Brian-Margolis

Episode 8 – John – Corporate Health Care Service Sales
Call 2: Pillar Review and CAP Creation

Simplify Your Strategy
Magnify Your Results Podcast

Transcript and Audio
Episode 8 – John – Corporate Health Care Service Sales – Call 2: Pillar Review and CAP Creation

Brian Margolis (00:00):

This is Brian Margolis. And welcome to the simplify, your strategy, magnify your results podcast, where on each episode I use the pillar system to help a sales pro entrepreneur or other results based professional, create a weekly strategy to run a simple, more lucrative business strategy. So simple. It can fit on an index card, but so powerful. It’s actually helped create multiple seven figure earners and is now licensed by some of the largest companies in the world to create strategies for their teams. If you’d like a free copy of my book on exactly how to do this, or want to be considered as a guest on a future episode, head on over to productivity, giant.com enjoy the episode. So when we established John, we established your pillars almost two months ago now that’s right. It was a while ago. So I guess there’s kind of two components to this, which is the first one is you know, have you refined them in any way, change them added subtracted. And we can talk about that a little bit. And then the second part is, you know, have you been hitting them consistently inconsistently some more than others? You know, just, just as honest as possible, right. You kind of go down this, this new road of, of having an actual weekly strategy. Right? Sure. So I’ll, I’ll shut up and I’ll kind of just let you update me on what’s been happening the last few months.

John (01:35):

Yeah, absolutely. It’s been a, it’s actually been very good to follow it and I will say, and I’ll get into the detail, you know, I have, I have changed. I’ve had, I’ve had to add and subtract and so on and I’ll, I’ll fill you in as to why, and that’ll lead to hopefully some other strategies going forward, but you know, one of the things that I had done right away after our meeting and the establishment of the pillars that I was going to start with was to place them in a prominent place where I was going to see them every day. And so what I’ve done is I’ve entered them onto my my home screen of my computer. So when I boot up my computer, they I’ve got my background image, obviously there and there, they sit right up in the upper left hand corner.

John (02:23):

So they are a constant reminder for me to stay with these. And I have I’ve got more than one screen in front of me, what I’m, what I’m working from home. So I can play a little bit with, you know, different projects we’re working on. So on one of the screens, it’s always there in front of me, which has been wonderful it’s top of mind, I’m always looking at them, always that reminder to stay with these. And it’s worked very well. It’s obviously worked very well. We’ve been extremely busy with work I’d to think that some of what I’ve been doing has been that positive impact. Obviously I can’t say all of it has, but some of the, the pillars and the strategies that we had talked about and have put in place have certainly made an impact on the specific line of service that I’m in within my company.

John (03:20):

As you remember, my company has different lines of service. They’re all healthcare related. The line of service that I do, the business development and sales from is one of the smaller lines of service but has been on a very progressive path to growth. And we’re looking at some tremendous growth for 2019. So w what did, what did I do and what were the things that I knew I had to change? And some of it was defined by sort of the direction or the guide rails of our organization. So for example my number one pillar that I have on my list was to schedule a weekly meeting with one of the other line of service, business development, people, director of operations, or a specific sales person. And I think we call those SSDs, right? I think we did. Yup. Yup.

John (04:23):

Okay. And that’s strategy and sales director, correct? Correct. that has been extremely helpful and so much so that the, the larger part of our company business looks to my line of service and pulls us in as a supporting service, a way to grow an existing account, a way to be maybe a little bit more strategic in being able to meet the client needs much more broadly. Again, we’re, we’re just another service that they can add on here. The problem that, that I faced when I came into this organization, and again, it’s only been four months since I’ve been with this organization, is that, that larger part of our business, the main state part of our business really wasn’t aware of what my line of service does. They weren’t really aware of who we were, that we were professionals, that we were sort of experts in our field. We were the subject matter experts for what we do. And so just simply the fact that are there the step to have a meeting with these folks once a week. And I’ve, I’ve touched just about every single one of them, maybe one left that we haven’t done yet has been wonderful because we’ve already been brought into multiple different client projects that I don’t think we would have had had the opportunity to, if we weren’t talking on a regular basis,

Brian Margolis (06:09):

The pillar itself is not to have one a week. It’s just a schedule one for the future. So

John (06:14):

Yeah, in some ways

Brian Margolis (06:16):

You could wind up with two, so we should, could wind up with zero, right?

John (06:19):

Correct. Correct. And I I’ve pushed that a little bit. I’ve tried to actually have one a week. It hasn’t, it hasn’t worked out completely, as you’d said, especially through the holidays, but I’ve got what’s the exact number it’s sort of morphed a little bit over the last couple months, but there’s, there’s 12 to 15 of those folks that I can, I can schedule with. So I think I still have one more to meet with, but that, that alone has been an eye opener for that side of our organization to look to us to basically say, Holy cow, I didn’t know, you guys did this. Right.

Brian Margolis (07:04):

And is, is the plan is the plan to continue that as a pillar, in other words, you still want to stay in front of these guys. It wasn’t just a onetime thing. Right? Correct.

John (07:13):

Correct. Oh, I want to, so I’ve been setting up a, basically a schedule, you know, check marking. You know, I met with Dan, I met with Brian, I met with Mary. I met with Stephanie and I want to, I want to cycle back now after a while and, and go through these folks again. Now what’s nice about this is that as we’ve created this sort of internal, you know, broader awareness of what my line of service does now, I’m talking to these folks much more often, right? So these last couple of weeks, this last two months have been sort of, you know, RFP hell or RFP heaven, you know, depending on how you look at it, because these folks have said, Holy cow, my client just asked me about this. Had we not spoken? I would have just glazed over it, but now we’re going to bring you guys in. And so these, these weekly meetings with the sales folks and the business development folks on the larger side of our business has led to much more activity between us, which obviously then has led to many more opportunities for our line of services.

Brian Margolis (08:28):

Okay. So the schedule one SSD a week is obviously staying put

John (08:32):

Absolutely.

Brian Margolis (08:35):

What about some of the other ones, the reaching out to a hundred prospects reviewing opportunity report, et cetera, et cetera.

John (08:43):

Yeah. So great. Great question. So the, the second one that I have here is reach prospects. Now we started with a hundred and I backed that off to 50 and, and explain why that has not really taken hold. And here’s why we’re up. We’re $700 million organization. My line of service is considerably smaller net, but, but does contribute. The organization is very particular about how we reach out to our, our clients and our prospects. And that is being that is being directed through our sales and marketing department, which has held me back from doing this. And internally we’ve been pushing on this hard and and I’ve pushed it with the, the individual that I report to and the individual that they report to as well basically to say, guys, you brought me in to do this job. The job is to grow this business and hit these goals. We’re only going to do that if we can generate growth and that’s only going to happen by reaching more people right now, I’m being handheld or handcuffed, if you will, by, by doing that because you want me to follow the process that the company is setting in place, which hasn’t occurred.

Brian Margolis (10:18):

Okay. So the reason we, when we said reach out to a hundred prospects a week, that wasn’t obviously you don’t have to connect with them. We’re saying, send them an email, leave them a voicemail, whatever it is, some will connect some won’t. Did you dial it back to 50 because you will, based on the restrictions the company’s placed, you just don’t have that many to reach out to

John (10:44):

That’s correct.

Brian Margolis (10:46):

But it’s 50 the right number. And is that still the right thing to do?

John (10:51):

Honestly, Brian, I don’t know yet. It, I have not, this is one pillar that I have not reached on a consistent basis, simply because of the, the structure for prospecting that the company’s going to outline for us. And the same, same holds true with the larger part of our business in that it is remarkably. And I, and I, I truly find this remarkable that those other folks, those other SSDs that are contacting on a, on a weekly basis are not prospecting at all because there is so much business coming in the door. And I’ve never experienced that before. Never run into that before in the 20 plus years that I’ve been doing field sales, that that has been a situation I’ve never seen. Right. But it seems to be happening on that side of our business. So, so this drive say, I, I got to have the fortune 1000 lists and there’s 700 additional clients on there. We should be contacting that’s, what’s actually being set in place for this coming part of this year, early part of this year.

Brian Margolis (12:11):

So the re the reason we put that in there, they’re obviously the reaching out to a hundred prospects. It’s now 50. That was you reaching out to those companies directly, not through an SSD, right? Correct. That’s correct. And are, so right now, that’s almost not even a pillar because it sounds to me like that’s in limbo.

John (12:32):

It is, it is. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been, I’ve been doing your work

Brian Margolis (12:36):

Waited to hear from the company about how you’re allowed to proceed.

John (12:40):

Correct. There’s a, there is a the development of a direct mail campaign to the fortune 1000 lists. They will dictate to us what the structure for followup and prospecting is going to be. Cause again, the, the larger, the larger part of our business just hasn’t had a need to be as proactive to prospecting as, as I’ve experienced in my career. And that, I think from my line of service, we need to do.

Brian Margolis (13:13):

Right. Okay. So that, one’s kind of on ice right now. It’s not even a pillar. Yeah. Okay. Because at some point you’re going to have to prospect. Absolutely. Alright. So then the third pillar reviewing your opportunity report, that was kind of, you know, that was set in place basically as a follow up pillar, right? So when you have open opportunities, people you’ve met with people you’ve talked to, you make sure by reviewing that thing top to bottom every week, if I remember correctly, that means things don’t fall through the crack. If they need another touch, they get one, if they don’t. So be it, but you at least have to go through that report each week.

John (13:52):

Absolutely. And it’s, and based upon our discussion, you had given me some great direction on, you know, we, we have a CRM that we use for the whole company that uses I’ve had experience with different CRMs. This is, this is one of the bigger ones that’s out there. And you can guess which one it is. And it’s a monster, it’s an absolute monster, but we obviously have to be feeding into it and keeping it updated. So not only have I been doing that, touching those leads and those opportunities through what’s in there, but as you had recommended, maybe create your own list too, whether it’s in an Excel spreadsheet or whether it’s a word document, however I wanted to do it. And I, I went to Xcel that’s been, that’s been a key pillar for me to again, stay in front of these people.

John (14:44):

And, you know, my, my approach to that has always been, don’t just follow up these, these people just, they don’t want to hear that you’re sending them an email or a voicemail and say, Hey, I’m just checking in. Right, right, right. It’s the number one, turn off and being in sales, we all know that. So it’s been an opportunity to follow up with people, with information with, with some education, with some announcement with, Hey, did you know, we just, we just signed on this client as well, which may be in the same field as, or the same industry as somebody I’m touching base with. So that’s been very good,

Brian Margolis (15:26):

Right? W w I mean, the, obviously without going down the road of a sales training here, cause we both know this, but whether they read that information or, you know, skip it or whatever, it’s still a poke that says, Hey, don’t forget about me. And sometimes that’s all you need. I mean, you know what, one of my pillars that has just stayed through and through for the years has been my pillar of Excel follow, which is, you know, every week is laborious as it can be. Sometimes I go down my list of all people, you know, people I’ve talked to over time and I have a ranking system. Right. But you know, even people from a few years ago, sometimes it’s funny when you revisit and things like that. And it’s just this never ending source. And it’s so obvious to me when I want to fill up my calendar, so to speak, if I want more business, I use that, that Excel follow.

Brian Margolis (16:23):

If I don’t, I, I don’t, I go through it every time, but my decision making about whether to contact people or not. And it’s just, it’s, you know, to me, followup has always been, you know, it’s always been a weak point of a lot of salespeople because what they do is when things are good, they’re so busy selling and then the prospecting drive. But anyway, we can talk about that another time. Alright. So reviewing the opportunity report is going to stay. Yes. And then, okay. And then we had five hours of building your database a week

John (16:59):

And this has, this has backed off as well. When, what I have in front of me now, I have one to three hours creating that database and that’s tailed off. So I’m going to be looking at that. Essentially what I’ve done is I’ve taken the fortune 1000 lists, which is our target customers, self insured employers, large self insured employers, domestic, domestically, located, and have basically married that up to our existing master client list. Because again, the, the direction from our sales and marketing group is it’s, it’s going to be that I should be able to I’m expecting that I will be able to prospect outside of the existing client list. We have some, at least a lot of people, right. So what I’ve done, and again, as I’ve reached out to, you know, a small amount of these people here and there, I’ve married that up to our current client list so that I’m not reaching out to an existing customer and interfering with what might be being developed on the larger side of our business. And that, and I understand that, and that makes sense to me because that’s being driven that larger side of the business is being driven by the SSDs that we were talking about earlier. So I gotta, I gotta almost stay away from that until they say, Hey, John, I want you to come in and talk to my client.

Brian Margolis (18:32):

Right. So, okay. So, but building this database is important. Yes. So when you say one to three hours was five hours too much just cause there was other, probably more important things to do or was it just five hours was too much because you’d have that database built in a few weeks kind of thing.

John (18:54):

Well, a little bit of both, a little bit of both I’m I am anticipating that the database will be provided to me by our sales and marketing department. And they’ll say, you know, the first 300 lines here are existing customers, the next 700, knock yourself out. Here’s the contacts, here’s their names, their telephone numbers, emails, and so on and so on and so on. But, but that’s what

Brian Margolis (19:26):

We might be building something that they already have.

John (19:28):

Exactly. Well, I know, I know we have, I know we have.

Brian Margolis (19:33):

Okay then what’s the, maybe I’m misunderstanding. What’s the value of working on it now?

John (19:38):

Well, the value was because the not knowing what the plan or the strategy was going to be for prospecting this coming year. I wanted, I didn’t want to wait. You know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been in positions where, you know, you, you are accountable, you’re accountable for this goal. And I get, I get a little bit nervous when somebody says, yeah, just wait, we’ll have it for you. That, that doesn’t settle with me. So what I started was let me, let me match up our existing customer list, our existing client list with the fortune 1000 lists. So that at least I have who I think are our prospects will be

Brian Margolis (20:24):

Got it. Okay. So you feel like you need to spend time on that every week moving forward or not really. Okay. That’s kind of where I was. That’s kind of where I was going with this. So I’m crossing that one out, crossing that one off the other ones on ice, because you will want to bring it back. This one, if you’re understanding correctly, someone else has already done the work. So you won’t have to correct. Okay. 45 minutes of messaging. I have. Okay. Hold on 45 minutes. I wrote it down as 45 minutes of messaging learn.

John (21:01):

Yeah. So this was, so we talked about the sole roles into the prospecting and the follow ups and so on. So we had talked about learning direct response, the creation of response, right. Which has been real helpful. So I have been spending time researching reading, learning a little bit, mapping out what I want, some of this direct response to be to either clients or people reaching out on LinkedIn. Somebody just, you know, inquiring about what we do and how we can help out. And so I’ve, I’ve followed some of this with a plan that I’m still working on, which will give me the opportunity to categorize different ways to respond to people or different ways to create a message to get out there. And in some of this, I’m using a little bit now and it might be a little bit under the wire.

John (22:03):

But some of it’s also in preparation for we have your prospecting list here it is, you know, here’s some direction from us as to what we’d like you to do, but I will have a certain plan for what I want my direct responses to be in my message creation debate. And it’s, you know, it’s been good about learning that obviously you have to set goals with these creating creating a roadmap that you’re going to follow and, and identifying what the value is that your service is going to bring and then create, create a formula for that. So, you know, these are all things that you, you thought you knew, you thought you knew how to do it because you’ve been doing it for awhile. But when you look at it and you understand a little bit more about learning, what direct the correct direct response creation is, it was pretty eye opening to me.

Brian Margolis (23:03):

Yeah. I mean, look to me, listen, there’s a reason that direct response copywriters get paid 20, 30, $50,000 a day and up, right. And so it’s not one of these things that any of us could probably ever master. But I’m just, I’m always been amazed at, you know, the message more. So at this time of constant barrage and limited attention, it’s never been more important to have this skill. I mean, this is what ultimately separates you from everyone. Else’s your ability with words or videos or however you’re doing it emails, the ability to get someone, you know, within milliseconds to say, Hey, that’s something I need. Right. And, and you know, if this is repeat, so be it. But you know, I’ve always said that, listen, there’s only two reasons. You’re not going to get a response from someone. Number one is you don’t have anything of value for them. Right. What you have is just not valuable enough for them to, you know, stop what they’re doing or to take time to learn or whatever it is, right. Or number two, you have something of value, but you’re not able to articulate it very quickly. Right, right. Within a voicemail and email, a quick message. And outside of that, I mean, let’s be honest, if you have something to value and you can articulate it, people will respond. And your problem is always in one of those two areas.

John (24:40):

Right? Yeah.

Brian Margolis (24:42):

Amazing. You can message this thing, 36 different ways and the 37th way connects with you. Right. And so, yeah, I mean, 45 minutes to me is a, you know, to me that’s even a minimum. Right. of learning how to say something, to get someone to respond.

John (25:01):

Oh yeah. And it’s, you know, you’re, you’re absolutely right. You know, 45 minutes, either reading or learning or, or putting these together or putting the, the format together or the formula, it’s just by the time you get, you dig into it. And you’re really starting to understand it. Like you could spend another couple of hours doing this.

Brian Margolis (25:21):

Oh yeah. No. And, and your, your total is 90 minutes. Cause 45 is the learning 45 is the actual creating of messages. Right. And so, I mean, I remember, and you dig around, you dig around and you dig around and you try things and some things work and some things don’t, but you know, one of the classic, you know, email, subject lines or add subject lines, that for some reason still works today. A lot of these tend to kind of run their course and people see them and they emotionally unsubscribed. But you know, I’ve, I’ve read this in multiple places, but how to blank without blank. Right. And, and you basically fill in the benefit how to, whatever the benefit is. And then without, and the second blank is whatever they fear or don’t want to do. Right. You know, like how to lose weight without dieting.

John (26:14):

Yeah.

Brian Margolis (26:16):

Ask for referrals without feeling awkward. Right. How to, you know, how to reduce your insurance costs without what, you know, like, what is your customer’s number one fear about a program like yours. Right, right. What are they anticipating is going to be involved? Right. It’s like when someone tells me they can save me money on my phone bill or whatever, I get one of these, I’m like, that’s great. But to me, I just have this picture of a big mess and dealing with a button. And to me, it’s not even worth it. Right. So if someone sends me an email, right, like, you know how to get an extra 1% on your savings account without having to change something or whatever, you know, that’s the kind of stuff that tends to work. And so, you know, you learn this by studying direct response. So anyway all right. So did you add any pillars?

John (27:12):

You know, I think I have, but I haven’t, I haven’t actually formalized it. So, so let me frame this in, and this is probably where again, you can help me this, this line of service that I’m in has really only, although the company has been doing it for 35 years, it wasn’t necessarily by design, I guess, is the best way to explain it. It was, they would have, the company would have clients say, you know, I know you’re doing all these things for us. One, two, three, four, five, but we also have number six, can you do this? Which would be my line of service and internally the company would go, yeah, sure. We can do that. But there really wasn’t, there wasn’t a design to it. It almost just happened. And it happened through some acquisition and an accurate through some merging as well.

John (28:11):

But in the last couple years, there’s truly been a effort to build up this line of service with dedicated directors of operations, with a dedicated vice president of operations, with dedicated field management teams that weren’t just floating out there, but that they really did have formalized direction and development and formats. And I’ve always been very big on, you need to be able to scale this. This has to be a rinse and repeat kind of process or it’ll drive us crazy. So that’s, what’s been building in the last couple of years here, but they haven’t had a business development person. They haven’t had a dedicated sales person to work this again. It’s just sort of happened for that. So what I’ve been doing really in the last two months have been developing a core presentation, deck that with, again, at any time we need to build a presentation, I can go into this core deck and select the slides that we want to create our story.

John (29:30):

We’ve been building a we do a lot of in my line of service. We do facility design and development. And again, just as a reminder, this is fitness related onsite fitness, right? So we, we do quite a bit of facility design and development. We have an internal architect that primarily works on our larger side of the business and not so much on my line of service. So what I’ve been building is a space allocation formula. It’s a, it’s essentially a spreadsheet that when we have a client that comes to us and says, we want you guys to come onsite and design for us an onsite fitness facility, here’s our population. Here’s our demographics. What we can do now is I can take that information, minimal information, plug it into this space allocator, and it’s gonna spit out for me what the space allocations we need for every aspect of this program. From a group exercise room to equipment space, to locker rooms, to the number of lockers, the number of showers, the number of water closets how much equipment do you need and so on and so on. And so on.

Brian Margolis (30:51):

I understand. So how does this, where’s this moving in the direction of pillars though?

John (30:56):

Well, it’s, I think it’s, it’s moving in the direction of, of, of pillars for a short term. Because it, in, in the long run, these things, the development of these will support the overall business and the overall growth of the business. So as these, as these are being done, now that that will wind down,

Brian Margolis (31:21):

Right? So you’re saying you, you base, there’s two things that let’s call these projects or tasks. All right. One is you want to develop this spreadsheet as a tool to use in sales presentations or in the service part of it. Right. And then the second thing is you want to build this kind of master slide deck that you can, you know, pull pieces for ’em or customize for different presentations. Right? Correct. Okay. And this is your responsibility, right? Correct. So to me, I don’t know that these rise to the level of pillars, as much as, because once these are done, essentially they’re done. Right. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. So to me, these are just tasks. Okay. Meaning, so for me, if you remember from the book I have, when I plan my week, okay. When I plan my week on that large index card, there’s three columns.

Brian Margolis (32:27):

And on the right column is this ongoing to do list. Right. And as part of that ongoing to do list, I have, if something has a deadline, right. I put it in yellow. So for example, you could have these two things on your, to do list in yellow, and you could give yourself a deadline. Like I’d like to have these done by March 31st. Okay. Kind of thing. And so they’re always kind of sitting out there as March 31st, right. These things you, you know, I don’t want to say there’s a consequence for not getting them done, but there is a consequence for not getting them done. Right. and so it’s not that you’re going to get fired or that, you know, a customer’s waiting for them. It’s almost like a self-imposed deadline, because, so to me, these would go on that list. And then when you create your weekly list in the left column about where your priorities are, and you put down your pillars for the week, and then any other projects you want to work on, you know, you make the decision each week based on your workload and priorities, you know, are these something I want to focus on this week?

Brian Margolis (33:41):

Right. Are these something, do I want to do 90 minutes on the master slide deck? Do I want to do, but these don’t necessarily rise to the level of a pillar. These are tasks. Okay. Now sometimes, you know, just more of a lesson here about pillars, but sometimes these tasks that we have fit inside of a pillar, meaning that you might, you know, you, you might have an ongoing pillar of always spending one hour a week, right. Building sales tools. Okay. So for example, if you’re someone like me, I’m an entrepreneur. I don’t have a company behind me necessarily. A lot of stuff I have to do on my own. Right. Yup. And so that could be a pillar for an entrepreneur or someone like me where it sounds to me like you have a couple of things you want to do, but I don’t know that a year from now, you’re still building all these sales materials.

Brian Margolis (34:43):

Right? Yeah. I agree with you. It’s probably something that you’ll build and then realize what works, what doesn’t you might refine it a little bit kind of thing. So, so to me, this wouldn’t rise to the level of a pillar right now, if you are getting an entrepreneur and you were going to be, you are going to hire some salespeople, you might have a pillar of, you know, spending one hour a week, always modifying, reviewing, you know, creating sales materials, right. To assist them. But, but I don’t, I don’t see that here as anything more than just a task you’re working on.

John (35:20):

Yeah. And I agree. And I think that’s why, although we’ve been working on them towards a deadline, I didn’t really create them as a pillar because I knew that this is going to go away. I’m going to finish this, get it done, submit it, get it approved. And then it’s in place. Correct.

Brian Margolis (35:39):

Right now in my current business, I have, you know, in, in a couple of weeks, I’m going to be doing a little bit of a road show. It just happens to be the time of year when, you know, people are doing national sales meetings. And I have five national sales meetings in five different cities, you know, over like a 10 day period or a 12 day period or something. Right. So to me, one of the things I need to get done before then is I have to have, you know, this slide decks ready, and my material, you know, all that kind of thing. But, and that’s just a project it’s in yellow because it has a deadline, but it’s not a pillar because after that’s done, you know, there won’t be one for a little bit. So again, these are just tasks that, you know, and we tend to be good at these things, right. These urgent, significant things that either have a deadline for someone else, or we know that there’s a deadline because, you know, without these things, we’re kind of playing with one, one arm tied behind our back.

John (36:39):

Right. Right.

Brian Margolis (36:42):

W was there anything else that you had added? I know

John (36:47):

The, the other, I don’t think we touched upon the other one that I have here, which was to spend 30 minutes working on LinkedIn posts and interactions

Brian Margolis (37:01):

That didn’t make it to my final list. So tell me about that.

John (37:04):

Well, I, I had it on here. Maybe I’m not too sure why, but I’ve, I’ve stuck with that. Because again, the, the fact that the company hasn’t released the reins on, you know, going out and doing a full prospecting. So I’ve been, you know, mining, LinkedIn, reaching out to people, leveraging some posts that company has put out and utilize that to create a, a secondary message, if you will. And I’ve also been working with our field staff to make sure that they’re essentially doing the same thing, because again, the one of, one of my goals in this role is to create widespread visibility and awareness that we do this within this company, because it seems to be a gap out there for us to her, for us.

Brian Margolis (37:58):

So that the 30 minutes of LinkedIn could be posting commenting on other people’s posts, inviting people to become connections or whatever.

John (38:07):

Correct. Correct.

Brian Margolis (38:10):

Anything else?

John (38:12):

Nope. No, just you know, besides the, the daily again, this is the last two months have been good for us. Business-Wise because we’ve been inundated with proposals and RFPs again, right through the holidays, but it’s, it’s been very good. Yeah. And again, just so you understand

Brian Margolis (38:36):

Where pillars fall, I mean, RFPs proposals, those are the things you’re going to take care of. You’re already wired for that,

John (38:42):

Right?

Brian Margolis (38:45):

Those result in business, those have deadlines. There’s other people waiting. These are the things that you do weekend and week out that there’s, you know, no penalty so to speak for. Right. And that’s the problem. But the compound effect of doing them week in and week out is huge. Right? If you don’t knock out that RFP or whatever, by Friday, you know, you feel the pressure to do that. There’s a consequence, but if you don’t spend 45 minutes or 90 minutes working on direct response messaging, you know, nothing’s going to change by Friday. Correct. And again, that, that to me is like the, you know, the last piece of the puzzle, right? I mean, I, you know, one of the analogies, it’s like kind of baseball, right? In baseball at the beginning of every season, you already know for a fact, we already know this for a fact that every team’s going to lose about a third of their games, right?

Brian Margolis (39:42):

Every team’s gonna win about a third of their games. I don’t care if you’re the worst team or the best team, right. Whatever that was 162 games in a baseball season or something by doing that right. 162, something like that, you know, you’d divide, you divide that into a third, you know, every team’s gonna gonna win 50. Every team’s going to probably lose 50 or so, whatever it is, it’s that other 50, that makes all the difference. Right. And it’s, you know, and it’s that sales, same thing with salespeople. It’s, everyone’s gonna get their request for proposals in, right. Everyone’s going to handle business when it comes in. Now, no one has an issue with that. It’s that other third that makes all the difference, right. You know, one year from now, are you better? Do you have a fill full pipeline? Is your messaging always getting better, more effective? And so, you know, that’s why these pillars are so important. So here’s what I have for you for your five pillars. And then I want to talk about actually hitting them, schedule the one SSD each week for it’s all each week, obviously schedule one in SSD review your opportunity report 45 minutes of direct response messaging, the learning part of it, 45 minutes on the output, actually crafting messages and then 30 minutes of LinkedIn. Right?

John (40:59):

Yup. Okay.

Brian Margolis (41:01):

As far as hitting these things consistently, I know you’ve changed them up a little bit. Do you see these being a problem? Are there certain weeks where you had trouble hitting them and you’re like, this is going to be the issue on weeks like this, or this is going to be my problem to hit them or

John (41:17):

No, not at all. No, not, not these, not these four. These, these have been very consistent. And again, I, I do believe that hitting these has been partially a result of us being busier with our line of service.

Brian Margolis (41:35):

Well, yeah. And, and like you said, at the beginning, you can’t always tell what’s driving what, this is a compound effect. And here here’s, here’s what will start happening though, that the more you hit your pillars over time, the more urgent and significant activities you’re going to wind up with, right. Pillars actually drive those. Correct. Right. They drive the RFPs, they drive the calls, you have set up the amount of scheduled appointments, all that kind of stuff. Right. It’s when you kinda, and I just had this talk with him with another guy who’s been doing the pillars for awhile, that we recorded as part of this series. He’s in sales as well. And he’s been doing the pillars for longer and they’ve almost caused him not too much business, but they’ve given him too much stuff. Right. And so got into that trap or now he’s not hitting his pillars.

Brian Margolis (42:25):

Right. Okay. And you have to be careful because you know how it goes in sales, where all of a sudden you have a lot going on. And then all of a sudden you haven’t been prospecting. You have been doing the other things beneath the surface because you have so much going on. And all of a sudden there’s a desert a few months out. And then all of a sudden you’re running back around going, Oh, I got to do my pillars. I got a prospect it’s too late by then. And so that’s a challenge. I can just tell you that it’s coming up for you. Right. And that’s when you need to start looking into, you know, those cap strategies. And it’s not a bad idea to start them now, but, you know, I would really consider if you don’t already do it, do you do anything out of the office or do you ever go onsite? Do you travel? Do you,

John (43:16):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We’re we’re either. And that can fall into a category of it’s a, it’s a finalist presentation. It’s a a presentation that we’ve been invited to go to. It could be coordinating and arranging a site visit for a prospecting client. I, you know, in the four months that I’ve been here, I honestly say I have not gone out on into the field for prospecting meetings.

Brian Margolis (43:46):

Right. Okay. But it’s something that’s, but it’s not going to be a common thing it’s going to happen, but it’s, but you’re not a road warrior.

John (43:53):

It, you know, he, in the four months that I’ve been here in God at all, which is, which is a very big shift from where I came from previously. And it actually makes me a little nervous to be honest, what am I doing so much? And, and again, it’s some of it’s been helping to build this business. Like you say, some of these projects and tasks are, are helping to build where we are, so that w we are going to be able to go out and, you know, I’m gonna make a, a, a sales run through the Northeast or the central States or whatever it may be. I’m, I’m hoping that that happens in the four months I’ve been here. It has not. Okay.

Brian Margolis (44:37):

I mean, and that’s going to make, hitting your pillars more difficult, right? Yes, absolutely. And that’s why, to me, what, you know, my recommendation is, if you do start turning into a little bit more of a road warrior to make sure that you have an office day, right. That you schedule an office day, you protect that office day, whether it’s Mondays and you do your travels at other times, you know, the other part is controlling your mornings, right? Where you, you know, make sure you budget the first 90 minutes or two hours every morning, you know, to hit your pillars. Like I, like I talk about in the book, but it sounds to me from a mental standpoint, you’re not having trouble with the pillars. They’re actually something you want to do. So the only thing I see coming down the road would be logistical stuff.

Brian Margolis (45:28):

When you start getting really, really busy, and that’s when you’re going to have to move to those cap strategies of really, you know, protecting, scheduling time to do them and then protecting it, right. Whether those are office days, whether those are mornings, you know, my sales guys who are road warriors, we tend to focus on office days, right? Like Mondays are their sacred office days to get 80 to 90% of their pillars done, then they can travel other people. I work with that. Aren’t on the road so much, you know, it’s usually better to take the first couple of hours each morning to do this kind of stuff. We’re going to start hopping on the phones and, and really, really protect your time. Right. any other questions or concerns Mo, and again, you’re going to be adding the prospecting one down the road. So when you add that, that’s gonna, cause right now you don’t have a lot of time to hit your, the good news is your pillars. Don’t take a lot of time. Correct. Which is good when we get into the prospecting portion that could change. Right.

John (46:30):

Correct. Cause that’ll just generate more activity,

Brian Margolis (46:32):

It’ll generate more activity and it’s, you know, more time to, more time to prospect. Any questions you have for me or any concerns you see coming, or any specific pillar questions. I mean, I feel like you have the right pillars right now. Mine is minus the prospecting one. That’s on ice for awhile. Right,

John (46:51):

Right. Right. Now I, I believe I do. I am, I’m anticipating though, what’s going to be next. What, what additional pillar or two or three, or, you know, obviously within, within some sort of control here and not go crazy on the number of pillars, but, but what’s going to be next. And, and the idea that, that really you gave me when we spoke the first time was control your morning. Yeah. That’s been critical. And I have, and there’s days where I’ve gone into my, my outlook calendar and I’ve just, I’ve blocked the first two hours of that day. Now that may be, that may be from seven to nine or maybe from eight to 10, but it’s been critical.

Brian Margolis (47:39):

I mean, mine’s, mine’s blocked out for the entire year. I mean, it’s not even, it’s it by default, it’s blocked out if there’s ever an exception to the rule, I move it. But yeah, if it’s not a travel day, seven to 10 is mine. It’s. I mean, I, now that I operate this way, I just, I cannot imagine how I used to do things block. It boggles my mind. It boggles my mind that ever got anything done, honestly.

John (48:05):

Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s too haphazard. It’s too chaotic. Yeah. And, and I know when I get into that, that frazzled state, it’s because I haven’t followed this, I follow.

Brian Margolis (48:17):

And you don’t, you haven’t planned you haven’t planned your day and all that. So. Alright. Well, if I think we’re good if obviously, if anything happens, reach out to me any updates or anything you want up good or bad, I want updates on all different things, right? Yeah.

John (48:34):

Good. And then I’ve been I’ve actually been trying to influence others with vision that, Hey, you know, you guys gotta try this and I’ve shared these, I’ve shared these with my boss. And it’s interesting, cause I’ve, I’ve said to her, listen, I’m good at, this is something that I’m trying here, not done this before. I’d like to be organized. I’d like to be methodical. I like to have that plan to follow. And this is this I found to be very helpful in getting done and getting us moving in the right direction. And so I’ve been sharing these with her and I’ll keep her updated. Cause I’m said, this is, if this is working, then we should all be looking at something like this.

Brian Margolis (49:20):

Yeah. I mean, I’ll tell you this, if right now, if the company’s got, remember you said they have so much business coming in, they’re not even prospecting. That’s usually not the time when they’re thinking about systems and all that kind of.

John (49:33):

Yeah, I know. And again, it’s, I don’t know.

Brian Margolis (49:36):

They tend to wait until they tell everything dries up. Right. And then it’s almost too late, but yeah, I know

John (49:43):

Just I’ve never been with an organization where this has been the case and truly with, with each one of these individuals that I talked to who are in a similar position to me on a different line of service, I’m blown away by that.

Brian Margolis (49:59):

It’s not your, it’s not your line of service that this is happening for it’s the other lines of service, right?

John (50:05):

Correct. Correct.

Brian Margolis (50:07):

I mean, listen, for the company sake, hopefully it stays that way, but that’s rarely the case. And if that much business comes in, then eventually they move away from commission salespeople anyways. And they’re like, wait, what do we need you guys for? We just need account managers, people to service it. Right. So, all right, well listen, have a great, well thank you. And if anything, like I said, if anything pops up, please feel free to reach out to me any updates. I want to hear him. All right. Good. Thank you, Brian. Appreciate it. All right, man. Have a great one. Have a happy new year. You too. Thanks for listening to another episode of simplify your strategy, magnifier results. If you know someone you think could benefit from this episode, be their hero and share it with them. If you’d like a free copy of my book or you want to be considered as a guest on a future episode, head on over to productivity, giant.com. Have a great day. And thanks again.

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