Latest / Budget Your Business / No More Make-Believe Sales Plans with Nick Loise

Transcript

No More Make-Believe Sales Plans with Nick Loise · Budget Your Business

0:01
Scott Geller: Hi, scott, host of Budget your Business, here, and I have a quick favor to ask.
0:06
Scott Geller: After about a year of recording episodes of Budget your Business, I would really love your feedback.
0:12
Scott Geller: So please take about maybe not even five minutes to answer eight quick questions in the link in the show notes.
0:21
Scott Geller: That's it.
0:22
Scott Geller: Just check out the link in the show notes and answer a couple of quick questions.
0:25
Scott Geller: Thank you, and now on to the show.
0:28
Nick Loise: And that's tough for you on the fractional CFO side because you're building cash flow analysis, you're kind of building run rates.
0:36
Nick Loise: You're doing a rolling TTM based on okay, they're saying that they're going to bring in X and then they fall short, right.
0:40
Nick Loise: Ok, they're saying that they're going to bring in X and then they fall short Right, and that's tough on the financial side for you guys to do really good planning, especially in cash flow management.
0:50
Nick Loise: So you know, it's one big circle of life if you will, but it's the two have to be bringing truthful, and that's, I think, what frustrates a lot of CFOs is, you know, I hear from the sales VP oh, they're bringing in five million this quarter and they end up closing at $3.
1:07
Scott Geller: Well, I've made plans for $5, right, maybe we've made some capital investments, maybe we've looked at hiring some key staff in other departments because of we think we had this run rate.
1:22
Scott Geller: That was going to happen and it doesn't.
1:23
Scott Geller: Hello and welcome to Budget your Business the podcast for small business owners who want to learn how to financially plan for every aspect of their business.
1:29
Scott Geller: Today, I'm joined by Nick Luisi of Sales Performance Team to talk about setting next year's sales plan.
1:37
Scott Geller: Hello, nick.
1:38
Nick Loise: Happy Monday, happy day after Father's Day Don't know when this is dropping but love all that you do.
1:43
Nick Loise: You know, I think we can never talk about profit enough, right, and especially on the sales side, right, sales as a derivative of profit, or, you know, we want to make sure the sales teams that we help put in place and manage are selling things profitably.
1:55
Nick Loise: So I love what you're doing.
1:57
Nick Loise: I love the fractional work right, we're kind of fractional CSOs, so love everything you're doing.
2:03
Nick Loise: You know, and I appreciate being on this podcast and being with you this afternoon.
2:08
Scott Geller: Yeah, well, I really appreciate you coming on, nick, and I'll tell you we've chatted a little bit, but not everybody, not all the folks that are listening, know who you are, so could you maybe share a little bit about who you are and what you do?
2:21
Nick Loise: Yeah, sure so, nicholas Luisi, founder of Sales Performance Team.
2:24
Nick Loise: It's a company that we saw a need for after I was the vice president of sales and a president of a private equity-owned marketing and sales education company, and we work with small to mid-sized businesses and I define small to mid-sized businesses about anywhere from a half a million dollars in revenue to 25 to 30 million dollars in revenue.
2:44
Nick Loise: And one of the things that you know, because we were a marketing education company, we got the marketing side right.
2:52
Nick Loise: We're able to kind of generate leads and get lead flow through the business.
2:56
Nick Loise: But they all struggled with the hiring of a salesperson, creating sales plans, keeping people accountable to sales forecasts and sales budgets and really, you know, they just wanted somebody to take the headache away from them.
3:11
Nick Loise: They all had their hearts broken right by a salesperson that they thought was going to sell and this was going to be their ticket to not having to go out and shill for business anymore as business owners.
3:20
Nick Loise: And the other thing that we saw, scott and I'm sure you see this in your work is the one common derivative that we saw with businesses that were over a million dollars in sales was that they had a salesperson Didn't mean, they had a sales team, but they had a salesperson.
3:37
Nick Loise: And then the third thing that we did is we worked with a lot of organizations, but really founders that were thinking about their exit, right, and you know, thinking about, okay, what has to happen for me to exit?
3:49
Nick Loise: And so what we have to say is you have to have a sales plan, right, you have to have a sales team.
3:54
Nick Loise: You have to have a sales plan, because nobody's going to buy your business to be a salesperson, right, they're going to want to know that you have a financial plan, you have an operation plan, you have all this stuff that you and your team create for people, scott, but they also need a sales plan and a sales forecast and budget and, most importantly, a sales process and system.
4:13
Nick Loise: So that's what we do we work on companies and help them put sales processes and systems in place and really kind of take the mystery out of the sales side.
4:22
Scott Geller: Well, Okay, I really like that.
4:27
Scott Geller: You put in there.
4:27
Scott Geller: You included, included nick around.
4:28
Scott Geller: If you're going to sell your business and I I try to communicate that as well as many people as you can't do everything.
4:34
Scott Geller: If you want to sell your business because there's, you got to have processes in place, and especially on the sales side, right, if you're the only salesperson, there's not much to really sell you're.
4:46
Nick Loise: Maybe a little bit.
4:47
Nick Loise: Right, you're going to get some goodwill for the phone number and the website.
4:51
Nick Loise: But you know we would have founders that thought that they were going to get a pretty good payday on the exit of their business.
4:58
Nick Loise: And you know, then they went out, took it to the market and people were saying, nope, we're not buying it because of what you just said.
5:04
Nick Loise: And so now they have to pivot and they say, okay, I need, I got a three-year runway, let's get a sales team in place, let's get a sales process and sales systems in place.
5:13
Nick Loise: And you know, and that way when I go to market, I'm going to be able to get maybe one times earnings, two times earnings, you know, depending on where they're at.
5:20
Nick Loise: You know SaaS businesses are going to get seven times earnings.
5:23
Nick Loise: But so you know, we spend a lot of time in that.
5:26
Nick Loise: We like working with.
5:28
Nick Loise: You know we only work with founder led companies, which is, by design, right and really help them right.
5:33
Nick Loise: I believe small businesses are the foundation of any local economy and any national economy and you know I want to help.
5:42
Nick Loise: I want to help everybody get the most for their business when they're looking to sell.
5:44
Nick Loise: And you know I want to help.
5:45
Nick Loise: I want to help everybody get the most for their business when they're looking to sell and you know certain industries are hotter right now than others.
5:49
Nick Loise: I'm sure you see that with private equity and to a lot of places.
5:52
Nick Loise: So we're getting our phone rings a lot with people trying to get get some help in that space.
5:57
Scott Geller: Understood.
5:58
Scott Geller: Well, let me get started with.
6:00
Scott Geller: You know, sometimes the first step is the hardest step.
6:03
Scott Geller: So if I'm a business owner and I'm, I'm, maybe, maybe I'm doing the sales myself.
6:09
Scott Geller: But let's assume maybe there there's at least one salesperson and you're thinking, they're thinking about planning, you know, the next year for the business.
6:15
Scott Geller: Where do they get started to create a sales plan?
6:20
Nick Loise: Okay, that's a great question and something that's near and dear to our heart.
6:23
Nick Loise: So the first thing we say is where do you want to go?
6:26
Nick Loise: Where do you want the revenue to be?
6:27
Nick Loise: So sometimes it's top-down driven.
6:29
Nick Loise: So where are we at, right?
6:30
Nick Loise: And so let's say they're at let's do 3 million, for easy math, right?
6:34
Nick Loise: So they're at $3 million and they want to grow by 25 to 50%.
6:40
Nick Loise: Then we're going to say, okay, that's doable, but obviously not with what you have in place, because if you historically have only grown by 3% or 5% or maybe 10%, we could do a little bit with raising the prices, right?
6:52
Nick Loise: So we're going to help them raise their prices.
6:53
Nick Loise: That's the first thing we're going to look at.
6:55
Nick Loise: So the thing we're going to look at is you got one salesperson.
6:58
Nick Loise: What does that revenue?
6:59
Nick Loise: What does that salesperson bring in net revenue?
7:02
Nick Loise: Okay, so now, if we bring one salesperson in, we're not going to get 100% of what a seasoned and tenured salesperson is going to bring in, just because they got to build up a territory, they got to build up a book of business.
7:13
Nick Loise: It's going to take them some time.
7:15
Nick Loise: So we're going to say, okay, what would two bring in?
7:18
Nick Loise: What would three bring in.
7:19
Nick Loise: We want, you know, a pretty aggressive runway, right?
7:22
Nick Loise: Ie, we want them hitting quota by the first quota, by the first quarter, if you will.
7:27
Nick Loise: And so we're going to figure out where they want to go to get that extra 10 percent, 20 percent, 15 percent of revenue.
7:34
Nick Loise: So now we got a three million dollar business.
7:36
Nick Loise: Let's say we want to go at the four, four million.
7:38
Nick Loise: Ok, average salesperson brings in a half a million dollars in revenue for them, right?
7:43
Nick Loise: So that's going to mean that for that person to be brought in we got to bring two in because we need a million dollars more, right?
7:49
Nick Loise: So, three to four, we're at two sales per people bring in three, an extra one million, realizing that their run rate's going to be, you know, by the end of the year we want them at full quotas.
8:01
Nick Loise: Maybe we're bringing in a third person.
8:01
Nick Loise: Now we're looking at saying what can we afford to pay?
8:05
Nick Loise: Usually it's a base salary, right?
8:08
Nick Loise: Or you're working them off of a base salary, but historically it's a base salary for, you know, half a million dollar in quota, that's probably about a $40,000 base salary, right?
8:19
Nick Loise: And then you're going to pay them a commission off of the profit or revenue, depending on how you want to calculate it, of what you're selling, and that profit could be anywhere from 3% to 10%, right, just depends on what you could afford to give out.
8:32
Nick Loise: And so now you know what your cost of sale is going to be, your cost of acquisition per person, per salesperson.
8:39
Nick Loise: Then you got to go out and hire them, right.
8:41
Nick Loise: You got to get them trained up right.
8:42
Nick Loise: That's where a firm like us comes in, right, getting them hired, getting them trained up and trying to get them to quota as fast and furious as possible.
8:50
Nick Loise: The other thing that we talked about real and I just did it as a drive-by but we want to look at your pricing.
8:55
Nick Loise: I'm sure you see this, scott.
8:56
Nick Loise: We see it that they haven't raised prices right, and there's a level of anxiety and trepidation.
9:01
Nick Loise: The raise price there is.
9:03
Scott Geller: It's hard to raise prices right.
9:04
Scott Geller: It's easy to lower them.
9:05
Scott Geller: You think it's great for the business, but it's it's tough to raise them.
9:09
Nick Loise: There's some, there's some emotional attachment to it, but we had a little bit um at the beginning of the year, maybe the end of the year, where inflation and everybody was talking about inflation so we were able to raise prices because everything was being raised right, so we were able to raise prices because everything was being raised right, so we were able to kind of sneak in some price raises.
9:25
Nick Loise: So we're going to look at the mix.
9:28
Nick Loise: So maybe they have a number of different SKUs or products or services that they're selling.
9:33
Nick Loise: We're going to look at what's the most profitable to the business, ie what generates the most profit, and we're going to try to raise the prices on those.
9:41
Nick Loise: And we're going to try to raise the prices on some of our dogs and our laggard products or services.
9:45
Nick Loise: Right, not all products and services provide the same level of profit to the organization, but they're all necessary, right.
9:51
Nick Loise: So we're going to try to get some of that.
9:53
Nick Loise: There's an old analogy that they taught us in business school and I'm curious if you think it's the same.
9:58
Nick Loise: They said you know, raising 10, your profits by 10, your prices by 10%, well, you probably will only lose about 3% of your business because of it right, so it's well worth it what you're going to pick up.
10:12
Nick Loise: And those probably are maybe some of the worst customers you have, right, they're the most draining on the organization.
10:19
Nick Loise: They're probably late pays if you were an issue of POs and invoices so it's okay to raise the prices and so that's the first thing that we're going to do.
10:28
Nick Loise: We're going to put a.
10:30
Nick Loise: You know, you got the one salesperson we're going to look at how they sell, right?
10:34
Nick Loise: So we want to kind of create a proven and repeatable sales process, not to change the first person that you have, right, so the person that you have that's been with you for a while, but to really have a model, if you will, for the second, third and fourth, the new people we're going to bring in, because we just don't want to give them old scripts, right, and say here's your territory, there's your queue, go out and make some sales calls.
10:57
Nick Loise: We want to give them a gritty, intense playbook, right, a sales playbook, and we have one in a sales process.
11:03
Nick Loise: We want to have everything that they need, all the sales collateral, all of the things that they're going to need to be successful.
11:09
Nick Loise: We want to have it in one drive, if you will, or one Dropbox folder so they're not running around using.
11:16
Nick Loise: When we come in.
11:17
Nick Loise: We see every salesperson's using something different, right.
11:20
Nick Loise: You know, maybe marketing's created some new pieces that they don't even know about, right, and it's just, it's just messy.
11:26
Nick Loise: So we want to kind of organize that, and then we're going to kind of help them build out a plan, write a sales individual plan.
11:33
Nick Loise: We call it what winning looks like for the salesperson.
11:36
Nick Loise: So we say, ok, here's your base, right, here's your quota.
11:40
Nick Loise: But what do you want to make?
11:41
Nick Loise: Right, what salespeople were all derivative of driving the business, and but we're also about what's in my pocket.
11:48
Nick Loise: So we want to say what do you want to make?
11:50
Nick Loise: And so we teach them how to make what they need to make, but also how to really hit quota, and hit quota as fast and furious as possible.
11:59
Scott Geller: So that's a back of the envelope, really quick way to kind of create a sales plan, yeah, and you hit a lot of a lot of really quick way to kind of create a sales plan, yeah, and you hit a lot of really great topics there and ideas there.
12:09
Scott Geller: And you know, one question I hear quite a bit is how do I set a run rate for my salespeople?
12:16
Scott Geller: And you touched on it towards the end there.
12:18
Scott Geller: A little bit around, tell us how much you want to make.
12:21
Scott Geller: But do you have any thoughts around like how do I know what a right?
12:27
Scott Geller: How do I, as a business owner, how do I know what the right run rate is for my salespeople?
12:33
Nick Loise: Great question and it's a forward-thinking business owner that asked that question versus.
12:37
Nick Loise: Well, I just expect them to hit that and we don't want to give them a plan, right?
12:43
Nick Loise: So how do I make sure?
12:44
Nick Loise: And so a lot of it will say how long does it take for you to currently sell a new lead that is generated through either inbound or outbound, right?
12:51
Nick Loise: So inbound marketing or outbound marketing?
12:53
Nick Loise: An inbound lead is going to move faster because they're already looking for a solution, if you will.
13:00
Nick Loise: An outbound lead is going to take a little bit longer to nurture, unless you kind of hit perfect numbers.
13:05
Nick Loise: So we really want to look at how long.
13:08
Nick Loise: So it's the sales velocity.
13:10
Nick Loise: How long are things taking to get sold?
13:12
Nick Loise: So, how long are things sitting in pipelines?
13:15
Nick Loise: Deals that take 90 days, okay.
13:18
Nick Loise: So now I know how to build a run rate.
13:20
Nick Loise: If it's a 90 day or a 30, you know, 60 day or a 30 day transaction time, I could now start building out with that person of saying, okay, here's where you need to be Right, so let's go back to the half a million dollars, let's go to a million, it's and it's a bigger.
13:37
Nick Loise: Yeah, right, so then every quarter, the easiest way to do is okay.
13:42
Nick Loise: Every quarter you got to produce 250,000.
13:43
Nick Loise: They're not going to do that because the first quarter they're going to be chasing that number.
13:48
Nick Loise: Now you've dug a hole for them and then they're going to be frustrated.
13:51
Nick Loise: So we like to say first quarter, maybe 50 percent of of their quota, right, maybe 50 percent.
14:00
Nick Loise: Um, maybe I can make the argument of taking it down to 30 percent, right, so, 30 percent of their quota.
14:04
Nick Loise: You want them producing something?
14:06
Nick Loise: Right.
14:06
Nick Loise: Then second quarter, I now need them at.
14:10
Nick Loise: Well, they definitely need to be at 50.
14:12
Nick Loise: I can make the argument that maybe I'm just kind of scotching them up to 75 percent of quota.
14:16
Nick Loise: Then, third quarter, they're at 100% of quota.
14:19
Nick Loise: And then, fourth quarter, they're at, you know, 100% of quota.
14:23
Nick Loise: So that's how I kind of normally ease them into that business.
14:27
Nick Loise: You know you want them producing something and I like run rates of three-month increments, right, because one month, you know anybody can have a great month or a bad month, right?
14:37
Nick Loise: So that's tough to kind of figure it out.
14:44
Nick Loise: So I like looking at it in quarters, especially if you have a less than 90 day sales cycle, right?
14:47
Nick Loise: Sometimes you have much larger sales cycle, right, so much longer sales, like 120 days.
14:52
Nick Loise: Well, now, unfortunately, you got to kind of push those numbers that I just gave to you a little bit out, a little bit further.
15:01
Scott Geller: So what you're saying is you can't expect somebody if you have 120 day sales cycle.
15:05
Nick Loise: You can't expect somebody to really close in 60 to 90 days, unless you're giving them or prospects are already in the funnel right, unless you're giving them leads that are there, correct, or maybe you're giving them house accounts, right, and so they got to grow house accounts and I would make the argument for your audience that those will be at a lower commission, right, because you've already acquired the customer right, so house account would be at a lower commission.
15:31
Nick Loise: The other thing, too, that then I like to see if I have a much longer sales cycle, ie your 120 days.
15:39
Nick Loise: The Apple's a great way.
15:41
Nick Loise: I'm now going to look at production.
15:44
Nick Loise: Okay, got you, so it's not dollar amount.
15:49
Nick Loise: How many new opportunities are you putting in the pipeline, right?
15:51
Nick Loise: How many new meetings are you having?
15:54
Nick Loise: How many new second meetings are you having with people that you had the first?
15:58
Nick Loise: So what does your pipeline look?
16:00
Nick Loise: People that you had the first, so what does your pipeline look like?
16:04
Nick Loise: That you're building?
16:05
Nick Loise: And now the only thing I can judge within those first 90 days really probably is production.
16:07
Nick Loise: How much activity are they doing?
16:09
Nick Loise: How many meetings are they doing?
16:10
Nick Loise: How many new opportunities are they putting into the pipeline?
16:15
Nick Loise: And then, with those opportunities, are they real or are they fake?
16:19
Nick Loise: Listen, I've been around salespeople my entire lives.
16:22
Nick Loise: I've been one myself right I'm pointing out there.
16:24
Nick Loise: I got four going back at me.
16:25
Nick Loise: We love to hold things in the pipeline that we think are going to close, that are never going to close right.
16:31
Nick Loise: So you got to have the, you got to have the crucial conversation of saying are they really closing right?
16:36
Nick Loise: This is really is really a deal.
16:37
Nick Loise: When's the last?
16:38
Nick Loise: And now we could use some AI, which is kind of cool to have, and it's done in the background of saying, well, here's, we want to look at their emails and we look at their calendars.
16:48
Nick Loise: We say, ok, nick, I hear what you're saying, that Scott's going to buy, but you haven't had an email exchange with him for 90 days.
16:56
Nick Loise: You haven't had a calendar meeting with him for 90 days.
16:58
Nick Loise: You haven't had a calendar meeting with him for 45 days.
16:59
Nick Loise: Right, and you know so is he really an opportunity or is it something that we have to take out of the pipeline and just put him into our warm leads and we're just going to nurture him that, right?
17:10
Nick Loise: So I think you know that's the other thing that, really, when I see business owners flummox, it's one is the lack of production by their salespeople, but two, it's the lack of really authenticity in the pipeline, if you will right.
17:25
Nick Loise: It's the.
17:25
Nick Loise: There's so much fiction and that's tough for you on the fractional CFO side because you're building cashflow analysis, you're kind of building run rates, you're doing a rolling TTM based on okay, they're saying that they're going to bring in X and then they fall short.
17:43
Nick Loise: Right, and that's tough on the financial side for you guys to do really good planning, especially in cash flow management.
17:50
Nick Loise: So you know it's one big circle of life if you will, but it's, you know the two have to be bringing truthful and that's, I think, what frustrates a lot of CFOs is, you know I hear from the sales VP, oh, they're bringing in five million this quarter and they end up closing at three.
18:05
Nick Loise: You know I've made plans for five.
18:08
Nick Loise: Right, you know, maybe we've made some capital investments, maybe we've looked at hiring some key staff and other departments because of we think we had this run rate that was going to happen and it doesn't yeah.
18:21
Scott Geller: So you know, I think a big, a big question mark or a big challenge that companies have is how patient should you be with sales people and even like, especially with the new, new sales, like recently hired um sales staff, how long do you kind of let them go before you start having that maybe more difficult conversation around?
18:46
Nick Loise: you're not hitting your numbers and you're not producing enough so a lot of it is a derivative of your sales cycle, right, and if your sales cycle is your shorter sales cycle, then I've got a 90 day run a window with them, right, and then I've got a 90 day run window with them, right, and then I have the conversation with them.
19:02
Nick Loise: Conversation with them maybe 60 days, maybe 90 days, if the expectation is that they are putting something on the board, right, ie selling something within 30 days and they haven't sold something in 30 days.
19:14
Nick Loise: I'm at 45 days having that conversation with them, right, okay, okay, you.
19:22
Nick Loise: The goal was you had to put up a thousand dollars, right, five, right, whatever it was.
19:25
Nick Loise: You have it at 45 days in.
19:28
Nick Loise: I'm having that conversation with them but I'm probably having that conversation with them in my role or if I have a team member in their account, every week we're having that conversation with them Okay.
19:39
Nick Loise: What's going on?
19:40
Nick Loise: So you recommend talk to them every week.
19:42
Scott Geller: Make sure they're doing what they need to.
19:43
Scott Geller: Every week we're doing a pipeline review.
19:44
Nick Loise: I've got them on a short window, right.
19:47
Nick Loise: If it's a longer tenured sales cycle, right.
19:51
Nick Loise: So it's a 60 days, 90 days sales cycle.
19:54
Nick Loise: I'm looking at their production, right, and saying, okay, they've put 35 new opportunities into the pipeline.
20:03
Nick Loise: That's pretty good, you know, if it's, if we're 60 days in, that's one.
20:07
Nick Loise: Every you know, every you know that's.
20:09
Nick Loise: They're putting 15 in every month and it's not a story, but it's a fact-based conversation I'm having about every account.
20:19
Nick Loise: Okay, where are you at with Scott?
20:21
Nick Loise: What's going on?
20:22
Nick Loise: When was the last meeting?
20:23
Nick Loise: What's their pain?
20:25
Nick Loise: What is their buyers?
20:26
Nick Loise: Right?
20:27
Nick Loise: So, who has the budget?
20:28
Nick Loise: Who has the authority?
20:29
Nick Loise: Who has the need?
20:30
Nick Loise: What's their timeline?
20:31
Nick Loise: Right.
20:31
Nick Loise: And so, if I know that these are 30 solid deals and we're just waiting on something, right, maybe we're waiting on next quarter's budget to open up.
20:43
Nick Loise: Maybe we're waiting on, you know, the executive team to review the proposal, which is going to take some time, right, trying to move an executive team always does that.
20:52
Nick Loise: As long as I have really good data and I feel that they're buttoned up on their pipeline, have really good data and I feel that they're buttoned up on their pipeline, I'm going to give them maybe a little bit longer of a runway, maybe 30 days, 60 days, but we're going to have that conversation probably faster than a business owner, right?
21:10
Nick Loise: Because?
21:10
Nick Loise: we're brought in.
21:11
Nick Loise: We're almost like a manager of the baseball team.
21:13
Nick Loise: If Nick is in a slump, I'm not leaving him in all season.
21:17
Nick Loise: I'm maybe going to put him down to AAA.
21:19
Nick Loise: Let him figure it out a little bit, let him take some more reps and then bring him up.
21:24
Nick Loise: You can't do that with salespeople, right.
21:26
Nick Loise: You kind of have to let it go, and the worst thing to do is, especially if you're an inbound shop is waste inbound leads on a non-performing salesperson, right?
21:35
Nick Loise: That's the biggest fatal flaw in business.
21:38
Nick Loise: Okay, I like this, nick, let me kind of.
21:45
Scott Geller: I started down a rabbit hole, so I appreciate you going with me there, I'm going to step back a little bit because you've laid out a really interesting way to approach this.
21:51
Scott Geller: And going back to that first step, how long does it really take to kind of go through this process?
22:00
Scott Geller: Like, how long does it take and when should they get started thinking about it Other than yesterday?
22:06
Nick Loise: Yeah, it's a great question Because every business owner hasn't done it ever and they want it done in a week, right.
22:13
Nick Loise: And so it usually takes us about 30 to 60 days to have a really good playbook kind of created.
22:22
Nick Loise: Right, that's us looking at what you've done in the past.
22:26
Nick Loise: That's us listening to calls, that's us building out your discovery sessions, that's us building out your objection matrices, everything that you're going to have, right.
22:38
Nick Loise: And if you're a little bit more complex of a sale, well, there's going to be nuance there because you know you sell to different types of buyers different ways.
22:46
Nick Loise: You sell the buying committees much different than you do to individuals, right.
22:51
Nick Loise: So we kind of have to look at who are you selling to and how are things getting sold currently.
22:55
Nick Loise: But it probably takes 30 to 60 days, right.
22:58
Nick Loise: When should they start?
23:01
Nick Loise: Yesterday?
23:03
Nick Loise: I kind of say that tongue in cheek, just like you did.
23:06
Nick Loise: But it just depends on what they want to do, right?
23:09
Nick Loise: So if they have growth plans, right now some some business owners it's a lifestyle business, right.
23:13
Nick Loise: It's doing really well, right they're.
23:15
Nick Loise: They're spinning off cash.
23:17
Nick Loise: They don't want to take on any extra debt.
23:19
Nick Loise: They're fine with it.
23:21
Nick Loise: Maybe they're kind of waiting for the kids to get done with college and then they're going to groom them into the business, right?
23:28
Nick Loise: Or maybe they've got some key people that they're going to do maybe an ESOP, or they're going to sell the business Right, good three-year run rate, so they tell a good story, right?
23:35
Nick Loise: Um, because that's what a, that's what a savvy buyer is going to look at is you know where you at?
23:51
Nick Loise: Let's look at back three years.
23:52
Nick Loise: Um, so just we look at where do you?
23:56
Nick Loise: When do you want to sell?
23:57
Nick Loise: Right?
23:58
Nick Loise: When you want to go to florida, when you want to be playing golf, right.
23:59
Nick Loise: When you want to get that fishing boat in the water, whatever you want to do, I don't care right, but what do you want to sell?
24:01
Nick Loise: Right?
24:01
Nick Loise: When you want to go to Florida?
24:01
Nick Loise: When you want to be playing golf, right.
24:02
Nick Loise: When you want to get that fishing boat in the water, whatever you want to do, I don't care Right, but what do you want to do?
24:05
Nick Loise: Let's then figure it out.
24:06
Nick Loise: And we want to go faster.
24:08
Nick Loise: Sometimes, too, that there's internal pressure, right.
24:11
Nick Loise: So we just met with two business owners the other day and it's fascinating.
24:14
Nick Loise: You know they've got, they probably have a very good service.
24:17
Nick Loise: It's a service-based business but they aren't converting right, they're just not selling.
24:24
Nick Loise: It's a very commoditized market because of the fact that the buyers don't really know, right, so it's in the IT services, so we'll leave it at that.
24:35
Nick Loise: So in that case we're saying you got a conversion problem right, and it's the founders that are doing the selling.
24:42
Nick Loise: I'm like we got to get in deep and listen to what you're saying and how you're saying it and what you're not saying, and that's a different situation.
24:48
Nick Loise: It's much easier for me because, like you know, teaching an old dog new tricks is tough, right, but if I take a salesperson and put them into a business, when is it fresh energy, new energy, right, they're going to be open, they're going to be a sponge, they're going to want to try things.
25:03
Nick Loise: So that's always the easiest, okay.
25:06
Scott Geller: So, as we kind of wrap up here, I'd love to hear if you have any examples or tips on how do we take this sales plan and align it with the financial planning or budgeting.
25:17
Nick Loise: Yeah, well, I think we kind of talked about that a little bit.
25:20
Nick Loise: But that most important thing is where do I want to go from a revenue perspective?
25:23
Nick Loise: Where do I want to go from a cash perspective?
25:25
Nick Loise: Right, what do I need to do on the business side, on the operational side?
25:29
Nick Loise: Maybe I got to make some capital investments in the business, those type of things, and so now I know financially where do I need to go, okay.
25:35
Nick Loise: So now I go to my team and I say, okay, I want to grow by X and maybe we have some really aggressive.
25:39
Nick Loise: So now I go to my team and I say, ok, I want to grow by X and maybe we have some really aggressive.
25:42
Nick Loise: So I could do two things when I could do what every other business does and just say I've got four salespeople, their quota historically has been a million and they barely hit that.
25:52
Nick Loise: But I'm going to make them hit a million, five next year.
25:54
Nick Loise: Right, that's going to be a recipe for failure, right?
26:01
Nick Loise: So you're going to be frustrated as a business owner, so let's not do that.
26:03
Nick Loise: But let's say I got to bring two new people on.
26:04
Nick Loise: Why two Nick versus one?
26:06
Nick Loise: Well, because somebody's not going to work out, right.
26:08
Nick Loise: And because it's going to take some time for them to get kind of revved up.
26:11
Nick Loise: Plus, they have peers, right.
26:13
Nick Loise: So, okay, now I'm going to need X amount of people.
26:16
Nick Loise: What I know with the historic, the quota is based on realistic numbers that my sales people, my sales team, historically delivers to me.
26:25
Nick Loise: I'm going to make it a stretch goal, right?
26:27
Nick Loise: So I'm going to bring it up by 10% or 20%.
26:29
Nick Loise: What is it we're going to look at?
26:30
Nick Loise: What's the pricing, what's my yield management of my pricing, right?
26:34
Nick Loise: So, is there flexibility?
26:36
Nick Loise: Can I raise prices across the board?
26:38
Nick Loise: Or there are certain products and services that are maybe less competitive environments that I could raise them by 15%, where other things I'm going to only raise by five because it's hyper competitive, right, I'm going to build it from EBITDA, right?
26:51
Nick Loise: What's the EBITDA I want to bring into the business?
26:54
Nick Loise: But a lot of that's going to be derivative by what I want my salespeople producing, and that's okay.
26:59
Nick Loise: Now I look at historic trends over the time by the calendar, right?
27:05
Nick Loise: So are certain months slower than others?
27:07
Nick Loise: Right, are certain months busier than others?
27:09
Nick Loise: And that's kind of how I'm going to spread my quota for the salespeople.
27:13
Nick Loise: I'm not going to do a flat line.
27:14
Nick Loise: I'm going to do it based on what's the historic ups and downs, or cash in and outs of the business, based on the calendar, and then from there you know, we're off to the races.
27:24
Scott Geller: Okay, nick, I really like how you put that financial perspective into it, and I have a feeling, if I'm not walking track of my time, we're going to continue talking for a lot longer here.
27:38
Nick Loise: Well, cash is king and profit drives everything right.
27:41
Scott Geller: Yes, it does.
27:42
Nick Loise: I've been blessed to work with great financial people like yourselves, either in companies that I've had or companies that I've been an employee or a partner in, and so it all starts with profit.
27:53
Nick Loise: Right, and you could sell the world, but if you're not making a profit, it doesn't matter, right, it does not matter, you're 100% right.
28:00
Scott Geller: Well, nick, I like to wrap up all of our shows with one to three immediate takeaways that our listeners could literally put into action.
28:08
Scott Geller: You've shared a lot already, so it might even be hey, make sure you do these three or two that I've already mentioned, or it could be something completely different that you haven't said.
28:17
Scott Geller: But what can you share with us today?
28:20
Nick Loise: So two things.
28:20
Nick Loise: One is we talked about it is look at aggressively and work with Scott or people like Scott to raise your prices.
28:26
Nick Loise: So what can you do to raise your prices?
28:29
Nick Loise: The second thing, which may be counterintuitive to what I just said, is watch your churn, right.
28:34
Nick Loise: So what can you retain?
28:37
Nick Loise: Retention is growth in this business and every business right now.
28:40
Nick Loise: So how can I reduce my customer churn?
28:43
Nick Loise: How can I make sure that I'm not losing market share, ie losing customers?
28:48
Nick Loise: So really get in deep on making sure your customers are satisfied, making sure that they're locked in, and that will also allow for the easier conversation about raising the prices.
28:58
Nick Loise: So watch your churn, raise your prices if you can.
29:01
Nick Loise: And if you only want to get to that million, if you're an entrepreneur wanting to get to that million dollar mark, you have to have a salesperson right.
29:08
Nick Loise: So that's the one easiest way to do it.
29:10
Nick Loise: I know it's scary, right, because in some organizations and I'm sure you see this, scott, some if you've got really high producing salespeople, they may be making more than the owners right Absolutely, and that really is a bone of contention with ownership right, and I don't blame them, but it's just the nature of the business.
29:30
Nick Loise: You're going to get yours on the back end when you sell right, and so the other.
29:35
Nick Loise: And then the fourth thing because we asked for three, I'm going to give an extra one, because I'm that kind of guy is get a good partner like Scott right.
29:41
Nick Loise: Get somebody in there that is doing the books and has the visibility of all different types of businesses and different types of industries and brings that to you so that they could say, okay, this is where you should be, this is where we see, like businesses being on an EBITDA perspective or a nonprofit.
29:59
Scott Geller: Well, thanks, nick, that was great.
30:01
Scott Geller: I appreciate the fourth one in there as well.
30:02
Scott Geller: But my last ask is a favorite podcast or book recommendation.
30:07
Nick Loise: Yeah, so it's getting to be summer, so I like to go a little bit lighter, right, I deal normally business books up to summer, so I picked up this book in Berlin and it's a great series.
30:19
Nick Loise: It's by Rory Clements and it's great series.
30:24
Nick Loise: It's by Rory Clements and it's, in essence he's a American teaching at Cambridge, but he's also working for M5 or M6, right.
30:28
Nick Loise: So that's kind of like my escape beach reading.
30:30
Nick Loise: I've also been reading a great book by a English, a venture capital.
30:36
Nick Loise: It's called the Second Bounce of the Ball and it's really about you know, you got to know where that second bounce is going to go in business, right, because the first bounce everybody's looking at, but that second bounce is where you're going to leapfrog over the competition and look at and it's got some great things in there Look at everything as an investment, right, people are investment.
30:56
Nick Loise: So it's a really good book that I'm enjoying.
30:58
Nick Loise: I picked them both up, you know, in Germany.
31:02
Scott Geller: Well, thank you.
31:02
Scott Geller: Those are new ones that I have to add to the list.
31:05
Scott Geller: Appreciate that.
31:06
Nick Loise: You're welcome.
31:07
Scott Geller: Well, Nick, thanks a lot for joining us today.
31:09
Scott Geller: It's been great.
31:10
Scott Geller: You've laid out almost a great map of how to address a sales plan for a business and I really appreciate you coming on today.
31:19
Nick Loise: Thank you for being on and thank you for the podcast.
31:21
Nick Loise: These things aren't easy, right?
31:22
Nick Loise: They're a labor of love, and you'll think about all the great knowledge that your listeners are getting, for all the great guests and the stuff that you bring on.
31:30
Scott Geller: All right, folks.
31:30
Scott Geller: Well, that's it for today.
31:32
Scott Geller: If you liked the show or found something useful, please share it with someone else.
31:37
Scott Geller: I'd love to grow the listener base and, as Nick said, provide learnings that can help you in your business.
31:46
Scott Geller: I'm Scott Keller and I hope you join me next time for Budget your Business.