What You Should Actually Measure to Have Better Closing Rates [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 51]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy.

Connor DeLaney
0:00:00
As business owners, you're likely spending too much time on surface level issues, but instead you need to be focusing on...

Alex Winter
0:00:17
Welcome back to Endless Customers. I'm Alex Winter and today we are joined by Connor Delaney, who is the lead sales consultant here at Impact. Connor, welcome back to the show.

Connor DeLaney
0:00:25
Thanks, buddy.

Alex Winter
0:00:26
Happy to be here. I'm pumped that you're here. I love having you on the show. We always have great conversations and we're gonna have a good one today. Today's a big one, we're talking about closing rates.

Alex Winter
0:00:34
But I really wanna talk high level and get into the idea of how we help businesses grow and that closing rates is a piece of that puzzle but the growth overall is really the important characteristic of it and how you set teams up for success

Alex Winter
0:00:48
and the mindset shift and like all those pieces. So how do we want to kick this off? Where's like a good place to start here for you?

Connor DeLaney
0:00:54
Yeah, well, you know, when you bring up closing rates, I think the initial reaction is like, yeah, we all want high closing rates. I think the broader part of our conversation today is around what are the different ways that businesses are seeking out success?

Connor DeLaney
0:01:10
And for me in the sales side of things, like yes, I wish I could close more deals. Yes, I also wish I had an unlimited amount of leads so that you have to play this delicate balance. And for some businesses, it is that balance that they need help with.

Connor DeLaney
0:01:23
But I think to zoom out, it's what does success mean for businesses? I think that's what we're really gonna focus in on today. And the perfect example, and maybe this is, let's start there. It's...

Alex Winter
0:01:36
I like that too, because it's like, let's really define what success is. Cause I think a lot of businesses don't do that. They just, you're trying to grow your, you get busy, which is hopefully the, that's what you want. But then like when you're busy, you just, you're just trying to go, go, go. And you don't really define some of these things that are so critical for your

Connor DeLaney
0:01:51
business. Yeah. And for, for a lot of business owners, especially when they come to us. So I'll use impact as the example, like when they come and they chat with me, a lot of them start with, here's where we are today, which is exactly what I want to be talking about. What's going on today? What's working? What's not working? And for a lot of them, they say, we're not getting enough leads right now. And you want to, you

Connor DeLaney
0:02:12
know, the initial reaction is, we can help get more leads. But that's not actually what we want to talk about. Instead, it's, okay, why not? Or, what does more leads look like? You know, I go one of those two directions, but based on the emotion that they're coming, and we're gonna talk a lot about the emotional side of selling and how do you get someone to have that

Connor DeLaney
0:02:31
emotional reaction to that conversation, we'll dive into that. But where it typically starts is, let's say they say, I need more leads. I say, okay, how many more leads do you need? And then you start to quantify things,

Connor DeLaney
0:02:42
and it forces them to think, because the default reaction for most business owners is to say, we need more business opportunities to close more business. Sometimes that's the case, and we'll find out if it is. Other times it's, well, we get enough leads,

Connor DeLaney
0:02:58
but we close at a garbage rate, like we were talking about close rates earlier. But then there's the third option, which I think is where most business owners and most business leaders don't think, because there's very surface-level answers,

Connor DeLaney
0:03:10
which is we're not closing enough, we're not bringing enough business in. But then it's, let's talk about the difference between, is your team, do you have the right people in place? Do you have the right systems? Do you have the right frameworks?

Connor DeLaney
0:03:23
Do you have the right processes in place that allow you to get the end results that you need? When you start digging into those challenges, that's when you really get into the nitty gritty of things and you start talking about real problems. Not the surface level stuff, but the stuff

Connor DeLaney
0:03:38
that drives a business to be successful or not Not just do we have a sales team that works, right?

Alex Winter
0:03:43
And how do we get more volume in because I hear that too and I'm not a sales professional But I do hear all the time like we need more leads and especially in the digital marketing space It's like leads leads leads leads But sometimes the translation is really like you might have enough leads But your closing rates might not be great or the people that are trying to have these conversations Like those points that you're bringing up are really good points of like digging a little bit deeper. So as you have these

Alex Winter
0:04:03
conversations you're talking to a business leader, maybe you're talking to the head of sales, CMO, how do you get them to, like how do you paint that picture and get them to start to have those like aha moments and not just have them being like I need this, go, go, go, go, go, go.

Connor DeLaney
0:04:17
Yeah. So where I always start is where are you today? So it always has to begin with what are we doing right now? So not only like we said, like quantify what today's success looks like, and we'll use easy numbers. Let's say we're getting 100 leads a month, you're getting 25 a week, whatever that, you know, the math. You start with, okay, that's working. Where are they coming from? You start to break down what channels, what levers are they pulling, what's working and what's not working. So they might say, we've got PPC going, we've got some organic

Connor DeLaney
0:04:47
and SEO, and then we've got some social stuff. And we start to ask, you know, if you're getting 25 a week, how many of those, what percentages are coming from each? And they say 20 are coming from PPC, five are coming from this, zero come from that. And you start to paint the picture for where are they today? You now have an understanding of the things they're doing,

Connor DeLaney
0:05:05
you have an idea of what's working and what's not working. As you start to dig into those, then you dig deeper of like, okay, so you're getting 20 leads from a pay-per-click campaign, how many of those become customers? Or how many of those book appointments to talk with you? And then now you're really digging into, is that actually working because one lead is up here. And then if they say, well we get probably two or three

Connor DeLaney
0:05:26
appointments from that, okay, that's 10%, that's not great. And then they say maybe one of those close. Now you're identifying, you're getting garbage leads, some of them come in and maybe book an appointment and then maybe one of those close. But then let's say they get, and again this sounds like I'm biased because obviously we like organic here, but let's say they get five organic leads and four of them book appointments. Now you're like okay, so now there's an 80% appointment, right? And maybe two of those close. So now

Connor DeLaney
0:05:53
you're telling me 40% of those leads that come from organic are closing, you just don't have the volume of those. So now we're redefining what the problem is because maybe they don't need more leads, maybe they need to shift their focus off of we're pumping a lot of money into pay-per-click and we're focusing on organic more because you've got better. And that's the difference where we start to dig in. The other story that I see happen a lot of times with these businesses is let's say they

Connor DeLaney
0:06:19
come in with a different challenge. Let's say they come in and they say, our website, it's not working. That's a really broad stroke statement. Our website isn't working. What's not working with it? What's working mean? There's so many different questions that you have to ask and you, and I say you as in like the salesperson, but also this is what a business owner should be asking

Connor DeLaney
0:06:40
themselves and I think that's the mindset shift that I want everyone listening to have is, well I can ask these questions as an outside third party, you're responsible as the business owner to step back and say, my initial instinct tells me my website's not working. What does working need to look like? Does it mean it's a revenue engine that tons of leads are coming in? How do I quantify that? How do I show what we like to call the gap?

Connor DeLaney
0:07:05
How do I show here's where we are right now, here's where I'd like to be, here's the difference. The stuff in between, the gap. Yeah, here's the in between. And how we bridge it, right? Right, and then you start figuring out what's possible for me to get there.

Connor DeLaney
0:07:18
What can I do myself? What can my team do? And then, where do I need help? Because then you're starting to think about filling gaps. And again, when we use the word gap, it's the difference, and you're trying to build the bridge.

Connor DeLaney
0:07:32
For a lot of business owners, they don't have the abilities in-house to actually do that. So instead of it being just a revenue gap, you need to think about how do I bridge it because that's the problem you're trying to solve is maybe you have you're at five million dollars of revenue here and you want to be at ten and you say how do I get to that five million, you have a five

Connor DeLaney
0:07:51
million dollar gap but the actual gap you have is I don't know how to get there. I'm struggling to fill that gap so how do I fill it? Because you can quantify it in terms of money you also have to quantify it in terms of the ability to do the work. Can I actually do this, or do I need someone's help to do it,

Connor DeLaney
0:08:10
or do I not have any idea how to do it? And that's where a lot of the conversations when they dig deeper start to get to is, yes, revenue, yes, leads, yes, close rate are all important things. What it typically comes down to is you lack the ability

Connor DeLaney
0:08:23
in-house to do the work to get you where you want to be.

Alex Winter
0:08:27
I like that you define it as the gap, too, because sometimes when you start to have these conversations, it can have a negative connotation. Like if you have a CEO or somebody that's working really hard, and they want to close some of these gaps, they might look at it as like they're failing,

Alex Winter
0:08:40
or it's a mistake, or it's a problem, or whatever. So it's also positioning it so that the mentality in the headspace is like, OK, this is tangible. There is a gap here, and I can bridge this gap, but I need to identify these key things in order to get there and in order to have a plan that I can work, right?

Alex Winter
0:08:57
Versus just being lost in the ether going like, I'm at five, I wanna go to 10, I don't know. I've been trying, I keep hitting the ceiling and I can't get out of it, so that's really fascinating for me, and also, so you were talking earlier, and this is just my own question, I'm off the cuff here.

Alex Winter
0:09:11
What happens when you talk to business leaders or people and they don't have any of this data? So you're like, where are your leads coming from? And they're like, I don't know, maybe my website. Do you have a CRM? Like, no, we don't have a CRM.

Alex Winter
0:09:24
What happens when you don't have some of this data? Because that sounds like you're talking to somebody who is plugged in and is at least trying to track some of these things, but I'm sure you have instances where people are just like, not even at that point yet and they're still at the beginning of their journey

Alex Winter
0:09:38
of like, hey, data is important too

Connor DeLaney
0:09:39
and this is how we start to make these decisions. Yeah, a lot of business owners, if you're a savvy business person, you can get to a certain point without needing that data. Like, instinct does exist in business, and I think there's no way to say,

Connor DeLaney
0:09:55
like, you don't need good business intellect or good business instinct to be successful. You typically will hit a wall where it's going to hinder you not to have this data. And that's actually, I've had a few conversations

Connor DeLaney
0:10:07
in the last couple of weeks with teams that maybe are functioning out of spreadsheets or they're functioning out of their inboxes, where they're not big enough to say, we need to invest in a CRM, but they're not small enough to say,

Connor DeLaney
0:10:19
I know every single deal that's coming in. And so as you're chatting with them, what I typically find is you need to, that becomes part of the gap, is how do we get to that next stage? You need to be able to quantify things.

Connor DeLaney
0:10:32
And it doesn't mean you need to go invest in a really expensive tool. Like, you know, some people, they go from a spreadsheet to maybe just a simple like data tracking, I'm trying to think of like the right example for it. It's like we use like a tool like ClickUp.

Connor DeLaney
0:10:48
Like I know businesses that can run their pipelines out of Trello, like Trello boards. Some businesses can run like that and that's the difference because it goes from in your head to visualized somewhere without you having to break the bank on it.

Connor DeLaney
0:11:01
Now there's other businesses where it's like I need the analytics to show where they're coming from and what their journey looks like on our website to then convert on like a contact us form or whatever. If you need that data, yeah, you're gonna have to invest some tools into it. But ideally you're at that point where you're saying this is gonna get me over the hump and get me to that next place.

Connor DeLaney
0:11:21
But as a business owner and if you're chatting with us, but again, even if you're just sitting there on your own and you're saying something's missing, a CRM or a tool or other, you know, again, that comes back to like systems, processes, people and tools. All of those things need to be in place and they're usually the biggest reason for that gap of if I can't get from A to B, it probably has to do with one of those four things,

Connor DeLaney
0:11:44
not being in the place that they need. And that doesn't mean you need to blow things up, it probably means you just need to make adjustments and incremental growth over time.

Alex Winter
0:11:54
Yeah, I know that makes sense. And it's part of growth. And when you're a kid and you're growing up, you have growing pains, right? And it's the same thing with businesses. And they're good problems to have,

Alex Winter
0:12:02
but at a certain point, as you start to scale and you start to think longer term and where you want the business to go, there's only so much you can do before you have to start to use some of these tools and start to really think bigger so that you can track all these things

Alex Winter
0:12:14
and really have the resources and the tools that you need for your team.

Connor DeLaney
0:12:16
Right, I mean, so you bring up the growth for it, and I think it's a good analogy for business. So when I was in sixth and seventh grade, I was really short, and short compared to a lot of the people I knew. And I'm skinny, I was like a small kid. I was probably like.

Alex Winter
0:12:33
Yeah, but you're tall now, I'm almost 6 foot and you got a couple inches on me.

Connor DeLaney
0:12:35
So I was probably like 5'1", 5'2", in 7th grade. And the summer, so about a four month jump from 7th to 8th grade, I grew nine inches. So I went from like 5'1", let's say, to like 5'10", in the summer. Everything hurt, my body could not hold up.

Connor DeLaney
0:12:53
I had stretch marks on my back, which I still kinda like, my whole body just extended and it was out of nowhere. And so I became this long, lanky kid and it's the same deal with businesses. You sometimes hit a point where you have rapid growth

Connor DeLaney
0:13:06
and everything gets stretched really thin. And it's the same feeling of now you need to, you gotta bulk up, you gotta eat more, you've gotta treat your body differently. It's the same feeling for business owners where sometimes you have that crazy summer

Connor DeLaney
0:13:20
or that crazy quarter where things grow really fast. And the thing you can't do is overload yourself because then your body's gonna freak out even more and then it's gonna try to revert back and then when you try to tighten things up, that's where you get hurt, that's where you get injured,

Connor DeLaney
0:13:35
that's where you just don't know what's happening like with your body, it's the same thing. You don't know what to do with your business because things are going so fast. So instead, it's how do you figure out, and I had to do a lot of this,

Connor DeLaney
0:13:46
and it's funny, it's a good analogy I haven't thought of before, but I had to do a lot with diet adjustments. I had to do it with, I had to start weight training more because I had too little on my body for how tall and light you were.

Connor DeLaney
0:13:58
Right, your lifestyle changes. Yeah, your lifestyle had to change, and it's how your business has to adapt. If you have these rapid changes, you as the business owner need to be thinking about this ahead of time. And that's again where it comes back to maybe you have a gap that you're not sure of and

Connor DeLaney
0:14:13
it's different than a revenue gap. It's different than a sales gap. Now you're saying, my business grew really quickly. I need help to understand who to hire next, where to go next. That's a gap that I've seen a lot of businesses come to us with of they know how to grow revenue but they don't know how to grow a team and that can be its own gap in itself and again it's a

Connor DeLaney
0:14:31
different sales conversation because once you identify that and you start having conversation about people that's where you see business owners get really like personal and they start to say I really care about my team I want to hire the right people when you focus on that now we're talking about really personal conversations really like what's the future of your business look like? Do you want a sales team of 10 or do you want a sales team of 5? I actually had a conversation with a

Connor DeLaney
0:14:55
team recently that, you know, we were at a conference and I was chatting actually with Marcus Sheridan, who's obviously on here a lot. Him and I got to go speak at a conference in Baltimore a few weeks ago. And some of the businesses that were up on stage speaking were talking about going from like zero to $70 million in five years. And for some people, that's what they want to get to. For other businesses, I sat down with one at a dinner

Connor DeLaney
0:15:20
on the second night, and he said, we're a $3.5 million company. I'd love to get to four next year and then get to five, but I don't really want to hire people that fast. Instead, what I'm trying to figure out is, I don't have a CRM in place,

Connor DeLaney
0:15:34
which comes back to the example we were talking about. He's like, I don't know how to scale it, but I would rather pay my salespeople really well and get them to the point where they're maxed out on capacity, which he was like, we're probably like 70, 80%,

Connor DeLaney
0:15:46
and he said probably like this, because he's like, I don't actually know, but just based on feel of people, he didn't really know exactly how much their capacity was, and he's like, I need a tool that helps me understand maybe 20 calls a week is their capacity.

Connor DeLaney
0:16:00
They're at like 16, 17, maybe 20 is the capacity, maybe 30 is the capacity, I don't know. But I don't wanna just go double my team like these other businesses, because I would rather run a really profitable, really efficient, lean, $5 million company

Connor DeLaney
0:16:15
than try to scale up to the massive giants of the industry, because it's just not what me and my family-owned business wanna be. And that comes back to the gap. Like that comes back to his gap is, I don't know how to scale at the pace that I want to scale at. I don't want to be the

Connor DeLaney
0:16:29
industry dominator where I'm just, you know, my name is everywhere. I want to dominate my little space and I want to run a really effective, efficient company so that I have the ability to scale if I want to. And that's a huge thing to overcome because you've probably done it the same way for the last 20 years and now you're recognizing maybe I should be doing it differently for the future of the business.

Alex Winter
0:16:50
Right, right. And it goes back to what we were saying too about clearly defining goals, where it sounds like this particular case, he knew exactly what he wanted. He was like, we're here and I want to do X, Y, and Z. And it may not be like some of these other companies that are going to the moon and scaling

Connor DeLaney
0:17:04
super fast, but for him, that was perfect and that's what he wanted. And that was the question that I think business leaders fail to ask themselves. Because for him, he had this moment of awareness of, as cool as these stories sound, I don't know if that's what I want to be. And I don't think enough business leaders

Connor DeLaney
0:17:23
are asking themselves the difficult questions of, what do I want my business to be three, five, 10 years from now? Because for some, if you sit with that question long enough, you'll start to realize, what's the lifestyle I want? What do I want my family life to be like?

Connor DeLaney
0:17:40
When you start having those thoughts as a business leader or as a business owner, that's when you start making real decisions because it's easy to say, I want to grow and scale and multiply because that's what everyone else seems to do. That's what everyone says they want to do.

Connor DeLaney
0:17:54
But then when you think about, do I want to be on the road 20 out of 30 days a month or do I want to be home with my family every single night around six o'clock? You know, it comes back to what your values are. Everyone wants to run a successful business, but success means many different things to

Alex Winter
0:18:09
many different people. That's really well said. Yeah, and I loved what you said earlier too about salespeople. When you're starting to hire salespeople or as you're scaling a team, we talked about quality versus quantity. This is my personal opinion.

Alex Winter
0:18:20
I'd rather have less sales folks that were really well versed in the company culture culture and ask really deep questions and made the potential customer experience top notch versus having a team of 20 that's just churn and burn in numbers. That's my own personal preference and depending on your business you might need to do the churn and burn. Again, it comes back to what we've been talking about.

Alex Winter
0:18:41
You really need to think strategically a little bit longer term as to what you want and how it's going to play out into the future.

Connor DeLaney
0:18:47
Right. The right answer, there isn't a wrong answer, but the right answer is the only one that your business needs to hear. It's an awful way of saying it. There's some phrase that says it a lot better than that,

Connor DeLaney
0:18:57
but it's like, the only wrong answer is the one that isn't good for your business. And this is the question I've been waiting to ask you. So you talk to a lot of businesses, and we at Impact work with all different industries, B2B, B2C, we're not industry specific

Connor DeLaney
0:19:12
or anything to that effect. So you must talk to a ton of different people and from different backgrounds. Yeah, I'm sure it must be really eclectic and cool and fun. Do you have some stories you could share like about people that were trying to close the gap or how you define the gap and just like paint a picture for us just of like some maybe some people that really did it well or some like some things that you were impressed with?

Connor DeLaney
0:19:35
Yeah, you know, there's there's there are so many different ones and it's funny, we were just filming my bio video recently and our videographer Austin asked a similar, like what's your favorite part of your role? My favorite part of my job is talking with all these different business owners, big and small.

Connor DeLaney
0:19:52
You know, like I've talked with businesses that are doing three or 400K a year or 150 million a year. Like you get that range from all different industries all over the world. I mean, I'll talk with teams in Australia,

Connor DeLaney
0:20:03
to the UK, to the US, like it's amazing. And it's really fun.

Alex Winter
0:20:07
And you're passionate about it.

Connor DeLaney
0:20:08
Yeah, oh, we love it.

Connor DeLaney
0:20:09
It's like a parent. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, some stories that showcase that gap. You know, the first one that comes to mind, and they ended up not working with us, but there was this payroll company that we had maybe two conversations with.

Connor DeLaney
0:20:25
And they came in and they said, yeah, we're struggling to generate leads and we're struggling to generate opportunities and as we got talking with them there was a moment of this owner it was just him and I and he said I'm not sure I have the right person in my VP of sales seat out of nowhere like we were just talking about like things that are working the similar talk track we

Connor DeLaney
0:20:51
were going through earlier, and he goes, I'm not sure I have the right person in the sales seat. And I was like, what makes you say that? And he said, well, I've handed a lot over to him, and I just haven't seen the results. And I asked, like, what results are. And he had this moment of, like, you know, sat back, like, on the video side, like, you'll

Connor DeLaney
0:21:13
see it, like, he sat back from his computer, and then he leaned back in, and he said, I don't know if I ever told him what I wanted success to look like. And it was like, whoa, hold up, let's talk about that. And so.

Connor DeLaney
0:21:26
And that question, you could see it provoked, like he instantly went like, oh. He had this moment of realization of like, I am responsible for this, as much as I want to blame it on him. And I think he probably,

Connor DeLaney
0:21:37
I don't think I did anything that was like earth shattering. Like frankly I would say it probably wasn't my best sales conversation. But it was one of those where I think he needed the space and I think this is where a lot of business owners need is like, needed the space to think about it in like an isolated situation because there's so many different things happening. And I think if I was going to guess, this person probably had that,

Connor DeLaney
0:22:02
oh my god, the world just slowed down for a minute, and I could think clearly. And then he said, okay, maybe this isn't, like, maybe I have the right guy, I don't know. But now I have an idea of what I should do next. And again, we had one more conversation

Connor DeLaney
0:22:16
and I haven't chatted with them since, but it was one of those, I always think of it because it went from, we have a leads problem, to I haven't defined what success looks like and those are so different because maybe they're focusing on the right things and it's just not working maybe they're focusing on the wrong things he didn't know and I

Alex Winter
0:22:36
think that itself is its own problem. Right and then when you're when you're going fast and scaling a company it's like what you're saying it sounds so mundane almost that it's like how did you not define what success is but when you're going fast sometimes you just you're just going you don't even think about it doesn't even come on the radar until you have someone or you have a conversation, you have that moment

Alex Winter
0:22:54
where you can really stop and think about it for a second. And when you do, it becomes apparent, right? And then defining that success can really be a game changer.

Connor DeLaney
0:23:02
Yeah, yeah.

Alex Winter
0:23:03
Because it's not always just about more leads and closing rates, it's really defining your goals.

Connor DeLaney
0:23:09
Yeah, yeah, it's really zooming out. You know, I've got two more and I know that it could drag a little bit so feel free to cut them later if you want. We're not cutting anything. I want to hear.

Connor DeLaney
0:23:19
A second example, it was a door company out in like northern New York. They were pretty small and this business owner had recently acquired the business and wanted to grow it and had big growth goals. He was like, I want to 10X the business in the next few years with the goal of either scaling it to be an industry dominator or to sell the business.

Connor DeLaney
0:23:41
He was like, I haven't decided yet, I've been in this business for like two months. He's like, learning how it goes. And he came to us and he's like, I think I need some website help. And the website was literally built in like the 1990s,

Connor DeLaney
0:23:54
like super old, but it was so well positioned and was around so long that like, they were getting hundreds of organic leads a month like just people because they just found them right because the URL was really easy to find it just basically popped up if you search anything for that I want to show who they are, but it's it's I wouldn't be surprised you could find it and He came to us and we looked at the website

Connor DeLaney
0:24:17
We're like holy smokes like this thing is it works And he's like yeah, we get 400 leads a month through it and just through that and there's like other campaigns It was like wow this actually is working Wow and as we continued to To chat with him as we learned like what his business goals were which obviously he came in and said I want to fix the website And the first thing we said was sure what's fixing the website do for you like what's what's the end sayings like this is where? I want to get to you, and as we started talking through it. He's like I don't have

Connor DeLaney
0:24:44
We have a CRM. That's like as old as the company feels fields. And we have really unclean data and other pieces. And as we started to dig in, we started to identify that there's so many more things that need to be true in order for the website to work. It became a, let's say we open the floodgates, the website's redesigned, we've got so many leads coming through that are really quality. So of those 400, he was like, maybe 70 or 80 of them are good, qualified opportunities. The rest are kind of junk, which happens.

Connor DeLaney
0:25:16
But we're like, let's say that turned into 150 or 200 qualified opportunities in a given month. Could your business sustain it? He's like, from like doing the work, yes, but I think we'd lose a lot in just the follow-up process alone.

Connor DeLaney
0:25:30
And so there was this zoom out, and then we started talking, we need a CRM to help with that. We started talking about, you need business processes, you need sales teams that are trained up on it. It got so much bigger in terms of what was possible

Connor DeLaney
0:25:44
that we all paused. We ended up saying, I don't know if you're ready, and he ended up calling me on my cell phone and he said, I love what you guys are about. You've clearly opened my eyes to so many things that I probably knew but hadn't put it together

Connor DeLaney
0:26:02
in a way that made sense.

Alex Winter
0:26:03
Conversation.

Connor DeLaney
0:26:04
Yeah, and again, I think business owners end up feeling so isolated that they have to solve all these problems alone that if you can be that person that guides them to understanding what their real problem is, because again, for him he came in and said, my website doesn't look nice, can you make it look better?

Connor DeLaney
0:26:18
And we ended up realizing there's a lot more to a pretty website, which again, it was like, was this mind blowing stuff for him? No, he understood that the website needs to be functional and look nice and all that other stuff. Totally. But there was so many things where he ended up asking like can we get back together in the beginning of the new year. So we have monthly touch

Connor DeLaney
0:26:36
bases where I just reach out and say hi but it's more to make sure are we on the right track to where we want to get to. And that story, it resonates because it's the same deal of came in thinking of one thing, we dug into a much deeper challenge that he had and they ended up not working with us yet. We didn't force them into anything and this isn't the heroic salesperson that did the best for their company. But it was like they would have failed with us if we tried to get them to do

Connor DeLaney
0:27:04
the work that we wanted and that's not the goal either. I would rather have a success story six to twelve months from now than a three-month explosion that we're trying to clean up the pieces of and shrapnel all over us.

Alex Winter
0:27:14
See, that to me is a good, that's the defining characteristic of a good salesperson is knowing when to pass and knowing when to.

Connor DeLaney
0:27:22
And the awareness of a business owner too, for them to, for him to call me and say, this is where I'm feeling, like is that right? Like he was almost asking for permission to slow down. Yeah. And I was like, yeah.

Alex Winter
0:27:33
But now he also trusts you because you didn't jam like all these different products down his throat and try to be like, no, you have to do it.

Connor DeLaney
0:27:38
And we laid out a game plan of like, all right, here's what six months from now should look like and let's get back together in November and reevaluate and if things are in a good place we'll keep that conversation going. If they're not, let's talk about what happens next.

Alex Winter
0:27:49
And again, I've brought up two that ended up not working with us. Real quick, I have to jump in. So there's one other thing that you said that was really fascinating to me in that story that was about his website. He wanted to like, I need to redo the website, we get 400 leads a month, if we redo it,

Alex Winter
0:28:05
how many leads will that bring in, how much more quality leads will that get? But then there's another piece to that that people sometimes forget. It's like you want all these leads, but then if you fix the lead flow problem,

Alex Winter
0:28:15
and then you get all these leads, do you have the resources to actually handle these leads, and to be able to convert them, or is it gonna overload your business and bog everything down, where like it's just all gonna fall apart?

Alex Winter
0:28:25
And that's something, again, when you define goals, that's part of that conversation, is like, cool, there's a lead problem, we need to figure out closing rates and bridging that gap, but then also, can you handle these leads when they come in?

Connor DeLaney
0:28:36
Yeah, for most businesses, it's a good point, for a lot of businesses, the problem they have, and again, this isn't knocking, like, if you say you need more leads, there's a lot of folks that do need more quality leads. And again, so there's a difference with that too,

Connor DeLaney
0:28:51
of like, I need more leads and I need better quality leads. Sometimes those are the same, sometimes they're not. But there are a lot of businesses that say that. But it's amazing the amount of times that, and it's actually more recently, because I had a call with one yesterday,

Connor DeLaney
0:29:05
that say, if we figure out the lead problem, I'm not confident we have the ability to service those leads at the moment. So I need to focus on that. A lot of business leaders are really good at that part because they understand their industry, they understand their customer, they understand

Connor DeLaney
0:29:19
how to help them be successful, and then they will say, now how do I get more people that I can help wanting to talk to us? But sometimes businesses come in and they say, I have a little bit of both, but frankly I'm more concerned about do I know how to help them right now and do I have the manpower to do so, which comes into what we call the ability gap of, again, ability gap could be solving anything, but do I have the ability to solve, do I have the ability to service the people that I want to help? Do I have the ability to sell to the customers that I want and to find and

Connor DeLaney
0:29:50
gather them? It always comes back to do I as a business owner and as a business as a whole have the ability to help our customers to be successful? Meaning, do I need more of them? Can I actually service them? If you start running into that problem of we can't help them, impact's not a good fit. And honestly, lead gen is not your problem. Lead gen, it's always a thing you have to be thinking about

Connor DeLaney
0:30:13
because it's a balancing act. If you have so many leads coming in that you can't help, your business isn't gonna be successful. That's obviously a good problem to have in one sense. But if you actually can't service them, you're gonna make bad relationships

Connor DeLaney
0:30:25
and your reputation's gonna go down. So you'd rather be able to help businesses and have them be fueling that other side and then be the wave that raises all ships.

Alex Winter
0:30:34
Yeah, I love that. All right, so what's the third story that you have?

Connor DeLaney
0:30:37
Yeah, the third one is one that we're actively talking to. And they saw ImpactSpeak. And this is actually more of a, this is a flop on my part, but it shows when they have a true problem and we've done some digging and you have the right conversation that they're still willing to do the work.

Connor DeLaney
0:30:58
So this was a team that saw one of our team members, Marcus, speak, got super excited, said, I love what you guys are about. We had a couple of conversations and I got really narrow-minded on what their problem was. And I started thinking, I think their website's the problem. And we hyper-focused on that.

Connor DeLaney
0:31:15
And this was when I was pretty early in the sales role. So this is one of those learning lessons that was super-duper obvious looking back six months from now. Of where I am today, it's like, looking on that, I'm like, how did I let that happen?

Connor DeLaney
0:31:27
But they came in, they said, I love what this is all about. We started digging into what their sales and marketing looks like, what their website's doing, all these other things, and I was like, their website's the thing we gotta solve. And we got to the end of the sales process and for Impact our last step is showing

Connor DeLaney
0:31:42
them here's what our proposal to help you solve this problem is. And we were really focused on the website and their marketing director asked me, she's like, so what about the coaching stuff? And I was like, what do you mean? And she's like, well, we need our team to be bought in on this, we could have a nice website but it's not going to actually solve the problem. And I'm like, wait, that's not good. It was like such like an egg in your face moment. Because the gap that they had wasn't like their website was working

Connor DeLaney
0:32:13
okay. Is it great? No. Could it be fixed and get updates? Yes. But the bigger problem was they didn't have like a marketing engine. They didn't have anything that was like, all of their business was based on reputation and referrals, which isn't a bad thing. Actually, Marcus did an awesome job talking about that in a recent episode.

Connor DeLaney
0:32:31
So.

Alex Winter
0:32:31
Right.

Alex Winter
0:32:31
Referrals aren't bad.

Connor DeLaney
0:32:32
Yeah.

Connor DeLaney
0:32:32
It's great.

Connor DeLaney
0:32:33
Plug back. But it's one of those things.

Alex Winter
0:32:35
That's also a result of doing good business, too.

Connor DeLaney
0:32:37
Yeah.

Alex Winter
0:32:37
If you really look at it. If you do good business and your customers are happy, they're going to tell other people about it.

Connor DeLaney
0:32:42
So that's just part of doing good business.

Alex Winter
0:32:44
Right.

Connor DeLaney
0:32:44
And there are other ways to get good business, too.

Connor DeLaney
0:32:45
Yeah.

Connor DeLaney
0:32:46
And so when we were talking about the gap, bringing back the gap, it was like there was obviously a revenue thing. They were like, I see this being a differentiator in our business. No one's doing it this way. I want to do this. And they're all in on it.

Connor DeLaney
0:32:57
And by me focusing on the website, it was like I missed what their true ability gap was, which was I know where they wanted to get to revenue-wise. That was really obvious. But then we were just talking about how the website's going to fix that. But they're like, we don't have the team to do that. We don't have the sales buy-in.

Connor DeLaney
0:33:13
We don't have marketing buy-in. Like everyone just kind of is hearing this thing and if we just do a website, that doesn't solve anything. And so I actually missed the gap and built the wrong bridge that was just gonna be like, if you're driving across that bridge,

Connor DeLaney
0:33:26
I mean, you are falling like two feet after you get on the bridge. It was gonna be a nightmare. And luckily, they challenged me on it and I think that was the coolest part of, they were like, I don't think this actually

Connor DeLaney
0:33:37
is gonna solve our problem. We had to Zoom way back out. I brought in one of our coaches to like, I felt like I had like totally missed the mark. I blew all the trust and everything.

Alex Winter
0:33:47
And they were like, oh no, I messed this deal up.

Connor DeLaney
0:33:48
Right, like I thought that I really blew it. And they ended up, I had a couple conversations with them and they're really excited. They've done a workshop with us. They're gonna do another one later this year. They're very likely gonna work with us.

Connor DeLaney
0:33:59
But I had thought about it as like, man, I just blew this deal. And then as they were talking to us, they're like, look, you identified a lot of the right stuff. I think the problem, it was just too fast. Like, it was like three steps down the road.

Connor DeLaney
0:34:11
And so, as we zoomed it back out, we were like, all right, if we solve all these things, like, the proposition I gave is going to be part of this larger plan at some time. But that was a really cool, like, they had the awareness of what their gap truly was.

Connor DeLaney
0:34:24
And even if I missed it, I had built enough trust that I was willing to like work and listen and again this isn't just me like there was this was a team effort of team efforts of like we had two of our coaches we had one of you know like we had I think it was four or five people that were involved in the seal because they're a larger company I wanted like our team to be a part of it but I was very much thinking like I blew this because I missed the gap but if a

Connor DeLaney
0:34:47
business knows the gap or they identify and discover the gap over time. Like they discovered it through our conversation.

Alex Winter
0:34:53
I was just gonna say that. Yeah.

Connor DeLaney
0:34:54
Like you inadvertently helped them discover it. And I just gave the wrong, Yeah. I gave too fast of a proposal of what I thought success would look like. So they ended up,

Connor DeLaney
0:35:04
they ended up zooming back out saying, we need to get team buy-in, team alignment. They worked with their leadership team, now they're working with their entire company and Impact's gonna help facilitate a lot of that. And that was a beautiful moment of,

Connor DeLaney
0:35:15
even if I miss, if you're building trust within that sales process and helping them identify the things they need, this is a collaborative effort at the end of the day. I want it to be something where I'm not just gonna fix the problem for you, but everyone's going to work together

Connor DeLaney
0:35:30
to build the solution that's gonna work for everybody. And so as I think back to that story, it's like, we worked together to build that solution and found the thing, and now they're as fired up as ever. I was just I was emailing back and forth with them this morning and they're so excited to make this happen. So it was one of those even if you stumble, if the team's bought

Connor DeLaney
0:35:48
in and believes you can help, they're still gonna want to work with you. And again that's that goes back to the business owner side and the leaders at an organization. If they believe in something and they see the opportunity and they see the how you can help them get to where they want to go, they will help form a solution. It's not all on you as a salesperson and it's not all on you on a business leader. That's where that outside help can be really, really helpful for them.

Connor DeLaney
0:36:10
I love that you just shared that story and I appreciate the vulnerability because at the end of the day, not everything goes to plan and people make mistakes. We're human. We make mistakes all the time.

Alex Winter
0:36:19
All the time.

Alex Winter
0:36:20
But there seems to be...

Connor DeLaney
0:36:21
I've talked about this with Marcus at length about how, especially with sales folks, like you live and die by your deals and your numbers sometimes, depending on the organization, so they don't wanna discuss the mistakes, but that's how you grow and how you make better deals, better conversations, like that's so important

Connor DeLaney
0:36:37
and I love that you shared that, and I think it's, for everyone out there watching and listening, that's a really important piece that you need to look at the good and the bad so that you can figure out how to bridge these gaps. You learn from it, I mean it's one of those things,

Connor DeLaney
0:36:47
again, I was like two months into like the sales role that I'm in now like do I think that would happen again it probably will at some point to be honest but it's also a great learning moment and again I just I think about the awareness as business leaders that if you're having a conversation with a salesperson there's not there's rarely a cookie cutter solution that solves everything that solves the problem that solves the gap that solves whatever you

Connor DeLaney
0:37:15
want to call it there's rarely a cookie-color solution to it most of the time you need to work with that person this isn't like a negotiation tactic it's more I want to make sure that I fully understand your problem and again the first slide of that proposal that impact gives is current state future state I want to understand where you're at today right here and I want to define what success looks like yeah and I want them to say,

Connor DeLaney
0:37:38
does this define, at a high level, it's like three or four bullets on each, does this actually define where you are and where you wanna be? Because then the rest of the presentation's talking about how we're gonna get there, and it's like bridging that gap.

Connor DeLaney
0:37:51
And that's the story that we wanna tell throughout the process, but also, it's very collaborative. Like, I'm gonna ask them, am I nailing this? Did I mishear that? Is there anything that's missing? I want you, as the business owner, to say,

Connor DeLaney
0:38:03
well, there's this that I would add in there or let's make sure that we don't forget this piece so that we're always on the same page of what success looks like and how we're going to get to the success that

Alex Winter
0:38:14
you're aiming for. Yeah, that makes total sense. So I have a question here about business owners and budget because listen, budget is always a factor, right? As you scale, revenue is important but budget, P&Ls, it's critical for your business. So if people don't have extra budget right now

Alex Winter
0:38:30
to put towards this, and they can't necessarily talk to you and hire impact or hire a coaching team or whatever the case is, where's a good starting point? Or what would you recommend as far as, if someone wants to listen to this conversation, wants to start today, what's a couple things they can do

Connor DeLaney
0:38:46
to at least get the ball rolling? I always start by challenging that business owner. If it's enough of a priority, I believe that you can manipulate your budget to make it something you have to solve. There's always going to be, you're always going to budget at the beginning of the year and then things are going to change. You're going to have to adapt. You're going to have to move money around. I mean you've run more businesses than I have. I'm sure you've gone through that same journey of something changes halfway through the year and you've got to pivot, right? Yes.

Connor DeLaney
0:39:17
So it's one of those, I always believe it's, you have to start with, is this enough of a priority and is there enough of a gap to say, I need to allocate more budget towards this. Some people are really scared to change how their budget is set up. And it usually is going to hold them back because they're not willing to make the tough decision that's for the betterment of their business.

Connor DeLaney
0:39:42
Instead, they say, well, we already set up this plan, I don't want to change the plan. If the plan's not 100% working and you're not 100% confident it's gonna get you to where you want to be, the plan could change.

Connor DeLaney
0:39:52
And if you're wasting it.

Alex Winter
0:39:53
And it should change.

Connor DeLaney
0:39:54
And it should change. Yeah, it really should. Right, and so when I look back and I say, you don't have the budget, it's is this high enough of a priority? And again, when I say high enough of a priority,

Connor DeLaney
0:40:04
is there enough of a gap that justifies it? So when we put a revenue gap together, which most businesses, if they come to impact, they're saying, I want our sales to grow. I want to, we're in the business of helping grow your business.

Connor DeLaney
0:40:16
Whatever growth looks like, it might be $50 million, it might be $2 million, whatever it is. We're in the business of helping you do that. So when we quantify it, we're saying, you're a $5 million company, you want to get to 10, same example we've used throughout, that's a $5 million revenue gap.

Connor DeLaney
0:40:32
If you're going to spend money with impact, let's say you're spending $10,000 a month, if you're saying you're going to work with us for 12 months, is $5 million over the course of the next 5 years worth investing $120,000 into? When you quantify it like that, that's when you start to have like, oh, the math does work out. Because $10,000 a month is like nothing to,

Connor DeLaney
0:40:54
you know, you don't blink at that. Like that's gonna slow you down for a minute. It's a good chunk of money. Yeah, but if you can quantify it and say, I believe that by investing that 10K a month, it's gonna get me the five million over the next few years.

Connor DeLaney
0:41:06
Even a million. If you said, I'm gonna invest $100,000 and get a million dollars out of it, I don't know many business owners that would fear that because they're like, all right, I invest 10%, I get the rest of it back. Like, that's great.

Connor DeLaney
0:41:18
Yeah.

Alex Winter
0:41:18
Well, you're establishing ROI and that's the key is like, if you know that you're going to make this investment, but you're going to get a huge return on that investment and it's going to help you get to where you want to go, achieve your goals, like that becomes a no-brainer sort of situation. Right.

Connor DeLaney
0:41:31
And again, that's where the budget prioritization comes in. Is this important enough to you as the individual? So when I'm talking to business owners, and again, when business owners are thinking about that, is this important enough to me as the leader of our company to invest this money into?

Connor DeLaney
0:41:48
This is actually, I'll share one last example, because they're kicking off with us now.

Connor DeLaney
0:41:52
Two weeks.

Connor DeLaney
0:41:52
They're an ERP implementation company, and they are big fans of Impact, and they've kind of been in our community for a long time. And they came to us and they said, we just need like a little bit of guidance. We already have some of these pieces in place. And we started talking to them and immediately their owner was started talking about their

Connor DeLaney
0:42:13
sales team, which we had never met their sales team before. We'd met their marketing team, they have a content manager, they've done some of the endless customers they asked you to.

Alex Winter
0:42:19
Some of the pieces are in place.

Connor DeLaney
0:42:20
Yeah. Yeah. And we started talking about their sales team and he's like, I'm going to, if he listens to this, he's going to know that it's him. But he was like, our sales team's really young and they're not as good as I'd like them to be.

Connor DeLaney
0:42:33
And we're like, oh, that's different, okay. And so he came in, and I used that as the thing because it was very different. His marketing director had come to us and said, I wanna talk about a guidance program with Impact that's just more of a monthly touch base,

Connor DeLaney
0:42:48
just keep us on track. And he says, our sales team isn't really getting where we want to be, and then we start talking about their marketing team, and they're like, we don't really, we think we're doing it, but we're not getting the results we think we should be

Connor DeLaney
0:42:58
for what we've been doing, and really dug into it. And so, from a budget allocation perspective, this is where the story was interesting, they came in thinking, we can't really spend more than like 2,500, three grand a month, and they signed a 12-month contract for 10k a month because we started talking about here's the problems

Connor DeLaney
0:43:16
that you have. If we can, like, let's quantify that problem. If you're quantifying our marketing person needs some guidance versus our sales team isn't as effective as they should be, you start putting money into sales. They're saying, if you make my sales team more effective, this is going to pay off in a month.

Connor DeLaney
0:43:31
Like, we're going to get all this that we need. Right. The difference that happened because of the questions that we asked and the challenging that we did, and him as a business owner, he knew like, we have bigger problems than just this marketing person. As we dug into it, we're like,

Connor DeLaney
0:43:44
if we work with a marketing person, it's not gonna solve your problem. Like it's gonna be a symptom of the larger issue that you have. So instead, we really started leaning into, let's talk about the bigger,

Connor DeLaney
0:43:54
like where do you need to get to as an organization? What role does your sales team play in that? What role does the marketing team play in that? How do they work together, all that stuff.

Alex Winter
0:44:00
Yeah, do they even talk to each other?

Connor DeLaney
0:44:01
And he was like, well yeah, they're working together, but there's a lot of work to be done. And so we identify, and he was like, yeah, we'll have to talk about budget stuff. And we're like, so how important is this to you if your sales team was way more effective in using the principles that we talked about? And he's like, that would be a game changer.

Connor DeLaney
0:44:17
They just haven't done it before. It's like, how are you going to do that? He's like, I don't know. I need help to do that. That was his gap. He was like, I don't know how to get my sales team using this.

Connor DeLaney
0:44:25
And we're like, that's exactly how Impact helps you do it. And so he went from a $2,000 to $3,000 budget to a $10,000 budget. And it's not saying we just ramped it up. We said, we're going to do a lot more work with your team. We saw the value. Right. And he immediately was like, it was actually, I think of this quote because I thought it was pretty funny. And he kind of laughed as he said it. He's like, well, if I'm gonna invest this much money,

Connor DeLaney
0:44:50
they better freaking get their acting line. Because there was like a hesitation from their team of like, are we gonna have time to do the work? He's like, if I'm gonna invest in it, you're gonna make the time to do it. But he believed in it so much that he's like,

Connor DeLaney
0:45:00
I will make sure that they're there, I will do my part. They need to be in line and do the work, and it's on us. And I think that's the piece, again, using Impact as the example. I know there's a lot of businesses out there that this doesn't directly resonate,

Connor DeLaney
0:45:14
but as a coaching company, a lot of the success of our clients comes back to are they willing to do the work, and is it enough of a priority for their entire organization that they're all going to commit to the same North Star, the same thing that they're, are they all rowing in the same direction? Yeah, when it goes back to, he was ready, he was mentally ready to make this decision. He was willing to move the budget, like he said, he had no intention of doing that at the beginning of the year and they said, this is a priority.

Connor DeLaney
0:45:40
We're going to do it. And now they're kicking off with us in about two weeks time. That's really exciting. Whenever this podcast comes out, they kick off.

Alex Winter
0:45:46
We're going to have to do a check in. I want to hear how they're doing in a few months from now. That's exciting. Yeah, that's really, really cool. So any closing thoughts here as we get to the end of the episode here, any closing thoughts or things you want to leave with people as they're digesting all this awesome information

Alex Winter
0:46:02
that you just provided for us.

Connor DeLaney
0:46:03
Yeah, there were two things that I wrote down that I think are good leaving us statements. So number one is, as business leaders, ask yourself a lot of questions. Don't jump to assumptions so much or jump to this isn't working.

Connor DeLaney
0:46:18
Ask yourself a lot of questions and it's gonna help you dig deeper where you don't need a conner or someone else to do the digging for you. Yes, it's awesome to have an outside perspective, but I find the business leaders that are most self-aware

Connor DeLaney
0:46:31
are the ones that ask questions about what happened here, what's working here, what can we do differently there? Whenever a problem comes to them, ask a question first before you make a statement, and see where the conversation goes. That would be a huge one, because that's typically

Connor DeLaney
0:46:47
gonna help you identify that deeper issue that you actually need to solve, not the surface level thing that some of your team or even yourself, you may get sucked into. The second one, and this sounds obvious, but you had mentioned a little bit earlier

Connor DeLaney
0:47:01
of like they're putting a lot of effort into things and maybe it's not working. As you're asking those questions, be really self-aware of the potential that you're putting too much effort into the wrong things. And that's where most business owners go wrong is they believe something's going

Connor DeLaney
0:47:17
to work and again this is that balance of instincts and data. Business owners will oftentimes just think they have to be doing something because they have to instead of like you need to be aware both quantitatively and probably qualitatively is this the right thing for me to be investing my time money resources effort energy into. Those would be the two big things that I believe in. And will I get that return on the investment?

Connor DeLaney
0:47:43
Because we talked about this and I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember there was one time where a potential client was spending a lot of money on pay-per-click or on paid advertising, and they were like, we don't have the budget to work with you guys.

Connor DeLaney
0:47:56
But then when you really dug into it, and correct me if I'm wrong, but when you dug into it, it was like you're spending X, which was a huge number, on paid, and it wasn't really yielding any good business or leads, and if you could reallocate that budget and make some changes, what could it do?

Connor DeLaney
0:48:11
And doing that really shifted the business. It's all perspective. And again, with both of those, it's are you putting the right things in the right places, which things can mean the right people, the right money, the right energy or effort.

Connor DeLaney
0:48:25
Are you putting the right things in the right places? And then are you checking in on if things are working or not? Like the worst thing you can do is stick to a plan for a year because you made a plan. The best thing you can do is say, is the plan working or not? Because no one knows. I mean, 2024 has been crazy. Like things have fluctuated a lot. Wherever the rest of this year's heading, I have no idea. We're only in July and I feel like we've been like two years long.

Connor DeLaney
0:48:49
Yeah, man, it's been crazy. I mean, it's like the vortex that we thought was over just continues, but business leaders more than ever need to be able to adapt and change and optimize. And that starts with asking questions and challenging what your and your team's assumptions

Connor DeLaney
0:49:05
have been over time.

Alex Winter
0:49:06
Close the gap.

Connor DeLaney
0:49:08
That's it, man.

Alex Winter
0:49:08
I love it. Connor, so if people wanna follow up, they wanna pick your brain, how can they get in touch with you? How can they further the conversation if they have more questions?

Connor DeLaney
0:49:15
Yeah, LinkedIn is the best spot. You'll see me on there. I do my best to be there every single day, but at least a few days a week on there. You can find me on there. I think it's linkedin.com slash connor underscore delaney, whatever it is. You'll find it.

Alex Winter
0:49:29
We'll put in the show notes too.

Connor DeLaney
0:49:30
Or you can e-mail me, cdelaney at impactplus.com. Those would be the two best ways to get in touch. Awesome. Connor, thanks for your time. Thanks for being on the show. It's been a blast, Alex. Always is. Always is, yes. And for everybody out It's been a blast, Alex. Always is. Always is, yes. And for everybody out

Alex Winter
0:49:39
there listening and watching Designless Customers, we'll see you on the next episode.




Transcribed with Cockatoo