Transcription:
One of the biggest things that I always found is. We had to build trust between the sales team and the delivery team. They had to trust each other’s intentions and really know that both sides were willing to bend a little bit and to understand the needs of the other.
Hi, and welcome to the business alchemy podcast. I’m Jonathan. And with me today is Beth again. And we’re here today to talk to you about what sometimes ends up being a train wreck and that’s sales and operations. How do sales and marketing to a certain extent, collaborate effectively with operations to make sure that the things that the sales department sells get delivered and meet the client’s expectations.
Beth, as we know from working together for. Nearly 20 years, it’s not always as easy as it seems. Get your perspective on that. I think that most people that have worked either on one side or the other of that dynamic know that problems can abound. The sales team sells something. The delivery team is unhappy with either what the expectations were on the clients, what the sales team sold, and then struggles to maybe execute that where the sales team then gets frustrated because.
Maybe the operations team isn’t as flexible as they should be in their mind, so it can cause a bevy of problems. No doubt about it. And we’ve run into that ourselves and I know it’s taken me a long time as that sales mind to necessarily understand some of the problems that I cause in the sales process for the delivery team, because I hear an option to, Hey, this is the client’s willing to pay us to do this and it’s part of our, what we can do.
And then I add it in and then you guys are like, well, what are you doing? What now? What do we have to do? And while it may be a skill that the team has and something that they absolutely can deliver, what you’ve really taught me is that when we change things up all the time for the delivery team, their efficiencies plummet.
And it makes it so much harder for them to do an exemplary job. And that means it’s harder to meet the client’s expectations. In most cases, simply because I was trying to. Do a favor or something up front anyway, it wasn’t probably necessary in order to close the deal from somebody that’s obviously run the delivery side of that and taught me that.
What would your perspective on that be? I think that maybe the best way to talk about this is to give an example. Our experience together. And when you were doing the sales for Baller Circle, and then I’ve been responsible or traditionally in the past for the delivery, if one of the sales reps would, let’s say, have a client that was interested in an e commerce website.
And while that potential client is talking to the sales rep, maybe they mentioned that there’s a particular functionality or feature that they want on the econ site. And the sales rep is just excited about, let’s close the sale. Let’s close the sale. And so often I’ve heard. Ports back of the sales rep saying, Oh, absolutely.
We can do that for you, you know, with our websites traditionally had been based on project pricing and, uh, Then when there’s one unique feature is requested and promised, uh, going into the project with that and then fighting out from maybe an operational standpoint that, wow, that’s going to take 10 hours of PHP coding.
That’s not the turnkey process and website that we are supposed to be selling. But maybe the sales rep didn’t understand that, or again, just wanted to close that deal so badly that they were willing to go, yes, let’s, that’s not a problem. We can do that. And maybe technically we can do that, but that just causes all sorts of problems.
With not only the client and their expectations, but the team and executing that particular item, it just then means that, okay, now we got to handle the situation really carefully because we could lose profit, we could lose the client, we could get a bad review. Obviously, it’s our reputation and our integrity on the line.
So we want to make sure that we’ve really done a good job for the client. So that leads us. Basically, with three choices here, if the sales rep has promised something and it’s outside of the project, we either just tell the client that we can’t do it, which of course we never want to tell the client that we can’t do something that’s going to just lower our credibility immediately.
And then it’s gonna make them mad, of course, or we need to tell them that we can do it, but it’s outside the scope of the project. And this is what it would cost, or this is what it would be, then your client’s still unhappy because they felt that they were sold a poor bill of goods. And then your sales reps upset because we’re making them look bad.
Or the third option is that we just go ahead and do what the client wanted. It might make the client happy, it might make the sales rep happy, but we’ve just lost our profit margin or greatly decreased it. And our operations team’s not going to be happy whatsoever. It hurts their KPIs if they’re bonused off, how quickly they can get something done, how much they stay within budget.
So it really just has all these ramifications in not having clear cut sales expectations, clear cut services that we’re selling to our clients. So we’re not creating a raving fan in that situation. And we’ve just thrown a lot of drama into the mix. And a lot of frustration on the delivery team’s part.
So those things just come up as part of the sales and operational gap. But there are ways to correct that and to prevent that. No, absolutely. And I think to me, I’m sure for people watching or listening to this, they may find this hard to believe, but for me, it was just this huge revelation that by me, somebody who was trying to please the client and win them over and all that, that those.
What seemed like such simple promises on my part or simple commitments were causing huge angst on the delivery team. And obviously that’s not something I ever wanted to do. I love the teams that we’ve worked with and the people on those teams. And I remember, I don’t know how long ago it was, but I remember you and Rondo.
When Rhonda was a project manager coming to me and both of you guys were, I don’t want to say you were near tears or that you were near yelling, but it was very clear that both of you guys were incredibly frustrated because of the commitments that I’d made to a client that to me seemed like, and again, I oversimplify, I’ve got ADD, everything seems simple to me.
This is going to take us an hour, big deal. And come to find out that that hour that I thought it was going to take literally cost the team. Over 40 hours between project management, trying to figure it out, addressing all the things that I missed in my assumptions that weren’t accurate. And I remember that was such a revelation to me because I’d never realized that what seemed like this really simple process was creating huge angst and, as you pointed out very appropriately, a huge decrease in profitability for that as well.
And in the end, the customer wasn’t as happy because they sensed that angst. Our team was incredibly unhappy and our profit margins were decreased because of that. Yeah, just. Again, a huge brainstorm or light bulb moment, I guess, for me. It was an epiphany for you. Yes, thank you. Exactly. It was. It really was.
You take, okay, the 10 hours maybe of that PHP coding that my team had to do, but then beyond that. It then needs to be tested, so it’s not just doing it, it’s testing it and making sure it works and fits in with the rest of the system. Whatever construct you’re using, maybe you’re using WooCommerce or something like that has to work together.
So you’ve got that testing component has to go back to the client for their approval and almost always they would have update to revisions or yes, it didn’t work quite the way I want or something. So then you have these revisions and all, then the project manager would be frustrated. In this case, your memory Rhonda would get frustrated with that because it’s just another thing for her to manage to make sure it’s done.
Often there’s a technical expertise that needs to be there and not always do you have a project manager that understands all that technical aspect of what they’re doing. I just found that we needed to have clear expectations for you and for sales reps and what was really going to be included in that particular package and then that there had to be a way for that when questions like that would come up that the sales rep would be able to go back to the delivery team and ask questions, have them assess whether this could be done and what kind of time it would take.
But there have to be certain things going on between the sales team and the delivery team for even that to happen. There are certain things that have to be in place in order to overcome those hurdles of miscommunications and mis expectations, that type of thing. And one of the biggest things that I always found is We had to build trust between the sales team and the delivery team.
They had to trust each other’s intentions and really know that both sides were willing to bend a little bit and to understand the needs of the other. Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree with you more. It brings up so many memories and lessons learned over the years about that trust and understanding. And I think it was, again, I’ll blame my ADD here, but I think it was because everything seems very simple in my mind from a 30 or maybe a hundred thousand foot perspective.
I miss those details. And I’m guessing like a lot of salespeople, I miss a lot of those details that then the delivery team needs to shoulder and burden and go through. And it, it took me a while, I know, to gain that trust. It’s not that I didn’t trust them as individuals, but I just, I assumed they were over complicating everything because it just couldn’t be that hard.
It couldn’t be that hard. Exactly. Exactly. Because it certainly didn’t seem that way to you while working on the sales team. But there’s a couple of things going on there. One of them that comes to mind right off is that I found that entrepreneurs in general, but sales reps and the rest of the team, we tend to struggle with value, valuing our services and really and pricing them appropriately to really get what we deserve.
To be paid for something and from a sales reps perspective, the whole idea here is they really just want to close that deal brings this rush of adrenaline and this great feeling that comes in from that. And I understand that, but they did it at the expense of what. Was really, the situation was worth, we deserve to be paid what we’re worth.
And we don’t have to low ball ourselves in order to provide value to people. Either they’re willing to pay for it or they’re not. And so really training people and teaching people that you deserve to get paid and doing it from an ownership perspective of, okay, if we’re under profit margin on this, because of the choices you made.
Where should that money come from? Should I take it from your check? Should it come from my check? Where should this come from? So if we can really teach them that you want to get paid your weekly or monthly or annual salary, you want to get paid your commission, you need to be thinking with an owner’s mind as to how we spend our money and where we give discounts and where we short ourselves through for Efficiencies and so bringing some of that up and then just building you up to say that, hey.
You do a good job. Our team does a good job. They deserve to get paid for this. X amount of dollars of fair, livable wage. And I prefer to even be higher than that for my team. And to be able to give bonuses for the things they really do well. It really inspires people to have confidence in what they’re selling.
And that’s okay to be at a higher price. Yeah, no, it’s a really good point. I know I’ve really struggled with that. I know other entrepreneurs that I’ve coached over the years and collaborated with struggle with that. I’d really be interested in your perspective. You’ve obviously known me for 20 years.
Why do you, from your perspective, think that, uh, I often struggle as the other entrepreneurs with the value and the pricing things appropriately for the amount of work involved. First of all, when we’re starting a business off, if we don’t have another job that we’re doing at the same time, we tend to be very money focused.
There’s a lot of costs to building a small business, and we’re often doing that on a shoestring. And therefore, we’re just desperate to get money in. It’s like, we gotta make a sale. We gotta get our name out there, we gotta make a sale, I’ll take anything. In fact, often, we start off by doing things for free.
And then, we go from free, which I understand the concept of giving something away to get something. But I think we’re a little quick to do that, and then we don’t put boundaries around that. I remember when we first started with Valorous Circle, and you would give a lot away for free. And, but the problem was, is then people kept coming to you for more that was free.
And it’s, you didn’t necessarily have good boundaries about where that should stop and where it should go then to a paid status. And you were so much a people pleaser. And I think a lot of people in the sales people field are, they’re really people pleasers. And so they want to make people happy. They want to please them.
And the best way to do that is to give away something for free. Who doesn’t like that? Who’s not going to come back for something? So I think a lack of confidence sometimes in starting a business, really being on a shoestring. financially for that, especially if there’s not another job that you have on the side as you’re trying to build it up and then just really try to make people happy.
No, I think that’s really good insight and it definitely fits me to a T as I’ve gone through that. I know even in a new offering that I’m offering through Whitebeard, you and I were talking about it this weekend, and I’m going, oh I’m gonna do this and this and yeah, and you’re like, well, Stop. Even though you’re not responsible in this case for delivering it, you’re still, and I appreciate the counsel, you’re still like, no, you were going to make this so difficult on the delivery teams that you’re working with because of all these variables.
And in my mind, I’m like, yes, but I want to have this and I want to do this and I want to do this. And it’s really amazing. As I look back, all the things I’ve had to learn. About how, what I do on the front end selling, how and the decisions I make, even about what those products and services may be, how that really impacts my team on the delivery side, because I am not a delivery person, not that I’m not willing to, but that’s not my.
That’s not my God given gift. I’m not very good at that. I may understand what needs to be done, but I’m not in the day to day minutia. I’m not delivering that I’m not going through and slogging down that path. So to me again, from my 30 or more often that a hundred thousand foot view. It’s yeah, we got to walk down the path to get there, but it’s a simple straight path.
And I forget the fact that there’s trees over the path and there’s mud bugs. We got to walk through and sludge through it and hills that have to be climbed and cliffs that we’ve got to descend because from my view, it just looks like a nice straight line. And I miss a lot of that in between there. I definitely think that we could have a whole nother podcast and should just on the type of service or product that somebody is offering, and there is a lot of beauty.
To simplicity, simplicity in the product. It helps set expectations with the client, better simplicity in pricing. Again, sets good expectations. The client knows what they’re going to get and how much going it’s going to cost. That’s not going to change. Simplicity, that also helps the delivery team in what they’re providing in that it’s simple SOPs, it’s simple to, and regular to deliver.
It just, it, anything that can be uncomplicated in your business should be uncomplicated in our business. One of the, when we talked before about the three things we were never going to have. We’re never going to, we’re never going to have employees. We’re never going to have an office. One thing that was unspoken that was really big deal for you and I, though, was we’re never going to have drama.
We do not like drama. I do not like drama. You do not like drama. And so the easiest way to eliminate drama is to simplify things. And so it just helps in so many different areas. And sometimes saying no with a client is a great way to simplify drama. Simplified drama from the client and simplified drama from the team.
And products and services are that way too. And I just had a meeting with my team earlier today, and we talked about simplifying more. How can we simplify our product even more? And then I gave him a couple of things to think about as far as that, how that goes, what is something you really love to do and what would be.
Essentially, the area that we have the most expertise in, and there’s some areas of things we do that have more expertise and some that have less in those areas that have less expertise, we’re not going to be able to bridge that gap as well between sales and delivery if we don’t have that. At the highest expertise possible in our delivery team.
So that can also make a difference in just bridging that gap, but we’ve also put a lot of processes in place just to help those two areas of the company talk to each other. So, you know, one of the things I really want to make sure is when the sales team sells something that they, the passing of that baton from the sales team to operations.
is critical. And I know that when you and I were working together on that, I think that you thought that was pretty helpful. The process we had, Oh, no question about it. I think one of the things that you really brought to our partnership from a business perspective was that understanding of the operations and delivery.
And of course, Again, as I’ve said many times and will again, my brain tends to oversimplify things. So when I was looking at that transition, it all just made sense to me because of course, I’d already talked to the customer and I knew what they wanted. So it would just have made sense that by osmosis, everybody around me would know when that wasn’t a reasonable assumption to make whatsoever.
And one of the things you really taught me through that was the importance of that transparent communication right up front. And I think what I’ve learned from that, in particular, was that we were able to, as a team, as a larger team then, Avoid so many problems by being more transparent and be spending just a little bit more time up front, communicating the details and in my mind, giving your delivery team the opportunity to ask questions.
That admittedly drove me nuts because I’m like, why do you need all this detail? And we can figure it out later because of course I’ve always got things I want to do now. It never has to do with it now. Oh yeah. But yeah, that was always my kind of modus operandi. It was my default is we’ll figure it out later if I can.
And I’m going to. Pick on Congress for a minute. If you’re the U S I would have been a perfect congressman because I’m all for kicking the can down the road when it comes to making those tough decisions. Not because I don’t want to make them, but because I just don’t want to put the brainpower into them at that time.
And you really taught me again, that it’s less brainpower, it’s less time and it’s less angst for the internal team and the client, if we can just discuss a couple of those things up front and then. With the systems that you put in place, we won’t dig in today. We could do all the other podcasts just on the systems that you put in place.
But it reminds me, you and I meant to talk about this in the last week, about 20 years ago, I remember I bought when I had no money, but I bought a seminar. It was put on by Tony Robbins and somebody else. And the whole gist of the entire thing was you need repeatable processes in order to grow a business successfully.
And I heard the message, it didn’t necessarily totally digested at the time, but it’s been amazing as I look back over the last 20 years, how that message of creating those repeatable processes has continued to be reinforced. And every time that you’ve really helped me do that, the business has been successful.
Every time when I’ve ignored that, it’s caused pain and suffering at some level, sometimes mine, sometimes for other people, because we didn’t have those repeatable processes. Yeah, just, it’s so enlightening as we talk about it and I look back on it, and now I think it makes more sense to me than it ever has.
So looking back, it’s like, why did I have such a hard time figuring this out? That’s a really good question that I can not answer, but I can say that just setting clear expectations and communicating is that over communicating is really huge. We did something simple. Like we had what we call the new client to amaze form that we use to this day, where the sales rep would enter in all the key information about the client, about what they wanted, about what we’re supposed to deliver.
And it was based off questions that our team, the operations team, had on a regular basis. Then they’d end up asking you the same questions every single time. So we captured those questions, put them in a form, and then that would also be the milestone or the kickoff for the project. So then that just triggered all sorts of other things through project management, like setting the, the kickoff meeting with the client, which is also another huge part of setting expectations and passing the baton.
That, that new client to AmazeFarm was just. Was huge. And then the proposal and you had put together a very good proposal and we use a variation of that still today. And then on top of that, we had to have a time estimator. So if we’re doing a project. And right this minute, I’m thinking of more when we did our website projects, they weren’t ongoing, but they were just one and done.
Uh, there were very specific hours allotted to the amount of money that was being spent from the client. And so that was laid out. How many was going, how much time was going to be devoted to design, to development, to plugin configuration, how much through internal revisions. Client revisions, review meetings, the go live, responsiveness, just this long list of things that would need to be done, but passing that information also along to the operation team help, but from a sales standpoint, just even having a clear cut list of what your services are and what Aspects or components or features were part or included and were extra.
And again, we could take information that both the sales team and the operations team had from clients, what their requests were and what we had sold in the past. And we could build that together and just having that time and those ties. That brings me to my one more. that payment, that you know, just something to just be open and, to grow that business together for the teams to talk about it and to come up with something that both sides could buy into made a world of difference.
And from there, it was just a lot of setting expectations with the client, letting them know what, telling them what they’re going to get, showing them what they’re going to get. Repeating this is what you’re going to get and then touching base with them on a regular time, a regular basis to update them on what they’re getting makes a huge difference.
You were reading a book or talking recently about overcommunication. You want to talk a little bit about that, the idea of overcommunication? Boy, you got to be, you’ve caught me flat footed here. I’m trying to remember what that was. Can you give me some? Wasn’t it? Oh, it was a client retention stuff. Yes.
And just. The fact that we need to, I think it’s business people in general, and probably maybe even more on an operational standpoint, and I could be wrong, but we think that people understand what we’re doing and therefore we don’t communicate what we’re doing. And that causes a lot of issues with client retention on a long term basis because we, in the background, may be working fervently to provide value to the client, but we’re not communicating that to the client.
We’re not letting them know. Reminds me of Something I was taught years ago, which is in my sales training, if you’re going to do someone a favor, always tell them you’re doing them a favor, not because you want something out of it, but if you’re going to move heaven and earth to make sure a client’s happy, let them know that you’re doing that so that they know how much you appreciate them and you value their business, because if you don’t, They’re just going to assume it was no big deal.
And if you made this Herculean effort, you want to always do that even more. Yes, you’re right. Josh Nelson taught in his book. It’s right over my shoulder here in client retention. Most of client retention, there’s obviously a component to delivering what you said you were going to do, but the vast majority of client.
Retention has to do with communication with your client and making sure that you’re communicating to them what’s happening and where they’re at and, and telling them things that often seem, duh, of course I’m doing this, but the client doesn’t, as your example, they don’t build a new website every day. So they don’t understand the process.
They don’t know what to expect. They don’t know where things are going. And so all of a sudden you’re going, okay, we’re walking down our step. We may have great internal processes, but if we don’t give the client an update. Then they don’t know what we’re doing and they wonder, and then they’re they doing anything at all.
And we may be fervently working for them behind the scenes, but they need to be told. Um, that reminds me of something that we implemented at Valor Circle. I don’t know how many years ago, it was a long time, but I remember you and I had a conversation about this. And it was as we were going through web projects at the time.
What was a reasonable communication schedule? For the delivery team to have with the client, because we even ran into it. The delivery team was doing a great job. They weren’t necessarily giving regular updates to our clients and. Especially with delays that happen. It’s amazing how fast a month can go by.
And all of a sudden you realize you’ve never really updated the client and what you’re doing. And that caused us some issues and some pain. Can you maybe describe how we did that and what we ended up coming up with a solution? Cause I think that was a really good collaboration between. Sales and operations when we identified a problem there.
What we did is we basically had a spreadsheet with all of the client projects that were currently open. So the websites we were working on, and we had key information in that spreadsheet, including notes that then there was an internal project management meeting with the key people involved internally.
So that could be updated every week. And then every two weeks we would send an update. Either via email or a phone call, telling the client where they were within that website project. Were we waiting on something from the client? Are they waiting on us? Are we in the middle of? The design, the development, where are we in the process?
And of course, we had it laid out. Very specifically, the different aspects or segments of the project, different timeline, the timeline as well. And so we would communicate with them at least every two weeks. Now, often there were other communications in there as well. Maybe. The client would have a question or maybe would have a client or question for the client.
So there would be other communication, but we always made sure that we gave them an update every two weeks. And I think that was really critical because sometimes we were waiting on something from the client and they forgot we were waiting on it, or they thought they were waiting on something from us.
So we’d never, we never wanted to go longer than that two weeks without some sort of touch point with the client to ensure that they knew. What was going on? It certainly helped with our client retention and our client satisfaction at that point. It made a big difference. And I remember at the time thinking, wow, we’ve just got to communicate what we all took for granted, but the client obviously not being part of those meetings.
They didn’t know that there was discussions happening almost daily about their project. And there was work happening daily on their project because they weren’t privy to that. And, and. Yeah, just that communication was so critical. Absolutely. Absolutely. And while the client retention is more of an operational requirement or responsibility, setting that up for success is really done by the sales team at the beginning.
When you meet somebody, that first impression, that’s really the sales team. Often our clients would develop a relationship with the sales rep as they were working together to try to close this deal to meet that client’s needs. And I think there would be a little bit of a confidant feel there. And so then when this whole group of people led by a project manager would step in and the sales rep would have to hand them over.
That had to be done very deliberately through the project management meeting. So we had a kickoff meeting, excuse me, project kickoff meeting. And I would literally use the term passing the baton. So here is who you have been working with. We’re going to pass the baton from sales to our project manager, who is X.
It’s either myself or Rhonda or, or. Hope and make it very clear. And then right there at that meeting, that sales rep would be in that meeting to reassure them that if there was ever any problem, they could still reach out to the sales rep so they didn’t feel like they were just left off. These foreign people.
And you want to keep that goodwill that you’ve got going on. So many times the sales rep would step back in if there was ever an issue. Based on scope or maybe halfway through the process, the client would want something added to the package, added to the project, added to whatever services we were doing.
At that point, it was the sales rep’s responsibility to go back and talk to the client about that. And so that took a lot of Communication between the operations team and the sales rep and when you’ve got each other’s back and you feel good that they’re working together and that that sales reps going to do what’s best for the client, but also what’s best for the team because that’s going to make that raving fan occur.
Uh, it just makes the whole scenario much more supportive where we’re not working. You know, against each other, but we’re working together with each other. In fact, you mentioned earlier the over communicating. I’m sorry not to cut you off there, but you mentioned how you would, you need to really point out to the client we were doing something for them.
So that they would know, I remember you used that several times, actually, when we did have those scenarios where something was sold that this is going to cause us a lot of extra hours. And if we decide to absorb it, you would go back to the client and say, Hey, this was an oversight on our part. This really should be extra money.
This wasn’t included, but we’re going to go ahead and do it for you this time. And you would use that as a way to actually have them end up feeling really good about the situation. No, absolutely. I think it’s a good example of that. Yeah. I’ve been known to more than once, probably over promise or oversimplify what we were going to deliver.
And that meant I had to often, I used to say I had to, but the team was going to have to invest more time than what we had originally thought. And again, in my mind, that’s like doing a favor for a customer. We were going to do it. I committed to it. There was not a, in my mind, at least in most of those cases, if I committed to it, I was the founder.
We were going to follow through on that and again, that caused a few issues, especially since you own the company and I didn’t, but it was, we worked through that, but I, yeah, I’d go back to the customer at that point and go, Hey guys, I want to let you know, I screwed up. And here’s what happened, and because I told you we’re going to do it, we are going to do it.
We’re good for our word, we’re going to carry through on it. At the same point, yes, I wanted them to know that it had been a mistake that was going to benefit them. And that we were going to maintain our integrity and deliver based upon that. And an amazing thing happened in the process is that in almost every scenario, they then felt, as you said, more gratitude for the fact that we were doing what we should have done anyway, which was stood up for what I committed to do.
But now we were getting credit for going above and beyond. When they knew that other vendors may very well have said, oops, we screwed up. We can’t do that. And that made a huge difference. So, well, you were always good at turning lemons into lemonade. And we always knew that we could count on you to go back and talk to the client and make them feel heard and also end up getting the benefit for both sides.
So it was a win situation. That’s why we called you the client whisperer. We knew we could count on Jonathan to go back to the client. And to fix these situations where at the very least, we wanted to end up with a rating fan. We didn’t want to lose that. And so sometimes we’d sacrifice some things internally.
But what happened then, as you may recall, we had website debriefs. And I think quarterly we would meet. And we would go through all of the websites, the whole team, everyone who was involved and talk about what went right on a particular project, what went wrong, and we’d do this analysis, this measurable, and we’d figure out how to avoid that in the future.
And that also built trust then because then the sales reps felt like they had some control over not having that happen again. And then the operations team really felt like that they had some ways to speak into avoiding that in the future. And that it just made everything better. It made everything smoother because we came up with processes and ways to avoid situations that had caused us angst in the back and the past.
So then. We felt like it was worth it because we were becoming better at what we do. No, no doubt about it. Beth, one of the questions you had on here that I think would really be a benefit to our audience is, what advice would we give to business owners who are striving to bridge these gaps or similar gaps between Sales and delivery or sales and operation based on your experience and working with a very hard headed and opinionated sales guy, that would be me, by the way, if anybody’s wondering what advice would you have for business owners, entrepreneurs, or even just that maybe project managers who are trying to figure out how do I get the sales team on the same side that I am understanding that they, you do want the same thing at the end of the day, how would you recommend they, they begin that process or.
Any tips that you could give them? Sure. From the business owner’s standpoint, I think one of the first things that you need to do is to price yourself according to your worth, the focus on value, not just hours, because sometimes as your processes become more efficient. You have learned things and put hours into learning something in the past, but you should still be paying for that at a higher level.
So you need to value yourself and price yourself according to what you’re really worth and the value that you’re bringing to your clients. I also think that as you’re bringing on clients that you need to make sure that you’re taking on clients that are going to trust you as the expert in the service area that you’re providing for them.
If you’re talking to them or the sales rep is talking to them, And the client just wants to do it their way and they want to lead you instead of the other way around. I strongly recommend not taking on those clients because they’re going to be miserable. They’re not going to, they’re not going to follow your advice.
They’re going to end up unhappy. It’s just not going to, you’re not going to work well. So I also think you need to set really clear expectations of what you’re providing to the client and what results they can expect from you. That can be through a proposal, uh, but it shouldn’t just happen once. It should happen multiple times.
There have to be multiple touch points. Throughout the life of whatever the services you’re providing to the client needs to be regular. This is what we’re doing for you. This is what you’re getting and you need to share then the results of that. Really literally over communicate what’s going on because you may have it in your mind.
Like this is a duh situation, but remember you’re the expert. All the fancy words you can walk the walk and talk the talk. The person who you’re doing the service for, if they could do it as well as you, they wouldn’t have hired you in the first place. So make sure you’re communicating with them about what you’re doing.
And then the last thing that I would suggest is really to measure their happiness. So are they satisfied? Have conversations with them. Regularly follow up to see what the temperature of that client is. And that will give you a lot of information about how you’re doing or anything. Tweaks you might have to make in the trajectory of the services you’re offering.
I think that’s really good advice and i’d like to add one thing into it that I know is really important from the sales team perspective and chances are if if you’re having this Difficulty as in my mind at least as a business owner is there’s a lack of trust between your sales team and your delivery team The sales team is going to be believing that the delivery team just doesn’t get it.
Uh, or something along those lines. And you need to work to build that trust to let both sides know they’re on the same team and they actually are rowing the boat in the same direction, even if they’ve got slightly different styles. Because at least for our working relationship, Beth, I know once I came to that understanding and once I really did trust that the team, the whole team.
One of the same things that I did for the customer, wanted to serve them well, wanted to provide them with tons of value. It became so much easier to actually deliver that for the client because we weren’t that arguing with each other internally. We were collaborating and trying to figure out how did we accomplish that goal together?
Absolutely. That’s excellent. I completely agree. 100%. And if you’re new to the podcast, that doesn’t always happen. We like it when we agree how to I know you’re right. You’re taking my line. Actually, that used to be what I would always say, which is, we’d just get along so much better if you just realized I was right.
Unfortunately, when you have two partners and they both believe that statement of themselves, it does occasionally cause for just a bit of consternation here and there. But as, as one of my favorite verses in the Bible says, iron sharpens iron and makes us stronger. And if you have people you’re working with, I encourage you to find people that are willing to challenge you because it will make you stronger as well.
And I know just speaking of the partnership Beth and I have had, Beth has made me a much stronger person and a much better business person by not hesitating to challenge me when it was needed to do. And I know that is, as again, Yielded benefits, not only to me personally, but to the clients I deal with as well.
And vice versa, Jonathan, I definitely have learned a lot from you, from the sales perspective, which of course. You know, from an operations person, I’m logical, factual. I just want to get it done, get it done. I’m not always thinking about the emotional tie that a, and both the sales rep, but even more importantly, the client has to what we’re doing.
And then you gotta take that into consideration. No, I think that’s very wise. Do you want to wrap things up for us today, Beth? And I did the intro. You want to tell everybody what’s next and where we go? Sure. If you like what we have here, please do hit our just subscribe button. We’d love you for you to join us.
We’re going to have another podcast for you very soon. In fact, next time we’re going to be talking about personality assessments and really getting to know your partner, getting to know your team member, and then being able to understand what they need when you’re communicating and when you’re working together.
So I’m super excited about that because that’s definitely a passion of mine. So, we thank you for joining us today. Thank you, Jonathan. And we hope to see you all again very soon. Thanks, everybody.
Thanks, everybody.
