Author Archives: Rick Roberge

Who “Needs to Know”? Marketing or Sales?

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Watch CIA, FBI, or military movies and you’re bound to hear the term, “Need to Know”. We all know that when we hear those words, somebody isn’t smart enough, tactful enough or competent to handle the knowledge appropriately and the people saying those words consider themselves better able to act appropriately.

Recently, I met a sales executive that didn’t know his company was a Hubspot user, didn’t know the kind of data that was available when a lead was generated. Realization started when I asked the question, “How many sales have your salespeople closed as a result of inbound marketing?”
This is what I think is going on. The marketing executive doesn’t think that the sales force is capable of helping with marketing. So, he doesn’t share access to the data.
Could it be something else?

Good Questions and Sales Process

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Friday was a different kind of day.

  • It was Friday the 13th.
  • I worked.
    • I retired 12/29.
    • Even before that, I didn’t work on Fridays.
  • I went on a ‘face to face’ sales call in the prospect’s office.
    • Because my practice has been global for the past few years, most everything happened on the phone or computer.
    • Even before that, prospects came to my office, not me to theirs.
But there were circumstances.
  • Carole Mahoney and I were speaking at Maine Marketing Association’s Lunch and Learn.
  • Carole asked me if I would accompany her on a sales call.
  • When we agreed to the Lunch and Learn, Elaine and I were thinking, ‘long weekend at the beach house’.
Enough about how I got there. Let’s get to “Good Questions” and “Sales Process”.
This call started off like any other call.
  • High powered executive, busy, important, no real problems, wondering why I was there.
  • At 2:16, he said, “I’ve got 30 minutes and we’re 16 minutes in and I don’t have a clue what the relationship between you two is or what you can do for me.”
  • At 2:39, I asked, “Do you know that you’re 9 minutes over?” He replied, “I’m OK.”
  • We talked until 3:15.
Why did I stay? Because he started answering my questions with “Good question!”, “I don’t know.” “HHMMM.” and by staring off into space thinking. He was expecting a vendor to come in and tell him all the things that the vendor could do, but he got questions that he needed the answers to.
We closed with this exchange.
“Can your salespeople execute the strategies of the company?”
“Good question.”
“Wouldn’t that be good to know?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s talk again.”
Now, in realty, in order to know whether the salespeople CAN execute the strategies, don’t we all need to have a clear picture of what those strategies are and while we’re at it, shouldn’t the strategies be given the ‘sniff test’ to make sure that the strategy will get the company where they want to be?

Pricing Professional Services for Growth

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Do you sell yourself short? How do you calculate the price that you charge your clients? Do you find yourself working all the time? Is your company stuck? Has your income plateaued? Are you not able to dream attainable dreams? Maybe you should do what Vic did?

I talked to a bookkeeper a few years ago who had quit his job to become an independent bookkeeper. He was making $20/hour at his job and gave himself a raise to $25/hour when he went independent. Very normal, but it didn’t take long to realize that $25/hour doesn’t allow a business to grow. Sure, you could work 80 hours a week and gross $100K/year, but then you need to add in time for invoicing, unbillable conversations, doing your books and taxes, returning calls, dealing with sales people calling you, working out, family time, sleep, etc. You never have time to do marketing or make sales calls. You’re stuck!
You could hire a bookkeeper or get a sub-contractor, but they’ll want a minimum of $20/hour. They’ll probably want paid vacations, health insurance, a raise, etc. How long before they’re costing you more than than you charge your client? …and, now you have to manage an employee.
If you are already billing for 80 hours/week, I can’t help you. You’re already full and you’ll have to fire clients in order to have time to learn how to grow your business.
But, if you bill for 40 hours or less a week and you’d like to grow your business, these are the steps in the process.
  1. Get found by good prospects.
  2. Learn how to sell “21st Century” style.
  3. Raise your rates.
  4. Hire and repeat.
I know that it sound simple and it actually is. Not easy, but simple and I’ve seen it work with bookkeepers, marketing agencies, consultants, attorneys, tradespeople, contractors, IT people. I’ve seen incomes go from $20K/year to $70K/year, from $40K/year to $250K/year and everywhere in between.
Have questions? Want clarification? Ask in the comments or
send me an email.
Want my help?
Just ask..

Entrepreneurs The First Three Months

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Dictionary.com‘s first definition of entrepreneur is “a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.” I like that definition because it doesn’t reference a genius idea, venture capital, scalable, yada, yada, but does mention “considerable initiative and risk”.

Last week (like any other week) I talked with several entrepreneurs. Here are a few stories from last week.
Joe is what I call a ‘forced entrepreneur’. The founder is leaving the business immediately (for very personal reasons) and looking for someone to take on a small amount of debt and pay a dividend over time. Joe is a key employee and the company probably will not survive if Joe doesn’t stay on. However, the founder is considering taking on the role of minority stockholder and handing the day to day over to someone that doesn’t know the business nor have the respect of Joe, or the other employees. Joe’s concern should be, “What happens when the founder’s connections and good will are gone? Will we still have a full pipeline and can we make it better?”
Jim is a self-described “serial entrepreneur”. On 4/2 Jim asked for my opinion on a product that he was reviewing. I didn’t know Jim, but I did know the product. So, I replied, “Thank you for your offer, but I’m quite biased and don’t believe that my review
would have any value to you.” Jim replied, “Thanks for being a standup guy!” Then, he asked me if I wanted to be listed as a resource on his site and if I could refer him to anyone whose opinion would matter. I appreciate tenacity, so I asked about two mutual connections that we had on LinkedIn that I know and respect and learned that one of them is on Jim’s board. OK, the beginning of something beautiful. I gave Jim a referral. I wrote this post, and sent a link to the post to Jim along with “How are you deciding who to spam?”. Fast forward to we had a conversation. It was interesting that Jim did not have time to read my blog post, but did ask me to write a guest post for his blog. When I did, his editor made it so unrecognizable that I said they could publish it but not use my name. Jim said that he would publish it unedited, but yesterday the edited version was posted over my name. Not listening or not caring?
I have another example about an uncommitted pretender, but I’m already long. So, let me wrap up.
Since I’ve retired, I’ve become totally intolerant of pretenders, liars, know-it-alls as well as mediocrity, small thinkers with no dreams and big thinkers with one-dimensional plans. (Not that I’ve ever been very tolerant.) What the heck good is a perfect business plan if it’s going to put you out of business? What good is it to have a social media presence if you don’t know how to use it? What good is it to have great lead development software if you’re not closing sales and developing evangelists? and what good is sales training or sale process if you don’t have the prospects that will never turn into evangelists? Ever thought about taking a month with someone that’s been there? Doing an evaluation? Developing a strategy? Want to see where you are? What you’ve got? Where you’re headed? What would 100 evangelists do for your business? Sick of questions? Want answers? Get on my calendar!

Long Term Relationships

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In the fall of 1970, I was in my second year at WPI. For those of you who don’t know, WPI is a highly rated engineering school. I was also a social brother of ∑¶ fraternity. The lesson starts on pledge night in the fall of 1970. Pledge night is the night that all 12 fraternities at WPI throw parties to celebrate all of the new students that ‘pledged’ to join their respective fraternies. We need to give you the picture. In 1970, their were two girls at WPI and 1,000’s of boys. So, girls were in high demand and short supply for parties. There also wasn’t an all girls school right next door to balance things off. To make the job even more difficult, these were math, science and engineering students. We had pocket protectors, slide rules, very few social skills and Nerds weren’t cool.

So, back to pledge night. I had filled my funnel well and our party had lots of girls and was going well. So, I figured that I’d take a walk down the block to Steve Brennan’s fraternity house (Phi Sig) to see how his party was going. As I approached the house, three girls were walking down the front stairs leaving. I probably asked something like, “Where you going?” and I remember that they said that they were going to Lambda Chi because Lambda Chi had a reputation for having great parties. So, I tried to convince them to go back in. No dice. They left.
I didn’t know at the time, but one of those girls was Elaine.
Two weeks later, Elaine and I ‘officially’ met at another party and I can’t remember anybody else since. We got married 39 years ago today on April 7th, 1973.
Thank you, Elaine.
The sales lesson? Your process might start with a, “No.”, but keep getting your message out there. It may turn into the longest relationship of your life.

Stop Selling – Get Discovered

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I originally posted this on my other blog in August of 2011. Enjoy!

Frank Belzer is really good at his day job. He works with me at Kurlan & Associates. He also plays in a band a few times a month. My guess is that if some Hollywood agent called and said, “Frank, I like your sound. Here’s a guzillion dollars. Stop wasting your time at Kurlan and come make music full time.”, that we’d be a memory.

Go to Hollywood. Talk to the waitress in a restaurant, the attendant at the car wash, the clerk at the convenience store and you may find an actor, singer, dancer waiting to be discovered.

                               

Today, there are about 240 minor league baseball teams (down from over 400) ‘feeding’ the 30 major league teams. How many Little Leaguers, high school baseball players (varsity and JV) and even college players are hoping to be discovered, play in the minors, sign a multi-million dollar contract and be set for life? What are the odds?

A few days ago, I posted “Selling for Founders“. I actually talked to the first guy that I wrote about. He’s spending his savings to live. He’s talking to prospects about how wonderful he is, how great his work is, but they’re not buying. He doesn’t want to pay for my help until he “sells a couple of good deals” so that he can pay for it. Meanwhile, he’s talented, trying to be discovered, spending his savings, worrying about how long he can go on.

Brian Halligan’s advice was to go sell something, but the person that he was talking to already knew how to sell. I’m sure that, given the opportunity, Brian would tell the aforementioned first guy to go learn how to sell, then go sell something.

So, if you’re a founder, I suggest one of three paths.

  1. Contact me. Get evaluated. Learn how to sell.
  2. Take a lesson from Frank, actor wannabes and the Little Leaguers. Hope to get discovered, but “DON’T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB!”
  3. Convince somebody to give you $65 million. (OOPS! You might have to do #1 first.)

Selling For Founders

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I originally published this post in August, 2011.

Two quick stories to set up a simple point.

This is an excerpt from an email that I received yesterday.

“About 4 months ago I left my teaching career to work full time at my Internet marketing company….I have been working my website, blogging regularly, been involved in social media – it is all working. I am making good contacts, getting more website traffic, have more “friends”, “followers” and “connections”. I love what I am doing. My concern is that I am working off of limited savings and am running out of days before I need an income. I feel that I am moving in the right direction, and given time will get to where I need to be. However, not sure that I have that time. I need help in surviving the start up phase. Where my primary focus should be?”

The second story begins in this short post, My First RainMaker. Please read the post. Then come back. Now, one of the things that I didn’t share was Mark’s acceptance speech. He thanked Brian Halligan for giving him the opportunity and he shared a story which I’ll share here. Mark said that when he was hired as the VP Sales for Hubspot, he spent most of his time researching, setting up systems and getting ready. One day, Brian said, “Mark, enough of this research and getting ready. Let’s go sell something.” A few days later, Dave Kurlan was a Hubspot customer. I wonder how that happened!

Here’s the point. Hubspot is the name in Inbound Marketing. They are the pace-setter in the industry. They are the recognized leader in Inbound Marketing. It started with, “Let’s go sell something.” and today they have over 100 salespeople. They blog, tweet, and grow their following but they sell everyday.

Maybe it’s time for you to stop getting ready and take Brian Halligan’s advice.

“Go Sell Something!“

10 Serious Questions About Silly Social Media Practices

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I was thinking about “Why did you do that?” as a title, but this is more relevant.

  1. Do your competitors follow you? Why?
  2. Do you follow them back? Why?
  3. Do you hide your connections on LinkedIn? Why?
  4. Do you hide your identity on LinkedIn? Why?
  5. Do you follow, then un-follow, then follow (if they don’t follow you back), then un-follow, ad nauseum? Why?
  6. Do you comment on blog articles, but not add to the conversation? (i.e. – Great post!) Why?
  7. Do you write blog articles, but not read blog articles?
  8. Do you subscribe people to your blog and force them to unsubscribe?
  9. Do you have real conversations (talking) with people that you meet on line?
  10. Do you know how many customers you got last year that found you through social media?
Did I miss any? If you want to answer, feel free, but mostly I’m hoping that you’ll think about the questions?

Perfect Business Plans

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Dharmesh Shah is a pretty sharp guy. Of course, my opinion doesn’t really matter, because a lot of people, way smarter than me pay attention when he speaks. I just read his most recent post in which he suggests that “sometimes business plans are dangerous”. You can read his post here.

A couple of days ago, I wrote “Thoughts on Mom & Pop Shops“. Now, I’d suggest that Dharmesh and I write for different audiences, but sometimes the reader doesn’t know that they’re in the wrong audience. Let me make three points.
Last night was the drawing for the $640 million Mega Millions jackpot. I believe that I heard that 1.5 billion tickets were sold. That’s a lot of dreamers. That brings me to my first point. People dream. Furthermore, when people intentionally dream, they avoid bad dreams. They use rose-colored glasses and focus on good and happy and successful.
I talked to a founder earlier this week. There are other factors, but I’ll focus on one exchange.
Me: So, big picture, what would make 2012 good?
Them: 10 new locations.
Me: What would that mean?

Them: $184,256.

Me: What’s that?
Them: My net profit.
Me: How much revenue would the 10 offices generate?
Them: I don’t know. That’s their problem.
In case you haven’t figured it out, this founder wants to sell franchises. Now, if they don’t know how much a franchisee is going to sell, how will they convince the franchisee that it’s a good investment? This founder probably has a spreadsheet that shows how much they net with 3 franchisees, 12 franchisees, 50, etc., but no plan to get the first one, or the second one, let alone the 10th one. So, my second suggestion is don’t focus on making you rich. Focus on making your customers happy and don’t be ‘to the penny’ specific. Stuff happens. Revenues and margins get nibbled at and unexpected expenses appear. So, round the good numbers down and the bad numbers up.
Finally, it’s not unusual for entrepreneurs to be money and success driven. They want to be millionaires and eventually wind up on the list with Rockefeller, Getty, Gates, Buffet, etc. If you’ve already got millions of dollars backing you, go for it, but if you don’t, maybe you should make a plan that will allow you to feed your family this year and provide a nest egg to fund growth next year? How much do you need to pay your personal bills this year? Don’t forget your fun money because you’ll be working long hours and will need to ‘chill’ regularly. How much will your fixed and variable expenses be? Do you need a discretionary fund? How much will you need to scale next year? Add it all up. How many customers do you need this year? How many good prospects? How many interested parties? How much attention do you need to attract? Who can help? Who will hold you accountable?
So, what do you think? Want help with a Perfect Business Plan?