5 “Speed Bumps” That Can Kill Your Business

Grab some coffee a mountain dew maybe both a storm is brewing the Brain Storm welcome to The Brain Storm with Matt & Mike Hey welcome to the Brain Storm with Matt and Mike uh it's cool that we be … that we’re able to sit here and talk about different subjects that you guys our listeners and our viewers just seem to have a lot of problems with and you're not alone because we have the same problems you do as business owners and business executives Mike we all experience very very similar things you know day in and day out week in and week out and unfortunately year in and year out but I know that a lot of these speed bumps that we're going to talk about today a lot of business executives experience these exact same things yeah I mean we obviously uh have learned what we've learned from the experience of going through the painful process of experiencing most if not every single one of the speed bumps we'll discuss today we see it time and time again with with our clients and with others that we talk to in our community and beyond and hopefully we can add some value today and maybe give some clarity around how to address some of these uh problems just that are just kind of unavoidable um but but you can get past them yeah no doubt no doubt it's like um uh and that's today's show the day show is navigating business speed bumps are kind of overcoming business speed bumps sometimes you can call them roadblocks but really if you put enough effort enough thought around it that you can get around them so I think a better name for them is definitely speed bumps you know over the past 15 years of having Splash Omnimedia uh a marketing and advertising agency firm here in south carolina and then having other brands that they really hold hands well with that with a Brand Buzz and now the Brain Storm and and some other things that work well in the business world business executive world of which we do every day a next degree leader leadership development type of organization uh that both you and I participate in quite a bit mikas man we learn a lot of these things we see them all the time so we're able to really use the past 15 years of our experience sometimes we experience them on our own like you were just saying Mike and sometimes we experienced them through our clients experiences right and then it seems like we're saying the word experience a lot right now so let's put it into play let's put it let's put it to play here well hopefully this will be a great experience experience for everybody for all of our viewers exactly exactly so Mike talk to me about one of the and quite honestly over the past two years and being that we prep for the show I already know what you're gonna talk to us about but I would have to say that over the past couple years specifically and I don't really see any let up in this this is probably one of the main issues that business leaders talk about all the time talk to us about one of our first speed bumps today yeah we'll say speed bump number one uh or challenge is employee recruitment yeah and so it's it's not just finding people um and and of course today uh we're in this kind of in the midst of covid world where there are there are more people in the job market today than there were this time a year ago yeah uh this time a year ago the job market was really strong really and it was really difficult then to find uh it was like finding a needle in the haystack that perfect fit for a company today there are more people looking but that doesn't mean that the the challenge doesn't still exist you know the uh and in fact I think it just kind of surfaces some additional challenges now you have people who might take a role uh because they need a job right and they're not a person not really the job right or career path that they really want so here are some things that we hear you know people say when they're having employee recruitment challenges they might say things like I just can't find good people um our last few hires those people turned out to be idiots yeah yeah unfortunately that's said throughout history that he said um it's hard to find people that are committed beyond just a paycheck yeah they we use the flintstones yabba-dabba-doo out right with fred and barney um it's generally not a good indication they come in right on time and they leave right on time and they kind of have but they don't go to the bathroom until they get to work yeah that's right well they come in on time and then it takes them another 30 minutes to get settled ready to go right that's usually an indication that you may have made an improper hiring decision yeah so here's some things that we found help really I'm not going to pretend that you can eliminate having some hiring challenges because there's no crystal ball and no Matter how much you vet someone inevitably they may just turn out to not be the right fit right but you can reduce the likelihood that you're going to experience a bad hire as frequently by doing a few things number one is slow down people blast through the hiring process generally because they wait until they have an emergency someone left and they've got to fill that void immediately and they didn't plan they weren't able to plan accordingly they weren't able to plan to make that higher well in advance slow it down get through the short term with your existing team find some other solution but don't make another bad hiring decision just because you try and blast through it yeah and pressure right don't let your people pressure you in not in speeding up the process right right like we need somebody we need somebody we need somebody so you get someone you spend 15 20 minutes with them and you like them right you don't know if they can do anything associated with job you like them but because you're in such a rush like you're talking about you just say okay well when can you start that's right conduct numerous interviews here at splash we in all of our brands we take a process where we actually have numerous interviews with differing people on the team um that with different personalities four to five and they're looking for specific characteristics that we've established that help us identify what an ideal team player here at splash or bran buzz next degree leader so forth and so on what that looks like yeah and so if they don't fit those key characteristics ultimately they are going to bog the team down and it's going to be less of a positive impact and more of a potential challenge yeah no doubt and so we look for those things we use personality profile you know test we use disk strength finder enneagram myers-briggs I mean we will use as many tools as possible to help identify really is this person self-aware are they who they portray themselves to be and do they have the the natural kind of giftedness the natural personality traits that are needed to advance in the role that we're going to recruit them for yeah there's no doubt I know that we we have four to five different interviews that run through that process Mike and and then we I know a lot of times we'll do social media checks on them right we want their social media links sometimes we ask them for them sometimes we actually can just stalk them out right and we have a couple people on our team that's uh specifically uh designed to do that to figure out you know what they're off camera if you will right if they say hey you know if with joe if on wednesday they say hey every wednesday night I'm in a lead a bible study and I'm I'm i'll turn it in really early every night you know I'm in bed at 9 30. but you look on social media and on instagram you can see they're doing keg stands at 2 a.m three wednesdays in a row all right you know something's not adding up exactly you know I mean own who you are and so um you know really I think the most valuable thing that we do Matt is once we've gotten someone all the way through and they've made it through all of that interview process the the personality profiles the the social media check then we sit down with our team and the candidate and we just have a discussion with them and we allow them to ask anyone on our team any question they'd like and vice versa and what we found is by allowing our team to weigh in number one they buy in yeah when we make the hiring decision collectively right but we is always smarter than I and you know there are people on our team where I know many instances where you and I were pretty pretty committed to making a hire and and some folks on our team identified some issues that we had to pump to break and and step back and sometimes in some cases we ultimately didn't make that higher hey thanks for joining us today on the Brain Storm with Matt and Mike I can tell you that uh overcoming and navigating business speed bumps is vital and crucial to overall success uh and the longer you're down or the longer it's taking you to hurdle over that speed bumper the longer it's taking you to get over it uh the more you're kind of stuck in the mud if you will and stuck where you are and and no business executive likes to be stuck in the mud right I mean that's where all pressure starts to really pile on because not only do you know that you're stuck your entire team knows that you're stuck and so Mike was just talking about employee recruitment and hiring the right people and and we could we could do an entire show just on that because you know you have the right people in the right seats but you might have the right people in the wrong seats or the wrong people in the right seats worst case you have the wrong people in the wrong seats right those are usually easier to identify right you can eliminate that problem right those are the first ones that need to go and then and then absolutely the worst thing you can do as you know Mike is your team morale starts going down when they watch you not take action on a bad situation that you and everybody else knows about and so that that really kills morale which is which is usually the number two speed bump that businesses have is just company morale and culture you and I concentrate and probably put the majority of our leadership effort in this area yeah I call it number two usually it's number one it's just in the last couple years people have become the number one issue I would think so I would uh I'm slipping culture down to number two even though it was just right yeah how these people interact right each other right it usually goes right here number one pretty easy but company morale and culture is it's just a main issue it's a big issue you know when you you have people in your office that is the water cooler talk right they just stand around the water cooler and that really can be the the break area it can be someone's desk it can be the printer or the copier it can be you know you call everything as a as an analogy of the water cooler talk but it's where the gossip occurs it's where it happens man so if the office is full of gossip and drama there's an issue if you feel like you have an office just full of like negative nancies if you will uh there's an issue you know if cheap people just robbed the clock like you were just mentioning a minute ago there's an issue you know if no one uh is you know is going to work uh in your business like you feel like they need to or like you do you know you you're gonna have people that really really buy in and that's gonna be noticed uh and if there's you don't feel like there's any sense of loyalty that's that's an issue right you want people to be very loyal and as we both know Mike people buy into the why you do it not just what you do no some people buy into what you do because they just really like the what or they're reading into the wire making it up their own why but we know that doesn't last long no that's a short-term scenario and so they really have to decide and understand and you need to build your why you know because as you've heard this thing many many times that culture eats strategy for breakfast it definitely definitely does so absolutely here's some of the things you can do you can make sure that you clarify your vision your mission and your goals I think just making sure that you not only clarify them and you understand them but then your team buys in so you want to get that together your executive level you want to press that out to your your senior management and allow your senior management to kind of communicate that through the rest of the team the next thing is just that communication like that is key to success not only just communicating your vision mission your goals but just everything is part of communication oh yeah I mean communications well people need to know what their expectations are right absolutely what does it mean to be a member of this team right you can't you can't get a success you can't hit the hit the target if you don't know where the target even that's right so communication is the key to success imagine having a marriage or a friendship or a business relationship any type of relationship without great communication is just not going to work it simply is not going to work you know just show them the importance of their role allow them to understand there's two things that people want to know right they want to know they're needed and they want to know that they're wanted or they're valued that's two things that everybody wants to have right they're needed and they're wanted that's a big deal that's important especially because they're people who serve in a role that maybe is more behind the scenes and you know oftentimes people in sales or some front-facing public-facing a customer service that those folks they get more of the attention naturally because they're more visible right but without those people behind the scenes making whatever magic they make happen um the rest of it would never those people would never look good absolutely yeah and you want to take you want to basically show them the importance of their role like we were just talking about you want to give them credit you take the blame like you take the blame on them that helps them buy in and they'll go to war with you every day all day long uh and market yourself internally make sure that people love to understand what you do how you do it as if they are a consumer if your team feels like they would buy what you do then people other people will buy what you do so there's no doubt about it so while we're talking for just a minute about morale and culture you know where culture is such a buzz word today Matt and we we see it all over the place and for many people I think when they hear the word culture they think um kumbaya they think bean bags and ice cream cones they think google yeah they think slides in the office right they think all that type of stuff your office can have those things that's not culture no that that is that's a whole other thing right but culture is um kind of the dna of who your organization is why you exist how you operate what what what type of values you represent right how you're going to treat each other how you're going to communicate it's all of those things that are so important to success and as you pointed out peter drucker saying that culture eats strategy for breakfast it needs lunch and dinner and every snack in between yeah culture I think is probably one of the most important things of the workplace so you know if you have good employees and you create a good culture now you're ready for some clients right some customers some patients if you're a doctor or physician or something healthcare customers you know or clients whatever have you whatever you call them but it's time to actually get some revenue you go get those from from customers right how do you attract new customers be a really thin culture without any revenue coming in yeah people it would be you you know so that is that speed bump number three we're going to discuss is attracting new customers you know you're either growing or you're dying and so if your business has been flat for any given time you've got some problems you need to address if you're sliding backward and it's not an isolated event I mean this year covid it listen if your revenue's down this year and you're in certain industries I mean it'd be really difficult for it not to be yeah don't let this year determine or dictate where you go in the future and don't base your future results based on what this year look like right I mean you find a way to still win uh either way but attracting new customers so it's really just lead generation I mean we see lots of people having lead gen problems um here are some of the things we hear folks saying our sales team spends a lot of time cold calling it's time consuming it takes a it's a long sales process you've got to have a lot of you got a thick skin right you can hear no more often than you're going to hear yes and uh and that's a lot challenging for a lot of people you have a lot of leads you do and your p your salespeople can only be out and meeting with so many people our sales team doesn't have enough leads right the quality of the leads we're generating is weak so maybe they're they're generating but they're not the right opportunities we aren't bringing in enough new customers to reach our goals and that's really what it's all about is establishing goals and then determining what it's going to take to reach that target so here's some tips for establishing a solid lead gen strategy first establish those goals so often we hear people say well I just want to I want we need more new customers okay how many new customers what what's the value of a new customer right you got to answer those questions how many new customers do you need to add to your book of business and by when so make sure you use the smart goal kind of process that's specific measurable attainable relevant and time-bound yeah if you don't do that like you said a few minutes ago Matt when we were talking about some other things you said you got to identify your target or there is no target so clarify that target then create a lead generator tool some resource that is valuable to the audience you're trying to reach help them solve a fraction of the problem that you are able to help them solve give them the information they need for them to begin to work on solving that problem even if it's helping them solve it themselves you create that lead generator and you create a landing page that you embed it on and then you promote that lead generator now once someone takes action to capture that lead that lead generator they want that piece of content have it open a form gate where they fill out a form get access to that to immediate access to that lead generator and that's going to add them into a crm if you don't have a crm we'll talk about that later on in this show crm customer relationship management it's a software system where it houses all of your prospects uh customers former customers vendors all of your contacts all in one centralized piece of software what you're doing with them conversations if you gave them a proposal if you didn't what they purchased in the past all that day everything so important so create an automated sales campaign it can be kicked off via trigger through the crm yeah that will drip whether that's email text messages retargeted ads I'm out to these folks to nurture them what we're trying to do is move them through sales funnel funnel do they get them yeah imagine if your sales folks could focus on people who are in the middle to bottom of the funnel versus cold calling yeah their time would be much better served and their success rate would be considerably higher yeah and then just promote those those lead generators and so you could do that through a variety of ways again it depends on where your audience is hanging out linkedin facebook instagram youtube google search all those are great places to promote even all that valuable content right depending on where you are uh from a geography perspective right demogra uh demography demography demography new word demographically uh you know I mean whatever I mean you have to promote it to people where where they are at the time hey you're listening to the Brain Storm with Matt Mike we really appreciate you joining us today as we go through and talk about a show called navigating business speed bumps overcoming business speed bumps for business executives I believe that you'll really enjoy this because what you'll learn is is the majority of businesses no Matter the size from small to large from products to services from b to c to b to b most people are experiencing very similar issues or very similar speed bumps if you will earlier in the show Mike talked a little bit about employee recruitment and uh and how you kind of overcome that and how you set yourself up for success then we talked about how important company morale and culture is and how to create that uh that morale and culture and Mike was just explaining to us how to attract new customers by creating a creating your goals first and creating your messaging uh then getting a lead generation tool going whether it be online or offline and driving them back to some type of data mining system like a crm in order to kick off and launch some automated workflows it's by far the smartest way to attain new customers and clients absolutely Mike has a lot of experience in that realm so if you're ever interested in talking uh to us about crms or workflows or just content messaging feel free to give us a call at your 803-785-5656 engage with us on our podcast on all streaming devices uh and streaming services and also subscribe to our podcast and our youtube channel uh believe it or not we actually video and uh you might be watching our show on on social media but we also video our shows if you're listening to us on the radio you can see just how good of a haircut Mike and I use it's a very close uh haircut we'll tell that story one day Mike when uh I started shaving my head oh yeah really short that was fun all right so now that was another speed bump that was a big time speed bump hey so now we got a great recruit uh great employees we got a great morale and culture we got new clients now what's the important thing to do keep them like keep the clients retain them upsell them cross-selling uh right I mean nothing uh is less is is at least expensive to for a client attraction than to just sell your current clients uh upsell and cross-sell opportunity so customer retention if your customers only buy from you one time and you have a recurring product you got a problem right uh if customers are kind of one and done or they bounce they have a your website's got a high bounce rate your checkout card if you sell products got a high bounce rate you know there is a problem and so just retaining clients is a big deal and here's what it is Mike actually said this a little earlier he said communicate you have to communicate you want to keep a client happy you want to keep a client long term every client that we've ever lost Mike here is at splash in our marketing company uh which by the way we have a 92 retention rate from year to year what we do works and it works really good but there is I mean it's not 100 I would be shocked if any business has a hundred percent so I feel really good about hours but you also say well what happened in the times where we missed right right right right right right up to signs where we struck out and I would say almost all of those are because we dropped the ball in our communication some failed communication whether it's not setting expectations in advance right or whether that just being actively engaged in helping them but not keeping them in the loop yeah that leads to lots of sometimes they don't even know that what we're doing is actually working well especially in an industry like ours but you know there are folks out there who they're thinking well I sell a product all right yeah people only call me when they have an emergency problem and so talk a little bit about that talk about yeah we're talking about when we're talking about upselling and reselling even if you're selling a product you want to sell more of them do you want to sell uh in accessory products to the product that they purchased if that's a one-time product you know like we have a roofing company example right that can be considered a product or it can be even considered a service right I don't know you know you get a roof but you have the service to put it on and very few people buy more than one roof right but every one of those people have a roof have friends that need a roof right and so if you want to get referrals from those people that's cross-selling opportunity to one-time one-and-done product offering right then how do you do it you want to communicate with them so basically here's what you want to do you want to kick it into an automated system with automated messages you want to make sure that you're targeting and retargeting through their social media you want to make sure that you have a text messaging program you know if and this is all if applicable right not all of this is going to be applicable to each thing but this is how we think you and I think like this our team thinks like this and you have to excite them you have to ascend them to the next thing right upsell them one to number two to number three if you have a product or something can we talk about that so so what you find is that when someone makes their first purchase they generally are not going to you haven't established deep trust yet right really the relationship is only beginning right once once they've consummated the first purchase when they come back and you can cross-sell them or bring them back for a second visit second purchase they will more freely spend they are much more uh you know in position to invest more with you because they've already experienced and that what they've done is they value at this point via communication they value the product and or service that they've gotten right but even more now they value the relationship that they have with you that are selling it to them right right because they now see you as the expert they now see you as uh the educator in that space whatever that space is um and so it's because you've communicated with them like literally it doesn't Matter if you're selling t-shirts right tuxedos plumbing yeah I mean the first example if you if I buy a t-shirt you know how many or the t-shirts most t-shirt companies can sell me so if I buy a t-shirt well what's going to happen is I should go back to my social media page and I should see a carousel of all of the other products that you sell I should get an email like the day after I purchased it or the day after it was shipped telling me that it was shipped I should get an email a weekend asking me if I've worn my t-shirt yet or not how comfortable it is and here's by the way here's a bunch of other t-shirts that I think you would find extremely interesting maybe for your spouse maybe for your kids maybe for your friends take a picture show you another t-shirt and send it in right so now you're talking about uh you know user content right and so there's all types of ways that you can just continuously communicate with people in order to do that right and so you literally want to then make sure that you're creating a system that enables people to advocate on your behalf right so you're talking about testimonials or reviews on the website or on google on social media uh that's I can tell you a lot of people today go on and search what they're gonna buy based off the review I mean or probably one of the most important things right and then promotion if you're if you're really communicating with people on a regular basis it enables p people ask me Mike all the time people ask me now why is it that people advertise uh in my business and my don't ever advertise and all I get is referrals you know what I tell them I say if you advertise it enables more referrals to take place because what it does is it reminds people who they do business with and it enables people to more easily refer them because you can easily say hey you know what this is the lawyer that I do business with you you saw him and then here's my email that he sent me I'm going to forward it to you well here is the car a lot that I purchased my recent car from I just saw them on social media and I forward it to you right I mean here's the accountant that I use and you we were at a dinner party and you were saying how you need a better bookkeeping or a better accountant and so he sent me an email i'll just forward it to you and if you want you know someone might be willing to leave a brief review if you really are intentional about going after them even after one purchase but if they've only experienced one transaction with you one time one product they're not yet really equipped to be a true promoter of your business I mean those who have purchased numerous times have experienced building the relationship with you over a period of time and they've got they've experienced many of your products and services and again across numerous transactions they're best equipped to really talk to others on your behalf yeah and so it really again they become great promoters for your business yeah no doubt I mean that's what you want at the end of the day you won't well any day what you really want is creators people that like go out and create that usually takes place in things like networking groups and grassroots types of marketing and see people people think when they contact like uh it's like a splash on immediate example right a lot of people think they contact companies like that just for advertising but you know if you get a good marketing firm versus just a good advertising agent right which is one very different very very very different then what you're getting is you get people who believe in all sources of revenue generation right and so you create strategies for home shows and trade shows for grassroots like the chamber like you're on the board of the local chamber here we have uh one of our uh sales reps as uh council of another of a small business council uh member uh or actually I think he's the chair of that council right of another chamber I mean we're heavily involved you got networking chambers you got grassroots you got then you have advertising online and offline I mean all of it really really makes a difference so as you go down through some of these speed bumps and we're getting ready to get into a couple more that I think everybody would be very interested in you know you're looking at these things and saying wow these are the exact same issues my company is is really struggling with this show and we can dive deeper into those things but you're listening to the Brain Storm with Matt Mike and we really appreciate you joining us on our show hey subscribe to our podcast uh subscribe to our youtube channel and listen to us live on the radio or or just check us out on social media thebrainstormradio.com or you can check out our advertising marketing strategy firm over

at splashomnimedia.com Mike so if we have good employees and we have a great company morale and culture uh we've attracted new customers and we're able to retain them uh that sounds like a pretty good formula for success right there you know um so when you start thinking about okay how do we there's a lot of competition in my business a lot of competition in my industry business owners might think right so things like insurance and things like real estate uh things like law or legal profession I mean there's so many competitive just very competitive industries and a lot and then you have the people who have large advertising budgets people can just blow it out right and you have some more middle-of-the-road budgets if you will and you have some low uh to sometimes no budgets right uh so these people are saying when nobody knows who we are yeah nobody knows who we are how do we how do we even start getting our message out or competing what would you say to the question that really nobody knows who we are so I'm going to reframe that statement a little bit okay because we hear it kind of positioned in a variety of ways yeah so like we like brand awareness I love that I hear that we get asked all the time how long have you been in business yeah and not because they think you've been in business for a hundred years but because they're looking at you like where did you come from I've never ever heard of never heard of you prospects they'll often ask for a lot of references before they'll make a commitment to buy from you and it's because they haven't yet confirmed that you have the authority and experience to help them so there's some question about that uh the target audience is more familiar with your competitors right that stinks when when you've got when you're up against hey we're familiar with this brand right and we thought they were the only game in town and so you're fighting a little bit of an object like I'm a local hardware store but everybody goes to lowe's right that's right you know everybody knows lowe's right exactly and so what that is a branding issue yeah and so what you really need to do is launch an ongoing branding campaign a branding strategy and where that starts is you you begin a great branding strategy by first uh kind of cementing visual brand standards yeah beyond that means you want to keep things looking consistent everywhere they turn especially if you have a more modest budget right you can't afford to confuse anyone right if they see variations of your brand in different places they're not likely to connect the dots and even recognize it's the same company right being represented so you've got to keep it consistent you want to implement because 90 plus percent of people are very visual so the look is vital it is definitely so you want to implement a communication framework that clarifies your message points your message points need to speak to the problems that your customers are having you help them resolve and you need to beat the drum with that content you need to make sure you you're saying the same things over and over and over again because chances are the first second even sixth or seventh time your prospect sees it it just doesn't penetrate my mind they've got too much other noise coming at them you gotta create and promote quality content using that framework tell you this pro tip video is what ink video is king yeah I mean videos king I mean four billion well over four billion youtube videos are being watched every single day amazing just on youtube yeah only on youtube right and videos traded pretty much every digital channel there's only seven billion people in the world and a third of the world doesn't even have internet uh content so if you don't think video works you're crazy I saw a stat that said by 2022 they estimated that 80 plus percent of all digital content will be in the form of video that doesn't surprise me it's crazy isn't it doesn't surprise me so you want to frequently engage your audience the people that are the right people for you the people you'd like to become your customers or your existing customers using organic search targeted ads on social if your audience is hanging out there which most likely they're on at least one if not more of those platforms facebook linkedin instagram snapchat tick tock pinterest all of those are social uh platforms that you can engage your audience you can also pay to reach them there as well as google search youtube I'm exhibited industry trade shows you talked about that a few minutes ago what we're doing is talking about being visible being visible where your audience is at if you're going to exhibit at a trade show whether that's local if you're a local focused organization or whether that's industry related go above and beyond don't don't skip the little bit of investment to make sure you have a great I agree both I agree set the stage I mean already spending x x plus I had another half is not I mean you're already going to invest yeah I mean why go and invest and get nothing where you can invest maybe a little bit more and maximize everything you can great booth goes along it goes a long way and especially when you're trying to build credibility you know it's funny that you talk about that I've I've actually heard people say this my I I have some friends that said this just not even that long ago they said I you know what I hate I hate when these advertisers are like I'm thinking about buying you know I'm not going to tell you the product or service or whatever but I I'm thinking about buying this thing right this product and but I went to their website to buy and their website is crap but this product is very very expensive yeah and so you know what I hate I hate when people ask me to invest in their business but they don't even invest in their business right that's that's a telltale now someone is not in the marketing advertising space say that I was like wow that's that's a very very true it shines a a negative light on their brand right because now their perception of that brand is tarnished it's reduced and and you know what the thing about it to get that person back to buy your product now is going to be very very difficult because now these cognitive biases that we all have it's there's a seed that's been planted right and now you have a big a much bigger speed bump get over yeah now it's more like a roadblock you know another thing you can do Matt is speak at an event you want to raise authority and visibility be the presenter the communicator the educator is the expert and nothing builds credibility like speaking on a topic especially if it's a you know something of of significance sponsor an event you can sponsor local events uh industry events uh whether that be a cocktail hour at a large trade show where you invite um some of your target audience to participate whether it be a local 5k if you serve a local audience just be visible if you serve that local audience again digital billboards can be a great tool local radio television local publications those are all tools to help you kind of establish brand and you're not necessarily measuring the result from that brand mentioned to to an end customer what you're doing is setting the stage to allow more people to be aware of your brand so when they have a need they think of you first yeah one of the last two things i'll touch on on this topic today Matt is outfit your team if you've got a staff make sure they're wearing branded apparel yeah that's easy to do and very inexpensive to do yeah I mean so a Brand Buzz we'll give them a little a little plug yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah bailey erica and anne over at Brand Buzz can help you outfit your team and make them look top-notch but it's important you should have your people wear branded apparel every day that their work because you know just just first of all the pride let's say they don't go out to lunch or something just have the pride of wearing the brand is important right second of all if they go to lunch together or a separately people see that so now you're getting advertising dollars out of this that's right uh you might wear it to the gym if you have t-shirts you give your people t-shirts you might have what happens if you start giving your customers some of that type of stuff apparel is a big deal it's a much bigger deal than people might think it is yeah the last thing i'll mention is is ramp up your community involvement if people don't know who you are it's because you're stuck behind your desk or in the warehouse and you might be filling plenty of orders but you're not out building relationships you're not building visibility get you you and your people get involved in things like rotary or chamber or bnI or lions club or any other uh one of the many you know social absolute community clubs that are available to join just ramp up that involvement yeah just get involved and everything that Mike just said cost you very very little to do that's all it does and and you're and you run a business on purpose like that's the thing you're doing right and so here's what we discussed today in this show we've discussed how important navigating these business speed bumps are right finding the right people putting the right people in the right seats we actually have a program through our next degree leader that we can actually help you with that and so that's a that's a big deal building company morale and culture we talk about this constantly internally and externally it's so so important right yes it is and you got to have customers you got you got employees you got a team you got a great team you got a great culture people ready to go you gotta have some revenue in order to pay them they're really great people and a great culture only go so far by itself without your revenue it's gonna be very difficult so you definitely want to get that right then you want to keep those customers long-term now we want to talk about revenue it’s obviously kind of critical very critical much needed especially on pay day I don't know if you pay on Fridays or were the first in the fifteenth or however you pay I mean revenue is critical right but so is this margins margins might even be more critical because if you just look at revenue and not margins than what you have is a large team right that is extremely overwhelmed they are extremely busy and the business the organization is simply just not making that much money right your revenues up you know your your services up your overall growth this up what you but your margin suck right? and so if your margin suck your your overall profits are gonna suck right and so. How do you do that? well you have to add more value right you might want to go to a good better best option that's a great way of doing it so you could package your services I know a lot of people out there even in the service business these are easily thought about the product business right okay we'll just package these products and then the better a better scenario would be these 5 products it may be a good 3. these 3 a better will be these

5 and then the best would be the 7 right it's easy to conceptualize the product world not necessarily in the service world but believing not there's all types of different yeah good better best options if you you know sell roofing or if you sell more services this HVAC or something of that nature you have maintenance plans you know you have in the roofing business you have gutters and siding and windows and you know gutter protection right the there's all types of ways you can package things to get a good better best option Mike with the exception of a couple of industries there's always almost always a way to add more value right and command a premium, absolutely oftentimes we found people think that they can't charge more for their service it is really they are the the barrier right that they haven't accepted a recognized their value that they're heading right in so if they stop and look around to find out often times that they have competitors who are out marketing them and they wonder why they're able to do that is because their margins are considerably thicker -right it could be process related I mean it could be that they don't have the right technology in place and so they may be manually doing things over and over again that are time consuming things which requires more people power and that may be sucking up their profits I tell ya another one too for those that might have. might not have an ancillary type of service to on or whatever have you right I purchased some movie theater seating for my room over as you know and and so when I was buying those couple chairs I never purchased movie theater seats before and they're super cool by the way, are they comfortable oh my gosh they are super cool they got little blue neon lights and they got USB Chargers they have a little table to move around while you're drinking your food I mean it is super super freaking cool so and I was super impressed with the process of how I purchased and were you worried about the comfort like a Hey they look cool online absolutely don't know absolutely like about the cushion absolutely how far back did they go how far I mean I worry about all of that because let me tell you. My pocketbook they're not cheap so it was a big it was a long decision to actually have to purchase these things but I'm super happy I did but one of the things we were we just talking about how you increase your margins they know what they're doing to increase their margins because let me tell you what happened I don't know anything about these things I know how how it's going to connect them because I bought 2 and they they daisy chained together and then they connect to the wall because you know like electricity and really have a battery backup because if you're in a reclined position in the battery and the wall unit goes out I mean you have to be able to get back out you’re just stuck in the reclined position forever right and so what would you do yeah right, and so they have a battery backup system and all that right I didn’t know how all that worked right so you know what they did they had a they had a a product of you... you buy it and then you... you know you do it like they ship it to you and you put it

together okay and then you daisy chained it and all those type stuff and they come with videos and instructions but they had an up-sell right for only a couple $100 more you know $200-250 more you buy it and we do it verses you buy and you do it yep right there was a white glove concierge service we bring it in we set up where you want it we get all fixed up we daisy chained together we basically do everything but bring you your drinking and your popcorn you're ready to watch some movies right well of course I chose that option right absolutely I chose I was there for $200 I didn’t know what I was doing I want to be able to walk up and say this is where I’m gonna watch some movies right that's what they did they increase their margin just like that because they already had to pay those movers right they cost them no extra they literally made another $250-300 off of me just simply because they offered that option right right because it was a more enjoyable customer experience for you -oh absolutely you're not buying those chairs because you have to -right it is a... it's a luxury type of add on right -it’s something you're buying for, entertainment purpose that's right for comfort and to enjoy the experience of being at the movies yeah while at home another thing to increase your margins is don't... listen. Don't sell the product that sucks at a sucky price right like you know I mean you... you can have a middle of the road product right as far as qu, quality goes right but as people are going to value how you value it right so I can guarantee you that if you think your product is more middle of the road it’s probably better than middle of the road that's just what you think of it right and I'm just telling you create a product in value and build education around it and sell it at a good fair price right and that fair price might not be as low as you think it is like a lot of people sit around and say oh my gosh, nobody will pay me for that and that's just not true you know where we see that a lot Matt is in industries where products have a cost factor or the products are very similar at on the surface to what the competition offers and everyone says well I don't really have a differentiator I mean it's we're all the same well if you speak about the benefits that your product or service can add to your customer's life how you can make their life better by them buying your product or service and you speak the most clearly way more than your competitors you’ll win your your product is superior right if they're not saying it and you are, you're helping them make a more specific buying decision yeah and you’re easing that process for them, yeah and then if you like add a risk reducer like a money back guarantee or a limited lifetime warranty or whatever have you it just makes it that much more appealing because Hey if I don't like it I can always you know get my money back type of thing and I actually did have an issue with it because with the chairs I was talking about okay because when they installed ‘em the installers or whatever a ripped a little bit of leather on that, just on the arm I didn't even see it because they push the 2 chairs together you know how tight the movie theater chairs are they push them together and they did it the leather ripped and I don't know what was it like that before after but I know it when I noticed it I finally took a picture sent it in and the very next day they called me and they had an upholster drive up from about 30 miles away free of charge no, no, no charge 30 miles away drove up and fixed it immediately so that's great customer service great customer service and it’s made me just tell you about it on the show and I told a bunch of other people about that yeah many times and again that shows that you know people who buy that product can have confidence that if they have a problem that company has a historically based on a customer's review right here uh taken care of immediately and that's worth paying a little bit more for the product even though there looks to be a comparable product available by another supplier maybe it doesn’t have kind of that exactly that experience out in the marketplace Hey you’re listening to the brainstorm with Matt Mike we're talking about navigating business speed bumps I appreciate you listening and join us today Mike we have talked a lot about CRM customer relationship management and workflows and so on and so forth okay and you mention it quite a bit I think it's important that we break down and spend... break down a CRM and talk about the advantages of data mining

and things of that nature and just spend just a couple of minutes on how important a CRM is because a lot of people might even have a CRM they just don't use it right right and that's probably the most most people and then there's some people don't have one at all yeah and so I think it's vital that we spend a little bit of time on that speed bump business people, um talk to us a little bit about the importance of it and how you really employ it in a business yes so what we find oftentimes Matt surprisingly there some large organizations many large organizations that I guess are slow to to move and they don't have a clearly defined customer relationship management system they don't have a way for their team to have access to the same customer data it's buried in rolodexes and or maybe is nonexistent all arts on sticky notes with phone numbers or it's in different people's you know mobile phones or an excel spreadsheet so it's some dated antiquated technology they're using a process that doesn't allow them to tap into the real power that that today's customer relationship management software systems can provide there's anything from enterprise level all the way down to entry level CRMs that you can get at really affordable rates we work with quite a few of them. And what we've mostly advocate for is, have one, if you don't have your customer information held in a centralized cloud hosted place. You need to make that happen. That's one of the most valuable assets to any company is a list. With your prospects and customer’s data where you're tracking all of their interactions with your brand and your team over an extended period of time so here's, here's some things that we recommend -organize all of your business contact info prospects clients vendors any type of contact whatsoever in your CRM. Segment those folks categorize them based on where they're at

in the relationship are they an existing customer are they a former customer or are they an existing customer and they've bought and experienced all of the services that you offer what level of customer are they so you wanna identify all those things record and track all customer activity & interactions if they call in and you speak to them record it if you send them an email have it you can actually have it with a lot of software systems where it will pull that data automatically in yeah, which is a huge timesaver -where it records the phone call it can do it if you send an email sometimes your emails can sync up try your outlook to your CRM and what happens if your salesperson leaves right or they're out sick, or if they’re out sick, and they call in or they send an email right you don't, or they’re out on maternity leave you you want to make sure that you can be up to speed on on all contact where that contact is in process what conversations have happened so that way you can communicate it clearly with that customer and help guide them as quickly as possible to the desired outcome that they're looking for. And you know what Mike, and we’ve talked about trade shows and home shows and things of that nature on our shows in the past and ... over the years many years ago people would just flock to them not not consumers but the vendors would flock to them be represented at the trade show and what happens is you see people go through cycles like all gosh I got to go do this trade show got put up this booth and I got you know, they see it as this I don't get anything from it that's basically what everybody that’s disgruntled with the trade show home show says I don't get anything from it right and you know why because you're going with the wrong intentions and what they're going to get is I want a customer like I want someone to come inside to get a new roof, that’s right, while I'm standing at a booth at 8:00 on Saturday morning - transaction thinking, I’m not saying that that can't happen I'm saying that that absolutely can happen but the data mining is what you go for you go in order to data mine get as many contacts why do you think people give stuff away at their trade show booths are home shows in order to put people in there CRM. so this CRM is ... this is the hub of your business if we talk about people's websites are digital footprint of being the hub of their advertising the CRM is the hub of their business operations right and so you’re hitting the nail on the head about the CRM it is vital and people just don't buy in like they should yeah the the the amazing thing is you can take marketing and sales and really marry them together but CRM is the vital technology necessary to make that happen so once someone enters that CRM if they are a prospect whether a sales person enters their information or they or they get entered because they subscribe to get access to a lead generator or if they filled out a form or any other way they end up in your database based on certain parameters whether it's pages they visit on your website of you know forms they completed the get access again to that lead generator it can then automatically kick off specific workflows that are geared toward people who are in that stage of their buying journey and start sending them relevant information uh email it can trigger text messaging could you know trigger retargeted ads across the web whether that’s social media or display youtube to help continue to cultivate nurture that relationship and guide them toward making a buying decision right with you and so it while the sales person is is really focused on helping those who are already further in the sales journey your CRM can help power a lot of ongoing nurturing to move people from really top of the funnel oftentimes depending on your industry down to really the very bottom right bottom of your CRM is the hub of the business by really in the most I guess simple way of summarizing everything that you just said because it controls your communication right, it literally controls all the communication that someone does right, so someone needs to call someone it tells them to communicate that way if someone needs to send a personal letter then it the CRM trigger that, triggers that if someone needs to get an email then it triggers that in a pre-written email it is the hub of your organization's external communications and so if communication is the key to success and the CRM is a centralized hub that triggers all communication externally right. That is kind of a no brainer and so

it is weird that people don't understand it and doesn't properly deploy it and employ it like they should from a business perspective you know it's a, it's vitally important and I like to believe that the majority of people, once it's explained understanding and can see how it can really help their business I think what most people struggle with is finding which one is right for them in implementation if you've not implemented a lot of technology like this before it's hard it's it's challenging when you don't know the process that’s the hardest part no doubt about it you're exactly right so trying to find which software solution we already know that just em em.. we already know the struggle and pain it is to switch software and even to employee a new software but to going out and having to search for one and to get the right one in because once you put a bunch of time money and effort into one switching is simply just, it is painful yeah it is painful no doubt about it. Hey well uh we really appreciate you guys joining us today whether you're watching this on video whether you listen to us on the radio whether you were checking and checking us out through social media we really appreciate you as our listeners and our viewers to give us an opportunity to produce this content to help our business executives in this particular case navigate some business speed bumps on behalf of my business partner Michael White I appreciate you guys go to our website to brainstormradio.com subscribe to a podcast subscribe our YouTube

channel contact us at 803 785 5656 will answer any questions that you have thanks for watching.

2020-12-29 04:39

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