How Systems can Set You Free to Enjoy Success with B2B Services, Tech, SaaS company with Dave Jenyns

Welcome to the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast, where we talk with entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders at B2B services, tech, and SaaS companies to learn the systems and processes they've used to create success for their business. We'll also learn from marketing and sales experts to provide insights to help you grow your business. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, and the podcast is brought to you by Modern Revenue Strategies and their 10X ROI B2B Growth Guarantee. Schedule a free diagnostic call to learn the fastest path to double your B2B revenues in just 90 days. Hello and welcome to another episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint Podcast, where we talk with entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders at early-stage B2B services, tech, and SaaS companies to learn the systems and processes they've used to create success for their business. We also speak with the experts who have built countless businesses through strategies and tactics for success. And today I'm very excited, uh, to welcome one of those specific experts. Uh, Dave Ginnins is a serial entrepreneur, a systems devotee, and founder of Systemology. A company dedicated to helping business owners worldwide scale and streamline their operations. With over 20 years of experience in franchising, digital marketing, and business strategy, his mission is to empower business owners to work on their business, not in their business. Jennings has helped thousands of business owners achieve exponential growth and success, and I know a number of those have been within that B2B services, tech, and SaaS sector. And so we'll be excited to hear some of his stories about that. He's a passionate advocate for leveraging systems to simplify and streamline business operations, and his commitment to excellence has earned him the trust and admiration of his clients and peers alike. Dave, thanks so much for joining me today.

Hey, Mark, my pleasure. Looking forward to it.

Yeah, absolutely. I, I've been a big fan of yours since reading Systemology myself and it aligns very much with, you know, sort of my approach. But why don't you tell our audience that maybe hasn't read the book, what does Systemology do?

Yes. So Systemology is the system to systemize a small business. So I found when I read The E-Myth and Built to Sell and Traction and Scaling Up, some of those classic books that startup founders read, I felt Oh, I know systems and processes are important, but I was always stuck when it came to implementation. And I thought, where's the how-to guide? What is the step-by-step process from going from, I don't really have many systems and processes documented, to I have a well-oiled machine that runs profitably without me? And it was that transition of taking the business owner, as you talked about, from working in the business to on the business, or at the very least to be able to have the choice. A lot of business owners, they don't have the choice. They are chained to their business. And I would prefer that the business owner chooses, do they wanna work in it, on it? Do they wanna have a holiday? Whatever they wanna do, it should be their choice.

That's great. So I know that, you know, in bringing these systems to businesses, You've worked with both B2C companies that, you know, have a lot of customers, B2B companies that might be focused more on, you know, sort of specific identifiable prospects. Have you seen there be much difference in the B2B sector of applying systems or any sort of nuance that you've noticed as applying systems specifically to B2B services tech SaaS companies?

The more businesses I've worked with, the more I find business is business. And when you get down to the core of it, businesses need to generate leads. They need to be able to convert those leads and then they need to be able to deliver a core product or service. They need to manage staff as in how do you recruit, onboard and keep that person involved and engaged and there needs to be some management systems. So when you break a business up into its core components regardless of industry, regardless of niche or target audience. Those core elements are the same. There are still some variations that you see from service-based business when compared, like servicing B2B versus B2C, but it's really not at the deep level. It's more, well, the methods for acquiring B2C clients is gonna be different from B2B, but they still need leads if that makes sense.

Yeah, absolutely. And have you seen, you know, having worked with lots of different businesses of lots of different stripes, I'm sure there, you know, might be some listeners out there that are like, will it work for me though? And I know oftentimes there's this sort of conception of You know, companies like McDonald's that are really well systemized and they get exactly a, you know, a dime-sized dollop of ketchup and a quarter-sized dollop of mustard or whatever it might be. And some, you know, early-stage companies might be like, man, we're just, we're trying to keep the lights on. We're running fast. We don't have time to, you know, to do all these things. How have you seen, you know, the systemology approach adapt to those early stage companies that are still moving fast and, you know, and trying to make some things happen? How do you balance that out?

When a business gets traction, has some product to market fit, have some clients coming through the door, they're either coming back or they're referring friends and family and you've got a small team, perhaps more than 3, 4, 5 staff somewhere in there or larger. Generally, that means, okay, we've got a little bit of traction here. So that's kind of the, the first step to realize that you already have some proven processes in place. They may not be documented, but your staff and you are doing things a certain way, and that's how you've been able to get that traction. So, and this is what makes Systemology very different from a lot of the process improvement methodologies that came before it is that it focuses on capturing what's already working. The best proven processes that you have are the ones that already generate leads for you, that already help to convert those. So find out who on your team knows how to do a particular task well, capture that method, and then bring everybody up to that standard because what most small business struggles with is actually consistency and repeatability. It's that key person dependence. It's either the business owner or that team member who just knows how to do the thing, and they're the only one on the team who does that thing. So if that person isn't there or they're off sick, that thing doesn't get done. So it's very important to just capture that best process, consider that the baseline, and then bring everybody up to the standard that, that, that best person is doing. That is where you'll find the best proven practices and where you'll get the quickest traction. And you'll start to build a bit of a systems culture just by capturing a way of doing things.

Interesting. So what does that systems culture look like? You've, I'm certain, seen some sort of transformations in business and particularly Particularly in, you know, marketing and sales, which is the subject matter for a lot of these podcasts, is, you know, in marketing sales, sometimes it's a little bit catch as catch can or by the seat of your pants where we're gonna try this and hope it works. We're gonna try this. What does it look like once there's a system in place, you know, for those marketing and sales motions?

Yes. It, once it's in place, it really is comparing night and day. Like the difference is quite significant. And once you see a systems-driven business, you can't unsee it. Like there is, it becomes immediately obvious when you see it that that is the way that business is built. You need to identify what is the one best way that your organization sells. You need to find repeatable marketing tactics and strategies that are executed consistently regardless of whether or not you're there. You need consistent ways to onboard new clients and you have a one best way that sets expectations, lets the client know this is how we get started and what we need from you and gets them on board smoothly. It's Once you see it again, like I said, it's just the way that business works. Business, your business is a collection of systems. Some of them are currently documented and some of them are undocumented. The key is by documenting them, we're bringing them into visibility and that helps to build this systems culture because it's a way of getting your team to say, oh, that's how we do things here. And that's really where you wanna get to where Jenny asks, oh, How do we handle that incoming inquiry? And then Joe says, oh, this is our way of doing it. Here's my process.

That's right. That's right. You said a phrase once actually in a podcast interview like this, I think, which is actually sort of how I found you. You said, you know, systems set you free. And I've really sort of seen that to be true where, you know, it sets you free from, you know, worrying about, you know, where your if you're gonna hit your forecast or not, because you've got a system that allows you to forecast and allows you to know where you're pacing against that forecast. And free from the sort of strife that you have between different teams that, you know, might be fighting for, you know, different resources, especially at an early stage company that's growing fast and there's not infinite resources yet. You have to sort of mitigate those fights free from that, just that stress of worrying about, you know, How's it all gonna fit together?

I learned that lesson in the video production business that I owned. So it was a B2B business where we would sell video services to small business and help get them onto YouTube, those sorts of things. And I remember going on the first shoot with our videographer because I'm not a video guy, I'm just the business guy. And we spent the entire car ride journey with him saying, oh, did we bring the extension cable? I hope I packed to the second battery. I hope we emailed the client to let them know not to wear checks on the shirts because that doesn't look good on camera. All of this stuff that just should have been handled. And after that shoot, I said to him, look, we have to get a pre-shoot checklist that we'll keep at the studio. And the night before, you charge the extra batteries, you get the extension cables and load it all in. So we put that into place and then About 6 months later, I went on another shoot with the same videographer and the conversation I had with him was so vastly different. He was talking about the shots he wanted to get. He was talking about how to get the best performance from the actors. And I remember at that point, it was such a clear moment for me to go, the systems and the processes just handle the things that need to get handled and must be handled from an operational perspective. Then that creates space. And in that space, you can be more creative, you can make better choices, and that's what gives you the option to step in or out of the business. So they really do create a level of freedom and it's very counterintuitive for a lot of people. But once you see it, you go, ah, I get it now.

Yeah, it uplevels everything about what's happening in the organization. That's great. And so I'm sure you've seen this, you know, numerous times you talk about, you know, as companies are starting to really scale and grow and they're, you know, starting to bring in more people. So you wanna take what, you know, lives within one person and have that sort of best practice. I imagine it also helps with sort of competing priorities and sort of setting you free from sort of the strife of managing those different priorities. Particularly for early stage companies that, you know, they start to expand and they've got more of a sales staff now because the CEO can't take every sales call. And now they've, they've started to expand and they've got more marketing functions happening and they've got more clients and more client success. All of these different parts of the company are focused on revenue, but they have very different priorities. How does a systems approach help companies balance and integrate different priorities as they grow.

When you think about your business as a system and then you think about the subsystems that support to help the bigger system that is your business. So a subsystem would be marketing or sales or customer service or finance. These are departments inside this bigger system that is your business. Now, for a system to be healthy, all subsystems need to be healthy. If your marketing system or your sales system is underperforming, it'll bring down the overall health of your business. It's really important to make sure that each of these subsystems work well. So when you start to think of it from that perspective and you think of systems approach, you then start to go, well, in those subsystems, what are the most important functions that need to happen consistently for that subsystem to be considered a success? Well, marketing needs to generate leads and it needs to do it consistently. And if it doesn't do that, marketing is failing. Sales needs to convert those leads into clients. And then customer success needs to take those clients that are sold and make sure that they onboard and get a great result. So all of these systems need to help. And when you approach it from a systems thinking perspective, you think, well, what are the most important activities and tasks that help to deliver that result? And just getting very clear on them. Just, you don't have to systemize everything in your business. Your business kind of works at the moment. It's really about systemizing those things that are most important to ensure that those subsystems deliver the result.

That's right.

And then oftentimes the business owner or the leadership team early on when they're getting up and running, It's easy for them to just get pulled over to whatever the big fire is or whatever needs the attention. That often means they take their eye off the ball in the other departments or other things that are going on. And systems is a way to ensure that even when you're focusing in on something else, at least the core essential things are getting done.

That's right.

And that's why the systems approach is so important.

I think I've heard you describe it as sort of like the critical flow, like the most important path. Once that's defined, then you can have that flexibility either to, you know, enhance it in some way or even if, as you say, you get distracted, at least that critical flow is covered.

Yeah, we talk about the idea, the critical client flow, the CCF, and it's where we suggest you get started if you haven't documented anything yet.

Yeah.

And you think about that journey that the prospect and the client and the business goes through to deliver a core product or service, and you capture the most probable path, what is most likely to happen. And that's where you start. That's also a great way to introduce new team members into what you do, like as you grow and scale, getting new team members to deliver on that critical client path is fantastic because then it enables your higher skilled team members, oftentimes more costly team members to work on the highest value tasks because you free them up from things that are well documented, wax on, wax off, follow this process, and then they can work on the stuff that only they can work on, the exceptions or when something breaks down or leadership type areas.

Yeah. As you were talking earlier about integrating these different subsystems of, you know, marketing, sales, and customer success, one of the things that we've seen work too is as part of defining the system and process by defining cadence for communication and ways of collaborating, you can build a lot more sort of harmony throughout those systems as well so that you're reconciling maybe inherent friction within those different systems by just incorporating the sort of the feedback loop as part of it.

One of the ways I like to think about that, and it depends on the size of business when it's the solo startup founder and it's just them. Sometimes some of these things might be overkill, but as you get larger and you've got a small team and messages and communication between teams becomes critical, otherwise you've got double handling or mistakes get made, those sorts of things. The systems that you're talking about fit really well in the management department. So what are the core systems for management? It's things like, what is the meeting cadence? How do you identify what the focus is for the next 90 days? And what are the different departments working on? And how do we communicate that amongst us? So getting that piece right If we think about the most important pieces for management, that meeting cadence and the way that you set your goals and your targets and communicate on those is a critical one.

Yes, for sure. And they talk about that a lot in sort of, you know, Traction or the EOS framework of, you know, getting that meeting cadence down and that really being important to systemizing your business. So if we've got, you know, some founder, some CEO at a company who this is all making sense to them, but they haven't quite, you know, sort of gotten there. What would be your advice on how they can start to get the benefits of systems for their business today? What can they start doing right away that's gonna make an impact on their business?

First thing, and maybe a little selfishly, they can go to Amazon and get themselves a copy of my book Systemology. That's a good start because it explains—

I highly recommend having read it myself.

That's, I think that's a great first step. But in the book, I talk about the first step is to identify the first 10 to 15 systems that you're going to document. Apply the 80/20 to your rule or to your business, the 80/20 rule to your business and think what are the most important systems to deliver your core product or service. Think about those first and then sometimes you can even go the next step after that is then to say, And where is the most pain in those existing systems? You might go, oh, we already have more than enough leads. Okay, well, you don't need to start with lead generation. You might say it's delivery or maybe it's the sales process. Like, think, where does this process break down currently or where would it break down if I was to get 10 times more clients?

Yeah.

And it's identifying those areas of constraint and going to work on those chunks first to open the flow, remove that key person dependency, and then just remain focused. Most people struggle to follow through and they don't know where to start and they're systemizing everything and it becomes overwhelming. But everybody can do 10 systems. Just choose your 10, stick with it, make it a 90-day sprint. And don't give up until you've got that and then plan out your next 90 days.

That's great. We actually, we talk about revenue systems broken into attraction systems for attracting more of the right prospects, acceleration systems for moving deals through the pipeline faster, or activation systems for activating existing clients for more renewals, upsells, and referrals. And we actually have about 15 benchmarks and diagnostics that we use to sort of assess the health of each one, which pretty quickly sort of shines a relied on, well, your biggest gap is here. And so then you can focus on, well, let's spend the next 90 days on that biggest gap. And, you know, usually we try to double the, you know, the outcomes that we're getting from that area by just implementing those systems and upskilling everything as we talked about. Well, thank you so much, Dave. This is— oh yeah, go ahead. What were you gonna say?

I was gonna say that what you just talked about there is the key where the business owner does the best work is where they're problem solving. They go, well, here's a problem in my business, here's how I solve it. And the bit where most business owners get stuck is making that recur and keep solving the problem without them having to do it. Most business owners just get stuck, keep solving the same average problems day in and day out. The same clients are asking the same questions, the same staff are asking the same questions, and they're saying the same thing again and again and again. Systems is a way to solve it once forever. So I think you're bang on the money there.

Well, and that brings something I have to bring up, which is, you know, there's this phrase that happiness doesn't come from not having problems. It actually comes from solving problems that you care about. And a lot of people, I'm sure, have had the experience of looking back in their life and some of the times when they felt the most, you know, sort of fulfillment with their life whether personal or professional, was when they were solving problems that they cared about. And there's an interesting book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Bleep, where he talks about, you know, upskill your problems, uplevel your problems so that you're working on more interesting problems or problems that you care more about. And systems are such a great way to get rid of solving the small problems that you've actually already solved once You just didn't write it down. And so now you're having to resolve it every time. That's a great way to think about it. Yeah, I love it. So for folks that want to get in touch with you and integrate Systemology more into their work and life, how do they get in touch with you?

Yeah, well, you can head to systemology.com and there's all the links to our YouTube channel and we've got loads of free content. There's links through to Amazon to grab a copy of the book. The book's probably the best place to start though. It's useful, it's complete, it explains the full methodology and it'll just give someone some inspiration to start on systems and processes because it's, it's worth it.

Well, Dave, I can't thank you enough for joining us today. I know our audience will have gotten a lot of great insights from this. I've certainly learned a lot from reading the book and from chatting with you. So it was a real pleasure to have you on today.

Perfect. Thank you.

Alright, thanks so much. Thank you for joining this episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast. We hope you've gained insights to grow your business. If you enjoyed this discussion, please rate, comment, like on your favorite platform and share to others who will find it useful. Do you know a CEO, founder, or leader at an early-stage B2B services, tech, or SaaS company who would like to be a guest and share their story, send us a note. Let's schedule a conversation.