Darrell Amy's Blog, page 6

The Key To Differentiation and Growth: Client Experience

“What makes you different?” Every sales professional and marketer gets confronted with this question multiple times a day. The ability to answer this question well forms the difference between winning and losing, profitability and unprofitability.

Here’s the challenge: you’re not different. Is that a fair statement? Probably not. But in the eyes of your prospects and clients, unless you take intentional action to create differentiation, you are not different. 

Without differentiation, the best case scenario is that you win on price. The worst case scenario is the you lose to a competitor that creates differentiation. Even worse, what if you are losing to a competitor that creates differentation and charges more! Talk about salt in a wound.

How can you create differentiation? Let's consider three options that don't work for most companies.

Product Differentiation

Many companies I serve sell products that they don’t manufacture. From a product level, differentiation is at best low. Most importantly, these companies don’t make the products so they can’t control them. Even if they are able to beg the manufacturer for a new feature, in today’s world, it’s usually a matter of months before the competition achieves parity.

Service Differentiation

You can create differentiation by providing great service to go along with your product. Or, maybe your product is service. You can respond quickly--even proactively--to your clients’ needs. All of this is vital for a healthy business. However, I’m willing to bet that if you’re honest, you know you’re not the only provider in your space that provides outstanding service. Thus, differentiation from service becomes minimal.

Brand Differentiation

You could create a brand. Companies like Coca-Cola, Nike, and Red Lobster dump hundreds of millions of dollars into brand building. Guess what? It works--if you have hundreds of millions of dollars. (If you’re a small business trying to build your brand based on billboards or cable TV advertising, good luck. I think you’re flushing money down the toilet.)

How Can You Differentiate? Client Experience.

So, how do you differentiate? There has to be a better way to create differentiation that isn’t budget prohibitive. 

The answer may be found from successful companies like Starbucks and Disney.

Let’s start with coffee. The ingredients for a cup of coffee cost well less than a dollar. The labor to make the cup of coffee lies on the lower end of the labor cost scale. You can buy a cup of coffee at a convenience store or a McDonalds for about a $1. Why then do people line up at Starbucks?

How about Disney? As I write this, their theme parks are closed for the COVID-19 pandemic. But I can guarantee you that the moment the parks open back up, people will be streaming through the gates at hundreds of dollars a ticket. (In the meantime, families are eating popcorn watching movies on Disney+, a service that crushed records in revenue the week they launched.) Why do people line up at Disney?

The answer lies around a word that has become the foundation of economic success: client experience.

Starbucks creates an amazing customer experience. Walt Disney built an empire based on creating experiences around cartoons. As a result, both of these companies have achieved incredible results.

In The Experience Economy, Pine and Gilmore assert that customer experience is the key to growth--something we all need as we look to the future. “Recognizing experiences as a distinct economic offering provides the key to future economic growth.”

In Revenue Growth Engine, I talk about two key experiences: Buyer Experience and Client Experience.

 Your Buyer Experience comes from what your prospects feel about your company while they are in the buying process of awareness, consideration, and decision. 
Your Client Experience comes from the feelings your clients get during the time they are a client: onboarding, management, and upgrade.

In the book we explore strategies to create an Ideal Client Experience (ICX). That means that you intentionally craft an experience that your Ideal Clients will appreciate. 

What if you looked at your client experience AS your product? What could you do at each stage of the Buying Experience and Client Experience to add value and make your company memorable. Yes, you need to have great products and be operationally solid to deliver good service. But what can you do to enhance the experience your ideal clients have with your company?

I remember early in my sales career, a trainer said, “You don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.” As cheesy as that saying was (and still is) there is a huge nugget of truth. The sizzle is the Ideal Client Experience.

The good news is that crafting your Ideal Client Experience is fun! You can put the creative power of your team to work to continually enhance your ICX. As you do this, you will deepen your value, increase client loyalty, and increase differentiation.

As you develop growth plans, the key to your future growth may be experience!

 More Helpful Resources

Revenue Growth Engine Book--Download the First Two Chapters
Value Is In the Eye of the Beholder
The Smartest (and Fastest) Way To Grow Revenue

The Critical Shift From Triage To Strategy

Right now we are all in the midst of triage, trying to figure out how to navigate the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we can't stay here. Smart companies will make the shift to strategy.

If you own a company, run a sales team, or lead a marketing department, I want to encourage you to make the shift to strategy so that you can move into the aftermath of this crisis ready to grow.

Encouragement To Lead With Empathy

Whether you own a company, lead a sales team, or run a marketing department, as we begin this challenging week, I want to encourage you to lead with empathy. This is a defining moment for all of us. 

There are two things at which I excel: faith and strategy. If I can help with either or both of these, please feel free to reach out. I'd love to talk.

Let's KEEP going and let's keep growing!

Five Critical Sales and Marketing Processes For Driving Revenue Growth

Ask any management consultant and they will tell you that processes are the key to an efficient business. We find processes in departments throughout a business like finance, H.R., service, production, and fulfillment. 

Why is it that when it comes to revenue growth, sales and marketing teams typically have few, if any, documented processes?

In the Entrepreneurial Operating System, Gino Wickman asserts that process is a core part of an organization’s success:

“This is the secret ingredient in your organization. This means systemizing your business by identifying and documenting the core processes that define the way to run your business. You’ll need to get everyone on the same page with what the essential procedural steps are, and then get everyone to follow them to create consistency and scalability in your organization.”

While most departments have well thought out processes in place, sales and marketing teams are often left to wing it. “Go sell something.” “Manage our social media.” 

The challenge is that when you have unpredictable processes, you get unpredictable results.

Because of this, many companies experience either inconsistent or flat revenue growth. This is a shame since revenue is the lifeblood of any business.

What are your processes when it comes to revenue growth? The Revenue Growth Engine™ itemizes the core sets of sales and marketing processes you need to drive net-new revenue and cross sell current clients. Let’s consider these four process areas. 

The Revenue Growth Engine™ Model

NET-NEW BUSINESS PROCESSES

To drive net-new business you need defined processes for the two types of buyers: those who are actively looking and those who are not. 

PROCESS 1: INBOUND MARKETING

These processes ensure your company gets found by buyers looking online. It defines processes for converting visitors to leads, mining data for leads, qualifying those leads, and handing them off to sales.

PROCESS 2: OUTBOUND SELLING

For every buyer that is actively looking for what you sell there are many more who are not actively looking but could benefit from your value proposition. Documented sales processes define who is the ideal client, how data will be managed, how reps prospect, and how they influence the buying team throughout the sales cycle.

CROSS-SELLING PROCESSES

What additional products, services, or solutions could you provide to your current clients? Most companies could quickly double their revenue if they got this right. Without defined processes in place, most companies experience anemic growth in cross-sell revenue. Both sales and marketing have a role to play here.

PROCESS 3: CLIENT MANAGEMENT

What happens after the prospect says yes to your offer? This is where most businesses drop the ball. Processes should be defined for onboarding a new client, conducting periodic business reviews, and renewing contracts. Without process, balls get dropped and cross-selling does not happen.

PROCESS 4: CLIENT COMMUNICATION

Survey most clients and you’ll hear, “You never write, you never call, until it’s time for me to renew my contract.” Client communication processes ensure your clients feel valued. Documented processes need to exist for segmenting clients, managing data, communicating consistently with relevant messages, and delivering client loyalty programs.

PROCESS 5: UPDATE YOUR MESSAGE

In addition to sales and marketing processes to drive net-new and cross-sell, you also need processes in place to continually update your message. Your message is the fuel for your Revenue Growth Engine™. Make sure to have documented processes to refresh your website, sales collateral, advertising, and social presence. 

HOW ARE YOUR SALES AND MARKETING PROCESSES? DO YOU HAVE ANY? ARE THEY DOCUMENTED?

Are you unhappy with your flat or inconsistent revenue growth? Maybe you should look at your sales and marketing processes!

Value Is In The Eye of the Beholder

We’ve all heard the old saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” When it comes to business, the same could be said of value as well.

Value is in the eye of the beholder. In business, the “beholders” are your clients and prospects. How do you find out what your prospects value?

Over the years, I have written dozens of success stories. Before I talk with the client, I get the back story from the sales rep. When I do this, I will ask the rep why the client chose to work with them.

Nine times out of ten the rep confidently says, “Because we saved them money.” When I interview the client and ask why they said “yes” to the company, they usually rattle off a list of outcomes they are enjoying. Rarely do I hear a client say, “Because we’re saving money.” If they do, it is usually one part of a longer list of value.

The value you bring is not so much in the products and services you sell but in the outcomes that you deliver. Your goal is to understand the outcomes your buyers want.

This is why it is so critical to understand your clients and prospects before you try to craft value proposition.

How can you do this?

Do some case study interviews.
Ride in the field with your sales team and listen to what people are saying.
Read the books and blogs your prospects read.
Take your best clients to lunch and ask.

Remember, value is in the eye of the beholder. Understand the outcomes that your prospects and clients want. Then, you’ll be able to communicate value with a focused message in a way that resonates.

Why Great Companies Need To Grow Revenue

Yesterday morning at Dallas Love Field, I crossed paths with a guy I know who leads a sales team for a $10 million company. Over breakfast at Cantina Laredo (love this place!) I shared my concept behind the Revenue Growth Engine.

We talked about his team and their revenue growth. “Darrell, we’re OK at net-new, but cross-selling… we get too busy and good intentions rarely happen.”

I hear this over and over again from businesses. They are good at net-new business but struggle to cross-sell.

Probing further, I asked, “Why do you think that is?”

“We just get caught up in the day-to-day fires taking care of our customers.”

There it is. In the attempt to provide great customer service, cross-selling goes to the bottom of the list and rarely gets done.

As a result, this company is only growing in the low single digits.

Here’s the problem with this. I happen to know of the owner of this company. He’s a great person. He cares deeply for his employees, creating a good work environment. He also is a giver, generously supporting his church and other local non-profits.

I also know of my friends who work for large, faceless companies. These companies RIF employees at will, discarding them like yesterday’s trash when they need to pad the earnings. The only time they give back is for positive PR.

Good companies need to grow—they must grow. As they do, they create great jobs in good work environments. They provide for the churches and non-profits that make our world better.

So, why was my friend’s company not growing? What stood in the way of their best intentions to cross-sell? Two things: Strategy and Execution.

STRATEGY

Growing revenue doesn’t magically happen. Growth requires a strategy. This strategy needs to have two components: net-new business and cross-selling current clients. The strategy should align marketing and sales. Revenue Growth Engine provides the roadmap for this strategy.

EXECUTION

To grow, you must execute consistently. In the case of this company, poor operational execution ended up hurting their sales efforts, hence the flat growth. To fix this, I recommended the Entrepreneurial Operating System as outlined in the book Traction by Gino Wickman. Applying these principles supports consistent execution company-wide, freeing up bandwidth to be proactive at net-new AND cross-selling. These operational principles can also be applied to drive marketing and sales excellence as you deploy your Revenue Growth Engine. Plus, these operational principles will help the company handle the (good) issues that come with growth!

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

How is your company doing? Is your revenue growth in the single digits or low teens? If so, what’s holding you back? Do you have a revenue growth strategy? Are you good at execution.

How is your company doing? Is your revenue growth in the single digits or low teens? If so, what’s holding you back? Do you have a revenue growth strategy? Are you good at execution?

When great companies fix these two issues, they grow. This creates new jobs and more opportunities for existing employees. It generates cash flow that can fuel local non-profits.

Are you ready to grow? Let’s get to work building and fine-tuning your Revenue Growth Engine!

How is your company doing? Is your revenue growth in the single digits or low teens? If so, what’s holding you back? Do you have a revenue growth strategy? Are you good at execution.

When great companies fix these two issues, they grow. This creates new jobs and more opportunity for existing employees. It generates cash flow that can fuel local non-profits.

Are you ready to grow? Let’s get to work building and fine tuning your Revenue Growth Engine!

How To Build a Revenue Growth Plan For Next Year

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

What is your plan to grow revenue?

Every business wants to grow revenue. At the beginning of the year, most businesses set specific growth goals. (More ideas on setting goals: A New Way To Set Revenue Growth Goals.) However, as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry says, “A goal without a plan is just a wish!”

You need a revenue growth plan. That plan needs to be more sophisticated than simply saying, “We’re going to hire two more sales reps” or “We’re going to open an office in this city”.

Your revenue growth plan needs to provide detailed answers to two specific questions:

How will we grow net-new business?
How will we cross-sell more products, services, and solutions to our existing client base?

Under each of these questions, you need to detail how your sales and marketing initiatives will work together to achieve these goals. Let’s consider each of these.

NET-NEW REVENUE

New clients are the lifeblood of any business. There are only two types of prospects: those who are actively looking and those who are not.

For the ones that are actively looking, your Revenue Growth Plan should include the actions you will take to get found online, convert those visitors to leads, and then respond quickly to qualify them.

For the ones that are not actively looking, your plan should include the specific ways you will empower your sales team to prospect. How can you make them more efficient, effective, and accountable?

CROSS-SELL REVENUE

If you have additional products, services, and solutions to sell your clients, you need a plan to make sure you mine the gold from your base.

At a recent technology conference I attended, Tiffany Bova, Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce, observed that most businesses need to take a clue the prospectors of the 1850’s. Everyone that found a gold mine made sure to get all of the gold out of the mine before moving on. However, most sales teams land a new client and then move on to the next one, failing to mine the gold from their base.

From a sales perspective, what is your plan to follow up with your clients? Your plan should include consistent periodic business reviews for your A-list clients. Your team should be trained, coached, and have the tools to do these reviews effectively.

From a marketing perspective, what is your plan to communicate consistently with your base? Your plan needs to include a steady stream of targeted emails, social posts, and events. These communications should clearly communicate the outcomes your clients can enjoy when they expand their relationship with you.

REVENUE GROWTH PLANNING

How do you make this happen? Block some time off with your team! When I conduct a Revenue Growth Workshop with a company, we’ll begin by blocking off half a day to talk about the current state of each component of the growth engine.

At a recent growth workshop, the owner of the company told our team he was busy and could only be a part of the first session of the workshop where we discussed growth goals. At 5:00 that afternoon, he was still in the room, having rescheduled his other appointments for that day. Later, he told me that he learned things about his company during that day that he wasn’t aware of. Getting all leadership in the room to analyze the growth engine can be very powerful.

The old saying still holds true: “Those who fail to plan plan to fail.” Don’t fail to plan for revenue growth. If you could use some help doing this, feel free to reach out. We’d be glad to help!

How To Set Revenue Growth Goals For Your Business

When it comes to revenue growth, how are you setting your goals? What if there were a better way?

With the new year upon us, like most business owners, I’m looking forward to set goals for the next year. If you’re like me, revenue growth is at the top of your business goal list.

Most business owners set goals based on their current revenue number. They take what they did the previous year and add what they think is a reasonable growth percentage.

For example, if you did $10 million in revenue, maybe next year you set the goal of 20% to hit $12 million. That’s great, but where did you get that number? And, more importantly, how are you going to hit it?

I’d like to propose a different way to set your revenue goal. To do this, set aside your total revenue goal for a few minutes. Then, allow me to walk you through an alternative way to think about revenue goals.

1. CALCULATE TWO KEY REVENUE NUMBERS

 Darrell Amy explains the two key revenue scorecard metrics.

Instead of beginning with your current revenue, let’s begin with the two key numbers:

Total Number of Clients: How many active clients did you have at the end of 2019?
Revenue per Client: What was your revenue per client? To get to this number, simply take your total revenue and divide it by the number of clients.

These two numbers are critical as they form the foundation for measuring revenue growth:

Net New Revenue Growth is measured by the growth in the Total Number of Clients
Cross Sell Revenue Growth is measured by the growth in your Revenue per Client

Interested in learning more about this strategy: How Businesses Can Double Revenue In Less Than Three Years.

2. SET GOALS FOR EACH OF THESE TWO NUMBERS

The next step is to set reasonable goals for each of the two numbers:

Total Number of Clients: How many more net-new clients can we add this year?
Cross-Sell Revenue: How much in additional products, services, and solutions could we sell to our current clients this year?

Let’s consider a real world scenario. Four example, we’ll use a $10 million company with 5,000 clients. Their current revenue per client is $2,000 ($10M/5,000).

By driving 15% growth in each of these areas, the total revenue would grow by 32% year-over-year.

3. BUILD A PLAN

Interestingly, if this business had simply pulled a growth goal out of the hat, they might have said 20% and then not put a plan together to hit it. By focusing on the two metrics, number of clients and revenue per client, it now becomes obvious where sales and marketing efforts should be directed

Your sales and marketing plan should begin with two questions:

How can we get more net-new clients?
How can we sell more to our current clients?

GET STARTED

I believe that great businesses should grow. If you have a great business that treats heir employees well, gives back to the community, and provides exceptional services, here are some guidelines to get started.

What are your numbers?

How many clients do you have?
What’s your revenue per client?

How can you create an amazing buyer experience to drive net-new client growth?
How can you improve your client experience to drive more revenue per client?

Want to discuss this further? I’d be happy to talk!