say not so fast. So let me just maybe frame up kind of the the environment a little bit, but the little time that we have, I’ll do my best to be suspect and then and then answer, but hopefully it’ll help answer the question as well. First and foremost, elections matter. Underline Circle asked her to highlight that. And so what a small professional services company or mid-sized professional service company has to be careful of is not to investigate purely opportunities that may be born from a new administration, something that is unique maybe in the world that we live in today. There are very opposing views of how to serve the taxpayer and communities. And so for a small company, and as risky as it is, as it may be, you’re much better off in taking a look at what your current ideal client profile is, what your core competencies are, and then doing in this, you know, without engaging a firm at this point, really just investigating on one’s own. These founders, as we know, are very, very bright, very resourceful and and look for opportunities that are more insulated from the election cycle. And I think I think the founder and the founders team are probably capable with technology today, too, you know, because they’re keenly aware of what they do, what problem they solve, what value they bring, and then look for maybe some at this point is hunches and instinct, maybe educated kind of guesses before they walk into a lobbying firm. And why do I say that most lobbying firms, not all, are generalists, not specialists. They’re obviously exceptions. And they’re the type, generally the type of personalities where they’re extremely hard working, they’re very bright, they’re relational capital is extraordinarily useful to a founder, but if you don’t point them or help point them in at least a specific direction, what you what the founder may discover 6 to 8 months down the road, and after investing a significant amount of money or a modest amount of money, depending on on the scope that they engage with, is that they’ve met a lot of important people. They’ve met, they’ve walked the proverbial the halls of a county complex or a state legislature or state agency or even a federal agency, only to find out they’ve met a lot of people with big, important titles. But when they look at their PNL, there’s really nothing to show for it. And so you’ve got to really help point that government relations expert in the right direction, and it will also help the founder. Find a firm that aligns. Best with at least what their what their thesis might be. As I said, most of the firms are generalist, but they often have, like our subject matter experts across a wide range of of areas. And it’s good to to come to a firm with at least a little bit of some understanding of where the low lying fruit is. 

Greg Alexander [00:07:48] Excellent advice that’s going to save all of us lots of money and frustration. Okay. My next question was. Understanding legislation. So, you know, our members are reading and watching TV and they see, you know, big bills get passed like the Infrastructure Act and all that. And they’re trying to figure out how to understand it and capitalize on it. So what advice would you give a member when they’re trying to understand a piece of legislation and find an opportunity? 

Frank Tsamoutales [00:08:22] A couple of things. Was it? Mark Twain said to things you don’t want to ever watch being made sausage and laws. It’s rough and tumble environment and their legislation is generally a, you know, a manifestation of a lot of influence. Advocacy groups and special interests all have something at stake. And so by the time a piece of legislation passes, generally it has what we like to refer to a lot of stakeholders fingerprints on it. So in terms of doing, you know, how can I how can I as a founder exploit? And I mean that in a moral and ethical way, a piece of legislation to to build my business. What you don’t see at that point, once the legislation is passed, is all the folks that have had impact have written the language. Every line, every word is coming from somewhere, whether it’s a staffer in a cubbyhole with a light bulb hanging over their head you’ll never meet, or one of the usual suspects, whether it be an industry player or a government relations firm, and certainly the legislators and their staff as well. So it’s it’s better to get out front. It’s. Particularly for a founder just delving into this. Quite a risky proposition to react to a large piece of legislation that that on the surface appears to be a great opportunity for them, only for them to find out that, you know, it’s it’s what we call in the south home cooking. Hmm. Having said that. As a founder, a good approach can often be to partner with one of those usual suspects. And I and what I’ve learned from collective 54 and interacting with some of the founders is that they do business for large and medium sized. Firms that have quite robust business pipeline with the government, whether it be state, local or federal. And so approaching them is a good idea to see if they could bolt on to those opportunities so they don’t have to try and sort out all all the details and just provide it, you know, as part of a solution. Now, one of the risks in that is that typically not always the and this is a broad generalization, but it’s something that needs to be sorted out. Is when you’re interfacing with a private sector that will say a client, a founders and was one of their. They’re typically going to be talking to somebody that’s in the commercial side of the business. And one of the things that we focus a lot on, it’s actually become a product that we’ve developed. And I don’t know, but I would imagine other firms do this, too. McKinsey certainly done it, and several other firms that have done some interesting research on this is those commercial practices are not necessarily tied off or reliant or what we say integrated with the public sector side of that firm. So you may have some issues going from, you know, whoever the typical contact is. That you deal with on a day to day basis and transitioning into, you know, partnering with them on a on a government on a government project. But I think knowing that up front informs the founder what questions to ask and if if that firm is not integrated, if that if the prospective partner is not doesn’t have government relations integrated into the private sector sales, then you’re going to have to navigate that. But that’s another way to maybe faster, more efficiently, more effectively get into the market, particularly because you’re leveraging, you know, relationships that are at this point for the founder based on trust and experience a track record and they may be more likely to the client may be more likely to bring you in on some opportunities. 

Greg Alexander [00:12:56] So partnering, that’s a great recommendation. And you know, you mentioned the word relationships, which leads me to my last question here, which is members are wondering, you know, should they get involved with elected officials? Should they try to build relationships with, you know, the people that represent them? Any advice in that area? 

Frank Tsamoutales [00:13:19] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I said earlier, elections matter and relationships matter. We all know that business, right, is no different and maybe even more so in in politics and in government is, you know, get involved, get engaged, be prepared if you do for the elected officials when they enter campaign season to reach out and ask for your help, whether it be volunteering or providing financial assistance and that sort of thing, which is another reason why I wouldn’t want I wouldn’t recommend a founder start there just because it could get very expensive and work more, maybe risk more risk associated with saying no to too many of them, only to come back later and ask for some help. So there’s a lot of information to. I gather, before doing something like this. So I would want to know, you know, who historically has been behind that candidate or that elected official, because there could be some unintended consequences. You may find out that they have a long standing relationship with a firm that might be a competitor and they might be less inclined to help. So there’s you know, there’s a lot of due diligence upfront. The other you know, the other piece of that that’s related to that is there’s ways to. Ascertain what competitors are spending, both in donations to elected officials as well as what lobbying firms they’ve hired and how much they’re paying them. So you can get a good analysis of the landscape and make sure that, you know, you’re not talking to somebody, that at the end of the day might be a competitor or a friend of a competitor. 

Greg Alexander [00:15:18] So this is fantastic. I mean, today’s short session was just to talk about some broad ideas, and we were very successful in doing that. You know, I’m left with the feeling, as I’m sure our listeners are, there’s so much more to that. So when we have Frank on as our weekly role model and we do our private Q&A session with him, our members will be able to ask frank questions directly regarding this because as you can see, this is multi-layered. But Frank, on behalf of the membership, this is unique. You started off by saying you are unique. I believe that you are. You certainly are to us. You know, many of our members have expressed interest in expanding their firm into the government and they don’t really know how. And just a few things you share with us today have been very helpful. So thank you for being on the show and contributing to the collective. 

Frank Tsamoutales [00:16:06] Well, thank you, Greg. I know with the economy taking, we just had the Fed meeting out here in Jackson Hole. You know, there’s some potential black swan events on the lake that are on the horizon. Whether they’ll come to passed or not, who knows? But government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in the country and they’re not going to stop. And this could be a great opportunity for your members to shore up their PNL and even grow their business at a time in an uncertain time. 

Greg Alexander [00:16:37] Yeah. Okay. All right. So for those listening, I’m going to give you three calls to action. First, if you’re a member, attend the Q&A with Frank. Look out for the invite. If you’re a candidate for membership, you want to become a member. Go to collect 54 e-commerce site on application, and the app committee will get in contact with you. And then if you just want to learn more directed to my book, The Boutique How to Start Scale and sell a professional services firm, which you can find on Amazon. But with that, I wish everybody good luck and we’ll talk to you soon.

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Episode 142 – Why Recruiting for Sales Positions in Small Service Firms is Different and How to Adapt – Member Case by Carter Hopkins

Recruiting for sales positions in a small service firm is not the same as recruiting for sales positions in large service firm, or in a product company. This session will help you avoid making costly hiring mistakes as you build out your sales team.

TRANSCRIPT

Greg Alexander [00:00:10] Hi, everyone. This is Greg Alexander, the host of the Pro Serv Podcast, brought to you by Collective 54, the first community dedicated to the boutique professional services industry. On today’s episode, we’re going to discuss recruiting salespeople into a small services firm, which is a very precise recruiting process. And we have a wonderful role model with us today. His name is Carter Hopkins, and he’s a member of Collective 54, and he runs a firm that this is what they do. They recruit for sales, and he’s successfully done this for several of our members. So he’s got a lot to offer on this topic. So, Carter, it’s good to see you. Please introduce yourself to the audience. 

Carter Hopkins [00:00:59] Yes, they’re great. Thank you so much for having me. Honestly honored that you asked me to be on the podcast. So, yeah, I’m the founder of Pursuit and we are a sales and marketing recruiting firm that specializes in helping our partners scale out their sales and marketing function with top talent. 

Greg Alexander [00:01:16] Fantastic. So let’s jump into it. So my first question is how is recruiting for sales positions inside services firms different than recruiting for a similar role in a product company? 

Carter Hopkins [00:01:31] Absolutely. I think a. You know, for me, recruiting for sales in general is so different than any other type of recruiting out there. And that’s really the reason I started our company eight years ago, is because I there are a million recruiting firms out there. There’s not a lot of sales recruiting firms. And I believe sales recruiting done well is very, very different than recruiting an engineer or recruiting somebody in I.T. or something like that. And the reason why is it’s it’s it’s not as much about the resume. It’s a lot of it is about the intangibles. It’s about the person. And there’s no certification on a resume that’s going to sell anything. And so, you know, our approach to sales recruiting and don’t get me wrong, a lot of times we are looking for specific things on a resume as well. We’re looking for those intangibles that you may not necessarily be able to to see on the resume. And I think that makes it a little bit different, as well as recruiting for a professional services firm and sales within a professional services firm. Just the motion is a lot different than it is when you’re selling a product, you’re selling a product. A lot of times it’s the same sales pitch over and over and it doesn’t really have to be a solutions based sell. And when you’re recruiting somebody to a professional to sell within a professional services firm, it’s not tangible. Your the sell itself looks so different than it does when it is one product and you’re selling it the exact same way every time. Yeah. 

Greg Alexander [00:03:12] I agree. That’s a that’s a really good point to bring out. You know, sell services. You’re selling the intangible as a product, as a tangible. That’s a very different emotion. So that that’s a good ad. All right. Let me let me ask the next question, which is, you know, our our membership, because you’re a member and, you know, this is is focused on boutiques, which is code for smaller firms. So let’s talk about the size dimension. So when you’re recruiting sales positions for a small company as opposed to a large company, how is that different? 

Carter Hopkins [00:03:44] Yeah. Working at a big company. Opposed to working at a small company is so different. And you know, the thing that I would encourage members that are listening to this is when you recruit, you need to sell for what you are. And be very upfront and honest what you are with these candidates. And if the candidate is the right candidate for your small firm, that will excite them. If the candidate is the wrong candidate and you’re in, you are going through the good and the bad about working for a small firm, it will scare them away. And so for us, you know, for me, I started the company eight years ago and we’ve built it out. And, you know, I have when people come in to interview with me, I have to tell them, hey, it’s it it’s not a huge firm. We may not have all of the benefits for a lot of these sales reps that are coming from from big firms. What I see is they have a ton of resources. They have a marketing department, they have all of these different resources that they have access to. And then you throw them into a small environment and they’re not used to that. Like they’re like, Hey, where’s where is the client marketing collateral? It’s like, Well, I don’t know. You may have to create that kind of small firm. And so, you know, I think for me personally, I love small business, obviously. And if you sell it correctly, because to me, there’s a lot of advantages of a small firm. Candidates want to know that they can move up quickly. And I believe that you can in a small firm, they want to know that there’s not as much team in to work through. In a small company like that. There is a big company. They want to know that they have access to the founder. There’s a lot of selling points that you you can talk to candidates about that are true. But I would also say almost sell against your opportunity. Hey, here’s what it’s not in the interview process and what it will do. We’ve lost candidates that I liked and I thought could have been good, but they didn’t want that. And I would rather know that in the interview process than figure that out four months down the road and have them leave. 

Greg Alexander [00:05:43] Yeah, I like that. So against it, that makes it’s kind of reverse psychology. And I agree with you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen our membership and even outside of our membership, people get enamored, you know, with the person with 20 years of industry experience, you know, try to bring him in to this small firm. And it’s a trainwreck because they can’t scale down to a small firm. They’re used to being surrounded by all these resources and small firm. It’s it’s largely, you know, building the plane as you’re flying the plane. And you need scrappy people that can make it happen. And sometimes these big company people, they have a really hard time scaling down like that. So that’s a mistake. We’d like all of our members to avoid making speak. 

Carter Hopkins [00:06:25] And I think real quick on that, Greg, another selling point that I believe in small business for is if you’re in sales, you want to try to you want to try to create value within your company as an individual. And I believe it’s easier to create value for a sales rep in a small company than in a big company. And the reason why is because when you work for a big company and you walk in there and the name on your shirt sells itself, yeah, it’s really hard. You’re very replaceable. Yeah, very replaceable because the company’s buy, the buyer is buying from the company and not from you. When you work for a small company and you walk in there. And when we were a, you know, a six person company that preceded you, and our sales rep walks into the room and says, Hey, we’re pursued. They don’t know who pursuit is. So they’re buying from David. They’re buying from a person opposed to buying from a company. And so for me, that’s one of the reasons I always we work with a lot of small companies, and that’s one of our selling points to candidates about going to a small company. You may miss out on some benefits and some of those things, but you’re able to create so much more value for the company, which in turn creates value for yourself. 

Greg Alexander [00:07:33] Yeah, good point. So let’s get to one of the biggest mistakes that members are making right now, and that is they’re over hiring in the sales leadership role and they’re hiring for it too early. Yeah, you and I have spoken about this previously. I’d love for you to share with our members why you think this mistake is happening and maybe what to do about it. 

Carter Hopkins [00:07:59] Yeah, I think so. Here’s kind of what I see. And we have the opportunity to work with some professional services firms, and a lot of times it’s on their first sales hire and you know, they’ve been they’ve been the CEO and they’ve been selling more or less and they may not even wait to sell. Yeah, they may like the delivery side of things and they may be specialized in that, but they find themselves selling and then they listen to Greg and they listen to collective 54. They go, Hey, I need to scale out my sales team. And and they reach out to me. And a lot of times they want us. They want a sales leader. They think that they want a sales leader. That can be a player coach at first that can come in and is going to be an individual contributor. And then go into sales leadership. Right. And what I find is, you know, they want somebody that’s been leading people. Mm hmm. Because they want them to own that sales function. But the hard part about that is somebody that’s been leading people. It’s very hard for them to go back and to go back to selling all day, every day. Right. And they end up frustrated and it ends up not working out well, in theory, in my opinion, from what I’ve seen. And so, you know, I always in most I won’t say always in most scenarios, I believe in hiring somebody that’s going to be a straight sales rep. That’s a little bit probably junior that has no problem reaching out 30, 40 times a day. The person that’s been leading other people to make 40 calls a day is really hard to get them to go back to making 40 calls a day. And what I’ve seen. Yeah. And so, you know, I always cash is king. Right. And like people, how you get cash is you get people that are selling it. I believe your first couple of hires. Most of the time it’s important as long as you can put them in the right atmosphere. It’s important to to find somebody that’s okay with getting out. It’s selling all day. Would you agree with that? 

Greg Alexander [00:10:00] I agree 100%. I mean, listen, individual contributors in sales, it’s a grind. And it is when you get to a mid point in your career or maybe even later on in your career, going back to the grind is just culturally a very difficult thing to do. And for our community, if you think about it, you know, most of them are, you know, early in the development of their sales function in general. So hiring an individual contributor to start with and using that person to kind of be the guinea pig or the test lab, if you will, to figure out what works for you. And then once you understand that maybe that person has the ability to grow into the sales leadership job, if not, at least you know what’s needed now, because you had that junior person in there grinding all the time. So, so really good advice. Speaking of which, I wanted to get to the next question, which is. 

Carter Hopkins [00:10:46] Yeah. 

Greg Alexander [00:10:47] Our members. The stereotype of our members, if I could place it on them is this. They’re absolutely brilliant domain experts in what it is that they do. And that’s the reason why they’ve been able to build their firms, is because of their, you know, intellectual horsepower and their expertise. But they didn’t come up through sales most often. Therefore, they really don’t know what good looks like. And they have out of whack expectations. So they hire somebody and they think sales are just going to miraculously come in and they don’t understand that there needs to be a whole system in place. So can you tell us a little little bit about what expectations should be like and how to avoid this mistake? 

Carter Hopkins [00:11:32] Yeah, I would always I would even caution a lot of times what I see is people want to go hire the person that’s been doing it for 15, 20 or 20 years that says they have a Rolodex of contacts and they just move over the business and all of a sudden they’re making all this money. And where I talked to founders that have made a lot of mistakes is they’ve hired people that say that. And then they get in there and they don’t they don’t do anything. Sales is not easy. It’s not that’s why their sales reps make as much money as they make, is because it’s hard and it is a grind and there are no shortcuts to it. And, you know, I I’m going to quote as a friend, this is sales consultant Gregg Stanley. So I’m not going to take credit for it. But how he talks about it is it’s like a houseplant. You go you go buy a houseplant. And if you don’t put that houseplant in the right environment, it’s going to die. And, you know, and then what ends up happening is the plant dies and you don’t know if it was the environment or if it was a bad plant. And a lot of times you think it’s a bad plant, but really it’s a bad. It’s a bad it was a great plant, but you put it in a bad environment and it died. And so that really hit home with me because I watched that happen time after time again, where you have to create a sales environment and you have to have somebody within your organization to set up that right environment. When I say environment, accountability, KPI is a sales atmosphere where they don’t they they don’t feel like they’re flying solo when the day’s tough and they made 40 calls and they haven’t talked to one person all day long. Like you have to put them in an atmosphere to where they can thrive. And it may be like, Well, Greg, how do I do that if that’s not my background? Fortunately, I love sales. You know, when I started the company, that’s my passion and my background. But for a lot of founders, that’s not their domain or expertise. And I would just say like. I believe in. If it’s not going to be you owning that function, hire a sales consultant that helps you set up that environment correctly from the get go before you go hire that salesperson to put him in that environment overall. And then also don’t think once you hire that salesperson as the CEO or as the founder, you’re just going to be hands off and all of a sudden money’s going to start showing up. You’re going to have to be involved in training, in teaching and coaching the whole way through. 

Greg Alexander [00:14:01] Yeah, I love the house houseplant analogy. You know, when I was in the sales consulting space, I used to tell my clients, Listen, you don’t put a football helmet on Tiger Woods. Yeah, but if you hand him a golf club, you’re going to win Majors, right? So it’s matching the talent to the environment and making sure that you’re putting the talent in a position to win. And it’s very often not understood. And I think your advice of maybe renting a sales consultant that can build your sales environment first. Yeah. Then recruiting in the talent is the way to go. 

Carter Hopkins [00:14:35] Well, and I’ll say the last thing I’ll say to that, Greg, is be patient. Like if you have to play the long term game, far too often I see people playing. A short term game is like, you know, they’ll call, will fill a position, they’ll call me like, hey, never sold anything. It’s like, how long it been? It’s been a month and it’s like, man, it it you have to play the long term game with some of these you know, these people in your organization as well because it’s going to take time to figure it out, especially if you’ve never had anybody doing it before and you don’t have a playbook. Yeah. 

Greg Alexander [00:15:05] All right. Well, listen, we need to wrap this up, but I’ve got a few calls to action here for the listeners. So. So if you’re a member, keep your eyes open for the meeting. Invite. That’ll be coming to you shortly for the private Q&A session that we’ll have with Carter. You’ll be able to ask him direct questions, will go into much greater depth and more able to do in a short podcast. If you’re not a member and you want to become one, go to collect 54 Ecom and submit an application and we’ll get in contact with you. And then if you’re just someone who wants a little, little bit more, I would drive you towards our book. It’s called The Boutique How to Start Scale. And so a professional services firm written by yours truly, Greg Alexander, you can find it on Amazon. But Carter, on behalf of the membership, I appreciate you being here, making a deposit into the collective body of knowledge and I look forward to our upcoming member session. 

Carter Hopkins [00:15:59] Thank you, Greg. 

Greg Alexander [00:16:00] Okay, take care.

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Episode 141 – The Secret to Big Sales: How an Executive Sponsor Program and Executive Language Wins Clients – Member Case by Carajane Moore

What role should the Founder of a boutique professional service firm play in the process of acquiring new clients? That of an Executive Sponsor. And how can a Founder perform in this role with excellence? By using executive language. Attend this session and learn about executive sponsor programs and executive language. 

TRANSCRIPT

Greg Alexander [00:00:15] Hi, everyone. This is Greg Alexander, the host of the Pro Serve podcast. Brought to you by collective 54, the first community dedicated to the boutique professional services industry. On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about executive sponsor programs, what they are. Why you should care. Why you should deploy them. Who should own it, how to do it, etc., etc.. And I’m joined today by a member of Collective 54. Her name is Cara Jane Moore, and she’s an expert in this area and she’s got a lot to offer on this topic. So, Karajan, it’s great to see you. Please introduce yourself and your firm to the audience. 

Carajane Moore [00:00:52] Well, thanks, Greg. It’s great to be here. I’m CaraJane Moore, president Hunt Big Sales, co-owner and Hunt Big Sales is a boutique professional services firm, and we work with the small and mid-sized businesses to help them grow very rapidly by landing large accounts. 

Greg Alexander [00:01:07] Okay, Very good. All right. Well, let me let me start at the top. So what is an executive sponsor program? 

Carajane Moore [00:01:14] Well, actually, an executive sponsor program is more of an approach to how you go about sales. What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to increase that reality in your pipeline. We’re trying to add some assurances in your forecasting and to increase the close rates of of sales. And so an executive sponsorship is about an approach that’s going to allow us to do those things. So an executive sponsor then is somebody that is at the highest level of the organization you’re going after to secure new services. Right? And so they’re at the highest level that have the business problem that you solve. And that’s really important because oftentimes we end up trying to sell us sell benefits and services instead of solving business problems. And really all biotech firms do is solve business problems. And so they’re at the highest level who have the problem that you solve and then also have urgency to solve it. So what we’re talking about is an approach that allows us to secure those types of people so that they can help us through the sales process to close. 

Greg Alexander [00:02:23] Okay. So why do you think this approach and I like that word is the right approach for our community, which is made up of founder led boutique process firms? 

Carajane Moore [00:02:38] Sure. So as a smaller firm, as a founder led, oftentimes founders are involved in the sales. So one, it’s easier for them to get to the owners of the prospect companies they’re going after because sales, when you’re solving business problems happens at a higher level in the organizations you’re hunting than the managerial levels that maybe sales reps are only able to get to. So first and foremost, we have to get to that higher level and an executive is the easiest way to do that. But you can’t teach your salespeople how to do that as well. So one, that’s true. Two, we’re trying to solve business problems. And so you need the executive sponsor inside that organization because if it’s a larger opportunity, they’re going to be the ones that are going to be making the decision to buy. But even if it’s not a big opportunity, it’s a regular sales opportunity. If you’ve got the person who has the problem, the chances are you’re going to get more information and better information than your competitors on landing that piece of business, because you’re going to understand the nuances of the problem versus working with procurement who has no problem. And we oftentimes get lost in the idea of procurement h.r. Training some of these departments who actually don’t have problems. They’re hired to execute someone else’s problems. 

Greg Alexander [00:03:57] Very good. So if you think about a boutique and the lifecycle stages of grow, scale and exit, in your opinion, is there a good time to start this, a bad time to start this? Like where in a lifecycle should a small services firm think about an executive sponsor approach? 

Carajane Moore [00:04:19] Actually, I think that executive sponsor should start the minute you start if you’re selling, which there’s no way we could be in business if we aren’t selling right. If you’re selling the best way to get efficiency and effectiveness and clarity in your sales approach is only speak to the people that have the problems you solve, not their proxies. Mm hmm. 

Greg Alexander [00:04:41] So some of our founders, actually quite a few, are some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. And when you talk to them about their domain, I mean, you literally go back on your heels and you say, oh, my goodness, this person really is an expert. It’s one of the reasons why I love the professional services industry. However, they’re not great salespeople, not because they can’t be. It’s just they were never trained. They don’t want to be you know, they really love kind of the content of their job. So how do you get them? To be the executive sponsor and sell, Empower. Sell the power. 

Carajane Moore [00:05:19] Yeah. So power to power selling is really important. And although they’re the executive for their own organization, we’re trying to secure the executive at their prospects organization, right? Yep. And because they’re a subject matter expert and they are an owner, right. Or he as a founder, they have some gravitas that allows them to get in that door to begin with, which is why most professional services firms grow based on their network of the founders. Right. And we’ve talked about that and seen the founders bottleneck. And then at that particular point in time, as you’re having conversations, all you’re doing is adding clarity to the rules of the process that both you and your prospect are going to go through to determine if you’re the right solution. So we’re not doing anything unethical or behind the doors. This is all clean up, but we’re just making it clear. So even though they don’t have sales backgrounds or they don’t even want to sell, it’s about having an easy conversation. It’s just as simple as me saying, Hey, Greg, we’ve been talking and it sounds like what we’re talking about, I can solve the problem that you’ve got. And in your end, you want us to continue to look at that. But you and I both know there’s some nuances and we’re going to need to get our teams together. So I have to bring my team together. You have to bring your team together. They have to spend some time kind of working through the details. And I just want to make sure before we get started that you’re willing to be a part of that process, that you’re willing to stay engaged, that you’re willing to give me access to your team and data as necessary to go through the sales process. You’re willing to make it a priority. You’re willing to add clarity when maybe some of the people in your team have conflicting ideas or the urgency overcomes the importance and we get into a logjam and getting data and access. Would you be willing to do that for us so that we can work through this process to determine if we can solve this problem the way you need it in the timeframe you’re asking? It’s a that’s all it takes. 

Greg Alexander [00:07:21] Yeah. I mean, that was such a beautiful summary of it. STEM to stern. I marvel at your ability to take the complex and make it simple. Let’s, let’s consider a use case here. So let’s say I’m the founder of a 50 person consulting firm and I’m trying to scale my firm, which means I’m trying to solve for the founder bottleneck and replicate myself and others and be a great delegator and build a team. So because of that, I have a business development function of some kind of sales function, and they’re out there trying to win new clients. Where how is the labor separated? Like who does what and when does the founder parachuted? 

Carajane Moore [00:08:07] Sure, absolutely. So generally, if you’re on the earlier aid of that lifecycle, right, as a founder, you’re going to be more involved at the beginning of the sales process and then again at the end when you’re closing, as you’re scaling to your point, you should be able to turn over some of those, what we would call traditional prospecting activities to somebody in the business development department who is able to then sell the services. And as a founder, depending on the size of the transaction, whether you should be involved or not really is played at that point. So if you’ve already got somebody in business development and we’re trying to get to the highest person within that organization, you should be able to turn that over because they have to be a seasoned salesperson. If they’re trying to get to an owner. If we’re selling power to power, owner to owner, then they have to have enough. Business acumen and be able to do executive language speak to get in. And there’s three secrets to landing large deals you get sent to whom you sound like. So if you don’t sound like the executive, you’re going to get deferred down to a manager or director. You stay with whom you impress, which means you have to be able to continue conversation and an engagement at that executive level, and you close and grow with those who believe, which means you also have to be convincing. And so that’s part of where maybe a founder comes back in because they’ve got the resources they’re committing to. Yeah. So you should be able to transfer that to a salesperson, but they have to have that executive language, that executive presence and that business acumen to be able to be at that level, to have those conversations. 

Greg Alexander [00:09:47] So let’s talk about the executive language. And I know that your firm has an executive language program and how critical it is. And I think it’s so relevant to our community because our founders, they speak in jargon. They speak in like their domain expertise. And if you’re going to be power to power selling to an executive, the person inside to they don’t even understand all the three letter acronyms. So So how can one of our members get themselves trained on executive speak? 

Carajane Moore [00:10:24] Yeah, absolutely. Well, like you said, we’ve we’re launching a new program, Big Sale Secrets, and it’s really about mastering that executive language to close more deals. And that’s that language is more it’s less about the details. And this is one of the things that I think is really important. Executives buy to solve a problem of the future. They’re buying a better future. So they don’t need to know the details of how what we’re doing to solve that problem is going to happen. That’s what their team is for, to evaluate. So executive language is talking about the bigger concept, the bigger idea. We’re talking about money, not price. Right. We’re talking about leading through influence, persuasion and executive through some of the data. And especially if we’re talking about our founders speaking jargon, we’re going to back it up. We’re going to lead them through data and the analysis of that data to implications. And as executives themselves, they’d rather make a decision off of an option. So you have to be able to place the options that don’t include you as a part of the decision making framework for your executive buyer, then provide the recommendation for that choice. And so by putting in some of these conversational arcs and tools, how do you use napkin math so that we’re not into the precision, but we’re giving the big picture idea bullet points, bite sized, but a full arc of concept for executives to make a decision now. So our video program does exactly that. And then we’ve added C suite fluency because it’s a new language, right? So we have to become fluent in it. And what we’re learning is in today’s world, we want to consume information so rapidly, but we don’t take the time to practice and perfected. And so when you’re learning a new language, you have to practice that language. I don’t know about you. I try to do Spanish on a Rosetta Stone, and I could read it and I could I could understand it when they said it, but when I tried to say it back to them. Error. Yeah, error because I couldn’t get the role of the hours and all. I mean, it was, it was really fun and my daughter’s just fluent and I can’t write. Well, that’s the same thing when we’re talking about salespeople or founders trying to learn how to speak at an executive language, which is not their day to day language because they work with their own peers. And if your founders are those very, very smart people, but they’re the subject matter experts in their business, they’re going to be jargon based. Yeah. So we have to elevate them into business based conversation. 

Greg Alexander [00:12:59] Yeah. You know, I’ll share a story with the membership. I made this mistake that Cara Jane is talking about. When we first hit the market with collective 54, we would talk about helping a services firm grow, scale and exit. And I thought everybody understood what that meant. And I had several people say, What are you talking about? And finally someone said, So Greg, what you’re really talking about is going to help me make more money. You can help me work smarter, not harder, and you can help me get to an exit bigger and faster. And I almost kiss the person. I’m like, Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. So we have since taken that language, which is their language, not my language. I was using industry jargon and it wasn’t, it wasn’t landing. So using their language is what really happened. And that’s what this executive language program is about. All right. One more question for you. So let’s say I’m a member and I’m listening to this and I’ve now been inspired, you know, to go implement an executive sponsor approach. What obstacles should I anticipate? 

Carajane Moore [00:13:55] Well. So first and foremost, the first obstacle and I know this seems really obvious, but everybody misses it if you’re going to go ask for an executive sponsorship. Oftentimes people are afraid and it’s our side that’s afraid. So we kind of say it. We don’t really lay it out or. And so the biggest obstacle that we find is we work with companies to get them to do that is their own teams fear to actually go have that conversation. What I will tell you is when you’re actually speaking to executive, they are absolutely thrilled that when you have a problem, you’ve got a process, you’ve got a plan, and you know exactly how to execute it. And they know where they’re supposed to step in. They are grateful for the conversation. They’re not resentful. And so first we have to get over the fear. That’s the first piece. The other piece is if the answer is no, that tells you a whole lot of information. One, if they say, no, I don’t want to be your executive sponsor, it might be because they’re not the right person. Right? Might be because they’re just kicking tires and they’re not interested. Right? Answer Stop wasting our time. Right. So there’s nothing to be afraid of. This is just an easy conversation. Right? So those are some of the key obstacles. The last thing is, it depends on who you’re selling to. If you are in big situations in which you can’t speak to anybody, you can’t ask for an executive sponsor at that particular time, even though you might be able to gather more information. Right. If you’re speaking to municipalities, we have to be careful about the language we use. We don’t say executive sponsor because that sounds like we’re for you to win versus others. And that’s not what we’re asking for. We’re asking for to guide us through the sales process like they would anybody else. Right? So government, military contracting, some of those types of things, the language has to be tweaked just a little bit. And we’re not asking them to sign an agreement and we’re not even asking them to favor us. We just have to be careful. That’s an obstacle in some of those organizations that you have to be aware of. 

Greg Alexander [00:15:58] All right. Very good. Well, listen, we’re out of our time here, but this was really intriguing. And I’m so looking forward to the private Q&A session we’re going to have with the members where members can ask you questions directly. And I’m sure there’s going to be a ton of them. But, Caroline, you’ve been a wonderful addition to our community. You’re always a giving member. You’re actively participating. So on behalf of the entire membership, I just wanted to thank you for all that you do for us. 

Carajane Moore [00:16:22] Oh, well, thank you. I love being a part of C 54, and I keep referring everybody I can because I think it’s a great organization and a great structure for professional service firms like mine and yours. So yeah. 

Greg Alexander [00:16:35] Okay, so audience members, three calls to action. So if you’re a member, keep an eye out for the invitation that’s going to come for Carajane’s Q&A session. If you’re a candidate for membership, go to collective 54 dot com and submit an application and we’ll get in contact with you. And if you’re not ready for that, just want to learn more. Go to Amazon and find my book. It’s called The Boutique How to Start Scale and Sell a Professional services firm. And we talk about lots of topics that hopefully resonate with you. But thanks for listening. And until next time, I wish you the best of luck as you try to grow, scale and exit your firm.

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Episode 140 – Lead Generation Inside the Small Service Firm: How It Is Different and What to Do About It – Member Case by Christian Banach

Small service firms need to generate leads but are constrained by limited resources. Budget and talent are in short supply. Therefore, what works in a small service firm is different than what works in a large service firm, or in a product company. Attend this session and learn what works, and what does not work, for small service firms.

TRANSCRIPT

Greg Alexander [00:00:10] Hi, everyone. This is Greg Alexander, the host of the Pro Serv Podcast, brought to you by Collective 54, the first community dedicated to the boutique professional services industry. On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about lead generation inside of a small services firm or an agency. And the reason why I want to have this conversation is because sometimes this term lead generation gets thrown around carelessly, and a lot of times the best practices that are available to people don’t apply to services companies only product companies, and they don’t really apply to small firms that are constrained by resources. You know, they sound great on paper. Then you go to implement them. You realize you need $1,000,000 budget, a team of ten, so it doesn’t work. So we’re going to dissect what is working for agencies. And we’ve got a great member with us today. His name is Christian Banach. This is what Christian does for a living and he’s got a lot to say about this topic. So. Christian, it’s good to see you. Thanks for being here. Please introduce yourself and your firm. 

Christian Banach [00:01:23] Thanks for having me, Greg. So, yeah, my name is Christian, but I am the founder of Christian Banach LLC. We are a business development and growth consulting firm. We work with primarily advertising and marketing agencies, but we work also with SAS companies, along with other professional services firm. And our job really is to help them get in the door with the types of companies that they want to do business with, and that’s oftentimes mid-market or enterprise level businesses. 

Greg Alexander [00:01:52] Okay. So very good. So I’m going to ask you a very simple question to start with, but it’s so important to get this definition correct. What is lead generation? 

Christian Banach [00:02:03] Yeah. Greg, that’s a great, great question that we do hear a lot of that thrown around in different ways to us. Lead generation is really the proactive engagement of prospects to generate a predictable pipeline of opportunities to a certain segment of a target audience. That’s what that means to us. 

Greg Alexander [00:02:22] Okay. So proactive, as important as what that means, is outbound outreach as opposed to just like receiving a referral or word of mouth or something like that. 

Christian Banach [00:02:33] Exactly. Yeah. So an inbound lead would be somebody who finds you through, say, a CEO or through word of mouth or through referrals. But when we’re talking about lead generation, it is more of a. A proactive approach in which you’re being really intentional about the types of companies and the types of people within those companies that you want to connect with. 

Greg Alexander [00:02:55] Okay, perfect. Okay. So with that as our foundation. Tell me how lead generation is different for agencies as opposed to product companies. 

Christian Banach [00:03:06] Yeah. So product companies, obviously there is a product, right? There is something tangible that somebody can hold that can feel, that can smell, it can touch. However, when you’re a professional services firm, you’re in most cases selling expertise. There is nothing to hold, nothing to touch, per se. So here you really have to demonstrate your expertise through case studies, through testimonials, through research, through various different ways where you can make a prospect, believe that whatever problem they’re looking to solve, that you have something that could help them solve for it. So it’s a little bit more challenging and much more complex than, you know, throwing a picture or an image up on a website somebody can click to buy. These are oftentimes also very much a consultative type agreements, right? So it’s very customized as well. So it’s much more complex than, say, a product. 

Greg Alexander [00:04:03] Yeah. Okay. Very good. All right. And how is lead generation different for small firms than it is for large firms? 

Christian Banach [00:04:11] Yeah, well, the biggest thing that I see here, the large firms obviously have much more brand recognition. So if you were to do some sort of lead generation or outbound call call or email and you work at IBM, the prospect is going to immediately know who you are and what you stand for versus if you’re a small professional services firm and you reach out, they have no idea who you are. So that barrier is much greater for a professional services firm that’s on the small side to break through, because I’m sure we’re all on the receiving end of emails and cold calls from various vendors. So we’ve been in our prospect shoes so we know what it’s like. And so how do you stand out? I’m sure with the work you do is great, but how do you stand out from all the other competitors that are out there? Yep. 

Greg Alexander [00:04:56] Okay, so by the time this airs, it’s going to be autumn of 2023. We’re recording here the last day of August. So in that time period. So tell me, tell me what’s working currently and why. And then as a second part of your question, tell me what’s not working currently and why? Or if you want to do those in reverse order, that’s fine too. 

Christian Banach [00:05:17] Sure. Yeah. Let me talk about what what isn’t working? You know, maybe first, I think a lot of people, when they think about lead generation, they really defer back to what, you know, kind of old school methods where you might get a list and you just sort of call it dialing for dollars, or you get an email list and you blast out an email to hundreds or thousands of prospects that used to work years ago. It doesn’t anymore. You really have to be much more strategic and thoughtful and who you reach out to, what you say to them. You have to be very personalized in your outreach to them. You can’t come across as like a robot or check your email. People will see right through it. So that has definitely changed. So there’s a lot more effort that is involved. And what’s also causing problems is technology itself. You know, is these inboxes are flooded now. There’s spam filters, there’s robo calls that are you know, your phones are blocking robo calls now. So the technology is blocking it. So it’s a lot more challenging to get through these days. On the other hand, there are certainly plenty of firms that we work with and others that are out there that are excelling. And what are they doing while they’re trying to doing the opposite of what I just said? They are taking the time to personalize their outreach communications to these different companies. They’re taking more of a quality over quantity based approach. What we’re also seeing is more creativity in what you’re reaching out with. And what I mean by that is sort of the old school way might be to contact the company and say, Hey, we’d love to get 15 minutes on your calendar or do a demo of our product and tell you how great we are and where our office is and about our company dog. And nobody has time for those things, right? They you really need to give we call give to get right you need to give value before you can expect value back. And what you want back from them is their time, right? Their time is worth something. So we’re seeing some of them are higher performing firms in the space. What they’re doing is they’re coming up with something. So maybe they have done some original research and they’re going to reach out to prospects and say, Hey, we’ve done some research into your industry. We’d love to share these insights with you on a call or I’ve seen others that are taking the approach of they might be organizing a virtual panel. And by that I mean as they pick a topic that’s really a hot topic, let’s say maybe A.I. and they’re reaching out to different senior managers, senior decision makers at their target companies and saying, Hey, we’d like to we’re organizing this panel. We’re getting eight thought leaders together to talk about this hot topic. And they’re using that as sort of a Trojan horse way to start building a relationship and contacting these people and then using that again to start building relationships. So the companies that are really. Doing well with this are thinking more long term. They’re thinking more about building relationships than they’re thinking about short term and transactional type regeneration. 

Greg Alexander [00:08:14] You know, one thing I would add to you, add to your list is community participation. So something I’ve experienced with Collective 54. There’s some of our members that are in collective that whose businesses have exploded as a result of that because they’re participating in the community. They’re not selling anything, but they’re in the community and people are getting exposed to them with their expertise and they’re proactively reaching out and saying, Hey, I noticed that you do X, Y, Z, I happen to have that problem. Can we chat? And it’s been fantastic to see the amount of business that’s been generated in the community. So and our community is only one. So the the lesson for the people that are listening is there’s all kinds of communities out there. And if you become a active participant in them and you adhere to the code of conduct, there’s there’s lots of benefits that can come from that. So just another idea. Okay. Next question. So who in a firm or an agency, a small firm should own lead generation? 

Christian Banach [00:09:10] Yeah, I think about this a little bit, depending on the size. Yes, small agencies. But if you’re under, say, ten people, you know, it can be challenging, right? Because you’re the founder, you’re wearing a lot of different hats. You probably don’t have the budget to go out there and hire somebody full time to do this. So in that case, I think you really need to get smart about how you’re prospecting, right? You’re not going to be able to do as large or volume of prospecting as maybe a larger firm would be able to do. But there are still some really tactical type things that you could do looking at things like your website, visitor ID, people that are visiting your website, people are engage with you on social media. If you have an email newsletter, who’s engaging a newsletter? So being really smart about who you reach out to and strategic and I think the owner can take that on, you know, in a smaller type of firm. That said, you know, if you want to up level and go beyond that, you know, I think at that point then usually this is on this is maybe firms of ten or more. You might then have somebody that’s a head of marketing or a head of sales or something along those lines. And at that point, they could potentially, you know, own this process as well. The challenge there is I see a lot of these firms is when you hire, say, a VP of sales, they may not want to do the prospecting. They may think that that’s maybe lower level type work for them and they want to be in the pitch in the close and get the deal sign. So sometimes it’s hard to motivate those folks to to do that type of work. But but I will say, you know, if you’re a small firm, you need to push your your team to do that. And and you might want to look beyond just those people to how do you involve maybe others within your team, you know, to be involved in this as well? You know, there are certainly you can go out and hire more of a junior business development representative. That’s certainly something to explore. Or, you know, you may want to explore outsourcing, you know, essentially what we do. But with a firm like ours, you know, you’re able to get the technology, you get the tools, you get the people, you kind of get everything, you know, all in one, which is, you know, generally for smaller firms, you know, they can’t afford all of those different elements. But by outsourcing, that is certainly a possibility for growth as well. 

Greg Alexander [00:11:26] You know, a collective even for one of our features is the process of benchmark, and that’s where we collect operational and financial metrics from our members. We’re always looking at kind of the firms that are doing really well in comparison to the average. What are they doing differently? And not to just give you a blatant plug here, but I can tell you that as it relates to lead gen, the firms that are doing better than average typically outsource it. And the reason why they outsource it is because it’s not core to who they are and what they do. And the idea of hiring these people and training them and retaining them, installing all the instrumentation and all the tech is, there’s a lot and it’s a very specialized skill. So, you know, spending money and having an expert do that for you, it would be my recommendation that to those that are listening, are you talked about obstacles to success. So let’s go there next. So I’m a I’m a small agency or a consulting firm of some kind. Maybe I’m 25 people or something along those lines. And you’re right, I realize I need to do lead gen because I want that predictable pipeline. That’s the thing that’s eluding me. What are the obstacles to success? 

Christian Banach [00:12:31] So a couple of things. So if you’re a size of 25 people, if you’ve grown primarily through more word of mouth and referrals, but we oftentimes see is that you sometimes still don’t have your value propositions and your ideal company profile really nailed down yet at times. Right. And you’ve kind of taken what have come in through the door, which is fine, which as you should. But when you’re going outbound, you really need to be very specific and you have to have a niche that you’re going after just to come out and say, Hey, we do marketing and we’d love to work with you. Is it enough? You’ve got to really zero in on specific problems that you can solve for clients. So a lot of the companies that we work with initially, that’s what we’re doing with them. To start off, we don’t just start off sending out emails or making cold calls for them. It’s really getting clear on their go to market from an outbound perspective because that is a different lens to think about it. So to me that is probably the number one challenge, is then also changing the mindset and wanting them to specialize in something. Because if you don’t, you’re not going to see success with outbound. 

Greg Alexander [00:13:39] Okay, very good. So the flip side of that question is, let’s say that I do this and it works. What’s the payoff? 

Christian Banach [00:13:47] The payoff is really scalable and predictable growth. Well, we work with our clients on and anyone that really implements a program like this is you will eventually start to know the metrics. The metrics meaning how many outreaches do I need to do to land a meeting on average? And then of those meetings I get what percentage do I convert to an opportunity? Which one of those what percentage of those opportunities converted to do business wins? When you start to know those numbers, you have that predictability. So if you’re looking to grow double in revenue, in revenue next year, you will know I need to do this many outreaches to get to that point and to get to that those number of wins that I’m going to need. If you get very busy and you can’t take on more clients, you could pull that back. So, you know, we’re it’s not uncommon to see clients of ours, you know, giving a ten X, you rely on their investment. But it does take time. You know, outbound sales cycles are longer than inbound sales cycles. That is another mindset shift that people have to take. So if your sales cycle is six months on an inbound lead, it’s going to be longer for outbound. So you still have to give it enough time in order to start to learn those metrics and then be able to dial it up or ballot down as needed. 

Greg Alexander [00:15:00] You know, one thing I would add to that is what we’re seeing is a decline in referral generation. And the reason for that is because the world has gone to remote work. Word of mouth and referral generation is impacted greatly by geographic density and face to face interaction. You know, so back in the day you’d go to a networking event and, you know, you’d meet ten, 15 people and there was all kinds of introductions and referrals happen kind of naturally. That’s the way humans spread. B2B brands, it’s face to face. I share something with you. Oh, that’s interesting. Tell me more kind of thing. Well, we’re not doing that anymore. We’re not doing that nearly enough. So the referral rate has gone down, and that’s been the bread and butter for most of the professional services firms. So if if you are experiencing a decline in referrals, I hope you’re not. But if you are two things, try to reengage in in-person networking as much as possible. This fewer opportunities, but you can do that. And then add, you know, outbound lead generation to your mix as part of your marketing strategy because something’s got to replace those lost referrals. And what we talked to Christian about today as one possible replacement for that decline in referrals. All right, Chris, and we’re out of our time here today, but it’s great to have you in the community. Your expertise is very relevant because you focus on lead gen for small agencies, which is what we’re comprised of. So it was wonderful to hear what you had to say today. I very much look forward to our Q&A session, which we’ll have in a few weeks. So on behalf of the members, thanks for being here. 

Christian Banach [00:16:38] Thank you, Greg. It’s been a pleasure. 

Greg Alexander [00:16:40] All right. We got three calls to action. So if you’re a member, look for the meeting. Invite when you’ll get a chance to attend question session sessions and you can ask your questions directly. Even if you’re not a member and you want to become one, go to collective 54 dot com and apply and the membership committee will consider your application and get in contact with you. And if you just want to learn more, go to Amazon and find my book. It’s titled The Boutique How to Start Scale and Sell a Professional services Firm. When we talk about subjects like this and many more, okay, until next time, I wish you the best of luck as you try to grow, scale and exit your front.

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Episode 139 – How to Use the Post Project Review to Scale Your Firm – Member Case by Nicole Merrill

Listening to clients intentionally is a core competency for service firms attempting to scale. There are 5 listening techniques appropriate for a boutique service firm. They are: 1- client advisory board, 2- post project reviews, 3- client satisfaction program, 4- win loss program, and 5- conferences. In this session, we take a deep dive on #2 post project reviews. Learn what they are, why they are required, the benefits they produce, and how and when to perform them.

TRANSCRIPT

Greg Alexander [00:00:10] Welcome to the Pro Serv Podcast, a podcast for leaders of thriving boutique professional services firms. For those that are not familiar with us, Collective 54 is the first mastermind community focused on the unique needs of the boutique processor firm. My name’s Greg Alexander. I’m the founder and I’m going to be your host. Today on in this episode, we’re going to talk about one of the listening techniques. We discussed five listening techniques in the book, The Boutique. And one of those is called a Post Project Review. We’re going to talk about what it is, why you should be doing them, when you should be doing them, who should own it, how many should be done, etc., etc.. And we’ve got a great member role model with us. Her name is Nicole Merrill and she’s a CEO of Vecteris. Nicole, it’s good to see you. And you introduce yourself and your firm, please. 

Nicole Merrill [00:01:05] Absolutely. Thank you for having me here. It’s nice to be here. Vector is works with B2B professional services companies to build products that allow them to grow without adding more headcount. It’s an important area that a lot of our organizations are struggling with. So most organizations run right to the technology, you know, the app they want to build or the elements they want to build, whatever it might be, and they run into trouble. So we help those organizations by addressing the three major challenges they face leadership, vision and alignment, product mindset and skill set, and finally developing their own product innovation process. And that’s all specific to the B2B professional services space. So and my own background is in over 20 years of designing and executing the go to market strategies for those kinds of services and products. 

Greg Alexander [00:01:57] Okay, great. So let’s start with the basics. What is your definition of a post project review? 

Nicole Merrill [00:02:06] So for us, we like to use the post product review process. 

Greg Alexander [00:02:11] Yep. 

Nicole Merrill [00:02:12] Yes. Project Review Fork for a couple of different things. We see it as an opportunity to debrief and give people our clients an opportunity to ask more questions. Look for clarity. We also see it as a time where we can get feedback on the work that we’ve done for them and also a really a wonderful opportunity to explore new opportunities. How else could we be working together? So. 

Greg Alexander [00:02:42] Okay, fantastic. And the mechanics of it, how do you do them at the terrace? 

Nicole Merrill [00:02:49] So within our consulting practice, typically we’ll do a couple of things. We have a survey that gets sent out to all the participants in the project, and then we also will schedule time with the project sponsor to really get to talk through with them. Sorry. Things are about making noises here so that we get a chance to talk through with them. The. Her opportunities there, the victories that they saw coming out of the project. So there is a interview guide that we actually use to kind of walk us through that. So that’s with our consultant, with our customers. We actually also do an internal project review where everyone from the project comes together and we also do the same victories, opportunities for development for us internally. We look for the things that we want to productize, that we want to use again and again because they work so well in that particular project and look for ways that we can work to better together. So there’s kind of three layers to our post project work actually. 

Greg Alexander [00:03:57] And when you do it internally. Um hmm. What are some things that you commonly find? One of the outputs of that. 

Nicole Merrill [00:04:09] One of them is definitely to look for the opportunities that we can do more work with someone potentially, if we haven’t already identified them. It’s a way to give the team an opportunity to give each other like kudos and great feedback on Hey, you really helped me out when you did this. So it’s a good kind of team building opportunity for them. It also gives us the opportunity to look for places where we can repeat and just, you know, get better and faster and more efficient as an organization. Yeah. 

Greg Alexander [00:04:37] Yeah, exactly. Okay. And is there like, who owns it inside the company? Is it the person who own the project? Is it somebody else who owns the Post Project Review? 

Nicole Merrill [00:04:50] That’s a great question. So we actually have a leader in project management who is the person who kind of owns the set up of every project and then the debrief of every project. So she makes sure that we send out that survey. She makes sure that we’re scheduling that session with the project sponsor, and she makes sure that we actually have our internal debrief. So she schedules all that. She runs us through the agenda. And then she makes sure that those pieces that we want to make sure we’re repeating end up in the right place, because she is also the person who owns our playbook. 

Greg Alexander [00:05:23] Essentially, yeah. You know, the repeating concept is one that’s worth highlighting the way that we did it in my old firm and we use different terminology, but it’s essentially the same thing. What we did was we pulled out the original scope and and then we compared the original scope with what actually happened in the project. And if we were out of scope and therefore not as profitable as we needed to be, we would analyze why, you know, if the profit margin on that project was higher than normal, we analyzed why. So it’s always a good kind of closed loop process to, you know, to go back to, you know, what were the original assumptions and what actually happened. So, okay, So we talked about what it is, why members should be doing them. Who owns it in the firm? When is it done? 

Nicole Merrill [00:06:09] We usually do it within a few days of actually wrapping up the project. So we try to do it very, very quickly as much as we can. So someone’s on vacation will wait, but typically we’re doing it within days. 

Greg Alexander [00:06:21] And the theory there is there’s more time passes, the less fresh our memories are. 

Nicole Merrill [00:06:26] You forget. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You forget what was important or you’ve lost sometimes. Well, even if it’s a particularly long project, we’ll actually fit in something mid-stream because we don’t want to miss the things that maybe happened early in the project that could have that we will have forgotten by the end. So it’s not necessarily only at the end that we’re doing these kinds of conversations. 

Greg Alexander [00:06:47] Okay. And do you do them after every project, or is there a certain project size that gets this extra attention? 

Nicole Merrill [00:06:55] No, for us, we do it after every single project. There’s really no project that we wouldn’t do it after. It’s it’s an integral part of kind of how we do business. 

Greg Alexander [00:07:07] Okay. And and the results that are gathered from this. Mm hmm. Are they use across the entire organization or is it just within client delivery? 

Nicole Merrill [00:07:20] The entire organization. So, you know, I mentioned early on that in our consulting practice, we do these post project reviews, but it’s really driven how we’ve developed our organization as a whole. So we’ve moved as an organization more and more into a subscription based advisory solution. And part of that was because we wanted our business model to to grow in that direction. But through these kinds of conversations is where we got that. Why, for our customers, like, why is this more important for our customers to be more in this advisory solution kind of approach? You know, we learned through having these discussions that essentially what companies were doing was almost outsourcing their strategy, and it was really important that they keep that strategy internal. And it became very, very clear as we were having some of those post project conversations that being able to work with and partner more with customers is really important and that it really kind of gave us the the why behind we were making a more a big business model shift. 

Greg Alexander [00:08:26] Yep. And as you do these post-graduate reviews and you guys are doing them after every project, which is, which is quite a lot, does it help you get a better understanding as to really who your ideal client is and therefore who you might target from a sales and marketing perspective? 

Nicole Merrill [00:08:46] Yes, I would say it does. It definitely helps us identify what are the. The things that are a bit different between each of the organizations so that we can be looking for those right companies when we see them, and also help us eliminate the ones that aren’t the right fit long term. Yeah, help us better understand the problems that they’re facing and so that when we’re upfront selling, where we’re positioning it better so that the people who really need us, they can self-identify as well. Yeah. 

Greg Alexander [00:09:17] You know, in my journey from time to time, we would have a set of projects that didn’t go so well, and then we would analyze those to see what was common amongst them and they would say, Listen, you know, when you’re in the services business, you become what you sell and who you serve. So if you’re having a problem with a certain type of project and you keep selling them that project, life is going to be miserable because you going to keep putting yourself into those difficult situations. And I know it’s difficult to walk away from revenue, but not every dollar is worth the same. Some dollars are more attractive than other dollars and there’s real opportunity cost there. So I just wanted to work into the conversation on how critical it is to pull forward the post project reviews into the sales and marketing process so that what you’re bringing into the firm, other types of clients and types of projects that you want to work on because that will lead to success because again, ultimately we become what we sell and who we serve. 

Nicole Merrill [00:10:16] Now, couldn’t agree more. 

Greg Alexander [00:10:17] If you were starting a firm today and you weren’t doing this and you didn’t even know maybe what it was, would some listening to this will fall into that category and you were paralyzed because you don’t even know how to take the first couple of steps. You know, how would you get going on this? 

Nicole Merrill [00:10:34] On the process of how to do a post project review. 

Greg Alexander [00:10:37] Correct. 

Nicole Merrill [00:10:38] I’d probably chat at first. 

Greg Alexander [00:10:42] I think we’re all doing that these days. 

Nicole Merrill [00:10:44] Yeah, 100%. I don’t think. I don’t think it has to be fancy. Yeah, we, we started with a like start, stop, continue kind of framework. So we just were able to kind of help people think about all the key areas that we wanted feedback on. We’ve kind of moved into a slightly more elegant framework, which is victories, opportunities and shifts. So what are the things that really organizations felt were there where they really saw value? Where were the areas where we had maybe we had a miss that we could have filled the gap on and still maybe could fill the gap on. And then shifts in the shifts is where we get into conversations of how we do work together in the future, because it’s how their organization is shifting because of this. And we really get a nice opportunity to get expansion from those kinds of questions so it doesn’t have to be fancy. I think you can start super easy and just have a conversation with people. 

Greg Alexander [00:11:41] Yeah, I agree. You know, one thing that I might put on top of that maybe at the intermediate step, not the expert stuff, but once you pass the beginning step is to really embrace this concept of project profitability. Sometimes we measure margins in the aggregate at the firm level, and that can be a little deceiving if you’re measuring profitability at the project level. And the post project review would be the way that which you did that you start to get really granular. You know, so for example, if you were I don’t know if there were four phases to a project and phase two was 200% of scope, like what the heck happened? You know, if if Bob, who was assigned to the project, you know, had these three deliverables and he was two weeks late on each one, like what was going on with Bob, did we staff the project correctly? And then when you when you start doing it that way, you really get good and understanding scope and then you can pull that forward into the sales process so that when you put a proposal on the table for a client, maybe you can move away from hourly billing and you can move into something like a fixed, better or flat fee because you really have great understanding as to what the work is, you know, what the level of effort is going to need to be in order to pull it off. So just something to think about there for for the members. All right. Well, listen, we’re at our time here, but for members of collective 54 that are listening, I want you to pay attention to the meeting invite that will come out for the private member Q&A session, which we’ll have with Nicole. And you’ll be able to double click into this and a lot more detail and ask her her direct questions and learn a lot about the Post project review. For those that are listening, that are nonmembers. Obviously, I encourage you to become a member and you can do that. A collective 54 Adcom fill out a form and some will get in contact with you. And if want to learn about the other techniques that we advocate for, pick up a copy of our book. It’s called The Boutique How to Start Scale and Sell a Professional Services Firm. But Nicole, you and your team have been long time supporters of Collective 54. You’ve made just a tremendous contribution to the community and you did so again here today. So on behalf of all the members, thank you so much for being here. 

Nicole Merrill [00:13:51] And I was delighted. Thank you so much. All right. 

Greg Alexander [00:13:55] Okay. Until next time, I wish you the best of luck as you try to grow, scale and exit your firm.

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Episode 138 –  Journey Maps: What Are They, How Are They Used, and Why Every Professional Service Firm Needs Them – Member Case by Miles Kailburn

Quality work is table stakes, not a competitive advantage. Lots of firms deliver quality work and many clients cannot tell the difference between great work and average work. In contrast, the client experience is a powerful differentiator. Very few firms can deliver an outstanding client experience consistently. Those that can scale. The tool they use to do so is called a journey map. Attend this session and learn what a journey map is, and how to create and use them effectively. 

TRANSCRIPT

Greg Alexander [00:00:10] Welcome to the Pro Serv Podcast, a podcast for leaders of thriving boutique professional services firms. If you’re not familiar with us, Collective 54 is the first mastermind community focused on the unique needs of founders of boutique professional services firms. My name’s Greg Alexander. I’m the founder and I’m going to be your host today. On in this episode, we’re going to talk about one of the most important tools that services firms have at their disposal being best in class. And this tool can make a significant improvement in many areas of your business. And the tool I’m referring to is the journey map. And we have a role model with us today who’s an expert at this. His name is Miles. I’m going to mispronounce your last name. I’ll say it for me. Kelburn Kelburn. I was going to say Kelburn. So thank you for that. And Miles, it’s good to see you. Would you introduce yourself and your firm to the audience? 

Miles Kailburn [00:01:13] Certainly. Thanks for having me on today. We are a 17 year old creative firm located in northern Colorado, primarily focused on high lifetime value segments and client industries. And our company is OTM. You’ll find us at Time.com. 

Greg Alexander [00:01:35] All right, Very good. So let’s let’s start from the basics. You know, we have some young emerging firms here, and this term might not be familiar to them. So what is a journey map? 

Miles Kailburn [00:01:46] Simply put, a journey map is a visual representation of whichever audience you’re going after. Could be employees, that could be customers. Anything that we’re we’re tracking. But really, it’s it’s a visual representation of the process that they go through, whether it’s employment, buying services, things like that. 

Greg Alexander [00:02:06] Okay. And let’s let’s take those one at a time here. So if I have a journey map and let’s say I want to use it for service delivery because I want my client to have an exceptional experience, how might I use it in that context? 

Miles Kailburn [00:02:25] It’s a great question. And I just walked out of a service delivery meeting where we were going through that right now on SEO and social services. So. The first thing is to go through and map out what are the touch points in terms of I guess, first, are we looking at securing new work or delivering existing work to existing clients? 

Greg Alexander [00:02:47] So I’m going to get to the new work in a moment, but for this example, delivering existing work. 

Miles Kailburn [00:02:52] All right. So that’s what we’re going to map out. First is what our client engagement experience is. So we’re going to look at that typically on our side on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis. And so we’re going to map out all the touchpoints that we need to have with a client and really also what are the touch points and areas and timing of their business that they need to communicate with us. We’re going to lay that out kind of on a linear, flat visual map. There’s some great tools at mural near Miro smartly to to map that out. And then from there we’re going to look at what are the emotions that are driving that on the customer side, Where where are there intentional opportunities to align with the customer that we can get ahead of that we can predict? And then from there, we’re going to start to build our services really around that map. 

Greg Alexander [00:03:46] Okay, some terminology here. So touch points. What is a touchpoint? 

Miles Kailburn [00:03:52] Touchpoint would be any engagement that a prospective client or existing client has with our brand. So that could be visiting a website, reading a newsletter, engaging in social for the existing client side. It’s typically going to be more around our IT within our client engagement model. It’s going to be more around client meetings, client cadence, client reviews. Typically anything that account services leading is going to be a communication touchpoint. 

Greg Alexander [00:04:25] Yeah, Okay. Very good. And our audience here today is our members. So I’ll use Collective 54 as an example because they’ve all gone through this. An example of a touchpoint for us is your onboarding session. You know, we know that if you get onboarded well and it’s a good experience and then we’re off to the races and things are going to work out when onboarding does not go well, which sometimes happens for a variety of reasons, then you know, it’s a rocky road from there and we’re in recovery mode right away. So that’s an example of a touchpoint, that’s a milestone on a journey map. And, you know, highlighting that and recognizing it for the level of importance that it has and being really good at it is what a journey map would help you do. Now, you mentioned the word emotions, which I have to double click on because I completely agree with you on this, because sometimes with clients it’s not necessarily what you deliver them, although that is important, of course, but it’s how they feel in the project itself and emotions can get in the way. So for example, when someone comes to our onboarding session, they they kind of know like what they just bought, but not really. So they’re coming at it with, you know, a fair amount of skepticism. And then we need to know that. And so therefore we kind of go overboard in how we explain things to remove some of that skepticism and get them to open up a bit. So emotions plays a huge role here. So, Miles, how does how does your firm help clients? Because I know you do this for a living as well as use it yourself. How do you help people identify what those emotions may be? 

Miles Kailburn [00:06:00] The emotions are. I mean, to your point, that’s that’s almost almost a majority of what you’re managing from. From analyzing that, it really comes down to a bunch of different touch points. Some of it’s qualitative, some of it’s quantitative. So we use focus groups a lot. We use session recording tools like Hotjar that will record website activity to look at hesitancy and delay. But really it comes down to watching the customer in one way or another. We can you and I can sit in a room and we can hypothesize what what a pinpoint is to a perspective or where the emotional state of a prospective collective 54 member or potential sales prospect. But that doesn’t really do us enough good until we actually sit down and have those conversations like you guys do with your prospective members in measure that go back, look at the journey map. Are we addressing these touch points or are these emotions at the right touch point? And what could we do differently maybe leading into that onboarding process or things like that to actually influence that emotion? 

Greg Alexander [00:07:16] Yep. Very good. Now, these are used also in the sales process with new prospects, not just with existing clients during client discovery or client delivery. Excuse me, is it the process basically this the same into supply differently or is it an entirely different process? 

Miles Kailburn [00:07:35] The way we do it as well will basically take a look at the full funnel. So we’re going to look at it from a marketing and sales perspective first. So we’ll start to map through the marketing marketing process. So looking at awareness, consideration and acquisition and so working basically top down tracking that prospect or that persona really from the point at which they are even entertaining the idea of joining a group, buying a car or whatever, that, that buying that customer journey is all the way down through the marketing channels. The transition from marketing qualified lead an MQ out to a sales qualified lead, handing that over to the sales process. And then from there it’s a it is a separate journey inside of the sales process, but we look at it as a linear extension of that marketing, qualified marketing customer journey cycle, because really we’re looking at what is the customer’s experience or perspective customers experience going through that whole process. And then once they become a customer, then it serves to nurture and client engagement, so commonly referred to as a bow tie funnel. But really at that point, once they’re signed, you basically start a whole new customer journey. 

Greg Alexander [00:08:55] Tell us what a bow tie bow tie funnel is. 

Miles Kailburn [00:09:00] So think of two triangles that meet in the middle and the pointy side. But basically you’ve got your customer journey coming in, you’re attracting customers, you’re nurturing them, you’re getting them into your sales table. So from left to right, that’s getting a little more narrow. And that that center point in between is the conversion that client has purchased. The client has signed up, and at that point you actually start the process all over again, just well further on the right hand side of the spectrum. And that becomes what we would consider a client engagement model. So instead of looking at how are we heading them up with drip campaigns and nurturing their sales process, it’s how are we nurturing them as a customer? Are we having the right meeting cadences? Are we delivering things as planned, and are we doing our quarterly business reviews and things like that at the right cadences? 

Greg Alexander [00:09:54] Okay, got it. If I’m a member and I don’t have a journey map and I want to get started, but I might be paralyzed because I don’t even know how to take the first two or three steps. What do I do? 

Miles Kailburn [00:10:07] It’s a little funny, but the first thing I would do is the accidental way we got into this is I would go Google Starbucks journey map. There’s a couple of visuals. It we accidentally stumbled across it a decade ago, and it’s an incredibly well structured document that outlines the buying process and considerations that go into getting that daily cup of coffee. And it’s pretty spot on. I would take a look at that first. That’s pretty easy to wrap your head around as we’ve all gone through Starbucks going from there and actually putting it into use, the two resources would be smartly applied. They are a very large customer journey focused platform, but they’ve got a lot of resources. And then video audio, which is IDL, has some human centered service design courses that you can take and those are really fantastic, maybe 4 to 6 week boot camps that really can get you going from from nothing to your first map. 

Greg Alexander [00:11:12] Awesome. And the first one just to do the spell again. S a l. P y. 

Miles Kailburn [00:11:18] S a ap l y a map. 

Greg Alexander [00:11:23] My, my, my dyslexia is getting the best of me simply because. 

Miles Kailburn [00:11:31] I want to. Yeah. Napoli Yeah, and they’ve got a lot of great resources. 

Greg Alexander [00:11:37] So who in a firm should own this? Not only the creation of it for the first time, but I would imagine it gets heavily iterated against who owns us. 

Miles Kailburn [00:11:46] It’s a great clash and we see it as a cross-functional resource. So with our clients, we work with about 45 brands, pretty much all of them adopt customer Journey as a focus at the leadership level, typically at the CEO level. They’re not the ones leading it, but once we once we can align with the CEO around leveraging and managing towards and building towards customer journeys, that really allows us to build through the cross-functional teams, whether it’s customer experience, marketing, sales, h.R. And so in most of our clients, really, the ownership is usually spread out across two or three department heads that are each managing it in their own areas. We’ve got clients that use them for professional development, onboarding internally, externally sales, marketing, even down to how to build a house. Our clients have kind of taken journey maps as really the source of truth for almost everything they deliver, which has been absolutely exciting to see. 

Greg Alexander [00:12:56] Yeah, I’ll share a story to bring all this to life as maybe a way to put a bow on our session. So I had dinner with a gentleman Tuesday night this week. He reached out to me, called on LinkedIn and said, Hey, I read your book and I’m going to be in Dallas on a business meeting. I’d like to come see you. And I looked him up and he looked like somebody that would fit well with our community. So I said, Sure. So I went and met him for dinner. And he he’s really great guy. And I was so glad that he reached out and said, So what did you think of the book? And he’s like, Well, he goes, I read it about two years ago. And right there I was, dropped my fork in my plate. I’m like, What? So all of my assumptions of my journey map kind of went away. I’m like, So you read it two years ago and here we are tonight. So like, what happened? And he’s like, Well, I started listening to your podcasts and you mentioned at the end of your podcast, so that told me my call to action was working. He goes, and I went back and listen to it this time via the Kindle audio version. So and I didn’t know that right in there. I am kind of not really paying attention to those early steps in the journey map. And then he went from listening to audio and to reaching out to me, which is, you know, the idea behind content marketing. And here we are face to face. And it was something about the audio that did it as opposed to the text, you know, audio, all of it more intimate, you know, not a flat, that kind of thing. So just as an example for the audience that, you know, really understanding the behavior, the journey that a prospect or client goes on can help you make informed decisions in so many different ways. 

Miles Kailburn [00:14:35] Well, Greg, one point in there is you mentioned duration. You know, everyone has their own duration and that might be a little bit on the farther side, but respecting the duration that the customers are organically going to go through allows you to really back your tactics and and decisions to align with that and in our opinion, respect the customer journey. Yeah. 

Greg Alexander [00:14:59] Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, in fact, if I had known that he had read the book two weeks ago, my aggressive sales guys might have reached out to him and it probably would have backfired. Like he that wasn’t the way he wanted to go through it. So I guess I got lucky in that scenario. All right. Let me let me summarize a few things here. So for members that are listening to this, you’re going to get a meeting invite for the exclusive private member Q&A session. And this will allow us to double click on this much more than we can do so on a shorter podcast. And it gives you the opportunity to ask Myles your questions directly to him. So I highly encourage you to attend that. For nonmembers that are listening, get off your, you know what and become a member and you can do that. A collective 54 icon fill out a form and some will follow up with you if you don’t want to get off your you know what and you want to just, you know, investigate a little bit more. Check out the book that I just mentioned. Ironically, it’s called The Boutique How to Start Scale Sell in Professional Services Firm authored by yours Truly, Greg Alexander. And again, you can find that on Amazon. With that, Miles, you know, the way that collective works is, is we make deposits in the collective body of knowledge so that we all benefit from it and we share best practices, and that’s how we all get smarter. So you made a big contribution today. So on behalf of all the members, I want to thank you for being here. 

Miles Kailburn [00:16:15] My pleasure. I’ve been on the receiving side of that for a long time. So happy to give back. Greg Alexander [00:16:19] Okay, Very good. All right. Until next time, I wish you luck as you try to grow, scale and sell your firm. Take care.

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Episode 137 – How a Fast Growth Service Firm Formalized Goal Setting to Get Focused – Member Case by Jason Mills

A strategy defines who you serve, what you do, how you do it, and how you do it differently. And a strategy begins with a clear set of goals. In this session, learn how a boutique adopted a formal goal setting methodology, called OKRs, to get focused on what matters most.

TRANSCRIPT

Greg Alexander [00:00:10] Welcome to the Pro Serv podcast, a podcast for leaders of thriving boutique professional services firms. For those that aren’t familiar with us, Collective 54 is the first mastermind community focused entirely on the unique needs of the boutique processor firm. My name is Greg Alexander. I’m the founder and today I’ll be your host. And in this episode we’re going to talk about a popular management methodology, goal setting methodology called Okay Hours. And the reason why I’m going to talk about this is several of our members are attempting to implement them and we’re learning a lot and we want to share some of those learnings. And if you’re not using OKRs, you might be using something similar, such as the boutique framework from collective 54 or iOS or scaling up. There’s a lot of kind of techniques out there and it’s important to have one. Today we’re going to talk about OKRs and we’ve got a role model with us. It’s a member of Collective 54 from a company called Tribal Scale. His name is Jason Mills. Jason, it’s good to see you. Thanks for being here. And please introduce yourself and your firm. 

Jason Mills [00:01:25] Thanks, Greg. My name is Jason Mills. I had engineering a tribal scale. We’re a boutique services firm specializing in platform and software development, using extreme programing, which is essentially test driven development coupled with peer programing. We also use this to provide a unique approach to digital transformation. 

Greg Alexander [00:01:45] Very good. So let’s start with the basics. What is your definition of OKRs? 

Jason Mills [00:01:53] So Oscars are basically, I guess, essentially company goals. The acronym ACRONYM stands for Objectives and key results. The objective portion be more of a loosely defined company goal and the key results, more of the how to get there. So yeah, but it’s kind of like a quick overview. 

Greg Alexander [00:02:15] Yeah. And for those that might be interested, they really became famous when John Daw introduced them to Google back in the late nineties. And many in the tech world, such as tribal scale, you know, have embraced them as a result and to much great success. So, Jason, now we understand what they are. Let me ask you, why did you and your firm start using them? 

Jason Mills [00:02:40] So we’ve we’ve done goal setting exercises for several years to drive personal growth and company initiatives. But in the past, it was really just the manager collaborating with the with a report. And we came to the realization that, yeah, it’s great if someone wants to get a certification to support their growth, but what if that doesn’t align with the company’s goals? So what can we do to eliminate this gap? And as we as we look to really align the company vision in the organization, OKRs became the model to try out for us. 

Greg Alexander [00:03:15] Okay, great. And when did you begin your. Okay, our implementation. 

Jason Mills [00:03:21] So we started end of last year really trying to get the framework in place and for preparation to really launch this in Q1 of this year. So we are about two quarters in almost at the end of the second quarter right now and definitely iterated a little bit on the process. But that’s that’s where we are at this point. 

Greg Alexander [00:03:43] Which is great. I mean, we caught you at exactly the right time. If you already had everything fully baked, the the conversation wouldn’t be as fruitful because I think there’s many that are in the middle of an implementation. So to hear your your story is going to be helpful to them. So tell us a little bit about, you know, what the journey has been so far. You know, how are you using them, What’s gone well, what hasn’t gone well, etc.? 

Jason Mills [00:04:06] Yeah, sure. So we’ve gone ahead and we created for essentially for company OKRs to help line the teams. The first one was lined with white glove service. That was like an example of one of the ones we use trying to provide that ten X value to our clients. The second was service offerings kind of like complements the first OKRs, and the third was thought leadership in the form of content generation through blogs. Speaking of speaking out on podcasts or attending meetups, and the fourth one was meaningful bench work. So we were in a situation last year where a lot of times people were on bench and we wanted to make sure that it aligned with its valuable time. We wanted to make sure aligned with like with what would benefit our clients and our business the best. So those were some of the the OKRs we choose to use. And then each department really gets their own. They can add a couple of extra OKRs if they like, based on what the department needs might be. 

Greg Alexander [00:05:13] Okay, so let’s double click into into one of them and I’m going to choose meaningful bench work because I think that’s a rich topic for our audience. You know, most of our members, sometimes they’re a little lumpy in their businesses and they can find, you know, talented people on the bench for a period of time. And then unfortunately, sometimes it goes the other way your 120% capacity and everyone’s burning the midnight oil. So so what is some examples of meaningful bench work? 

Jason Mills [00:05:42] So a lot of times like the default for us just was like, okay, we’re gonna we’re going to certification certifications always help our, you know, our company in regards to Azure or things like that. But we took it a step further and we we said, you know, whatever we’re working on, it should benefit either a client that we’re going to have in the future or a client that we have currently. And we took it a step further and said, you know, how do we know we’re succeeding in this? So we put together like a metric saying that, you know, we want to we want to use whatever knowledge they’ve gained within two months of of learning it. And that’s how we know if we succeeded with that. So so that’s an example. 

Greg Alexander [00:06:27] That is a great example. So you want to use whatever you learned within two months. I can’t help myself. Two months is a very precise number. How did you pick that? 

Jason Mills [00:06:39] Oh, I it’s like it felt right. Okay. It seems like, you know, when you’re when there’s a little bit of leeway before the next client starts up, it seems like a good amount of time to prep before you actually get deep into the project. So that’s just landed there. 

Greg Alexander [00:06:58] Yeah. Okay. Well, that makes sense. All right. And you know, at the top, I mentioned that OKRs is there’s other similar systems. A lot of our members use iOS. Some use scaling up, some use the boutique. I mean, there’s a lot of them out there. And I advocate for everyone. To me, there’s not a ton of difference between them. The important thing is to have one and be committed to it and implement it. Right? So. So was there any reason why you picked OKRs over the alternatives? 

Jason Mills [00:07:27] Well, they you know, they were naturally a good starting place if you haven’t done organizational goals before. There they were from what we the research we did, they were loose, flexible to change, interpreted in different ways which which, you know, some might think that’s not you you want to make sure they’re not interpreting the phrase, but it actually allows to generate some creativity among the teams to solve different problems. And they’re not tied to compensation, which alleviate some of the pressure as well. So they were basically very forgiving if we screw this up, which we were going to screw it up. Yeah. So anyway, U.S. has its value, too, but I know that’s more of an operating system. And now that we’re two quarters in, we’re actually experimenting a bit, but laying us on top of that to kind of like help us drive and execute a lot of the a lot of the things we want to do. 

Greg Alexander [00:08:19] So that’s fantastic. So the reasons why you chose it, one of the reasons anyways, was the flexibility. And since this was the first attempt at this, that was obviously valuable, I also, I did not know that OKRs were divorced from compensation. So that’s a valuable add right there and I can see the benefits of that. Some might argue against that, but I can see if you’re early in this process that that might make it more, I guess, less stress in getting it implemented and maybe less of a shock to the system. So that’s interesting. Okay. And then in terms of the six months that you’ve been at it, you know, if you were to do it over again right now, if you had a clean sheet of paper, is there any any gotchas, any failures that happened along the way that you wish you would have known? 

Jason Mills [00:09:06] I think overall it went pretty well. We implemented this using just basic spreadsheets. Seems I think you can kind of run the world on spreadsheets and and just set up the spreadsheets, you know, kind of like doing weekly check ins, whether our our OKRs were on track, off track, or if they were done. Kind of provides that simple, simple implementation as we get into it. I think one of the challenges for the engineering team in a lot of times engineering is that one of the larger sizes is that multiple parking levels. So not having that visibility into, you know, what are the managers, the managers, you know, kind of trying to deliver. So are we all in one bucket of thought leadership and no one’s putting any any knowledge into or any time into white glove service. So that was a challenge that, you know, we are kind of working through and evolving on. Hmm. 

Greg Alexander [00:10:03] And what what are your early hypotheses as to how you might overcome that challenge? 

Jason Mills [00:10:09] So we had, I would say like long term, maybe just finding like a tool that can kind of work through and manage it and provide that hierarchal visibility. When I was working at a former Life, I built performance management systems and, you know, clients created goals from very simple to very complicated scorecards, you know, tracking metrics on time and dollar delivery. But end of the day, they all wanted to see a one page dashboard with visibility all the way down the line. So right now we are using a tool that actually integrates with our Google calendar and allows us to kind of tag each meeting that everyone has with an Oscar. And that month we can see how much time was spent across the organization and on the on the specific. Okay. So it kind of provides that visibility to Head Start, right? 

Greg Alexander [00:11:04] Yeah, very cool. Any other, you know, tools that you all leveraged or, you know, quick hacks that people might take advantage of when you got going on this? 

Jason Mills [00:11:15] And we’re we’re piloting a couple of different things, like from the iOS standpoint. There’s there’s a couple different tools that just manage that whole process. So it’s like we’re using 90 right now, which is something that we’re that we’re trying out, which is a good. 

Greg Alexander [00:11:33] Thing about like learning tools around OKRs. Were there any books that you read, any videos you watched, anything like that that you can recall that jump to mind that were particularly helpful? 

Jason Mills [00:11:43] Yeah, there were some there’s a lot of great information on some websites. Definitely read the book Traction, which was a good one on iOS, trying to think of some other ones that come to mind, but those are kind of amazing. 

Greg Alexander [00:11:57] Okay, Got it. And then my last question before we wrap up is, you know, the implementation of OKRs. Is there one person who kind of owns the the whole thing or is it distributed? You know, who’s in charge on it? 

Jason Mills [00:12:11] Yeah. So the for us we have the our chief of staff and she owns the process, kind of like owns the master spreadsheet. And then we have the department leads that kind of like manage the okay for each department, everything kind of rolls up, and that’s kind of a bogey structure. 

Greg Alexander [00:12:28] Got it. Very good. Okay, Well, so for the listeners that are members, let me draw your attention to making sure you accept the meeting invite that will come out here shortly with Jason Mill’s name on it from tribal school. And if you attend that member only private Q&A session on Friday, which is when we have a role model sessions, you can double click on any of these items and ask your questions directly of Jason. So I encourage you to do that. If you’re not a member and you think you might want to consider it, go to collective 54 dot com. You can fill out a form and one of our reps will get in contact with you. And if you want to read about other things that we do or the topics we cover. In addition to this, I pointed towards the book The Boutique How to Start the Scale and Sell a professional services firm in a video is your thing on YouTube. We have a channel called Profiting in Professional Services and you can see some videos on that. But Jason, I appreciate you accepting my invitation when I reached out to you and sharing your journey so far. And congratulations on the progress that you’ve made and we learned a lot from you today. So thanks for being here. 

Jason Mills [00:13:35] Great. Thank you, Greg. 

Greg Alexander [00:13:36] All right. Okay. And for the rest of us, you know, I wish you the best of luck as you try to grow, scale and exit your firm in the future. We’ll talk to you on the next episode.

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Episode 136 – Why Podcasting Should be Part of a Professional Service Firms Marketing Mix – Member Case by Tom Schwab

Podcasting is a perfect marketing channel for boutique professional service firms. It allows a firm to authentically connect with its target market at scale cost effectively. Yet, many members are not taking advantage of this tool. This session will teach members how to leverage the podcasting channel to grow their firms.

TRANSCRIPT

Greg Alexander [00:00:10] Welcome to the Pro Serve podcast, the podcast for leaders of thriving boutique professional services firms. For those that are not familiar with us, Collective 54 is the first mastermind community focused on the unique needs of the boutique process of firm space. My name is Greg Alexander. I’m the founder and I’m going to be your host today. On this episode, we’re going to talk about podcasting and its role that it might play in your marketing mix as you look to grow your firm. And we have a collective 54 member role model with us who’s an expert in this area. His name is Tom Schwab. He’s with Interview Valet Time. It’s good to see you. Please introduce yourself to everybody. 

Tom Schwab [00:01:00] Greg, I am thrilled to be here. You know, I run the agency interview valet. And my my viewpoint is that today every pro serves business problem is obscurity, right? There’s thousands, tens of thousands of people you could help. They just don’t know you exist. And I think instead of breaking through the noise, it’s much more powerful to get in on the conversation that people are already listening to. 

Greg Alexander [00:01:25] All right. So so give us kind of a State of the Union on podcasting. I’m not sure our membership community, you know, has a full appreciation for how prevalent it is, how it’s growing, etc.. 

Tom Schwab [00:01:37] Yeah. And everybody thinks there’s, you know, millions and millions of podcasts. While that’s true, less than 450,000 have gone live in the last 30 days. So there’s always room for great podcasts out there. The other thing is that not everyone is listening to podcasts. If you look at the current data, it says 51% of the U.S. adult population listens to podcasts, right? And they’re above average income. They’re above average education. These are people that are early adopters, that are looking for answers. They’re looking to make their life better right there. There’s still probably a third of the people out there that are so proud They haven’t read a book in since high school. They’re probably not listening to podcasts. Right? The people that are listening to podcasts are looking for answers, looking for ideas. Look at looking for people that can help them. Yeah. 

Greg Alexander [00:02:33] I mean, if half the American adult population is listening to podcasts, I mean, that’s that’s a huge audience. So, I mean, relative to the other forms of media, it’s pretty new, although it is maturing. Why do you think it’s grown so much? 

Tom Schwab [00:02:49] It’s now, what, almost 20 years old, right? So it it’s you know, it’s going to stick around for a while. But I think it’s really because of the intimacy and also the authenticity. Right. We’re so tired of this little, you know, sound world. And while there’s a place for that to really learn, to really understand, something is going to take more of a longer conversation and it’s more authentic. Right? And we look at things that are on television that is highly edited, and we really just sort of want to see what what really happened behind the scenes. And in some ways, almost like a voyeur is a bright. You and I would be having the same conversation if we were sitting at a coffee shop or a bar. Right. The only difference is that there’s microphones and the whole world gets to listen in. 

Greg Alexander [00:03:44] Yeah, it’s really interesting. I like the concept of intimacy because if you think about our audience boutique process firms, I mean, they’re boutiques by design, which means they serve. You know, I like to say the riches are in the niches. So anything that you can do to build a more intimate or authentic relationship with the target audience and the client base is much preferred over maybe kind of mass communication techniques. So. So tell us why, in your opinion, podcasting should be part of the marketing mix specifically for the boutique processor firm? 

Tom Schwab [00:04:14] Yeah, I think it’s really because there’s this idea of you’re one funnel away and I don’t believe that, right. The best things in life don’t come through funnels, They come through conversations and there’s a great book called Clicks and How Digital Marketing is Ruining Your Business. And I love how Bill Troy says Big fish don’t swim through funnels and whales don’t click right. The people that are hiring processor firms aren’t going to hire you because you did a dance on Tik. If anything, that’s a reason for them not to hire you, right? So they want this discussion. They want to know who they are working with. And at the end of the day, none of us need more leads, right? We need more profits. We need profits come through great customers, right? So the idea of going out there and being able to communicate at length is really magnetic marketing, where it will attract the right people and retell the wrong ones. The other. The thing I love about this channel is that it becomes so easy to create and then so easy to reproduce and repurpose. Right. I’ve written a lot of blogs in my life. Most of them feel like homework assignments, right? But we can have this conversation and then take the take the audio and get a transcript, have somebody clean it up and make a blog. We can take video clips from it, audio clips so you can get a month’s worth of content out of one podcast interview. Yeah. So to my my sense, it’s it’s easy to create, it’s inexpensive to create, and it’s so powerful that you can use it in your marketing and even in your sales, right? You can for somebody who gets on a sales call, you can say, Hey, our founder did this interview. Right? And I think it’d be interesting to, you know, how they’re going to listen to 45 minutes of the founder before they even jump on a sales call. That that becomes a warmed up lead. 

Greg Alexander [00:06:10] Yeah, I agree. So there’s there’s two approaches. Should they be done mutually exclusive? Should they be complementary to one another? And the two I’m referring to is sort of collective 54 members start their own podcast or should they seek to be a guest on somebody else’s podcast? What’s your opinion on that? 

Tom Schwab [00:06:29] Well, I’ve always got opinions on everything, but I look at it, it’s like, should you be an Uber driver or an Uber passenger? Right. Say same platform, but what are your goals? Right. If you want to nurture your current clients and your current leads, then host your own podcast. And Greg, this is a great example, right? Because you take this content, we we dig into it each week in the community. Right. So it’s really for people that already know about it or part of it. Well, if you want to go out and find new leads, new customers, you know, if you build it, they will come. Doesn’t work. You really need to tap in where they’re already listening to. So I’d say be a host. If you want to nurture your current leads and customers, be a guest. If you want to go out and get new customers, new leads, new exposure, new backlinks. 

Greg Alexander [00:07:25] Yeah. I mean, so that’s I mean, and I should tell everybody that collective 54 is a client of Tom’s, and we do both. I mean, obviously here we are, here we are hosting our own podcast. And you’re right, it’s that is for our members primarily. And we are able to, you know, put role models in front of them through the podcast every week. And our members love that. But when Tom books me as a guest on another show, that’s an audience that doesn’t know who I am and I get exposure, you know, to that group. And then through that they find their way to collective 54. So I think, you know, being a guest on someone else’s show is a great acquisition technique, and hosting your own show is a great retention technique. At least that’s how I see it. I think that’s a good way to frame it. So, Tom, tell the audience a little bit about your services. And I’m giving you permission here not to be modest and humble, but, you know, your expertise is taking people like me and getting them on other people’s shows, which it’s hard to get on other people’s shows. I don’t know how people do it without somebody like you. So why don’t you tell us how it works? 

Tom Schwab [00:08:31] Yeah. So we’ve been doing this for nine years now and we have a team of 30 in Europe and North America and. When we first started out, it was almost like guest blogging, right? My background is inbound marketing and engineering, and I looked at it and said, Well, I guess blogs aren’t working anymore more. Could we? The equivalent of guest blog on podcast. And so we started with that. And Greg, the first three years, we built up the systems, the processes, and I went, I tell people about it. I’d get my elevator pitch and they’d go, What’s the podcast? Well, that changed about 2019, and people started to see the power of those. And so now, now one of our clients said, I love working with you because you let me be the guest and you take care of the rest. And I’m like, Oh, that’s good. Copy were taken that. But we’re working with thought leaders, right? Coaches, consultants, leading brands, not fiction, nonfiction authors to get them out there on the right podcast and really, you know, let them be Sinatra. And we do all the supporting work with that. So not only finding the podcasts, but prepping them for every podcast, giving in the best tools and processes for each podcast, and then also the feedback, right? I’m an engineer by degree, so, you know, in God, we trust everyone else bring data. So we license a whole lot of databases. And I think without that it’s more podcast guessing than podcast guesting, because at the end of the day, nobody comes to us and says, I want to be on a podcast, right? That’s that’s an ego thing. Now there’s always an overarching goal of I want to grow my business. Yeah, being on podcast. So that’s really what we focus on. 

Greg Alexander [00:10:24] Okay, so some of our members and I’d say quite a few are what I would describe as a brilliant domain expert. Whatever their domain is, I don’t know. Maybe they’re, you know, a brilliant creative director in a marketing agency, or maybe they’re an absolute brilliant technologist in cybersecurity or something like that. And that’s is what allowed them to get their firms to the point that they’re at. But they’re they’re not great at sales and marketing and they don’t like it. And they sometimes suffer from what’s known as the imposter syndrome. You know, they maybe don’t recognize how brilliant they really are. So putting themselves out there on a podcast can be very intimidating to that group, which is a shame because the world needs to hear what they have to say. So you mentioned that you coach them and you prep them before they get on a call. So how do you help somebody like that maybe overcome their fear and kind of hold their hand? So it’s a great experience for them. 

Tom Schwab [00:11:25] Yeah. And I think I’m going to correct you there. I think all of them are brilliant, right? They’ve all brilliance in different ways. And one of the phrase you hear me talk about a lot is what’s ordinary to you is amazing to others. Right? So that expertise that you have there that everyone knows that. And there was a friend of mine that actually helped me with this because I started out I had that imposter syndrome. I’m like, I’m not the expert, Right? I don’t think there’s anything as the expert, but there is a expert. And he said, you know, the legal definition of a of an expert is someone by their training, their education or their experience knows more than the average person. Trust me, as long as hard hours as you put in your business, in the industry, you have expertise there that others don’t have and that your clients are paying you for. And so I think to frame it that way, for people to also work through their one sheet to say these are the topics that you can bring expertise to, let’s focus on these. Right? Nobody’s going to ask you a question. You know, if you’re not in finance, they’re not going to ask you, Well, what do you think about the Fed’s move? I don’t know. That’s not my area of expertise. Yeah, right. So they want to bring you on. They they want to make you look good with that. So I really think it’s focusing that that light on where they can they can add expertise. The other thing is I love it when people come and they’re like, Yeah, I don’t like sales, I don’t like marketing, I don’t like promoting myself. Perfect, right? Because the worst thing to do on a podcast interview is to make it an infomercial. Yeah. And, you know, Rand Fishkin, who wrote the book Lost and Found Her, I love how he put out there. He said the best way to sell something today is not to sell anything, but to earn the respect, awareness and trust of those who might buy. And I would say, you know, on a podcast, it’s those who are ready to buy, right? If they listened to you for 30 or 45 minutes, they’re going to turn you up or turn you off. That’s fine, right? But if you’re the answer to. FRAYER You don’t have to sell them, right? You have to just tell them what you do, how you do it, and it will attract it to it. And, you know, the data shows that we’ve have for nine years that the leads from podcaster interviews tend to close faster for a higher initial engagement and less churn. Yeah, and it sort of makes sense. It’s not cold traffic. It’s it’s a warm referral. Yeah. 

Greg Alexander [00:14:04] I mean, that’s the experience that I’ve had for sure, and that’s why I’m so committed to the podcasting piece of our marketing mix. All right. Well, listen, we’re out of our time here, but for the members that are listening to this, I want to encourage you all to attend the private member only Q&A session, which we’ll have with Tom that will allow you to ask your direct questions to Tom and he’ll answer those. That meeting invite will come out shortly, but look for that and please attend. If you’re not a member and you think you might want to join, go to collective 54 dot com. You can fill out a contact us form and one of our reps will get in contact with you. And if you’re interested in topics like this and you want to learn about other things, I would point you in the direction of our book. It’s called The Boutique How to Start Scale and Sell a Professional Services Firm. But with that, Tom, I mean, I appreciate you and all that you do. Thanks for being a great contributing member to Collective 54. You give a lot as well as take. So thanks for that spirit and thanks for being part of our tribe. 

Tom Schwab [00:15:02] I thank you for putting it all together. It’s such a great community and like I said before, what’s ordinary to you is amazing to others, and there’s just brilliance in there. And when people share that, it’s amazing the magic and synergy that happens. 

Greg Alexander [00:15:17] Okay, great.

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