Insightly_Ep04_final
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Alyssa: [00:00:00] Welcome back everybody. Thanks for, you stuck with us through three episodes

now we're number four.

It is, but I'm really excited for this one because this is a different format than we've ever,

Jordan: than we've ever done before

Alyssa: in our first

Jordan: We're doing this for years.

Alyssa: But we thought this kind of switching it up and talking less at you and more with you about a real world example would be fun but the extra reason it's going to be fun is because I have put [00:01:00] together a use case, a client that maybe Jordan and I both would work with, but Jordan does not know the details of this said use case. She's going in blind, and we're going to get some raw feedback and thoughts on this use case from her so you'll know that she's legit after this episode.

Jordan: Let's hope. I'm a little nervous.

Alyssa: You are? Why? You can show us what you're made of.

Jordan: I just really want to impress you, Alyssa.

Alyssa: Oh, well, you've already done that. So impress the audience now.

Jordan: Oh, great, thank you!

Alyssa: Okay. So I'm going to start by walking through a high level kind of brief,

Jordan: okay. I'm ready.

Alyssa: And then we'll jump into some questions and go from there.

Jordan: Okay,

Alyssa: so a client comes to us. This company is a professional services business.

Their name is Dynamic Consultants.

Jordan: Super cute.

Alyssa: Because they're very dynamic. They're doing about 40 million in revenue, so pretty sizable. They have a good staff about 75 [00:02:00] people and a lot of their employees are made up consultants. So Dynamic Consultants specializes in providing IT consulting services specifically to healthcare and manufacturing.

That's kind of their niches of specialty. On top of that they do software development, system integration, and cybersecurity.

Jordan: Well rounded.

Alyssa: Yes. when you play in that space, I feel like you kind of touch a lot of different things. So they have teams that kind of specialize in each of those areas and, yeah, they've really found their niche in healthcare and manufacturing. They work with their clients on a project basis, typically. So, a lot of times that is an implementation or a specific IT solution or an integration project and that's a fixed fee model, and then they move into a retainer if the customer wants them to manage, maintain what they've done.

Jordan: Okay.

Alyssa: Now what they're coming [00:03:00] to us saying is that they're having trouble retaining their health care clients past the initial project. So they're doing a lot of one off projects, and then they're losing them or dropping off or

Jordan: Their not turning into the retainer

Alyssa: Right, no. And then secondly, they want more manufacturing clients, but they don't know

what to do or how to move forward.

Jordan: Is manufacturing a segment or a focus where they're seeing the project implementation plus the ongoing retainer?

Alyssa: Yes, but there's a few of them,

Jordan: Okay. And so they see opportunity to grow that.

Alyssa: and they don't know much more than just, we would like more of them.

Jordan: We like that too.

Alyssa: Yeah and they're doing pretty much everything in HubSpot.

Jordan: When you say they're doing everything in HubSpot, what does that

mean?

Alyssa: So they're using it as their CRM, so they're documenting from lead capture all the way through closed one there. Their sales people are [00:04:00] using it to take notes, to input meetings, all that type of stuff. They're also using it for the marketing side of the house, marketing automation emails. All that stuff. They don't really have much other, many other platforms, like they try to put everything in HubSpot. So I think they're using it pretty robustly.

Jordan: That's great. Yeah. So the, it seems like they're using the full suite and you mentioned that on the CRM and sales side, they are tracking their full user journey from that lead capture all the way to the closed one and then as they're continuing that client relationship, do they have any, like, do they have the integration for like IT customer service type inquiries or like IT tickets and things like that also coming those ongoing?

Alyssa: Their using Zendesk for all of their support tickets and that integrates with Hubspot.

Jordan: So in this scenario, our goals for reviewing and helping to identify what [00:05:00] they should do next is they want to increase their ability for healthcare clients to become ongoing consulting agreements through those retainers beyond just that initial project implementation and then the second one is identify more manufacturing clients that look like their current ones to grow that segment.

Alyssa: Yes, and I will add on the first one they also want to know the health care clients are not

going anywhere past the projects.

Jordan: Okay, that's a question that I have as well. In their client or company profiles, are they, capturing any attributes or, I guess the better question is, when somebody ends an agreement with them or the project comes to a completion, are they doing any follow up strategy or a check in review to see how things are going and to ask them if additional support is needed?

Alyssa: so they typically are doing like an off boarding call where they're handing [00:06:00] over the project fully to the internal team, the internal IT team but they don't have a follow up after that to

Jordan: So something I wonder is in that offboarding, are they already identifying an upsell value to continue a relationship or is it purely just to check in to see how things are going for the client now that the project has been implemented?

Alyssa: I think it's more of, how is it going, is there anything broken? Not so much, it doesn't seem like whoever's running those is strategically thinking about cross sell, upsell. Moving towards a longer, greater customer lifetime value.

Jordan: You mentioned earlier that the consulting teams each have their own specialties, so are there a set of consultants that are dedicated to healthcare, a set of consultants dedicated to manufacturing, and they split it in that way?

Alyssa: No, it's not industry split, it's [00:07:00] technical specialty split.

Jordan: Okay so then in theory, manufacturing clients and healthcare clients go through a very similar like prospecting journey regardless.

Alyssa: Yeah they want an IT solution, whether they're manufacturing or healthcare, they're working with the same team.

Jordan: Okay, so then I go to the start of the user journey when they're prospecting before, as they're starting to qualify that lead, what attributes are they capturing about that prospect's needs to know, not just what project are they needing to implement right now, but to help them identify why manufacturing clients need ongoing consulting versus why healthcare clients don't.

Alyssa: So, what they're capturing is, you know, your basic attributes, and they are asking about their long term IT goals.

I will say that I think there's a, which I think caused this problem, there's somewhat of a shortcoming of, looking long term with the client. It's very much focused on

~ ~what do you need?

How can we help you? [00:08:00] And I think just kind of assuming once they do good work for them

Jordan: That they continue it forward. Okay. So, just based off of this conversation so far, that's what I think needs to really be explored because even though they've had a few manufacturing clients that have continued forward right now, it's an assumption that manufacturing would be the best industry to grow that type of relationship with but there's opportunity to look at the success points and why that carried forward and that is like, to me, where you start is really reviewing the sales journey and maybe shadowing on some of those calls to understand, okay, how is that like, the project off boarding. What does that look like? What is the conversation? What kind of questions are you asking? But then also starting from the point of the starting prospecting process where you're identifying what their needs are.

With that, we can start to identify some attributes to see, okay, maybe it's not an industry specific focus. Maybe it's [00:09:00] really a needs focus or a needs attribute that allows us to understand that this project may come to an end, but there is a need for maybe ongoing consulting or review or check ins down the line to see if scalability is needed or other solutions are needed or a phased approach to something. Some of the services that you mentioned between like development and software and cybersecurity, those are very different skill sets for very different needs within a company

and so then outside of just understanding that prospect to qualified lead, and then lead to client and then closed business or project close, we need to then like scale it out and see based on the services and our expertise, where is it that we actually provide the most value?

And how would we extend our sales journey? So we also have to kind of figure out what's the business model for [00:10:00] ongoing retainer and why is the retainer agreement itself valuable for the company?

Alyssa: And I would be curious too with, if we look at, we talked before about revenue analytics and combining CRM data with accounting. If we took a deep dive, look at

where the healthcare clients are coming in, where the manufacturing clients are coming in, how much are they, well, not only what service mix are they doing, what project are they starting with?

Do a compare contrast, like if you cohort the healthcare clients with the manufacturing clients and just do a little analysis of where are they starting and maybe it's the project itself that lends itself to a more natural retainer model.

I don't know how you would adjust,

because it could be needs based, right?

Like, the healthcare needs this project, but how do you transition them to retainer more easily?

Jordan: Yeah, I like your point about cohorting both of these industry focuses together to see, like, what are the [00:11:00] common themes that make just a successful relationship, even if it is project based and it ends there.

Kind of taking the anomalies of, okay, those that have carried forward with us, what were those reasons? Do they not have a team member internally that can manage these projects ongoing? for having me. Is that something we can identify early on in the process? If that is one of the reasons, let's say that's not again, necessarily meaning that that's manufacturing specific.

That means then we need to go and segment new leads based off of, or target new leads based off of, a company type has these needs internally for IT services and they do not have a CIO, CTO type of individual that is going to oversee these projects after we walk out of the door. So if you can know that and who is in the company structure early on, that actually makes for an easier prospecting and qualification because if your goal is to just increase [00:12:00] it to the ongoing retainer.

Then you have to identify the right client makeup for that but otherwise, if you are working with a company that has an internal team, but they need outside support so that, maybe they're tapped into capacity. They still have to direct it. They need to get it done. It's their budget that they're managing.

And maybe they also need to stretch their skillset a little bit to an expert in one of these services. In that case, maybe the end project date really is. where your journey ends, but then you can funnel it out and I know in future episodes, we're going to talk about how data drives innovation and like product offerings and whatnot.

But this is where my brain goes next maybe if you're not finding opportunities to carry forward, maybe you just don't have that product or that relationship type that makes sense for your opportunity. So do you need to explore your service mix to create a service offering that adds that value ongoing.[00:13:00]

Alyssa: And maybe it's, it is a promotional offer where they start with the implementation and then they get their first month of managed services free or something that kind of allows the customer to easily say yes, to move into, oh, the managed services actually is super value add and helpful but I, I would also think that at the size of clients that they're working with, they probably don't have internal bandwidth to maybe take this on and maybe that's a differentiation between the manufacturing and the healthcare, depending on the size of those types of companies is that an easy handoff and maybe it's just like, hey, the healthcare clients are really big in size and they have the capacity. They're just going to take that on and you just have to make sure that the profit, or the project is really profitable.

Jordan: Right, exactly.

Alyssa: If it's not, and you're going to have way less percentage of conversion to retainer, then how are we adding as much value and as much profit margin into those projects as possible?

Yeah

Jordan: and when you're talking about a situation like that, like [00:14:00] typically you don't think that like sales and marketing type tactics really help influence that profitability, but that's where then if you're noticing the healthcare segment just does not yet have that opportunity for the ongoing consultation that presents an opportunity to, one, explore what does that client relationship look like now?

Are you putting a lot of, you know, team bandwidth into touch points that could be automated and actually work a lot more efficiently for the client side and the company side. So automate those things that then turns your energy into other places, maybe taking on a little bit more volume of clients that you're serving in that case.

The other opportunity that I see is this is a sales and marketing's chance to really partner and interview these types of clients and like really strengthen that offboarding process to capture insights that aren't just answering the question of why do you not need ongoing consulting, but [00:15:00] asking questions to provide data that allows you to think about other products and services in the future.

So again, let's use the assumption that maybe we find the common attribute is they have teams that can support these tools and services that you're implementing for them. Maybe you have an offering that gives like a bi annual check in or like a security checkup or something like that, that keeps that relationship going.

But how can you use that relationship to get good feedback, to identify what other services are you not finding for your industry, or maybe you've tried that didn't work with other providers that you could easily bring in in the future.

Alyssa: If they started capturing that on, and off boarding or that type of a scenario, I

could imagine a super cool matrix that they could use

Jordan: knew your brain was doing that while I was talking about that.[00:16:00]

Alyssa: Because so typically we've done like a profitability matrix, but this could be even just like a customer and service mix matrix where you could really dive deep and analyze the mixture and the industry and you know, what they started with, what they moved to, what they stopped with, like to really pull out some trends and patterns that I think you're right, could really help you innovate in product offerings,

Jordan: like, I mean, let's say that over the course of a year, you're really tracking that those kind of attributes within customer profiles and in that year, maybe your strategy is we're going to be more focused on making our process more efficient and increase our profitability on these types of projects.

And then next year, we're going to beta test service mixes based off of real life feedback that we've gotten from real life customers that have already worked with us. Who are going to be more likely to allow us to try out new products and services on them in the future because they've already had a [00:17:00] relationship with us.

Alyssa: Yeah, so based on everything we've said, if this customer came to you and said, where should we start? What would you say?

Jordan: Well I think a lot of the questions that we just bantered back and forth, like that discovery and analysis of what do we have to work with right now to test some of these desires and assumptions. Like, that is always where we need to start. Let's discover, let's analyze, and let's really get clear on, are the goals that we're trying to achieve the right goals based on the data that we have to work with right now? Start there, but if some of our assumptions are accurate based on what we talked about today, I think that next place that you go is, okay, let's identify a segment that we can grow so maybe it's we put more of our focus into the manufacturing to the ongoing relationship while we're activating a test and learning opportunity in the healthcare segment to [00:18:00] really figure out where our profitability and our ongoing relationship could go.

So I think like that discovery has to happen first and then from there you develop the strategy that makes sense to maybe not completely solve for your goal but starts to identify those milestones that you need to achieve in order to get to that goal.

Alyssa: I thought it was interesting what you said is to validate what they say that they want is actually what is most strategic.

Jordan: Yeah, I think that's really important. Like, I mean, I want things in my own business too, but when you think about the capacity that you have, the budget that you have, you have to pour your energy into the right places or, because if you don't, then what's gonna end up happening is that you're gonna pull the plug and then just go to the next thing that make, that feels good or you're going to find yourself like stuck in, you know, wondering, [00:19:00] is this the right move? Or why is it not working when you haven't really fully aligned where your opportunity is yet,

Alyssa: Yeah, and I think too that a lot of times the goals that make sense are it's like more revenue drive to longer customer engagements or more lifetime value. Which I think are all good but I think a lot of times those can be based off gut and assumptions and not based on the data and so I think a lot of times it's helping companies not say, oh, you're wrong.

These are totally invalid assumptions, but how can we look at what you've already done, at what your data says, at what your customers are saying and doing, and how can we, like you said, align that with your capacity and your budget and all the things that are limiting factors.

But I think that that can be, I don't wanna go on a tangent on this, but I think that can be hard because as service providers,

you just wanna do what the client or customer comes to you asking

Jordan: provide [00:20:00] value. Yeah, and you're always looking for ways, like, I mean, the scenario that you just described for the IT services, that's totally bonfire strategy as well, we have project based work that have, pretty fixed costs associated to them because we've done it a lot, so we know what it's going to cost, and, but then our, you know, more enjoyable accounts, we get to go beyond that project based and go into more ongoing relationships because then we're more ingrained in their team and more ingrained in the goals that they're trying to achieve and so then we all just get greater together.

But when you're looking at it from like that, from the initial goal perspective and trying to grow different segments, something that I always talk to clients about when we're going through that discovery phase and we're talking about what are our business goals, like what are our revenue goals, I always follow it up with asking them why.

Why do we need to achieve that? Why is this important to our company?

Why do we [00:21:00] feel that's the right direction to go? Because sometimes gut reactions are accurate, but if you don't have the context, you might be missing a lot of details. And so we all need to increase sales, but why? Maybe it's because you're actually trying to stand up a new product line, but you need that additional capital in order to reinvest into your company. Maybe you have to build a certain segment up because you have experts on staff right now that aren't yet at capacity.

So there's reasons why behind this and I think if you don't even, if you don't align that even to the goal when you're testing these assumptions, then you miss a lot of the picture of like why people are so adamant about that thing.

Alyssa: Yeah, I just couldn't help but laugh because I feel like that's kind of a therapy or

coaching question.

Jordan: Yeah!

Alyssa: so it's like you're almost like a marketing therapist.

therapist.

Jordan: A little bit, yeah.

Alyssa: Because I've had coaches ask me like so why is that important to you and it really makes you step back and say yeah why does this matter? Are we [00:22:00] just growing to grow? Do we wanna keep grow this customer segment just 'cause

Jordan: Well, I mean, it makes sense though, right? Because any entrepreneur that you meet, any business owner or business leader that you meet, yeah, they're in it because they have a great career out of the deal but nine times out of 10, these are human beings that really care about what they do and really care about the clients that they serve.

If you've got to wake up every day and go somewhere for 40 plus hours a week, you might as well love what you do and so if you're not just like dreaming in the middle of the night about like, I think we should do this with the company because you're like, you're not doing it because you think it's like fun. Like you're really ingrained in it. ~ ~

Alyssa: This took a turn towards a why we're in business conversation, but I love it.

So if Dynamic Consultants is out there somewhere and you're listening to this, and this is your use case, we hope this was helpful to you but I, I do [00:23:00] hope that it can mirror some similar objectives that a lot of businesses out there do have. You know, wanting to grow specific segments or wanting to increase the longevity of a client engagement.

I picked those because I felt like they're very common. No matter what industry or vertical you're in, we all want to engage with clients longer. We all want to increase revenue and just to showcase, the nuances and the questions and the strategy that comes, behind that.

Jordan: It's a silver bullet. Like, these might be very common scenarios, but there's not one silver bullet that is going to work for every single business that's in that zone and so, I think, like, that's where, the reason why I like going through these use cases, because everybody, you've just been invited to like Alyssa and I's brain on like a normal Thursday afternoon or something but the reason why I like going through these use cases is because it really does show you that you have to be an explorer when you're trying to answer some of these questions and it just validates the [00:24:00] importance of having that data culture internally and getting to know your customers in a way that allows you to be more effective for them in the future, which also helps you grow your business.

Alyssa: Yes, 100%. So we will leave it at that. If you have any questions regarding this use case or want us to walk through another use case, Send us your ideas at our email. Hello at insightlypodcast. com. We would love to gather your questions and do a mailbag episode or a real live use case. We can anonymize it, whatever comes to your brain.

We'd love to hear from you. So we'll catch you on the next episode.

Jordan: Thank you!