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[Music]
welcome to scaling up the podcast where
we scale up on knowledge so we don’t
scale up our systems i’m trace blackmore
i get to host this awesome podcast
scaling up h2o
nation have you planned out your year do
you know what you are going to do
the situations that you are going to put
yourself in the environments that you
are going to meet new people in meet new
challenges and just start looking at
things you might already know a little
bit differently well a great way to do
that is figure out what are all of the
associations that are available to you
within the area of industrial water
treatment that you practice
they’re different for everybody if you
are a water treater that practices like
i do mainly industrial heating and
cooling and process you’re probably
looking at something like the
association of water technologies and
there’s many others around that so i
urge you while we’re new in this year
figure out what are the associations
that you should associate with and what
are they doing this year do they have a
convention do they have certain expos
that you can go to and when you start
doing that you are immersing yourself in
a learning opportunity and i hope you go
through every single day treating it as
a learning opportunity
yes it’s a brand new day what am i going
to learn today
keep your eyes open each and every day
for new learning opportunities but also
plan for them so when you figure out
which associations you need to associate
with figure out if you need to go to
their conferences figure out all the
things
that will allow you to get to that
conference and then plan for it
all that to say we’ve got a couple
things coming up in the near future and
one is if you are in europe the 2022
exhibition and conference is going to be
january 26 through 27th this is where
global water utilities and network
services meet to talk about how do they
save water how do they eliminate
needlessly wasting water to make water
use more efficient so this is if you are
in the water utilities industry
something that you might want to check
out another one is the international
conference on waste water treatment
processes and water quality that’s going
to be january 28th through 29th and this
brings together leading academics
scientists research and scholars to
exchange knowledge and experiences so
their research can help all aspects of
waste water and the treatment processes
for all water quality if this sounds
like something that interests you please
go to our show notes page at
scalinguph2o.com and we’ve got all the
information you need to send you
directly to those organizations now
something that i like to do here on the
podcast is let you know of different
events that are coming up and if i know
about them i will definitely share them
on the podcast but i know for a fact
that i am going to miss several just
because i don’t know about them all that
means you need to do your own research
what is going to help you the most to
associate with when it comes to an
association and how are you going to
utilize you
being part of that association
nation you’ve heard me talk about it
before but one of my favorite things
when i go to meetings like we just spoke
about is meeting all of you hearing
about all the things that you have
learned from this podcast and upcoming
things that you want me to talk about so
if you have a fresh idea if you have
something that you want to hear on this
podcast don’t keep that information to
yourself
go to
scalinguph2o.com and go to our show
ideas page
and either leave me a voicemail or you
can write down exactly what you want to
hear on this show i love hearing from
you because that means we’re always
getting new ideas and we’re bringing you
the right ideas because those are
straight from the scaling up nation
nation just a few short weeks ago i was
doing my year in wrap-up and i referred
to episode 204 where i talked about
being profitable and i talked about how
when i go in to other companies and
explain to different teams
what they should consider as far as
being profitable i normally talk about a
hamburger and how do we get all the
materials for the hamburger and when
everything is said and done what is left
over and from that i just received a lot
of comments where people really enjoyed
that analogy and it opened up a lot of
conversations
in various companies where people were
able to talk about what profit really
was when they sold something in
their companies well that got me
thinking what else can we explore when
it comes to
sales and marketing i think there’s a
lot of confusion i know there’s a lot of
confusion a lot of times people have one
department and people are responsible
for both
sales and marketing are they the same
are they different i know that’s not the
first time that that question has come
up on this show well i know you are
going to enjoy
my next interview
my lab partner today is daryl amy author
of revenue growth engine daryl welcome
to the scaling up h2o podcast
uh trace it’s great to be here i’m so
looking forward to this conversation
well i was so delighted that you’re a
listener of this podcast how awesome is
that well absolutely i mean nobody wants
to miss industrial water week and i am
so so excited and uh seriously though
this is this is gonna be a lot of fun
and and the ideas we’re gonna share
today i know are gonna be super helpful
to everybody so i’m i’m so looking
forward to diving in i am as well but
before we get into those topics i want
the scaling up nation to get to know
daryl amy who is daryl amy
daryl amy is a guy that uh well in the
business world i’m passionate about
helping great companies grow you know
and when i think about it trace when i
say great companies i mean companies
that have a purpose companies that
provide meaningful work for their teams
and companies that give back to their
communities so i look at helping a
company like that grow revenue as making
an incredible impact both in the
community where they are the causes they
support the people that work for them so
every day i get up our team gets up and
it’s just so exciting to help great
companies grow faster
so you wrote this book called revenue
growth engine tell us a little bit about
that
well trace that’s exactly about that is
how do we build an engine to grow our
companies faster i was i was actually
against all the advice of any
productivity guru i actually like to mow
my lawn and here’s why while i mow my
lawn a nobody can call me b i can listen
to podcasts like the scaling up podcast
and on top of that i also get to feel
like i’ve got something done when you
can see it so anyhow one day i’m mowing
my lawn and i’m going across at you know
i don’t know two three miles per hour
there’s not a speedometer on my zero
turn uh 60 inch lawnmower but i’m
looking down my driveway and i see my
car and i realized my lawnmower has an
engine my car has an engine now both of
those if i wanted to drive to another
city would get me there however the
lawnmower would take a lot longer and
i’d probably get a lot of embarrassing
looks on the freeway on the way there
you know forrest gump style so what i
realized was every business has an
engine as well that engine is the sum
total of your sales and marketing
efforts
moving towards growing the company so my
lawnmower two cylinders 24.8 horsepower
i looked it up my car eight cylinders
422 horsepower so both will get you
there but i say
i want an engine that’s going to allow
me to accelerate when it comes to
business the more cylinders we can have
in our sales and marketing engine the
faster we’re going to be able to
accelerate towards our goals and and be
able to generate the resources and
revenue that allow us to make an impact
well let’s talk about some of those
cylinders because i imagine all the
different pieces come together and
some engines out there are just going to
be better than others i imagine
yes they are and they’re all going to be
a little bit different everyone’s going
to customize their engine but there are
some core components and it all goes
down to what we’re actually trying to
accomplish
so you know when it comes to revenue
growth and their every business wants to
grow revenue
what i challenge people to think about
is where does revenue come from and if
you boil it all down really there’s only
two sources of revenue we get net new
business we go out we land new clients
awesome
or we cross sell more to our current
clients
so you know we get market share we get
wallet share we land we expand however
you want to say it those are the two
ways to drive revenue growth here’s the
challenge though trace most companies
tend to be good at one or the other they
tend to be good at going out and ringing
the bell and going we got a new deal or
or they’re really good at managing their
client base but maybe it’s been a long
time since they brought on another new
client and what i’ve discovered is when
you get both of those going at the same
time when you get net new and cross-sell
going at the same time all of a sudden
growth starts to become exponential and
that’s where things get really exciting
a good friend of mine says that there’s
no problem you cannot solve with more
revenue do you agree with them
well i don’t know if that’s completely
true but i will say that uh money can’t
buy happiness but it can make a lot of
problems go away and you know the
reality is we can laugh at that but
when it comes to business
revenue is the lifeblood of business
right it allows us to
uh pay the bills pay our teams but also
fund new projects fund growth uh and all
of that and you can tell when you walk
into a business and i’ve been in
hundreds maybe thousands of businesses
now over the last 27 years
when you walk into a business you can
almost feel it the moment you walk in
some businesses you walk in and you feel
it’s healthy and there’s dynamic growth
and you can feel the energy and other
businesses you walk in you kind of feel
the other it’s kind of a bummer like you
know nothing’s happening around here and
so revenue it can’t solve every problem
but it certainly can solve a lot of
problems for businesses and and more
more than solving problems revenue opens
up opportunities and and that’s where i
really get excited
i don’t think you can talk about revenue
without talking about sales and
marketing and so many people get those
two things confused or they just have
one department it’s the sales and
marketing department how are those
things different and how should we be
treating them
it’s a great question and uh just by way
of context trace i’ve spent 27 i guess
to be 28 years in b2b sales started my
career straight out of of university
right into a hardcore on the street dog
eat dog sales profession in the
technology world and then for the last
18 years i’ve also been involved in
marketing i’ve started and been partners
in several digital marketing agencies
all through that journey of web search
social inbound marketing all the amazing
things that are going on right now and
so what i would say to that is that
marketing is typically the message of
the company to the prospect
and sales is a message of
an individual to an individual inside
that prospects company so you know the
the marketing team is communicating on
behalf of the company a salesperson is
communicating one-to-one with the the
people in their network of clients and
prospects here’s the deal though they
should be communicating the same thing
first of all and a lot of of the
challenges we see when we go into
businesses regardless of how their sales
and marketing teams are organized is
there’s not alignment between sales and
marketing so sales will say one thing
marketing is saying something totally
different i was talking to a sales rep
the other day in the financial services
business he’s like yeah i went in to
meet with one of my best clients to talk
about something and they pulled out a
piece that they got from my marketing
department had questions i’d never even
seen this program before right so it’s a
blatant example of you know marketing
saying one thing sales is saying the
other and one of the first ways that
sales and marketing can get aligned is
by working on the message together like
what is our message going to be
to the marketplace what are we gonna say
you know how are we gonna talk about
this and that’s one of the first ways
that sales and marketing teams begin to
get alignment they get in the same room
and they start talking about okay what
is the message we’re gonna deliver
just to summarize sales is going you
know one-to-one marketing is going
company to uh that person but they
should all be working in the same
direction on the same team
there’s so many ways to have that
conversation
something that just popped into my head
is simon cynic where he has start with
why yes
is that where this conversation should
start with the sales and the marketing
department get together and they say why
are we doing this what what are we
trying to accomplish who are we trying
to serve
yeah i think there’s the question right
there is who are we trying to serve and
no disrespect to simon sinek he’s uh one
of my all-time favorite authors i’m
reading his book the infinite game right
now fantastic book but i would say start
with who so the question that we ask in
revenue growth engine is
who is your ideal client who’s your
ideal client that you could sell to
anybody but there are a certain number
of clients i would define an ideal
client as somebody that needs everything
that you offer and is a good fit with
your business
so they have the ability to buy
everything that you sell and they also
align with your values there’s good fit
like there’s mutual respect an ideal
client is not going to be an
antagonistic client they’re going to be
a client that trusts you and values your
opinion and all of that so once you
define who that ideal client is and and
we actually have some tools to do that
both in the revenue growth engine book
and on our website
revenuegrowthengine.net there’s a
toolkit right there to help you define
your ideal client profile once you
define that then as a sales and
marketing team we want to sit down
together and go okay what’s important to
that person
and i want everybody to do this in the
context of this very important reality
and that is
buyers don’t buy products and services
they buy the outcomes your products and
services enable theodore levitt was the
father of modern marketing and theodore
levitt used to walk into his harvard
business school class and he would be
holding up a drill bit from an electric
drill and by the way when i’m not
helping companies develop and execute
growth strategies i’m in my shop
building something so i love this
analogy so he’s holding up an electric
drill bit and he basically goes to his
class and says marketing 101 nobody in
the history of lowe’s home depot ace
hardware insert you know store here ever
went to the store to buy a drill bit
what did they go to buy they went to buy
the hole
and uh seth godin would take it a step
further and go well they actually didn’t
want a hole their wife wanted them to
hang something on the walls they wanted
you know to be in good relationship with
their spouse so they needed the hole
which required the drill bit and donald
miller a story brand another one of my
favorite books would say well we all
kind of descended from cavemen we’re
afraid we’re going to be eaten by a
tiger we need to live in communities so
we need the thing in the wall that makes
our friend look let’s look good to our
friends blah blah here’s the point the
point of this trace is whether you just
simply need a hole in the wall whether
you want to make your wife happy or
whether you’re afraid of being eaten by
a tiger the point is you didn’t go to
buy the drill bit you went to buy the
outcome that drill bit enabled so here’s
the point when it comes to sales and
marketing working together on the
message
what are the outcomes that the decision
makers in your ideal clients want
so
you know i’m not a specialist in the
industrial water industry but if you
think about you know the products and
services that you sell that’s not
actually what they’re buying they’re
buying the outcomes that that those
products and services deliver the thing
that we tend to talk about is marketing
people and sales people we love talking
about our products we love talking about
how great our company is and nobody
cares
what they care about is what is the
outcome that you’re going to help me get
what problem are you going to help me
solve what goal are you going to help me
hit what risk are you going to help me
avoid and that’s what we need to be
talking about so
get sales and marketing people in the
room together define your ideal client
and then begin thinking about what that
client actually wants and that’s where
alignment begins to happen and the
message becomes hyper effective
so we’ve got our sales team we’ve got
our marketing team they’re in a room
they’re asking the right questions
they’re actually speaking with each
other a huge step in the right direction
by the way and we say that
tongue-in-cheek but this is really
critical to get your sales and marketing
people working together so yes do that
so now we’ve got some
literature we’ve got some statements
we’ve got some
mindsets that were all coming at the the
same issue
aligned together
where do we now go with that what is a
process that we need to consider to make
sure we’re staying on the right course
well you brought up the important word
here and that’s process and for my
fellow canadian friends uh that’s
process either way you say it businesses
run on processes right you go in the hr
department there’s an onboarding process
if you go in the shipping and receiving
department process you go in the
service department there’s a process
billing i hope you have a billing
process otherwise you’re going to be in
trouble the challenge is when you go
into most sales and marketing teams it’s
like the wild west there’s no process
you know there’s there’s a bunch of
sales guys leaning up against the saloon
door and the tumbleweeds blowing by and
someone’s flipping a coin and the sales
manager is like y’all go out and sell
something no process and we get
frustrated because we bring new sales
people in and they fail
why because we didn’t bring them into
any processes marketing doesn’t get off
the hook either because a lot of times
marketing you know we get stuck on the
shiny objects there’s a bunch of cool
new things in marketing or we hear hey
run an event for us we need a brochure
do a webinar whatever all great things
but where is the the process so when it
comes to building your revenue growth
engine what i challenge companies to
think about is what are your processes
for sales and marketing related to those
two core revenue drivers we talked about
earlier what are your processes for net
new business and what are your processes
for cross selling more to your current
clients
and the beautiful thing about this trace
is when the processes are put in place
they may not be perfect on the first
round but one of my favorite authors
gino wickman says look you cannot
improve something that you haven’t
documented you can’t improve a process
if you haven’t written it down so step
one of all of this is to say okay what
are the core sales processes we need for
net neu the course sales processes we
need for cross sell what are the
marketing processes we need for net new
and cross sell and begin to list those
out and go to work building those
processes the whole last half of the
book revenue growth engine is geared
towards giving companies ideas in terms
of some of the core processes that they
need to put in place so that they have a
fully functional you know eight cylinder
however many horsepower engine running
whatever you want the more of those
processes you get in place it’s like
adding more cylinders to your growth
engine
let’s talk about the elephant in the
room and you mentioned it all right
sales normally doesn’t follow a process
and i love sales people i am a
salesperson but probably the most
dysfunctional department in all of the
company so let’s say these people do get
in a room they’ve come up with this
process
but not everybody’s following it
probably the most successful people are
following it but then there are other
people that are going along their own
way and they’re being successful as well
so how do we get everybody aligned to do
the same thing so we can start making
some improvements
it’s a really good question and um in in
a former life i’ve been a sales manager
several different times and i’ve worked
with tons of sales leaders
we talked to a lot of sales leaders on
on one of my podcasts which is called
selling from the heart and uh
here’s the deal i think what you said is
is really important what are your best
reps doing like what’s working that’s a
great place to start
what’s working with the best reps and
begin documenting that
and work off of that look if there’s a
sales rep that’s getting results and
they’re not violating company ethics or
in like they’re dragging the sales team
down or
in direct conflict with the values of
the company i don’t think i’m going to
be that concerned about them quite
frankly the reality is that salesperson
over time is going to begin to realize
that the process that that is being
developed actually works and i think as
leaders we have the opportunity to show
them that what i am concerned about
though is you know in sales especially
for growing companies we always want to
be bringing new people onto the team and
so bringing a new sales person onto the
team you know it depends on the industry
but i think it’s very easy to say the
opportunity cost and hard cost of hiring
a new sales rep is usually somewhere
between 50 and a hundred thousand
dollars depending on the industry so are
you going to take a 50 to 100 000 risk
and basically bring somebody in hand
them a box of business cards give them a
login to salesforce and go good luck
or are you gonna say this is how we do
things around here here’s the playbook
here’s how we handle net new business
here’s how we prospect here’s how we
influence buying teams here’s how you
know we close here’s how we onboard
here’s how we manage our clients and
here’s how we do renewals you know six
core processes for sales people
i would say
if i’m going to take a 50 to 100 000
risk on a sales person it sure makes a
lot of sense to invest a little bit of
time in documenting processes and along
with that you know you take the
processes and then you blend in the
message that we talked about sales and
marketing creating earlier you know
these become talking points um inside
the sales process you create sales tools
collateral and messaging that aligns
with that message for those reps to use
you’re going to have a much greater
chance of those new sales people being
successful and i got to say right now in
a marketplace where it is a challenge to
find people this has never been more
important than now to get sales process
right
in order for somebody to follow a
process they have to be able to
understand it and in order to understand
it they have to be able to visualize it
how important
is it to get some sort of visual
illustration out of a binder that we
might have all these processes in yeah i
think that’s a really good idea you know
the way i like to visualize all of this
is around
customer experience so and this is a
great sales and marketing alignment
exercise you know sales people think
about
things one way marketing people tend to
think about things a different way right
sales people we think about the funnel
pipeline marketing people we think about
buyer journey
what we really want to look at is what
is the customer experience from the time
they first encounter our company all the
way through their journey with us
becoming a client and hopefully their
long relationship with us as mark hunter
would say you don’t close a sale you
open a relationship so what do we want
that journey to look like and begin to
map that out that can be extremely
visual like what are the stages of the
client experience when someone’s a
prospect what are the stages of that
experience once they become a client
and that’s where we can begin to to
define that and this is where a lot of
sales process begins to make sense
because when you look at that what we
would call in revenue growth engine the
ideal customer experience when you look
at that then you go oh
i see what process could be plugged in
here to really help with that or i can
start to see where things are broken and
need to be adjusted so i’ve seen this
numerous times i was thinking about a
technology company i was in
just last month i was so impressed i
walked in their office and they had
hired an artist
to sketch out their entire client
experience and it was right there on the
wall of their sales team right so it was
highly visual and not only that i’ve
seen other sales teams absolutely love
this where they define that ideal client
and they actually have that on the wall
as well
and so you know this should be when it
comes to
leaders in organizations especially in
sales and marketing
we should be flying the flag of this is
our ideal client hear success stories
around our ideal client here’s the
message they want to hear and here’s the
process that we use to attract and grow
business
and this should be everywhere and the
more visual and the more everywhere it
is the better
peter drucker says what get measured
gets better we have this process what
should we be measuring one to make sure
that the process we came up with is
actually working and
then how do we know where we need to go
to start working on the process to
either help the individual or realign
the process
yeah you know there’s leading indicators
and trailing indicators but i want to
suggest two trailing indicators first no
that’s counter-intuitive but i want to
suggest these because most companies
don’t measure this and i think this is a
way these two numbers i’m about to share
will show you where you’re healthy and
where you’re not healthy so the first
number is
related to net new business and that’s
how many clients do we have
how many clients do we have you know and
and is that number growing or shrinking
you know we started the month with a
thousand clients do we have 1020 or do
we have 950 what’s going on there right
the second number is revenue per client
which is simple math we take our total
revenue and divide it by that first
number number of clients and we see how
much revenue we’re getting on average
from our client base and a healthy
company that is effectively
cross-selling more to their client base
is going to have growth in that revenue
per client so a lot of times in sales
and marketing we just want to look at
the big number right how much revenue
did we bring in i say go down a level
and look at number of clients and
revenue per client and you’re going to
get a really good idea of how healthy
your company is
and then there’s another
metric that i want to suggest as well
that will gauge the health and
effectiveness of your company in those
two areas the first is 100
sold
when i was a brand new sales person i
worked for a technology company and this
is going to date me so we sold copy
machines
fax machines
dictation equipment
and document management software so now
i just totally dated myself we had
pagers we had pay phones and all of the
above great stuff but you know back then
we would get an order in the second
order and i came back to the office as a
sales rep with somebody’s copy machines
i go look at this order it’s great and
everyone slap high fives in his
cocky sales rep i’d go
i own that account to which my sales
leader would go oh really do they have
fax machines from us no do they have
dictation equipment no do they have
software no okay well you own 25 of the
account now let’s build that
relationship and let’s get that account
to 100 sold where they’re buying
everything they can buy from us
so what i want to know
and then you can measure this at two
levels and we unpack this in more depth
in the book is for everyone listening in
for every one of your core products or
services that you offer what percent of
your client base is actually using those
so we all probably have a core product
that everybody uses but maybe you added
on a new service last year what percent
of your client base is using that
service is it 10
50
5
what whatever that is that should be on
the wall
that should be on the wall for every one
of your core services all aiming towards
100 sold and you can do that in
individual accounts as well trace you
can go in when you’re doing account
reviews on your larger accounts and go
okay how are we doing in that account
well we’ve got this product line but
these three we need to start working on
a strategy to get those in there so the
selling doesn’t stop when you get an
order the selling just begins right and
the marketing doesn’t stop when you get
an order the marketing just begins so i
really recommend everybody start looking
at each one of their core product or
services lines and start measuring what
percent of your clients are using it
aiming at that 100 sold mark
how should we be looking at growth goals
yeah this is a great question trace and
it goes back to what we were talking
about these two numbers numbers of
clients and revenue per client right how
are we doing at net new how many clients
do we have and what’s our revenue per
client so when you’re setting goals most
companies use one of two methods some
companies use the spaghetti on the wall
method right where they get in a room
like what do you think we can do next
year i don’t know and they throw a
number on the wall see what sticks and
usually around august or september when
they’re not hitting the goal everyone in
the room goes well i wasn’t a realistic
goal anyways and you know better luck
next year well that’s not a good way to
run a business
the more conservative way to set goals
is what i call the ruler method and
that’s where you put a ruler on the last
couple years of growth and you just kind
of draw a line and go well this is kind
of our trajectory so this is what we
think we can do
conservative but i think it may be
leaving money on the table and i don’t
know about what your listeners
experienced during the pandemic in 2020
but a lot of people’s ruler is now
pointed in the wrong direction or you
had such an incredible year it’s not
realistic if you’re selling plexiglas or
personal protective equipment you know
can you sustain that hyper growth
probably not so what i say is look at go
down a level look at how many customers
do we have
and with the right sales and marketing
processes in place how many more
customers could we get this year
same thing for revenue per client what’s
our revenue per client right now and
with the right processes in place
how much can we grow that revenue per
client set the goals there multiply them
together and you have your total goal
and what you’re going to find is what i
call an aggressive but realistic goal
you may feel aggressive but you
understand what it takes to get there we
got to get this many more customers and
we got to raise our revenue per customer
this much and now the team can look at
that and now we’ve got something to
manage towards so when we get to
september or october we’re not hitting
the goal it’s not uh it wasn’t a good
goal it is a good goal how are we going
to hit it
what’s one of the best ways to increase
what we’re cross-selling to our
customers
in the b2b space which is where i live
and i know a lot of your listeners live
as well
i think the most effective strategy we
can use is periodic business reviews
maybe quarterly maybe semi-annual annual
whatever it is for your top clients your
ideal clients
i highly recommend you set up a cadence
where you get together with them once a
quarter now a lot of sales people would
say well i tried that before darrell it
didn’t work and to which i will ask well
what did you talk about they said well
we did we presented all of our service
level metrics we showed them what a
great job we did on service and how well
we took care of them and then we told
them all about our new products like
well nobody cares about the service
level metrics just send that to me in an
email and i’m not really you know don’t
tell me about your new products what i
want to know
is i’ve got challenges in my business
what insights can you bring that are
going to help my business so a periodic
business review conversation would
typically start with a question like
hey trace how’s business what are you
aiming towards in 2022 and beyond i’m
curious right now in this environment
what are the biggest challenges you’re
facing
and then bring insight from your
experience from your other clients from
what you’re reading to the table to
actually become what we want to become
all along which is a trusted advisor
trusted advisors are trusted people that
give advice so set up a quarterly
business review we’re actually talking
about their business
and working to add value those
conversations when they’re done well are
going to lead to two things they’re
going to lead to problems which are also
known as opportunities which will lead
to deals
and they’ll also lead to referrals and
in the process of doing all of that
you’re going to build your credibility
and trust with that client so one of the
best strategies that any b2b team can
put to work right away is consistent you
know might be quarterly business review
strategy with the top 20 of your
accounts and it’s one of the fastest
ways i’ve seen companies move the needle
darryl you alluded to your podcast
earlier selling from the heart tell us
about that where can we find it
yeah absolutely so
selling from the heart is our sales
podcast and it is fantastic my co-host
is larry levine he is the author of
selling from the heart and we are
helping
salespeople integrate authenticity into
their sales strategies so that they can
build trusted relationships and trust is
the x factor in sales so if folks are
interested in growing sales i highly
recommend you check out selling from the
heart and so you can do that on any
podcasting platform i also host the
revenue growth podcast and the revenue
growth podcast is fantastic we get to
talk with all kinds of thought leaders
in sales in marketing leadership
entrepreneurship
all around driving growth and you can
find revenue growth podcasts and all the
platforms as well
i know there are many listeners out
there that want to read the book how do
they find it
well i’d love to send you a copy if
you’ll go to revenue
revenuegrowthengine.net
you can order a copy of the book just
pay shipping and handling i’ll actually
get an autographed copy straight in the
mail to you along with a toolkit that’s
there that will help you get started
all right dale it’s anybody’s game up to
this point it’s now time for the
lightning round where the point values
are double are you ready
i’m ready bring it on
first question if you could go back in
time and talk to your former self on
your first day as an entrepreneur what
advice would you give yourself
focus
i would say focus and this is you know
i’m a visionary i’m an entrepreneur i
know many people listening in
are but one of the things that is really
critical is to focus and i would also
say as soon as possible find your
integrator find the person in your life
if you’re a visionary you’re an
entrepreneur you’re an idea person as
quickly as possible bring someone on
your team that’s an administrative
operational person that can get things
done you know focus
and get administrative operational
competency on your team as quickly as
possible help you accelerate your growth
i got to say you’ve mentioned eos the
entrepreneur operating system a couple
of times gina wickman’s book traction
we’ve been running on eos for a little
better than seven years
it was the secret sauce that allowed our
company to start moving the direction
that it needed to everything was locked
up i was the bottleneck and i was
frustrated because everybody was coming
to me to try to solve the issues
everybody had to come to me that’s what
i trained everybody to do i didn’t
realize that until gino pretty much
wrote a book and threw it at me and then
i realized oh i do need these procedures
i need to make sure that other people
can do the things that i need to do and
i also need to realize that i’m not
great at everything
absolutely that was the light bulb
moment for me and and realizing that
my my gift my passion is creating ideas
and strategies
i need to surround myself with people
that are great at execution
so we’ve done that all of our companies
run on the entrepreneurial operating
system and actually one of my companies
convergo.co is actually helping eos
users companies that run on the traction
platform develop and execute growth
strategies so we’re in the middle of
that every day and and i am profoundly
grateful
for the entrepreneurial operating system
when hollywood finds out about daryl amy
they’re making a movie they have to who
plays daryl
daniel craig of course who else he’s
unemployed now right he’s done with uh
done with double 07. one of the things
your listeners may or may not know i’m
canadian you may have heard that in the
accent i’m a canadian that married a
southern girl so i actually carry two
passports and so if anyone’s going to
play me in a movie it needs to be daniel
craig or one of the former james bond
actors
so i was always told you couldn’t play
bingo in canada is that correct
that’s a great question i have no idea
people will say like b4 a and that’s
just not on the card
all right there you go you got me i can
do the rest of the podcast in canadian
you can give me
that already
last question you now have the ability
to speak with anybody throughout history
who to be with and why there’s so many
different people i’d like to talk to
this is such a fun question but i’m
going to answer the question partially
because of the book i’m looking at and
partially because of the products i’m
using i’d like to talk to steve jobs i
would really like to get inside that
guy’s mind and understand the creative
genius that resided in there along with
the incredible business
strategy that he brought to the table i
think he’s had an incredible impact on
the world my life and i think he would
be a fascinating guy to have a
conversation with well you’ve been a
fascinating guy to have a conversation
with i want to thank you for coming on
the scaling up h2o podcast taking
one of the departments that just has
just no structure to it let’s just get
right down to what it really is
and and putting some some metrics to it
actually looking at procedures so we can
work on it we can make it better we can
make people happier that are working
within it we can get better results
thank you for giving us all that
information
you got it man it’s been a pleasure it’s
so much fun
nation i had so much fun talking with
daryl in fact
we spoke for about another hour after we
concluded with that recording one of the
nicest guys i’ve ever had the pleasure
of meeting
and i don’t know if i’ve ever met an
angry canadian is that possible do
canadians get angry everybody’s always
so nice so i hope that that helped you
understand some principles that we were
talking about i also want to say how
much i enjoyed reading his book now
daryl thank you very much you sent me a
free copy to check out your book and his
book is called the revenue growth engine
and when he sent it to me i thought it
was great that he sent it to me
but as i was reading it
oh my goodness it does such a great job
of laying out so
many items around sales and marketing
how to track things what should you be
looking at it just defines so many
things around
everything revenue
what a client looks like what your ideal
client should look like what different
messages that you need to make sure you
understand when you’re talking with
clients things like inventory things
like marketing and sales processes
what outbound sales what inbound sales
needs to look like
how to cross-sell there is just so
much
in this book we decided that we were
going to read it in the rising tide
mastermind so this is actually the the
book that we are currently reading
within the rising tide mastermind and as
i’ve mentioned on the show before we
like to read about a book a quarter and
we take a book we read it together as a
group and then we really dissect it to
figure out
how can we take information that we
learned from this book and apply it to
our day-to-day and how do we hold
ourselves accountable that we’re
actually doing something different with
that information
so i can’t wait to tell you how that
turns out so far i think everybody is
enjoying the prospect of reading the
book we’re just starting somewhere a
little further than others
and i can’t wait to have our first
conversation
so if you want to learn more about the
book about what daryl does about some of
the tools that he mentioned go to our
show notes page i’ve got all of that
information there i’m sure you’ll get a
lot out of exploring his website
nation friend of show james mcdonald is
at it again
here is another installment of thinking
on water with james
welcome to thinking on water with james
the segment where we don’t give you the
answers we give you the topics and
questions for you to think about drop by
drop
now let’s get to it
in this week’s episode we’re thinking
about damaged underdrains in a water
softener
what purpose does an underdrain serve
what troubleshooting steps could you
take to determine if a softener under
drain is damaged before you have to
remove the resin and gravel what makes
you suspect the damage
what other causes can be ruled out first
to save you time
what can damage a softener underdream
take this next week to think about and
understand underdreams in softer units
and their performance
be sure to follow
tow 22 and hashtag scaling up h2o share
your thoughts on each week’s thinking on
water
i’m james mcdonald and i look forward to
learning more from you
i love how james always keeps it fresh
of course we just ended james’s
challenge last year
well james wasn’t done he put a new spin
on how he could keep us all getting
better
one thing at a time one week at a time
so james thanks for that and we look
forward to new installments each
and every week just like you’re going to
have a new installment of scaling up h2o
next week in the meantime i do hope that
you look at all the associations that
you have available to you and what you
are going to do to be active within that
association so you can put yourself in
an environment to start learning new
things to start meeting new people and
to push yourself for doing
things maybe a little differently maybe
some new things
so nation what are you waiting for start
figuring out what those associations are
i’ll talk to you next week on scaling up
h2o
[Music]
like most people in the water treatment
industry there’s always a struggle with
work and life and i had a daughter on
the way and i was probably a little more
mindful of how much i was working and
how i can
adjust my schedule or make it in such a
way that was sustainable for my family
and this conversation is a little more
difficult when you don’t have people in
the water treatment industry because
they don’t understand the
travel aspect the service aspect the
technical uh knowledge need to be
successful it’s a little more difficult
to balance that so to have a group of
like-minded individuals to work through
with the goal of self-development it’s
really helpful to kind of hash through
those problems for me
to find out more go to
scalinguph2o.com forward slash
mastermind