Class is in session! You don’t want to miss this awesome episode with Kevin Baumgart of SetSales. We cover what it’s gonna take to push your shop from $500k to your first $1m. There’s a few sales tricks and things to look out for that Kevin has laid out for you! Don’t miss it!
Reach out to Kevin! – kevin@sales.ink
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DGI Apparel: https://www.dgiapparel.com/
Transcript:
00;00;04;06 – 00;00;26;19
Hey, Print Hustlers. Welcome back. Mr. Kevin Baumgart here. Fun episode. We are diving in, getting to a million in sales. So this is look, if you’re if you’re way above that, you probably maybe you could skip this. Actually, maybe it’s a good refresher because, going to be stats sales. Don’t skip it. Yes. Kevin’s here. This is we appreciate you being here, but, Kevin’s here.
00;00;26;19 – 00;00;56;28
He runs sales Inc. He’s got an academy. He does one on one consulting. He has a really cool cohort. They have a third group that’s starting. That’s all at sales Dot Inc. But real quick we are going to dive into the details of going from roughly 500 canned sales to about a million in sales. And what are the things in the engine to get started and trying to get really tactical tools to download, tips to start using, and things that you guys can start working on on Monday.
00;00;57;00 – 00;01;25;14
But we’ve got four incredible sponsors here. And, if you guess this first one, shoot me an email so I can send you a little, gift for listening. All right. Drum roll week, Multicraft. All right. If you’ve heard of @Multicraft_daddy, then you are amazing. Why? Because if you need inc supplies or daddy Multicrafts screen printing and digital supplies have been around for over 50 years providing you with top brands at competitive prices.
00;01;25;17 – 00;01;45;28
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00;01;46;01 – 00;02;07;20
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00;02;07;23 – 00;02;29;16
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00;02;29;18 – 00;02;50;06
They do a ton more though. Creative art, mock ups, maps, digitizing back office hours, and all that good stuff. You’ve been doing it for over 30 years. Mention Printavo part two for Printavo power, two for. Get to 15% off your first vector. All right, super color if you check out store dot super color. ECommerce is so cool because they’ve really launched their new website.
00;02;50;06 – 00;03;10;25
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00;03;10;27 – 00;03;37;12
Not only that, their support is incredible. It’s like insanely fast. And they have an issue. If there’s an issue, they literally ship the stuff out as quickly as possible and rush it back to you. So they’re just an incredible partner for your shop as well. Printavo one five that gets you 15% off your order. That code is Printavo one five Bruce, I want to tell you about the best new software platform to hit the industry.
00;03;37;16 – 00;03;59;08
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00;03;59;10 – 00;04;16;21
You know, the average shop spends two hours purchasing every day, and DJI is going to cut that time in half. Ask yourself, what would I do with an extra hour every day? And we actually don’t have a promo code for DJI, or sorry, they don’t have a promo code for DJI because it’s free. It’s always free for shops to use.
00;04;16;21 – 00;04;39;16
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00;04;39;16 – 00;04;59;08
So thanks so much for being a sponsor, Ian and the team. And check out DGI apparel.com and tell them you tell them we sent you. All right. Let’s jump on it. All right, Print Hustlers, we’re back. We’ve got Kevin Baumgartner from Set Sales and Sales Inc. I’m Bruce from Printavo. Always love having you back. So thank you.
00;04;59;11 – 00;05;19;07
I get be here. You’re in Los Angeles visiting. We had some meetings and things and I was like, let’s let’s just do an episode, about a couple different topics that I feel like come up on this podcast a lot. You were just doing a masterclass in sales with Steven. Yeah, which that was really cool. You guys divulged a lot in there.
00;05;19;10 – 00;05;41;10
We’ve got Berkeley. Berkeley’s over there. This is our latest puppy who’s going to be joining in for some tips. One of the things well, first of all, obviously I think people know, but your background, you are you are running set sales, which is sales consultancy for a lot of print shops. Yeah. Just one on one shop coaching, consulting, helping them to grow sales.
00;05;41;14 – 00;05;58;14
That’s awesome. And you’re just telling me about a shop that you closed now? Which is really cool, if not a lot of shops. I feel like the last couple of years, well over 100. That’s crazy. I know I stopped counting. It’s it’s it’s been awesome, though. It’s like it’s my job now. I get to do this full time when we need it.
00;05;58;14 – 00;06;17;12
I feel like we need it. Even as a product person on my own. When I was working on Printavos so heavily sales, it’s just like, kind of let it come in. Like I feel like I’m better at the marketing side, and then we just let the leads dribble and handle it from there. Yeah. Which I feel like most people that get into it aren’t getting into it from the sales.
00;06;17;12 – 00;06;46;11
And anyway, they’re getting into it from the, you know, our to creatives or artists. Yeah, that’s that’s typically it. So it’s a whole different way to look at any launched sales Inc I see you went through the first cohort and you’re in the second round, the third cohort or sales Sales Inc which is a membership community. We get 15 shops together and noncompetitive geographies and allow them to just talk about all things sales, support, collaborate, pardon me, delivering content, but part them communicating and connecting.
00;06;46;13 – 00;07;20;25
I actually don’t know this, but how did the first and second go. Like what are some interesting takeaways from. Yeah yeah the first one’s done. The second one a little over six months. Through I do surveys after the six months mark. And it’s been pretty interesting, like the feedback that I’ve gotten, part of them are like, it’s about 50, 50, 50% say the most valuable component is me being able to deliver content that I would in a one on one engagement with a lot of their peers and the other 50% say the most valuable part is just being able to lean on other shop owners or salespeople and hear what’s working for them,
00;07;20;25 – 00;07;41;18
or what isn’t working for them, and just being able to share share sales tips and tricks and ideas. What what was the biggest takeaway or tip that when they were talking about it and it didn’t have to be that something that you shared, maybe anyone else shared in the group? That everyone was like, whoa, hold on. We need to we need to do this.
00;07;41;22 – 00;08;05;17
Yeah. I, I talked about this with Steven the last time I was on, but I think, like, the kitting and box strategy or, the fact that if you do send someone a really well curated box of merch, apparel, hard goods, whatever, that they’re not taking advantage of today with their logo on it, it sparks interest and intrigue.
00;08;05;19 – 00;08;27;11
So it’s just I’ve heard shops do it and then other shops have done it, and I only hear good stories. Not only on selling those items that are in that curated box, but also of selling, kitting and boxing solutions overall, like people will actually now order kits for employees, for client gifts, for it’s probably to be the most common topic, the biggest takeaway.
00;08;27;11 – 00;08;53;15
But more than that, it’s like the most valuable thing that they got out of the group that they started to really drive revenue from. Every business owner gets an insane amount of unsolicited requests, like inbound requests for services, to buy stuff, to do stuff. Sure. But when someone does send something like, I’ve gotten a book that makes me stop just other random little products or things that are interesting, it 100% always makes me look it up.
00;08;53;22 – 00;09;13;03
Sure, even respond back because they’ll tie it. I finally tie the item with an email or some sort of reach out a text or email or call. I love that, and I’ll respond back to it. And I know they and Frank talked about this before with his shop he uses. You probably know this one of those sales, like contact leads.
00;09;13;11 – 00;09;37;04
Those websites. Sure. And finds the I the the ideal customer is to target sends the box and sends the follow up email chain from there. Love it. I mean, what tools are those again? It’s like rocket lead li gen tools. So up lead or seamless or hollow, there’s a number of to try to get good contact information right from specific metadata.
00;09;37;05 – 00;09;59;10
Right. Market, industry geography, size, roll title, all. That’s pretty easy to get. One other one other tidbit in strategy that we just shared in the group that I thought was pretty interesting because I just read a stat, we’ve doubled the amount of email that we sent over the last two years. The amount of email that we get very serious is doubled, not send.
00;09;59;10 – 00;10;23;07
The amount of email that individuals get has doubled over the last two years. Someone sending it to someone sending it to you. Sure. So, all the more reason that we have to get creative with outreach. So, a shop had to think about certified mail or Fedex envelopes or UPS envelopes. When’s the last time you got one of them that you didn’t open?
00;10;23;09 – 00;10;42;08
Yeah, never. Good point. You’re going to open them. Always see you. Right. It’s flat for Fedex and it’s got red on the top. Yep. So when when you take that campaign strategy and add in something that you know they’re going to get their eyes on, you can delete emails pretty easily. But you’re going to get your name in front of them.
00;10;42;08 – 00;10;59;14
And like some creative communication on that letter, whatever’s inside of their hey, I know I’ve reached out a ton. I apologize, I know I sent you a ton of emails, LinkedIn connection requests. I’ve called. I really wanted to make sure that you got you got this, but not about you. Then convert it to them. I know your industry.
00;10;59;14 – 00;11;20;19
I know your role. I know what’s important to you. Here’s like people that I’ve worked with and we’ve really helped and supported. I’d love to just have a conversation to see if we can help you as well. I love that pretty impactful approach. Yeah, that’s a really great takeaway. The one thing I wanted to really talk about today is this gap between going from 500 K in sales to a million in sales, you’ve helped a lot of shops.
00;11;20;19 – 00;11;47;07
You’ve helped shops get there that are bigger, smaller and everywhere. But that feels like a range where the machines aren’t work like they’re not. The repetitive cycles aren’t there fully yet. You’re building the systems. You’re doing a lot as an owner at that stage. You don’t have the processes just yet. And so there’s a lot of confusion, like it’s you just you’re just trying to get orders out the door.
00;11;47;07 – 00;12;12;12
You’re just trying to get money in the door. But if we could help shops see around the corner in this phase, I’d like to be able to divulge that into as many different steps and as tactical as possible. Today. Hold on one second. We’re going to pause. Let’s break it down. Right. I think there’s a couple different categories that I pulled together.
00;12;12;14 – 00;12;39;21
We’ve got people revenue planning we’ll call it maybe like a forecasting type of thing. Marketing slash outbound and demystifying this and a little bit more around tactics for the outbound. So maybe a subcategory of that. And that includes things like you talked. There’s a saying here, focus on the phone. I’d love to hear more about that team training niches and systems.
00;12;39;21 – 00;12;58;23
So anyway, that’s the high level for us to be able to, dive into. Maybe we can start off with people. But before we do, I want to I want to ask you a question. I talked to a ton of shops that are have not hit that million dollar threshold and want to ask them about revenue growth goals or what they want to accomplish.
00;12;58;26 – 00;13;16;09
Almost always they say, I need to break the million dollar mark. Why do you think that is? I think it’s a big accomplishment. I think it’s to get $1 million in revenue. Yeah, like I think it’s a mental accomplishment. As in, you know, there’s two commas. It’s it’s a year, I don’t know, something with the million a million.
00;13;16;09 – 00;13;37;15
You know, it’s a it’s a big significant number. It’s a milestone. I think 100 K is a big milestone. And then I think the next really big one is the million to. It’s interesting because that’s I know if I’m talking to a shop, especially that’s like 600 K or below, like when I ask them about sales goals, it’s almost always I got to get to seven figures.
00;13;37;15 – 00;14;00;23
I got to get to $1 million in revenue, which I think is great. Like thinking about that. But now what can you do today to start putting that action in place to get to that, that revenue goal that’s we’re going to talk about. So let’s say we’re between 300 to 600 K or so. You know, there’s probably a couple people there maybe up to 4 or 5 part time makes a part time full time.
00;14;00;26 – 00;14;23;13
I’m assuming the owner is doing all order entry. Maybe there’s someone in the front desk helping with, a wide variety of tasks. They’re a generalist. Yeah, they’re really the right hand. Man, to the to the owner. Okay, where do you start even thinking about that? Because I think now. Yeah, I want to get to a million like you talked about the.
00;14;23;18 – 00;14;42;18
I want to get to a million. What is your what is your thought process start even before like thinking about people. The shop has to be willing to invest. They have to be willing to and want to grow. This can’t. This doesn’t just happen. It’s not like, all right, I’m just going to double the size of my business.
00;14;42;21 – 00;15;00;02
There has to be a concentrated effort to go and get it and to go do it. And it’s a it’s a pretty interesting economic environment right now. Like you talk to shops all week, every week. So do I. Some of them are up year over year. Some of them are about the same but a lot of them are down.
00;15;00;04 – 00;15;20;25
So is it the right time to really level up sales and growth and dive in on that strategy when you’re down or when you’re up? I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer, but like, you have to consciously think about, you have to consciously think about that strategy and that approach and make sure that this is the right time.
00;15;20;25 – 00;15;39;00
And I am going to put time and effort and focus into it. Otherwise it’s not going to work. Okay. That’s a great point. So is this the right time that I want to spend on getting my sales numbers up unnaturally? I will say, because yeah, if it’s natural, you’re just going to let it float here and there, it could go away, go away, go down.
00;15;39;00 – 00;15;58;07
What are we said? Yeah, that’s a great that’s a great thought process. How do I know if it’s the right time? Right. Because I know back at that stage you’re overworked like yeah there’s no doubt about that. You’re doing 18 different things. You don’t have the staff to delegate to, you know. Is it the right time or not?
00;15;58;12 – 00;16;13;11
Yeah, I usually say like you need to focus on it. I’m I’m a proponent of go. If you’re going to do it, you got to go do it. Like out of sight, out of mind. The opposite. What would the opposite of that be like? If you focus on it, it’s going to happen. Like you got to live in it.
00;16;13;11 – 00;16;30;25
I’m going to talk out of the other side of my mouth for a second. If your house isn’t in order, it’s production isn’t dialed. If art isn’t there, if fulfillment isn’t like if you don’t have systems, processes, and the back end of your shop dialed in, it’s going to be pretty hard to focus on sales and focus on driving revenue.
00;16;30;28 – 00;16;53;16
So you’re right, they’re stretched and they’re doing a bunch of different jobs. But putting systems, process automation, all of that in place and getting the back end of the shop in order is going to allow them, I think, to step into more focus on proactive outbound focus on like revenue generation and growth. Got it. So it sounds like get production as much, of a process as possible.
00;16;53;16 – 00;17;12;17
So you start to free up time to focus more on front office types of things I think so I think so. And then like look at your calendar, look at how you’re spending your day. Like analyze what you do all day every day. Is it customer service? Is it working with your team members? In my like, I work out of a calendar.
00;17;12;19 – 00;17;33;29
If it’s not in my calendar, I don’t do it. So, like, if that’s the way that the shop performs well, calendar growth just put two hour block every day that the team knows that you’re focused on growing revenue and focused on this side of the business, not looking at emails, not communicating with the team, not training, not bagging, tagging, folding.
00;17;33;29 – 00;17;48;29
Like I like like focusing on growth. I think that’s really the only way. That’s a good point. Step out of it. And I’d actually challenge everyone to do that. The first thing in the day is the block on the calendar. If it’s on the sales thing or whatever, the most important thing is, is that’s the first thing when you walk in.
00;17;49;02 – 00;18;20;05
Because I swear, if I open my laptop and I open Gmail, you know, and I’m starting to go through it, it’s going to be two hours that I don’t know what happened, you know, and slacks and and everything else totally working in this industry for long enough. I’ve now tweaked my schedule to focus the majority of my shop direct work in the morning, because I know how chaotic the life can be, and the likelihood of a 3 or 4 p.m. call with a print shop and me running super low.
00;18;20;05 – 00;18;43;12
Yeah, it like focus it on the morning, focus that first thing and I’ll show you something that’s been helping me and that we’re getting into, like productivity, stuff. But this, I put on my phone so you could tell Siri to start a timer. So I’ve been doing kind of like the counter box, but I’ll do a timer, so I’ve got my task list first thing, I opened it up, and, you know, if it’s like, okay, call and deal with this insurance thing.
00;18;43;12 – 00;19;06;19
Great. 15 minutes, I started it, I started on my phone as a timer, and now with the new iPhone OS, you can turn it sideways and, well, supposed to be. But anyway, you turn it sideways and you sit it on your desk. And basically what it does is it flips into a, like an alarm mode, and then you see a timer and it fills up on the screen.
00;19;06;22 – 00;19;22;16
I wish I could turn alarm. It doesn’t work. And so that one task, you put a time frame on it and you know that you’re going to focus on that task until that time frame. And I’m trying to do it before the thing fills up. I love it. Maybe if this thing, turns on, but I guess it’s just not going to work right now.
00;19;22;16 – 00;19;46;28
Anyway, I love it. So. Okay, so you have you start to have the time and the willingness to say, hey, I want to be able to do this. I want to commit to it makes total sense. What’s next? The you mentioned people. It’s interesting. It doesn’t that is it. Sorry I remember why it is work. You have to plug in the phone as well and turn it sideways.
00;19;46;28 – 00;20;07;08
And then it will turn into like an alarm on the power it on. Yeah yeah, yeah. All right, all right. So we, we talked about people as a potential place to start. This doesn’t mean that we have to hire that the people component of focusing on growth and going out and doing it can be the shop owner can be them.
00;20;07;11 – 00;20;30;03
But they have to know that they have time available to focus on it and do that work, so it can’t be them. You can also hire someone to do it. Often I find shops. We’ve, I talked about this with Steve in trying to move that customer success or account management manager into that sales person doesn’t work very well.
00;20;30;05 – 00;20;47;22
It’s not what they like to do. They’re not good at it. It’s not their focus. They don’t. I mean, I hope I own sales person or processing. Correct. Having that because they’re testing stuff now. They’re taking inbound orders. They’re running the process. But if you do want to grow, there has to be a concentrated effort on like going out and finding more customers and actually going out and doing it.
00;20;47;25 – 00;21;07;05
So the likelihood of that account manager or customer success person doing that successfully and well is pretty low, unless they really want to do it and they really enjoy the work and they want to transition maybe out of account management into sales, I see that working, but just transitioning someone because they know the business like not always the right fit.
00;21;07;07 – 00;21;32;16
Okay, so the the beautiful part about hiring a salesperson is you can pretty clearly see payback time and ramp and understand. And how long is it going to take for me to get this person? If they do this revenue, we can we can map it out. We can model it out. How long is it going to take for them to pay back the investment that I’ve made in them?
00;21;32;18 – 00;21;51;03
Easier said than done. It’s a lot that goes into like recruiting and hiring and selecting the right person and onboarding them effectively and measuring and tracking their effectiveness day in, day out. But but the nice part is, is if you get it right and they’re successful, they’re not only going to pay themselves back, they’re going to propel you to that.
00;21;51;05 – 00;22;11;21
That million dollar mark. So this goes into revenue planning and forecasting in my mind, which is something we probably didn’t do until we were around 2 million or so in sales, which definitely could have helped if we were going from call of the 500 K to a million, as in, all right, hey, here’s where I think our seasonality is.
00;22;11;21 – 00;22;31;06
I know we don’t have a ton of historical data, but here’s where I think our seasonality is, as far as, you know, busy times, slow times. And here’s where I think if we grew, you know, 20% this year, here’s the sales goals, the revenue goals that we should be hitting, in a profitable way to be able to, you know, clip at that goal.
00;22;31;06 – 00;22;51;11
And I’m not talking about in a year, but like, maybe it’s hey, look, I think we can hit 1,000,000 in 2 years, three years, whatever it is. But here’s sort of the monthly or quarterly I’ve seen quarterly, be a little bit easier as well because of the less fluctuations. Yep, yep. To be able to, to hit and I guess what we did that helps.
00;22;51;11 – 00;23;12;07
You talked about calculating the return of a sales rep. I feel like I need to make a template for this, because I felt this was one of the easier hires to make. Because of that. With the payback, the other thing. So like, first explain what you mean by especially most people haven’t really hired some sort of outbound sales rep.
00;23;12;07 – 00;23;30;27
That’s pretty foreign. What do you mean by payback period? How do you think about ROI of this person and and making it, you know, because I think it’s a little scary. It hasn’t been done. It’s like, oh, yeah, I mean, they’re going to process the orders coming in. Obviously I understand that, but I don’t understand that transferring someone hunting.
00;23;30;29 – 00;23;55;02
Yeah. That to calculate payback period. What I look at is like how much I’ve invested in that person and what is that total cost, the burden, labor rate of that individual month over month. Like, what am I investing in? Tools, technology support. What is the total cost of this individual on my payroll? Calculate that pretty easily. So month over month what does that cost now revenue comes in.
00;23;55;02 – 00;24;15;24
They start to sell. They start to drive both revenue and profitability. How long does it take for me to get to that delta of here? The expenses are going up, but then they flatten out and the revenue should now continue to go up and up and up. And now I’m offsetting that cost by net income or profitability. Just you just got to look at it month over month and model that out.
00;24;15;26 – 00;24;40;03
You also mentioned revenue planning. Like looking at, you know, in one year and two years, this is where I want to get to revenue wise. We should be looking at at every month, especially with the seasonality in our business. What did I do in August of last year? I want to make sure that I do that much, but not just here’s the revenue that I want to get, but also where is that coming from?
00;24;40;05 – 00;24;58;00
Is it reorders? Is it net new business? I should not only be just tracking. Here’s the revenue that I want to get to, but here’s how my here’s how I’m going to get there. Here’s how I’m going to drive that revenue. Again. It’s like if you plan it and if you’re involved in it and you focus on it, way higher likelihood that you’re going to be successful.
00;24;58;01 – 00;25;16;04
How do you help shops track something like that? Is that like HubSpot or are you just exporting data and calculating if a shop is, you know, hundreds of thousands of revenue, the likelihood of them having a CRM that they use effectively is probably nil. So just use it. Use a Google Sheet, use an Excel sheet. Just so we’re just putting it on track.
00;25;16;04 – 00;25;33;00
Dump it out. Yeah. If you can take it out of the print shop management software and pull it into an Excel sheet, or if you can do it within that, either way, just build a really, really simple model for you to look at month over month. Here’s where we need to be from a revenue perspective. And here’s my thoughts on how I’m going to get there and share it with the team.
00;25;33;07 – 00;25;56;15
Hey team, this is where we need to be this month. This is the goal. We know these customers are likely going to be ordering this month. That should take us to this amount. Now we need to get more. We need to find more. Let’s ask for referrals. Let’s go out proactively and try to drive more revenue. I built a custom like ChatGPT thing that can do that analysis for Printavo order data, and you can ask it any reporting question.
00;25;56;15 – 00;26;26;09
It’s really cool if you want to try it. I love to link. It’s like a private thing, but I love to link you to it. It’s, just shoot me an email separate tableau.com and so you can say, hey, who ordered 11, nine, ten, 11 months ago? Over $5,000, like, whatever. That’s awesome. You can even say last year out of my top, customers by order sales value, which are the ones who have decreased in sales this year.
00;26;26;11 – 00;26;45;20
So last year compared to this year. And it’ll give you that listing puts this in 15 seconds versus in Excel. That would take me 20 minutes. What like a lot of shops have done that. Who ordered 11 months ago. Like that’s an interesting one. But what what customers have reduced in revenue. That’s an interesting stat to look at.
00;26;45;23 – 00;27;14;06
And I want to know the account manager or customer success person that’s managing that account. And I want to know what they think as to why that’s happening. Yeah. And we can get into this. But like from a level of sophistication of managing those AMS and those CSS folks, their KPIs, their metrics, how we score them and how we hold them accountable should be tied to that month, over month, quarter over quarter, year over year revenue number and income, net income number from their customers.
00;27;14;11 – 00;27;34;03
Interesting. If I’m if my book of business is 60 customers, I should know and be able to look at and understand how much each of them should be ordering this month in this quarter, based on past past historical data and things happen with businesses. So that might go down. But I better be able to tell the shop owner that this is why they decreased.
00;27;34;05 – 00;27;55;08
Maybe their business isn’t going that well. Interesting. What we did was I was very scared to hire our first sales rep because I figured while I’m doing it, I don’t know if this is going to pay back. I’m going to have this overhead. Like, does this make sense? I could just do it. And what I did was I put in an Excel sheet every single month.
00;27;55;08 – 00;28;16;08
What the what the payroll cost would be. So that’s the you know, there’s a basic plus commission model I put in the base right there. And it kept adding up over the months. Right. So let’s say it’s, you know, simple numbers five K first month second, the five K the second month, and every single month five k and then the second column, I could see the total amount of their salary.
00;28;16;08 – 00;28;39;10
So it’s five, then ten and 15 and so on. And then in the third column was my calculation of what is the revenue that they’re bringing in. So obviously there’s a ramp up time. It’s not going to be like day one. They’re going to have all this. Sure there’s additional sales coming in, but now let’s say it’s, it’s let’s call it 55% of utilization for one month.
00;28;39;10 – 00;29;07;04
So if the goal of their quota is supposed to be I don’t know, 100 k a month of sales, just throwing that number again out there. Then the first three months maybe like five, ten, 15, 20% of that utilization. Basically what I did is try to back into it to understand what should the sales rep be doing and bringing in sales wise, what is the profit margin on those sales that they brought in?
00;29;07;12 – 00;29;30;19
What is the commission that I paid on it? And then what is the payback period? So based on all of the payroll that I was paying, commission plus base and the ramp up of how quickly they were driving and sales, I would then know, okay, this person takes seven months or eight months to break even, and then the rest is gravy like the rest goes straight to the business.
00;29;30;21 – 00;29;57;01
Yeah. And if it was, I thought if it was ten months or less, I was in I was in good spirits. But the most important thing I think that sheet gave to me is it helped me understand what the sales reps should be doing as far as a goal every month starting. And I showed it to them. I said, look, you know, first week or so, hey, this is this is how this makes sense, right?
00;29;57;01 – 00;30;15;17
For us to have you on full time. These are the goals that we need to be able to hit together. And then you make money. The company makes money and we continue together. So it was so clear for them. For me, I felt really comfortable. And if they were going off path, it, you know, we either had to correct part ways whatever the deal was.
00;30;15;17 – 00;30;34;19
Yeah. And and then those performance management conversations are much easier. Hey we talked about like this is the amount of revenue that I need to drive to make this make sense. Yeah. That that transparency and just upfront upfront we need a business model. I think I’m going to get you hard. I have the basics anyway. We’ll do it after I love it.
00;30;34;24 – 00;30;58;07
Okay. So this is for a sales rep hire. What one thing that I wanted to comment on what you said prior, for payback in our industry specifically, this happens in most businesses. You mentioned you get to that point where it’s gravy, right? In our industry specifically, if you provide a good product and good service, the likelihood of them reordering and coming back is incredibly high.
00;30;58;09 – 00;31;19;07
So I think in our industry specifically, if you do a good job in getting a sales rep up to productivity and up to that point, of which we call it the gravy precipice, the amount, the the amount of revenue that you will get or net income from that individual would just skyrocket because you know you’re going to keep them as a customer.
00;31;19;07 – 00;31;34;07
You know you’re going to drive good revenue from them long term, just not just when that sales person is there. It just you got to get to that point, though. You got to be willing to make that investment to get there. I like it okay. So that’s the first trap hire. I think there’s a lot, though that goes into the first hop here.
00;31;34;07 – 00;31;57;21
I mean, sure. All right. We understand maybe maybe you really calculated you spent an hour on this thing and you feel like. Yeah. Makes sense. They this hire makes sense financially. After six months, they should be doing well or will part ways and find someone else. Now let’s talk about making them successful though, because there is a thought of, well, you know, who are they reaching out to?
00;31;57;21 – 00;32;15;02
What are they doing? What are they calling, who they are they emailing? Are they like kidding? Or what are we doing here other than the inbound traffic that I’m getting? Because there’s always that debate of, well, should I commission them and stuff that’s coming inbound? Is that a if if an account manager is there, do they take that?
00;32;15;08 – 00;32;37;06
And the other guy only takes what he’s doing outbound? How do you see this work with the caveat that, again, this is the kind of half million dollar stage where this is probably not. There may be an account manager, probably the owner doing that. Yeah, it’s it’s tough if you don’t have someone in that space. And I, I’m a huge fan of specialization.
00;32;37;08 – 00;33;01;24
Like let’s not have them do account management and customer success and outbound sales. Like there’s not many salespeople, people in general that are good at all of those things. So if you have one person, you’re going to have to have them wear multiple hats. I think it a couple things. One, it goes down to onboarding and training and development, like give them the tools to onboard effectively have them use the tools for that.
00;33;01;26 – 00;33;23;20
What is a 60 day onboarding plan look like? What do I need to learn from a shop perspective? What what processes and methods do we need them to follow and really understand? How do we call jobs? As an example? What what skills and knowledge do they need to uncover shop wise and or the business wise? Like whatever it’s like in terms of and, or, objectives, what do we want to accomplish?
00;33;23;20 – 00;33;44;26
What what does success look like as far as specific goals and objectives in the first 60 days of your employment here, 90 days of your employment here, that could be number of network touches. My network I’m going to reach out to as a new hire. That could be referral asks of current customers. That could be amount of revenue that I bring in those first 60 or 90 days like that.
00;33;44;26 – 00;34;12;06
Plan up front to have them come on and be productive and efficient as quickly as possible. Super important. It’s almost as important as hiring the right person is setting them up for success and those numbers and getting to your what was it, the the gravy precipice, getting them to that point plus train as quickly as possible. Yeah. Onboarding is is going to be super, super impactful.
00;34;12;08 – 00;34;44;11
The metrics and KPI portion of that is, is, is a really important part of that onboarding. This should happen not when onboarding. It should happen even prior. It should happen in the interview process. So clarity on the role. Yes. You are going to be fielding inbound requests and, inbound outreach. But a big portion of your goal, a big portion of your role, 75%, 60%, whatever is going to be you proactively going outbound and helping us build a book of business.
00;34;44;18 – 00;35;07;29
I’ll be I’ll be honest. I feel like if you’re doing inbound, it’s a lot easier. And so naturally, as humans, we want to take the easier path. And so we’ll spend more time on the inbound 100%, not do the outbound. So like I’ve always found it tricky to balance to have one person do both. Yes. Is that a yes.
00;35;08;02 – 00;35;30;11
And even then it’s like, how do you commission that differently? And maybe that’s too complicated. So is it really two different rules you think at some point or what is it if 1,000% has to be two separate roles? But if the shop doesn’t have the luxury of having multiple people in those seats and they only have one person, the only way to measure and track and monitor it is with with metrics, with KPIs.
00;35;30;17 – 00;35;48;07
So yes, it’s so much easier to manage inbound orders and that’s more fun. Somebody raises their hand and say, hey, I want to do business with your shop. That’s way easier than me cold calling you and asking you if you want to buy shirts. Got it way different. So if if they are doing both, there has to be a portion of their job that you just meticulously review.
00;35;48;07 – 00;36;10;20
As far as metrics of calls, emails, visits, mailings, samples sent all of those things need to be tracked and if they get sucked into that inbound flow because it’s funner, it’s easier work. They’re not going to be in that portion long because they’re missing. But 60, 75% of their role, which should be outbound or whatever that that number is.
00;36;10;24 – 00;36;28;04
But being really clear up front in the interview process of, hey, Bruce, this isn’t just us, sit back, relax and let orders come in, job. There’s going to be a portion of that, and we’ve built a good reputation. People will come inbound, but a big portion of it is going to be you going out on and driving net new opportunities for us and finding people that aren’t working with us today.
00;36;28;07 – 00;36;50;09
And we’re going to measure and track and give you the support you need. There has to be that measurement and communication upfront. Okay. Again, I’m going to challenge the measurement aspect at the shop level size. How do we keep it simple so it’s ready to go you know on Monday as far as maybe 2 or 3 metrics right.
00;36;50;09 – 00;37;16;08
Because there’s a lot. But it’s hard when you don’t have all the tools. You know, you may not even implemented those things yet. You know, maybe one of the top few that could be of interest and my, my, my brain goes to when I, when we talked to Dan again when he was doing outreach, we, I think it’s like rocket emails or one of those things that you mentioned, like email maybe.
00;37;16;08 – 00;37;34;20
Yeah, yeah. And basically it was, okay, I’ve exported all of these leads. And because you can create you’ve talked about this, you can create criteria of the companies that you’re looking for based on revenue and size and the contact and so on, so on. I of course, I’ve got the list of those I can import those into, you know, front app or whatever.
00;37;34;20 – 00;38;01;27
Everyone’s using email tool. Yeah. And then be able to customize and send stuff out. I guess that’s an Easiway in front to be able to see like maybe outbound email. Yeah. How many emails sent. That’s a good metric. If you want like simplest form I look at activities and then the outcomes from those activities. So activities calls emails, visits, samples dropped off LinkedIn connection requests sent just like list out all the activities.
00;38;01;27 – 00;38;24;13
List out all the stuff that you need to do, even like leads. Added number of leads that you pull from a tool or that you find in Google or whatever the approaches. Those are all the activity metrics, the input metrics and then output outcome comes from that. Okay, that’s I solidified a meeting. I ran a meeting, I quoted a job, I closed an opportunity.
00;38;24;16 – 00;38;50;11
Like all of that comes after the fact. I’ve got a template that I’d be happy to share. Cool. That’s cabinet set sales.com cabinet salesperson K cabinet salesman K yeah, feel free to to reach out. Okay. I’ll, I’ll share I’ll share it to an easy template to follow. All right. That’ll be in the description as well. Also there’s a tool that we used to use a lot called close CRM, which I still think is pretty good as a starting CRM.
00;38;50;13 – 00;39;12;06
And I can’t remember maybe it’s 50 bucks a month per user, but you can see that reporting really easily. You could see the number of emails and calls made and the opportunities created right inside there. Yeah, maybe HubSpot does the same, but close was so simple to me. All those CRM do that easy tracking, really easy tracking and dashboarding.
00;39;12;13 – 00;39;28;01
Again, if you don’t, if you haven’t invested in one of those tools, you can do it in an Excel sheet. You can do it in a Google sheet. Yeah, that’s I almost always do that in a Google Sheet, even if I have it in a dashboard, because it forces that sales rep to take that data out of the CRM and manually plug in that number.
00;39;28;07 – 00;39;54;09
And if they hit that metric, they’re happy and it gives that dopamine release. If they didn’t hit that number, it’s painful to plug it in, and they don’t want to have to plug that in week over week. Having that number being down or not, not at their goal, okay. These are huge tactics on the outbound side. Are there any other systems processes, you know, maybe even downloadable that you have that can be used to get started?
00;39;54;09 – 00;40;18;16
I and I’m thinking even basic you know, it could be what to email. You know, what to send. Yeah. What to say on the on a phone call or leave voicemail. There’s a lot that you can package under. Like what is our our outbound strategy. What does this go to market. What is this opportunity creation strategy. There’s there’s a lot of components in that you talked a lot about like messaging and language.
00;40;18;16 – 00;40;36;22
What are what are we using. What are we saying. How are we communicating. Which is important. But that should be part of I think most rudimentary is just part of a campaign. This is not I’m going to call my list a couple times, or I’m going to send a couple emails and see what happens. It’s all campaign driven.
00;40;36;22 – 00;40;59;19
I’ve talked about this at length. It’s got to be ten plus touches. It’s got to be multichannel. It can’t just be email, it’s got to be email call LinkedIn. And this is why the owner cannot do it also because it’s so it’s a great point. It’s an iceberg of a problem or not a problem. It’s an iceberg of like a challenge in that you only see the immediate outreach, the first email, the first phone call, whatever.
00;40;59;26 – 00;41;18;25
You don’t see the follow ups. You talk about ten follow ups. You’re right. Love that. And that is a that it is almost a full time job. Doesn’t mean that the owner can’t block off 2 or 3 hours every day, stay Uber organized and stay efficient to stay on track. But the amount of time and effort and energy to to do this, well, it’s going to take a lot.
00;41;18;25 – 00;41;37;16
And so for the last part I think is ongoing support. So you’ve talked about this for supporting someone here, whether it’s, I guess check ins constantly making sure they’ve got what they need and so on. How do you think about that as a sales leader for a small team and helping them be more successful? Like, okay, we did.
00;41;37;16 – 00;41;57;07
Let’s say we did the onboarding, we did all the training and that stuff. Let’s say we’re in, you know, month three. Yeah, a one on one is a perfect example. Like I don’t know why, but I don’t find a lot of shop owners doing like individual one on one meetings with their team members, with a really, really succinct agenda of what’s working, what’s not working.
00;41;57;10 – 00;42;18;17
Where do you need support for me? Let’s review your KPIs and let’s have an open discussion. I stole like a traction iOS model of of ideas identified. Discuss. Solve. You and I both put IDs issues in this list, and we’ll we’ll knock them out. We’ll talk together and restore them. Okay. That’s a great point. So these are your things that sales reps bring up that okay.
00;42;18;17 – 00;42;45;22
These are challenges I run into why I can’t close a deal or what. Like what’s friction in my role. Why I can’t close a deal. Any anything that happens, any issue, challenge or concern that either I, the shop owner or the sales person has, they added to adds what I just use as a running Google doc. And at the top of that doc is our meeting that set up Tuesdays at 9 a.m. and that salesperson and me as the owner, are adding items to ads throughout the week that are not urgent.
00;42;45;25 – 00;43;03;27
They’re important for us to talk about. And we jump in and we review those friction points and we identify the problem we discuss and then try to come to a resolution. We try to solve it in that meeting. So that one on one is an important point. How often should you be doing? Well, every week. Every week, every every week at minimum.
00;43;04;04 – 00;43;25;26
Think about it 30 minutes. If I can’t give my employee 30 minutes of my time as an owner every week, I. I’m not. There’s no way that you can run a run a sustainable, long term business if you can’t step out of the business for 30 minutes to support your key employees, especially those ones that are going to help you in the long term drive your revenue.
00;43;25;27 – 00;43;47;12
Sure, you have to do it every week and think about that as a sales team member, I have this define time once a week to sit down with my owner to get all of my problems fixed, like there’s you’re not going to go a long time without not getting in front of that person. That can get you answers, and that can work with you side by side to overcome any challenges that you’re facing.
00;43;47;15 – 00;44;10;01
It’s super, super important. Wow. Okay. So that’s more frequent than I thought. Yeah, I did every other way. Do you buy it? Don’t you buy into that though at what, once a week? You know, I think my tricky part is that it was easy to skip sometimes. And I got in a weird habit of, like, skipping and kind of doing every 2 to 3 weeks as a check.
00;44;10;01 – 00;44;28;01
Yeah. And it was, I think the part that was difficult and it depends on the role. Right. Because some roles don’t have as many friction points. It’s like they’re just cranking that thing. Yeah. But I do think sales, you’re right, has more friction points and it’s easy to go back to. All right. Are we hitting our numbers or not.
00;44;28;01 – 00;44;51;16
And if we aren’t, that one on one feels even more important to say, why aren’t we? Let’s go. Let’s. Yeah. You’ve made a big investment as a shop owner to bring that person in. Let’s really focus on this. You mentioned one thing that I see. Two main traps that I see with shop owners and one on ones. One they point like, yeah, we’re busy, let’s do it later in the week, or they’d reschedule it for the next week.
00;44;51;19 – 00;45;09;29
Think about how that would feel to a salesperson that is there one time each week that they can get in front of their owner and get answers. That shows to me that my time is an important what meeting with me like. That’s that’s not a good precedence to set number two. We use that as a time owners to get updates on deals or opportunities.
00;45;10;02 – 00;45;27;05
This is not our time as the owner. This is our employees time to help them and support them in their role. So I’ve even done this myself where it’s like, hey, what’s going on with this opportunity? Do we close this deal yet? What happened with this? Where are we at with this? Let’s take a step out of that and step into how can I best support them?
00;45;27;05 – 00;45;36;06
What do they need for me? How can I help? Like, that’s really the point of a one on one. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
00;45;36;08 – 00;45;56;28
What about when to fire? When is it not working? How long do you give someone. Because this is this is the tough part. You spent a lot of time recruiting, interviewing, training. You know, the one on ones, the meetings, setting all this stuff up. And, I mean, I got to be honest, I’m just like, let me give them another month.
00;45;56;28 – 00;46;18;28
Let me give them another month. And, you know, it’s like six months later and I probably should have parted ways before. But I dreaded rehiring and doing this whole thing again. Oh, it’s hard to recruit, hire, train on board again. That is so time consuming. We all do that. We’ll, like, let them roll. Maybe they’ll be fine. I read something the other day.
00;46;18;28 – 00;46;35;06
It’s like. It’s. If you ask yourself the question, would you rehire this person? You wrote this if if you asked, if you ask the question, would you rehire this person? And you say, no, you got to get rid of them? Yeah. Like if you wouldn’t make that hiring decision again, black and white. The, that was a great article, by the way.
00;46;35;08 – 00;46;58;04
The the the process that we follow for measuring and tracking salespeople. It’s pretty quantitative. It’s pretty numbers driven. So if they’re not performing and they’re not hitting, how long, how many months? So so that’s why we should have a performance management structure and system in place. So I can see the metrics. I can see the measurement if they’re following it and hitting it, great.
00;46;58;04 – 00;47;14;22
If they’re not we have performance management conversations. The approach that I follow it starts with a focus month. So if they don’t do well and aren’t performing well, I put them on a focus month, meaning we’re just going to focus on a few key areas and we’re going to try to drive up and improve some of these metrics in your scorecard.
00;47;14;22 – 00;47;33;17
How long, how many months? If they’re not doing well, I’m getting there. Okay. So we got to focus month then is A32. And maybe the focus month is a two week period. If they’re really not performing well then I do. Then I do a coaching plan meaning it’s a little bit more stringent and more of a documented plan of that focus.
00;47;33;17 – 00;47;55;26
Month didn’t go well. We didn’t hit these three metrics. Here’s what you need to do in your coaching. Two weeks or two coaching month and these are those metrics. And usually I look at both activity and output metrics. It’s not just revenue that they’re bringing in, but it’s what’s going to drive their revenue. And if they don’t do well in that coaching month or that coaching two week period, I put them on a performance improvement plan, which is the same thing two weeks or a month, and it’s more stringent.
00;47;55;26 – 00;48;14;21
And then they know if they don’t perform in those two weeks or that month that we’re cutting ties. So there’s no when do I make the decision? It’s my performance management is three months and here’s how it’s documented. Or my performance management is six weeks and it’s two weeks of a focused month, two weeks of a focused plan, two weeks of a coaching plan, and two weeks of a performance improvement plan.
00;48;14;27 – 00;48;32;19
Yeah, I think what’s what I found tricky is if there are in a player, you see it pretty quickly right away. I understand it right away, I see it, they’re out of the game, they’re performing, they’re doing all the things. They’re excited, they’re asking tens of questions, are taking notes. If they’re an F player, a D, you see it also right away.
00;48;32;19 – 00;48;52;16
They’re not showing up. They’re like missing phone calls or meetings. It’s very clear. I think the B in C is unclear as far as what to do, especially if it’s towards the C. Yeah. It’s like well you give them the benefit of the doubt. Let’s do a month here. Okay. We see I didn’t do so well. Let me try again in the next month.
00;48;52;16 – 00;49;15;21
Let’s see how they do. So is it you think two months maybe three is an optional. And the third is like the performance improvement proven playing play area I think I think that’s a logical time frame. But again you have to take the subjectivity and gut feeling out of this. Should I fire him should I not? You don’t need to ask yourself that and analyze that question.
00;49;15;28 – 00;49;48;27
You need to build a performance improvement and a performance management plan to know that if they don’t hit this, they’re gone. And they know that as well. And it’s only fair to those employees that like, am I going to get fired? They don’t know. They’ll know now if they don’t hit these metrics. Again, with sales being quantitative, it’s, in my opinion, a pretty Easiway to performance manage people versus someone that you can’t really measure in metric, who just makes me queasy thinking about having to rehire, especially when it’s when your team is so small that you have you, as the owner, are jumping back into every every hire.
00;49;49;00 – 00;50;08;12
Yeah. You make such a big difference. I mean, I think this is amazing. I look, leave comments, if you have questions about, if you’re in this range and you want to be able to hit the million leave comments, reach out. Kevin, at Sales dining. You’ve got the sales not in cohort. Can people get in. They go to sales Dot Inc.
00;50;08;12 – 00;50;34;09
And that’s where the info is. Yeah. Sales dot I and K and I also just launched Sales Inc Academy, so the smaller shops that we’re talking about, a lot of like under 500,000 in revenue shops will want to do work with the coach or console but sometimes don’t have the budget to do so. So I took all most of the content that I would typically work in a one on one engagement and put it into just coursework, put it into some learning, some videos, some downloadable content.
00;50;34;09 – 00;50;53;17
So at a much lower price point, they can access a lot of that content and just kickstart their their sales approach. Amazing. All right. We got Kevin Baumgartner again. Hold on. We actually have to go back and this episode. So Kevin and I were just talking really quickly like kind of recording kind of not. And we’re like, hold on.
00;50;53;23 – 00;51;19;09
We got to get this actually on the episode. So there’s two different things that we really wanted to to quickly mention because I think this is actually very helpful. So let’s go. Let’s rewind really quick. And the first part quoting and the what are you talking about being unapologetic. What was that being unapologetically aggressive. Yeah. When we’re following up on quotes, I think two scenarios.
00;51;19;09 – 00;51;40;28
One, we’re following up on quotes and one when we’re following up on quote, requests or contact us forms. Okay. When people are coming inbound or when we’ve already quoted a job, there is no reason why we should only reach out to them once or twice or three times, like if they raise their hand and said, hey Kevin from Kevin shirts, I want to I want you to quote this job.
00;51;40;28 – 00;52;01;13
I need X amount of shirts. And then they are just silent, like we should get aggressive in that follow up. Worst case scenario, they say, Hey, Kevin Lay off like you’ve reached out to me so much. I’m never going to do business with your with your shop again. The likelihood of that happening is really, really low. And if they do say that, the likelihood of them ever ordering anything from you was low to start with.
00;52;01;19 – 00;52;23;17
So why not get aggressive in that outreach? Why not be that person? Get back to them quickly. Lead response time is so critical when they get that lead in. All the data shows that conversion rates skyrocket. If we can get back to them really, really quickly. So get back to them and get aggressive with that follow up to make sure that you can get that time set to learn about how you can help them and what you can provide.
00;52;23;19 – 00;52;42;26
And then when we quote, there’s a ton of ghosting in our industry, right? Like people ghost all the time and it almost always happens after we’ve given a price. So if we’ve quoted there should be next up style, then we should know the order in hand, date or shirt and hand date, and we should back into when they need to make a decision.
00;52;42;26 – 00;53;02;09
By and give us that order. There’s no reason why, after we quote, that we don’t have time in the calendar with them. Another follow up meeting to figure out. I sometimes even put it in the calendar as a go no go meeting. Like let’s decide, go forward. If you’re going to partner with us, great. We can talk about the logistics and move everything forward.
00;53;02;11 – 00;53;19;11
If you’re not going to partner with us, that’s okay too. Let’s at least no, I don’t want to have to chase you. And I know you don’t want to have to have me chase you as well. So when you send out a quote, let’s say someone emails it in, you sent out that quote. Are you also sending out the question of, hey, when can I follow up with you?
00;53;19;12 – 00;53;38;27
I’ll give you a call. There’s the one of these two times work. Yeah. So, my the quote and hope stuff that we always talk about, like, I especially if it’s the first time they’re reaching out to us or the first time they came inbound. I don’t like to just email that quote over. I like to actually sit down with them and go over it live.
00;53;39;04 – 00;53;57;00
And at the end of that meeting, before I review the quote with them, now, I got them live. We’re answering questions. We’re talking through it. I’m getting feedback on how they feel about it. Now I’m scheduling those that this next steps. If I didn’t do that meeting, why not say, hey, I know you need to make a decision by the 10th, I’m going to put time on our calendar for the ninth.
00;53;57;01 – 00;54;21;05
Let me know if 9 a.m. works for you, or I’ll just send a 9 a.m. invite and we can. We can decide if it makes sense to move forward or if we’re not going to partner. All good as well just to like really hammer home on that. Get in front of them. I get I get pushback often. Like a lot of businesses in our industry care about their brand and their image and their cool, and it’s like we’re a pretty laid back industry as a whole.
00;54;21;08 – 00;54;43;28
That doesn’t mean that we can’t be professional and really just arduous in our in our out outreach and follow up. Like, it’s all good. And I would bet more than, hey, Kevin, you’re annoying me. That’s way too much like slow roll. I bet you get. Hey, thanks for following up. I’ve been crazy. I appreciate your persistence. I honestly bet you get that more often.
00;54;44;00 – 00;55;01;18
And maybe. Do you think it could also be, hey, can I text or call you, you know, tomorrow at ten to to to follow up on this quote. That’s better than nothing. But even better than that is I’m putting time in our calendars. So you and I have this calendar invite set. I don’t know why. Isn’t it so it sends an invite as well.
00;55;01;18 – 00;55;17;00
They got an invite? Yeah. Yeah for sure. And that blocks their time off so they don’t forget about it, which I’m sure they will. And on yours. And that’s the time you can call them and just reach out. And it doesn’t have to. Like we’re not talking about a meeting on zoom or something, right? I mean, it’s just, hey, this is the time I’m calling it.
00;55;17;00 – 00;55;40;08
It’s a 15 minute block. Yep. And then what are these are for all orders or is it a certain dollar range like shops want to do it above. So $500 an up if I’m taking the time and effort to run a discovery and understand what they need, and then taking the time and effort to quote it and go through that process, I should be willing to put the time and the effort in to follow up and making sure that I get an answer.
00;55;40;08 – 00;55;57;20
Yeah, that kind of hits hard. I mean, because my my thoughts are, wow, this is a lot of time. But you’re right, this is just a better quality follow up than just hey, just checking in. Are we good to go or like, whatever. I’m glad you said that. The worst email that you can send is. Hey, hey, it’s Kevin from.
00;55;57;20 – 00;56;18;25
Kevin’s here. It’s just checking in. Wanted to see you. Wanted to follow up and see, like, that’s not that’s not valuable. Like a better a better approach, a better email would be, Hey, this is Kevin with Kevin’s shirts. We seem to have lost touch. I’m wondering where we go from here. Dot dot dot. Like just us. Something to, like, get them to actually respond.
00;56;18;25 – 00;56;34;01
Not like I’m for. Hey, following up, checking in. Yeah. Like that shows like desperation. And I really need this order. It seems like we have lost touch wondering where we go from here. It’s just a little bit of a different way to say that and like, say psychologically, maybe a little bit more apt to respond to something like that.
00;56;34;05 – 00;56;50;26
I love it. So, so again, get aggressive with that outreach. Like there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be really, really hitting folks that raise their hand and say they want to do business with us or that we’ve already quoted. We got to get answers. I don’t know, is, in my opinion, so, so, so much worse than a no.
00;56;50;28 – 00;57;16;26
Let’s get aggressive. I love it. You mentioned something about niches right after you were like, yeah, it’s interesting because in this revenue range where we’re talking about maybe like the 300 to 600 K, we tend to be doing everything. Yeah. Taking orders from everywhere. You definitely see the larger businesses have picked a niche there. Nailed it. And they want to be the best at whatever they’re doing in that little space.
00;57;16;28 – 00;57;33;19
How do you really pick rate? Because sometimes that means you’re saying no to others. And that’s a hard thing to do when you use that to scrape and claw. So the 500 K, I don’t know if you need to say no. By the way, is it niches or is it niches? Niches Nisha I like niches, make riches, all the city niches.
00;57;33;22 – 00;57;58;11
Okay, I don’t think you need to say no to other things to hang your hat on a market. The reason why I think this is important for like, a, you know, shop approach to wanting to get to that million dollars in revenue mark is that if I talk to shops that are over $1 million in revenue, if you ask them what their core target focused market is, almost all of them off the cuff will be able to just shout it out.
00;57;58;13 – 00;58;13;24
They’re not gonna have to think. They’re not going to have to do an analysis of their data. They’re going to know our market is X. We do a lot of things for a lot of people, but our primary market is X. So my recommendation would be like figure that out early. And what I would do first is look at your customers.
00;58;13;24 – 00;58;35;20
Where’s the majority of your revenue coming from? Where are your most profitable customers today? In what market or what industry are they in and and pick one and figure out how to exploit it. So go to all the competitors of the people that you already work with. Create messaging and language about how you are the most widely used, apparel provider for X industry and X geography.
00;58;35;22 – 00;59;00;28
No, no one’s going to check you on that. So like you can make those statements and say that this is our industry. We know your space. We understand you. I’ll give you an example. I work with a shop that started to work with, like their local fire department and their local, like, first responders, EMS crew. They did all the uniform and they do a bunch of fundraisers and sell shirts and it’s like it’s it’s a good apparel based industry, a good business.
00;59;01;00 – 00;59;28;23
They did their like local folks and then they started branching out to like the counties surrounding. And then they did their state. Now they go to the national firefighters Convention, whatever. And they exhibit and they bring on firefighter stations and houses and departments all over the country. They have built a business around. Wow, that I don’t it doesn’t have to don’t don’t go to the after firefighters go after like figure out an industry, figure out a niche.
00;59;28;23 – 00;59;47;03
There are so many out there and even if someone’s already doing it, think about band merch. Every shop does band merch. A lot of shops do band merch, right? Like there’s a lot of space in a lot of those markets. The other good part I think about that is when I think about how we, they have to out really focused on apparel first shop.
00;59;47;03 – 01;00;20;26
So if you sell a majority apparel, that’s generally the the target customer for us. Right. And what that helped do though is also streamline the people we brought on and the training that we did with them. So the offering that we that we were building in the products was all driven towards that, to the firefighters, like everything was so focused on making it the best product and service offering for, you know, firefighters or for print shops or whatever, apparel for shops and okay to say no to others.
01;00;20;26 – 01;00;41;00
And then also when we brought people on like new hires, it was so focused on their training. I love that being so ingrained. I’m assuming they do the same with firefighters. And yeah, all the tooling and all that stuff is so it was just so narrowed in we could really dive deeper instead of go wider. I love that, and you get to start to understand and know the industry.
01;00;41;04 – 01;00;59;12
You get to understand the vernacular. You get to understand like the wording that they use in the industry, and you can connect with them quicker and you can build rapport and build trust much quicker. Like I, I know about this industry because I work with people like you all day, every day. And here’s what I found. Like, here’s what they really care about.
01;00;59;14 – 01;01;17;11
That’s a that’s a different message in language than, hey, we do screening embroidery and DTG like do you wanna buy some shirts? It’s way different. That actually hits. That’s really cool, especially because I’m sure their website is branded, you know, more faster for sure. The stuff they wear, how they talk, you write the terminology, the people they hang out with, they’re ingrained.
01;01;17;17 – 01;01;36;29
Yeah. That that approach of of really focusing on that not not forgoing other business, not continuing to work with all of our current clients, but as we go outbound, really figuring out what is the niche or the industry that we want to focus on and really, really doubling down on that. Love it. One more. Let’s do it. All right.
01;01;37;01 – 01;02;00;07
If you’re trying to approach that million dollar mark, the people that are are going to help get you there. Likely anyone that’s in like a customer facing role account manager, customer success person, the inbound order taker, maybe it’s you as the shop owner, just trying to figure out a way to get as much revenue from your current customers as you can.
01;02;00;09 – 01;02;18;02
So getting involved, asking them tough questions like, hey, who else are you using outside of us for any apparel or hard good promotional decoration? Is there any other providers that you’re using or. Good question, but it’s an awkward question. But if you don’t ask, you don’t know the answer to and you could be missing out on a lot of revenue.
01;02;18;02 – 01;02;36;18
Sure. Or ask for the referral. A lot of times those shops that are approaching that million dollars, they’re always asking for Google reviews. I love that, and you should get good, good reviews, but that’s not a direct correlation of money in your pocket if they refer someone, if you ask for a referral, they refer someone that buys from you.
01;02;36;18 – 01;02;59;27
That’s a revenue hit immediately. And what’s the difference if you have 20, 50 or 305 star reviews? Like it’s not going to that people are going to say, all right, because they only have 29 Google reviews. I’m not going to buy from them that that likely won’t happen. So levering on referrals and making that tough ask and being specific in that ask and saying, hey, who else do you know?
01;02;59;27 – 01;03;13;10
Who else do you network with? What other business owners in the in the community do you work with that could maybe use the services that that I provide? Would you be willing to make an email intro to just one person for me? I’ll send you the email intro connection. You can just copy and paste it into an email.
01;03;13;10 – 01;03;38;26
I’ll make it really easy for you, but levering on that, if that person that’s managing the current customer revenue is not you, it’s not the owner. I want to know the types of conversations that they’re having, and I want to be able to support them and train them and coach them. If if someone on your team is managing a big chunk of your revenue, you better be all over understanding how you can help and support them.
01;03;38;28 – 01;04;10;01
And in my opinion, the only way to do that is through recording reviews through call reviews. So why am I not taking a half an hour out of my week to listen to 2 or 3 calls that that individual had, and provide them with strong feedback? By the way, unclosed con, which I mentioned probably, and HubSpot and some others you can when they make a call out, it does record it, and you can see that thing and record even zoom like just do a zoom recording or a Google Meet recording or your phone system.
01;04;10;01 – 01;04;34;22
If you’ve got a VoIP system, the likelihood of them having some sort of recording functionality, you don’t have to even have a CRM to do that report. So getting that recording, listening to it and then giving them feedback, I bet most of those smaller shops, the owners would feel like they are the best customer support person. They feel more confident in a positive outcome of that conversation with the customer because they’re the owners.
01;04;34;22 – 01;04;53;12
It’s their shop right? If you feel that way, let’s get involved in those conversations that our team members are having, and just make sure that we are optimizing the amount of revenue that we’re getting and coaching to them and listen to those calls, play a snippet, play a question, stop it. Ask them. Say that over again. How might you have asked that differently?
01;04;53;18 – 01;05;15;25
Or what’s another way, like if you had to redo, what would you say and have them repeat it and get that muscle memory of like how you can really improve. And if they don’t know, you can help load their lips and help give them an ideas of like strategy approach talk tracks really, really hammering down on any customer facing employees and just trying to push as much revenue as we can out of our our current customers.
01;05;15;25 – 01;05;41;20
I think it’s really beneficial. Time spent, difficult to wrap your brain around, but probably has the highest ROI of of spending time anywhere. For sure. Business for sure. Okay, Kevin at sales Dot Inc again, we just came I think that okay. All right. Pronounces thanks. We’ll see you guys in the next week’s episode. Thank you so much for listening.
01;05;41;22 – 01;06;03;07
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01;06;03;07 – 01;06;16;03
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