The "4 R's" Needed to Maximize Efficiency In Your Sales Process

Listen to Dan on the Scaling Up Business Podcast!

How we improved the conversion rate from meeting to deal by 225%

You shared a story about a service business to kick us off - talk about the work that you did there with the salespeople and the focus and like that.

So over the last 15 years I've been helping the founding teams in the US and the UK and Australia to develop sales processes and accelerate growth. And so we've baked these learnings down over the last few years to a point where we've got a really repeatable framework. And so any opportunity to look at a business, you need to have an objective view in order to be able to work out what to improve. So we are very much aligned with the people, the strategy, the execution, the cash that you're talking about all of the time. What we're doing is just zooming in on that sales process and going, okay, let's have an objective look at all of the component parts of a sales process and work out where they actually are. So you go into a service business for example, one of the first times as I was baking this together - look out the customers that they'd already got. Let's review exactly where we are. We had a sales team, we had a number of people who were prospecting, booking meetings, and a number of people who were closing. And we had a logistical challenge, which was - we would run out of real estate. We needed a bigger office, or we needed to find another way. So we applied this logic, let's find a way of making the same people more productive. So the review stage was - let's have a look at all the assets that we've got. Let's have a look at all the customers that we've got, let's work out who we really serve best, and then refine our strategy so that we're doing more to reach those people. So in this particular case, the business had got some multi-million dollar revenue. They'd done well by talking to almost the entire market. But what we were able to do is zoom and actually see - okay, here are people that we should be spending more of our outbound resources talking to. And the ultimate result of that was we improved the conversion rate from meeting to deal by 225%. And the average order value increased 40% on the same team. If you continue doing that review and then refine and roll out those changes - it's the agile method: you refine and roll out until you get to the point of mastery. Fluency, we call it.

How to reach sales fluency: review, refine, rollout, replace

But in things this review refine and roll out kind of a flow makes a massive difference.

So what we've done is we've broken it down into five stages. And so there's the review, the refine, the rollout, the replace. But when we actually look at the component parts of a sales organization - it either doesn't exist in a lot of cases. It's being drafted, but it hasn't been released. There's a lot of sort of overthinking going on. And a lot of not really sharing things with the team and half baking things and not getting them out there - stuff stuck all the time. And then beyond that it's been released, but is it current? Then after that, has it been refined for each ideal customer? So as the business grows, you can afford to talk to more groups of potential customers. And then the final stage is fluency. Is fluent and reviewed quarterly to make sure that everybody retains the knowledge and is working with the fluency of that knowledge. And if you can get those elements of your sales process to be present, first of all, and then move them toward fluency with refine and roll out - your business accelerates. And we're often working with businesses a little smaller than some of the ones that you're working with. So it's often a founder, an early team before they can afford to spend the 300, $400,000 for a full-time VP of sales. So they don't necessarily have that initial person who's able to help them build that process. So it's the time and experience to actually plug in and help them get those things built and executed and rolled out that these things work best with.

How SaaS businesses can maximize sales efficiency

Talk about the SAS business that you worked with and how that went. What kind of work were they doing like that?

SaaS business - we started working with them in January 2020. They've actually been around for six or seven years and have been on the roller coaster. They'd been up there with some big clients and then they'd want some smaller clients and they'd had great partners and then most partners had faded out and they changed and pivoted where they were going. And after a few years in business, they now wanted a bit of fresh energy to work out what their next steps were going to be. So the review was really straightforward because they had a lot of data. They were able to see - here are the people who were paying for the service right now, here are the people who are using the platform most often, here are the partners that are actually working with these particular types of customers. So the review was relatively quick - we were able to get in with these guys and help them stop doing the stuff that wasn't productive. So the refine stage - they had a very dialed in team. They really knew what they were doing. They just needed to be able to go through a process, which helped them go - Oh yeah, we already do this very well, but we're also using our energy doing three or four other things. Let's pair that back. Let's focus on rolling out in this particular, very tight audience. So they focused on one ideal customer and they already had some really excellent partners. And so as COVID was hitting, what they were used to doing was going to a lot of different trade shows and networking with partners and coming back with mutual leads and so on. And so they needed to review and refine their sales process and their marketing process to deal with the situation we all went through last year. And so the two things happened at a very good time because they're able to focus on what ICP - ideal customer profile. They were able to really refine their marketing strategy, to do a lot of co webinars with partners who also access that same end customer. And so that was such a hit that that's been the strategy that's delivered most of their revenue throughout the last year. They found that the partners that they were working with were more than open to doing these educational shared webinars, to help the end customer. They're able to refine the partnerships, the integrations they did with some tech partners, that marketing partnerships they did with some training partners who help people with the skills associated with that platform. It's a sales enablement platform. And then they kept doing that. And then as they gathered momentum, we then worked on growing the team, added the right people and they five X their revenue last year. They're in a place where they've got really great momentum and a really good plan going into 21. And it has been a real joy working with those guys.

Random acts of marketing increase the cost of acquisition

I like that idea - one particular core customer profile, we're going to go after this one, we're going to devote everything we're going to, we're going to commit ourselves to this marketing partner, whatever. Now there are issues there, right? So now I'm going to concentrate. I'm betting on a particular direction now. And that mittment is, can be a little scary.

So in any new business, when you launch, just like you say - you go out and you work with a lot of very different people. You'll work with different industries. You'll see that they've got similar problems and you'll try and solve them. And then you'll prove it by adding as much value as you possibly can. But you realize that taking on a custom project with every new client is just not a scalable thing at all. And when you started to work in a SaaS company - years ago when I left an agency business and then wanted to work with more technology businesses, I went and trained as a product manager on purpose, so that I would understand more about the research and be able to talk better to a technology team. And that's where all of this persona and ideal customer thing comes from. Because if you try and serve too many people, you're just burning all the resources and you're not going to do anything well. But it's really - before you make that jump to commit to one particular ideal customer, you've got to look at your data and understand these are people who are having a great experience working with what we've already got. And they're actually - they're renewing, they're extending, they're giving us good NPS scores. They're having conversations with us about how else they want to use our service or work with us to develop something in their business. They're the people that are giving you a strong indication that you can then focus on those people with your marketing engine and then follow that with a sales engine. And there are the things that can communicate the confidence where teams might just be - well, how could I not work with everybody? And the answer is the cost of acquisition is a lot higher with random acts of marketing than it is with focus tactics of marketing, to bring in those people to the sales process.

How I thought I’d be selling paperclips at my first sales job

So I think this iteration and review and focusing that builds on the experimentation of the ideas is very much related to your own career arc. Talk a little bit about that. You started off wanting to be a musician, right?

Yeah. That's right. Many years ago. I was in a band and we really thought we had a shot. But the lead singer got signed to a recording contract and the rest of the band didn't so we took that as - okay we don't know where else to go with this. So I started a finance career right out of university at a big bank. And worked with that framework for a while, but really got choked up by the bureaucracy and the slow moving side of things. And one of my early career mentors said - Hey, if you work really hard, you might make it to middle management one day. And I thought, well, you know what? That's a great career, but it's middle management. It's not where I see I want to be able to go in and have a bigger impact quicker. I like to get things done quickly. That's what the Mind Racer is - once the mind starts going, it's new ideas, it's things it's this it's that - it's dialing stuff in. And so working with early stage companies where you can collaborate and make decisions, and test was just a great fit for me. And so I got lucky early in my career - a recruiter convinced me to go and work with a digital agency. He said - I want you to go sell pay-per-click. And I thought, you said paperclips! And I'm like paper clips? And he's like - no, no, no, no Google advertising. Pay-Per-Click! I'm like, Oh, I've never heard of it. And, just as they're changing the rules around what they're going to advertise on today.... But way back then, it was one of the fastest growing agencies in the UK. And I learned so much there in a fast-growing agency that then that agency went on to sell for a hundred million dollars. Then got into another fast growing company, which was a digital signage business. And we thought it was great. I was running that as a startup project. We had hardware, we had software, we were putting this product into the lobby areas of great businesses like Lehman Brothers and all these sorts of large banks. And 2007 turned into 2008. And that all of a sudden pipeline disappeared because they were trying to sell to banks again. And so that's how I came to the US. And the same investors I was working with had an agency project that they wanted to grow in Boston. And I had an opportunity to come and help them grow, and that exploded, that got to 61 on the English. Then I spent another agency out of that. Built that to the point where it just didn't need me anymore. And so I sort of lost interest at that point. Then I was like - okay, well I need to go and do something new. So I went traveling and didn't find myself. Many people go traveling to go and find themselves. And I found myself on a beach in Australia a bit bored thinking, well, what can I do next? And that's where Mind Racer Consulting came from. Initially it was to go out and work with a bunch of early stage companies and see where there was a project where I could dive in and add value. And that's where I began refining this process. I kept hopping in and helping hopping in and helping hopping in and helping. And so that's where the four Rs came from. It's really baking in those things that I kept doing early, that helps businesses when large clients, helps businesses when early clients, helps them step up to the next stage. And so that brings us to where we are today. It's been a really interesting mission and our ------ is to help a thousand businesses reach the next level of maturity by the end of 2025.

How legal tech business can maximize their sales efficiency

Another client that you helped figure out their ideal client and refine that process was this legal tech business. Talk about that.

These gents had put together a way of analyzing legal bills that could tell the fortune companies that are spending hundreds of millions on legal costs, that they were overspending and actually put data behind it. This may not be a surprise to anyone who's worked in a large company that large companies spend a lot of money on legal, but these guys actually began to build out a data background data system that would show what the partner to associate ratios were and what they actual cost for doing an IPO should be and so on. And they both had brilliant experience in the world of law. They come from that, and they built a platform and they were having lots and lots and lots of meetings. So again - I went in, reviewed with them, and helped them understand where they were. And then helped refine the documentation and the next steps in the sales process and the exit criteria and those sorts of things. And they then went on from that to roll it out and started winning Fortune 100 clients. And it was a real pleasure to help those guys get what they already knew. They were fantastic openers, but to show them what the steps in the process were that they could go through to regularly close. And now they're growing steadily and doing very nicely as that legal tech business in New York. It was good fun to build those blocks with them.

Develop building blocks to successfully onboard new salespeople

Here's the rub.So they're spending money on lead generation and they're getting these leads booked for their team, but they just got absolutely no repeatable process. So the leads cannot be giving them a decent ROI. And a lot of the time strong established lead generation companies will come to us and say - Hey, this client could really use some help in developing a repeatable process because they've been used to closing referrals, they've been used to closing people from their network where the trust already exists. And they've, they've hired a lead gen company, or they've got marketers doing content marketing. And there's an inbound, which are easier to close than outbound. And we do get a lot of people coming there because they want to add even more value to that company. And when you go into the company and the company has a brilliant founder, who absolutely understands every aspect of what the product they've built is and why it works for the existing customers, but it's found it difficult to make that bridge of a repeatable process because they don't see themselves as a salesperson. And that they brought in somebody who can't create a repeatable sales process, but they've been hired from a mega company. And they were brought in to a startup that doesn't have any of the resources they're used to using. And then they throw leads at them. And what do they do? Well, they talk to the leads, but they don't have the resources there to help them move the deal down the pipeline. And the expectation management is terrible between the CEO and the salesperson, because salespeople should just sell. And they should be left alone because they just sell. Well, it doesn't work that way in the very early stages, you got to develop the building blocks to be able to successfully onboard people so that you can scale. That's how we see it. Most of the times we get brought in where that fire's already burning.

The founder’s magic just doesn’t scale

Vast majority of early stage startups that we talk to - the CEO is interested in detaching themselves more and more from the business. And if you've been central to sales, you won't detach yourself as easily. If you go looking for somebody who does it as effortlessly and naturally, you've got to break it down into a process, map it out. And I think your message is really great. You're not going to do it all at once. You're going to piece it apart and tweak on it, iteratively. So that it's not all resting on the next rockstar and probably nobody's ever going to do it quite as well as you did as a founder. If you're, if you're that person.

Well, there's the founder's magic that we've got to consider here. The founder can always look you in the eye and these days virtually shake your hand and say - We'll look after you. Nobody in the world can repeat that and get that same sort of leverage. And the founders don't often

recognize that or pay attention to how custom the deals they're doing are, or how much them being involved in that process individually is. And then they'll bring in salespeople and go - Well, I did it off you go. And there's a learning curve on both sides there, but founders who are not naturally inclined towards sales do you just want to hire somebody to take themselves out of it? And we spend a lot of time trying to make that transition easier, and then to give the sales person who's come in with great confidence that they can add value to this process a much better chance of succeeding because we really want to help companies grow - add people, have people be able to stay there in the long so that they can actually add value to their communities. And that doesn't happen if your salespeople are churning out the door all the time. And they say the CEO keeps getting pulled back into sales because it just doesn't work.

Put in the yards before you take yourself out of the process

Early on, you want to make sure the salesperson's getting in and they're able to pull in your resources to make sure that they don't make those sorts of mistakes. And then very quickly learn the confidence of defending the price and understanding why they choose it over the competition and so on. And that's why these days it can take eight months to ramp up somebody even selling something relatively straightforward to full productivity. If you start getting a very complex enterprise product, you're looking at 10 months to 12 months before they're really up to speed. And we're talking about organizations that already have momentum. If you're bringing in early salespeople, you've really got to focus on getting that to operate quicker by enabling them quicker and being involved in that discussion. You've got to put in the yards before you can take yourself out of the process. And again, that's something that doesn't happen very often. It mostly happens in the weekly sales meeting or - Hey, can I get up half an hour with you? And as a startup founder, your calendar's normally pretty full, right? And so, how can you squeeze other people in for a conversation about deals unless they're absolutely sure it's going to move forward. So setting the guidelines early is always going to be an accelerating factor.