What Innovation Strategies Drive Success for StoneGate Advisor with Marc Pierce

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. And welcome to another episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, and today I'm very excited to welcome my guest, Mark Pierce. Now I'm going to read Mark's bio to make sure I get all this right. Mark is a nationally recognized healthcare strategy and consulting leader with more than 25 years of experience driving growth across the healthcare sector, working across the sector including payers, providers, health management companies, health tech, and health data, and it was recently acquired by ECG Management Consultants. Before joining ECG, Mark was the founder and CEO of Stonegate Advisors, a boutique consulting and analytics firm where he developed Stamp, an AI-enabled SaaS platform that gives healthcare organizations real-time insight into customer sentiment and retention risks. Throughout his career, Mark has been known for aligning strategy, innovation, and execution to deliver measurable results in acquisition, retention, and market share. He's a frequent speaker, author on healthcare innovation, customer experience, and market strategy, and has served on advisory boards for leading children's hospitals. He holds a master's degree in marketing and strategy from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and a bachelor's in business administration from the University of Michigan. So, Mark, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. Great to be here.

So you've obviously had some recent, uh, interesting, uh, changes in your professional life. Why don't you give our audience a little bit of a a picture of sort of what your career has been and those twists and turns that brought you to where you are today.

Sounds good. Sounds good. So for the last 20 years, I ran my own business, a company called Stonegate Advisors. We were a leading player in the healthcare consulting space, working extensively with payers, providers, health management, health tech, health data. While I started it as a strategy consulting company. We also did market research. So both primary and secondary market research, things like focus groups, in-depth interviews to very sophisticated quant research, mainly around customer insights, product innovation. And then I got enamored with the idea of integrating products. So we started developing SaaS tools. We've had several along our journey. But the most successful one you mentioned, which is Stamp, it's a tool that helps really any company. It doesn't have to just be health sector, even though I focus on the health sector, but it helps them predict the likelihood that a client is going to churn a contract or policy renewal, and we'll advise them what they need to do in the event that that client's going to churn so you can intervene in advance and save a client. As we know, it's lot more profitable to keep an existing client than have to necessarily go out and acquire new ones. So after that 20-year journey, you know, I got an opportunity to be acquired by the ECG management consulting firm. They're a pretty sizable main player. They've been around since the late '60s, predominantly serving the provider sector up until about 10 years, and they expanded into the health payer sector. Given that our focus was heavily in the payer ecosystem, it was just a great chance to join a broader organization, have access to a lot more resources. And so officially at the beginning of this month, I'm now part of a, you know, much larger organization. So it's been an interesting change from being an entrepreneur to, working for a corporation, but I'm doing pretty much what I did before because my task is to go and help them grow and expand into the payer sector.

Well, that's exciting stuff. Congratulations on that. And definitely, you know, sort of happy for you and thrilled to, you know, sort of see that success blossom and grow. As you and I were sort of chatting a little bit, prior to this recording and the call, we were talking about sort of how companies grow and that oftentimes people get distracted by looking for shiny objects and hoping that one thing is going to be the solution. But usually that's not the case. Instead, it's more about building a system. And I know that you've talked about Stamp as a system for churn prediction. I want to get into that, but maybe chronologically we start with sort of customer acquisition before we get into that retention piece. And I know that you've spent a lot of time building a system specifically around, you know, sort of lead acquisition and cultivation. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, I think even touching back to your first comment, which is constantly reinventing yourself, I think that's one thing that I will underscore as an entrepreneur of 20 years is the importance of doing that, not hanging your hat on one thing. And a system is one thing, innovation is another. So as you continue to innovate, and like I said, we, through those 20 years, we probably went through 3 or 4 different iterations as we saw competition come in, as, you know, markets change, even with the most recent advent of AI coming in and how that changes the dynamic. So You're spot on there. And then the key is, is to really perfect a way that whatever you do, to find a way to cultivate warm leads. So as we chat, I'd love to chat about that. But also, once you get those accounts, talk a bit about retaining those accounts and the importance for doing it. So jumping on the, on the, the lead capture and warming, I mean, this is a journey I've been on for 20 years, and I have tried Everything. I mean, from doing it myself, hiring salespeople, and I'm sure this is gonna resonate with your audience. It's like how many salespeople talk such a great game and then once they come work for you, it's just a disappointment. They can't deliver. They don't come with a Rolodex. They're not motivated. You know, it's like a lot of entrepreneurs say, how can I just duplicate myself? And I just can't seem to do it. And I tend to find that In some cases, it's not the case. But in many cases, if a person is that good of a sales and business development person, they're not coming to work for another business. They're doing it on their own, which then further underscores having a system. So as I learned a lot, I learned less to just say, I'm gonna hire a guy and expect him to do everything to where it's gotta be, you gotta create this system. So then I tried other things like, hey, let's use an offshore team to go make a bunch of phone calls and schedule meetings. Didn't work. Let's try to rely exclusively on some of these online tools to do outreach and moderate success. But I think in the end what I found is, is you have to blend multiple components to your system in order for it to work. And finally, last year, which I think helped really propel and, you know, get us acquired, was finding a system that brought together the best of, you know, lead identification tools, LinkedIn automation tools, email automation tools. And then you can— I sometimes use it, sometimes don't, but even like phone call automation tools. So I can, I can show that process and kind of work through it. But it makes it a lot easier because otherwise, if you try and do it piecemeal, like you start on it one Monday and then you forget on Tuesday you're supposed to send these emails and then life gets in the way. And it is consistency because I find that to really penetrate a contact, It could take 5 to 8 touchpoints. And for you to manually do 5 to 8 touchpoints to, let's say, 500, 1,000 contacts, it's just, it's just not feasible unless that's all you're doing. And as a business owner, it's, it's, you're lucky if you have 3, 3 or 4 hours a week to do that consistently. So, so I'll share my screen.

Yeah, let's pull it up. And while you're doing that, I gotta call out a few things. And the first is, so often we see this challenge where the founder or CEO or business owner will come to us and be like, we hired this great salesperson that had all this history of success. And they said for sure they were going to be able to be successful here. And we hired them and then it didn't work out. And almost every time, it's because That person was successful in the other environment because they were running a system that was already existing. But they didn't necessarily have the skill set at creating a system. They were experts at running a system versus the company that they joined doesn't have a system yet and they need to create it. And that's so often that stumbling block that companies run into is they think hiring a person Replaces the system. And that's just not true. You got to create the system, then you hire someone to run it.

No, I think you're spot on. And, you know, for example, I was talking to another person who's in a sales and biz dev role and, you know, they basically make phone calls all day. That's all they do. And it's outbound calling and, you know, there's some success, but, you know, it's a part of a system. I think you really need to think about all the different touchpoints, which include LinkedIn Email, phone call, and how they string together. Because I don't think any one medium anymore, vehicle anymore, makes it work, especially today where, you know, that's why I say phone calling is intermittent. I mean, I don't ever pick up my phone. Like, do you? It's like if you want to get in touch with me, you know, hey, we'll schedule a call. That's one thing. But otherwise, text me, email me. But I get so much spam that I keep my phone on silent. So It's not a great way, I think, especially with the up-and-coming generation to get in touch with you. So.

Well, and you also hit on something there that, you know, we talk about, like, so often people confuse sales as an event versus sales as a process. And, you know, people that haven't done it much sort of think, oh, it's an event. You show up and you make a pitch and then they sign on the line that is dotted. But that's not really how it works. It's fundamentally multiple stages of identifying and capturing leads, nurturing those leads until, you know, because 95% of your market is not in market at any given time. And then once they are in market, then it's facilitating the value exchange, education, and guiding them through that process of making a decision. Those are 3 different things. And so you need Systems for each of those three areas and an overarching system that connects them.

Yep. No, I agree 100%.

So talk us through this visual.

Yeah. So you know what I'm showing here? We actually now do for clients. You can kind of see the time frame that's involved, but it really starts out with you know adequately and appropriately identifying your target leads. So there are a lot of sources of data out there, right? There is LinkedIn Sales Navigator, there's ZoomInfo, there is D&B, there's Apollo, and I'm sure there's, I don't know, 20—

Dozens of others.

Yeah. What I found is that no one is really great at getting the best information. I kind of find they're 70% and 80% correct because inevitably, something pops up in your filter where they shouldn't even be in there. Like, you know, you're looking for healthcare and I'm getting people in education, or I'm looking for marketing and I'm getting people in the program management office.

Yeah.

So what's, what's really important is, is to, you know, first get your initial list, right? So it'd be pretty targeted. I think it's, it's good to do outreach to somewhere between 500 and 1,000 at a time, because that's kind of what this is designed for, mainly because if you try and do so much bigger than that, it's, it's not as manageable. You could do as little as 100, right? So I would say anywhere between, like, say, 100 and 1,000 is probably a good segment to do. So make sure you're narrowing down to get that. And when you're using filters on Sales Navigator or Zoom or Apollo, you're not getting 10,000. It's just, it's tough because the second step is really to verify those leads. Now I'm fortunate enough to have an analyst team, so they literally will go through every single lead and verify that they are a real person. Another good example is I tend to find a lot of these folks are between jobs. Now you can't always tell that on LinkedIn, but you have to recognize that Inevitably, when you're doing your outreach, they'll be like, oh, I just recently lost my job and things like that. But it'll kind of take that 60-70% clean list that comes out of like a Zoom, an Apollo, or a Sales Navigator and get you to like 90%. So that's kind of like step 1. I call it the target and verify leads. The 2nd step is enrichment of that data. So this really did not exist, I think, until Probably 12 to 18 months, and there are more and more platforms that are out there that it will take a piece of data, typically a LinkedIn address, could be email, could be company name. And there are tools now that will vet it on, you know, 10, 20, 30 different sources and with a high degree of success. Confirm the email and often the cell number, which, which you need both. So it's kind of those 2 pieces. So when you're all done, you, you know, it's going from like a 60-70% correct list that when you're done with the enrichment piece, you should feel good that your call 500,000 contacts are about 95% correct.

Yeah. So I know Quay is a popular solution there. Apollo also does that. Do you have a favorite?

I, right now I'm using Apollo, and I think it's a value thing for me. I think that the value that you get in terms of the cost of data and the functionality is better than some of the other tools that I've seen out there. Like, I've used ZimInfo, I've used D&B. So right now it's that, but with the acceleration of You know, these platforms coming out. I mean, who knows, there could be somebody tomorrow. And then for the enrichment of data, I'm actually using a— it's a functionality inside Monday. So the other thing I didn't mention is you got to have a CRM. Like, you can't do this without a CRM. And I, I use a couple of different CRMs, but my favorite's probably HubSpot. It's great. It's got great functionality. They do have a data enrichment partner in there. I'm using Monday, which just recently came out of the CRM for a data enrichment tool, because I, I know the engine behind them, and I like them, and I've used them before, and they recently did a partnership with them. So that's the main reason. But I haven't vetted it against the enrichment tool that HubSpot has. Maybe it's as good, but just make sure you have an enrichment tool. So, all right, keep going.

Yeah.

So the next step is automation on LinkedIn. So again, this is something that was relatively new to me last year. I, you know, I was the kind of person I'd search and I'd find a person and then send a contact request and then maybe send a message. And you can do that with about 10 people, but you cannot do that with, you know, 100 people, 200 people. So I stumbled upon this world of, you know, LinkedIn automations and they're pretty cool. So basically it'll auto, you know, help you connect. So it'll, you can create a very short message that's fairly general but yet specific to your industry. So mine often says, hey, like you, I've been in the health industry for 20+ years in the area of growth and customer management. Love to connect and explore ways to collaborate. I find that that works and I, and I probably connect with somewhere in the neighborhood of like 30 to 40% of people that I do outreach to. Now I have probably close to 9 or 10,000 connections. I've been, you know, on LinkedIn for a long time. I've got a pretty robust profile that helps. You gotta make sure you've got a clean, appealing LinkedIn profile 'cause they'll inevitably click over and decide whether they want to connect with you or not. So that's kind of prerequisite. We help companies like refine the LinkedIn profiles of their biz dev up to their senior leadership 'cause that's gonna be a key component. So then what it'll do is it will actually automate that if you don't connect, it'll follow them or it will endorse them or it will look at their profile. And if they do connect, then it can send them a message and then another message and another message. I usually do about 3 messages. And at any point, if they respond to you, then they, then they opt out of that sequence. So I can now have direct communications with them.

Yep.

Now LinkedIn will only allow you to do about 75 connects a week. So that's why this process takes time. So you can imagine that if I've got, you know, 1,000 contacts, it's gonna take me 10 to 12 weeks to make connections with everybody that's in there. But that really simplified, like it's doing, it's doing work while you're sleeping because it's just going out and it's connecting and it's sending messages and Doing all the stuff that would take you a lot of time. Now the messages are really important. So this is one of the areas that I do use AI. So I will, I will go into a variety of AI tools. I tend to use ChatGPT the most. Yeah, it will help you develop a sequence and you can say, I'm going to do a 3-series sequence in LinkedIn with an intro. Give it to me. You got to refine it so you can't rely on it 100%. But the other important component is that I've learned is keep it short, like super duper short. I'm telling you, every connection or every message, 3 to 4 sentences. Like, do not write paragraphs. Do not write multiple bullets. The whole goal of your LinkedIn outreach is to get a phone call or something scheduled with this person. So have the call to action and keep it super, super short. So that's my, my, my big recommendation there. So then you move on to the next phase, which is email sequencing. So if you recall back in the enrichment, you've got the email, you've got pretty good certainty that the people you're contacting, you know, you've got a valid email for. There's 2 ways to think about email sequencing. One is you do it in parallel. So you take that same 1,000 and you set up an email sequence with a similar message that you're doing on LinkedIn, because you can imagine with an email sequence of somewhere between 3 and 5 emails with the LinkedIn outreach that gives you 8 contact points. It's reinforcement, reinforcement, reinforcement of message. What I find is that people you connect to are far, far more likely to engage with you than people that don't connect with you, because then you can refer and say, hey, we recently connected on LinkedIn, and they tend to be like, oh yeah. So I would give you like an A and a B solution. A solution on your email sequence is to just do everybody that's in your LinkedIn and do in parallel. And then as far as platforms, Apollo does have sequencing built in, but it's not as sophisticated as, let's say, some platforms like Klaviyo, which would really allow you to do branch logic. Did they open and not click? Did they click and go to your site? Did they never open? And you can do some really cool flows inside that. HubSpot does have a a similar flow. I just find it's a lot more expensive than doing a Klaviyo. So as a business owner, I was very conscious of trying to keep— I mean, I'm, I'm subscriptioned out. I probably have, I don't know, 7 subscriptions, and once you total them all up, you're at $700. So I, I try and not do any one subscription that costs, you know, thousands of dollars a month. HubSpot's expensive, but it is great. So Yeah. So on the email sequencing, you can do that. But what I like to do, I find the most successful, is those that you connect with, you can actually export out of the tools and you specifically put them into your email sequence, which will be a portion. So if you're going after 1,000, by the time you're done, maybe you've got 200 or 300. But the messaging is much more personalized. Hey, we recently connected on LinkedIn in October and I thought now would be a good time to Reach out and see if I can grab some time. So that's like the second piece. So if you think about the funnel, right? So I got 1,000 coming in. I typically would connect with like 30-ish percent, 40%. So 300 to 400. And then I will actually engage in dialogue with maybe, I don't know, 20 to 25% of those that I've connected with. And then maybe I get a meeting with a subset. So, you know, you're looking at getting somewhere in the neighborhood of, call it 25 to 50 meetings, you know, once you've started with this 1,000 funnel and it ends up being, you know, call it like 2 to 3 meetings, 4 extra meetings a month because it does run for multiple months is kind of how the funnel works. Final thing is just refining and optimizing your message. Some of these tools will allow you to do A/B testing so you can like test 2 different messages on LinkedIn. 2 or 3 different messages in your email sequences. You never know. It could be something in the subject line. It could be something in the, in the body. I do recommend doing A/B testing so you can perfect it. And then the final thing that's not on this page is the calling. So there are tools out there that are pretty cool that'll automate the call. So you load them in. So anybody you connected with, you load them in, it'll dial. And then once that person picks up, your screen will click and you have the phone call. And it's great, but a lot of people don't like being bothered on the phone. So I, I found mixed, mixed success on that. So.

Well, and one thing that I've seen work actually quite well is in place of that call using SMS and text messaging that has that same sort of additional channel. But it's not quite as aggressive as the phone call. I love this. And this is actually very similar to things that we've built for other folks around similar. And one of the things that I love about it is, and this is so often overlooked in organizations, which is, you know, something like 60% of the population is primarily visual. And so if you think about your team, Half or more, you get their best ideas if you give them something visual that they can engage with and respond to. And by taking it from a description that you just tell people, hey, here's what we do, or even a written, you know, sort of SOP or playbook on here's what we do, and creating this visual, you're enabling about half of your team to do their best work.

Mm-hmm.

And also by putting it down, something that you can look at know, up on a screen together, you create a much better culture of collaboration so that other folks on your team can come in and say, oh, have you thought about this? You know, I have the opportunity to say, oh, what about SMS? Could we work that in here somewhere? And then it's not me critiquing your system, it's us collaborating on improving a system. And just that simple step of creating that visual representation Really unlocks so much stuff for companies.

Yeah, I, it's interesting you bring up SMS. So in some of these tools, particularly Klaviyo, you can integrate SMS into the threads. I, the only challenge is, is that the legalities around sending email versus SMS are a little bit different. SMS is a little bit more strict than you do need to get, like, gotta get permission to, they can't spam. So it's just a matter of, you know, do you want to potentially piss off people with a text? Because it is— I still think it's still a little bit more personal. Yeah, like email is a little bit more general. So just be cognizant of whatever industry you're in. You know, could you potentially offend a possible client if they knew you had their mobile phone? Because even when I do the phone call, because I'll get the enriched data, they'll be like, how'd you get this number?

Yeah.

So you just, you just got to be careful. And it's like, oh, well, you know, I found it on this database. But, but the other thing that happens is some of these databases are wrong. So I'll get like the wife of this, of the exec. Oh, this is his wife because the info is not perfect. So just be careful with cell phones. Just be cognizant of that.

Yeah, very, very true. Very true. So thanks for sharing this. This is awesome. And, and it's such a great representation of a really best-in-class solution for everybody watching, like, this is, this is what you should be thinking about if you're, you know, developing a lead warming process. Um, and I think it bears, you know, sort of switching gears a little bit to talk about the retention thing, uh, that you've built, because, you know, one of the most valuable assets that companies fail to leverage is their existing database of customers or previous customers, and in terms of building both referral as well as advocacy programs, as well as, you know, reactivating old leads. And so talk to us a little bit about that stamp solution that you've built.

Yeah, so probably around 2008 or '09, I was working with some of my bigger clients that they said, Listen, we we are getting to contractor policy renewals, and we're finding our clients are churning. And you know we should have known that. And if you have sales and account management people, they're always like, "We have sales and account management people. Surely they know, and they're recording it in our CRM." Chances are, if there's a problem account, it's not getting put into your CRM because it's their job at risk, and they're doing everything they can. To keep it, but they don't want to let you know because often, you know, it comes down to well, you know, we we lost this account and and the account manager ends up kind of saying innocence. I didn't really know when in fact they probably did. So I I don't believe in relying on the sales and account manager. The other thing I've often found is that people will rely on You know, a net promoter score, like people put a lot, a lot of emphasis in a net promoter score. And when I talk about our system, we actually do capture it, but we've statistically proven that net promoter score is not a good predictor of retention.

Yep. I've seen, I've seen that same research from lots of places.

Yeah. And the reason is 2, 2 quick things and then we'll move on to the tool. Like one is, is that the scale is not a balanced scale. So if anybody knows how a net promoter, 0 to 10, how likely are you to, you know, to recommend me? 9 and 10 is a promoter, 7, 8 is a passive, 6 and below is a detractor. And you take the promoters less the detractors. But because the detractors are 0 through 6, you know, 5 is not the midpoint on that scale. And anybody that does not understand that thinks that 5 is the midpoint. So it can really throw off your, your scores. The other thing is, it's, it's a passive statement. How likely are you to recommend? It's not, do you like working with me or not? It's how likely are you to recommend? And I find that especially in larger industries that are more oligopolistic, financial services, like there's only so many big banks, healthcare, there's only so many health plans. They're gonna get recommended because there's only a few of them. That doesn't mean that you like working with them. So I've learned over time that, you know, it is not the, the best predictor. It's one of many. So what we ended up doing was we created a system because we talk systems, but then we actually turned it into a SaaS platform, launched it in 2017. It's called Stamp, and it helps you systematically determine the likelihood that your clients are going to churn at contract or policy renewal. And it does this by going out to them at a certain point before the renewal, and it asks, it asks them a series. Now it does use a tool we call an assessment. We don't use the term survey because survey seems to connote you're like one of hundreds or thousands, and your voice doesn't matter. It's, it's a performance assessment of the company. Takes them a couple minutes, and it helps them determine how well they're delivering on it. So So what's really important to understand is it's not a survey because survey tends to connote I'm one of hundreds or a thousand, you know, people. But it's actually, we call it an assessment, a performance assessment. So it goes out and it asks specifically what's most important to that client in their decision to renew together with how well our client is delivering. And then in real time, it will dashboard the differential between Importance, delivering against you know call it performance, and it scores the gap. So we have our own proprietary score that gives you almost like a health risk for that client, and it will tell you with pretty good granularity whether that client is going to churn or what kind of risk they're at. So you might even find out that they may not churn this year, but if you don't correct. Things that are wrong with them, they could churn in the future months. And I'll do, I'll do another quick screen share here so I can show you some of the inputs. All right, so just a couple quick things on this one. Yeah. So we, we use a variety of things. So we not only consume information that our client has, so it could be, you know, the, the standards like name, contact information, who the account manager is, if you have a broker, who the broker is, but any other data that you might want to look at as you slice and dice your customer dataset. Could be region, size, economic value. So we take that, but we also then ask the specific client across this constituent journey. So it could be through the process of marketing all the way into selling, renewing, prospecting, into fulfilling, installing, and onboarding and servicing. We look at those key touchpoints and we really try and understand how important is that touchpoint to your decision to renew, together with how well you're delivering on their needs. And then all of this data is captured And it's visualized in real time and you get these series of cascading dashboards. Now the great thing about the dashboards is that you can slice and dice the data in real time. So imagine I have 500 clients and I have 1 or 2 decision makers in each of those. The idea is to get as many of these clients to complete. We actually, interestingly enough, use a similar system as the acquisition flow for getting people to complete this. And we get about 60 to 70% of clients to participate. The account manager is heavily involved. It looks like it's coming from the account manager, even though it's not. It's coming from our system because we do find whoever's closest to the client should be the communicator. This is why a lot of Net Promoter Score, they get very low, you know, returns. It's like XYZ company. Well, they don't care. But if it's coming from Bill or Jane, your account manager, they're more likely to look at it. And then we also make it very clear in the communications that if you don't take the time to answer these, you know, 2 to 3 minutes of questions, we can't customize our solutions and products to you. So when it's done, you'll get an individual level dashboard so I can see exactly what Jane is thinking. But if I have 2 or 3 or 4 or even 5 decision makers or stakeholders at the company level, it'll automatically aggregate it to the company level. And then my favorite part is if I have account managers assigned, let's say each account manager has 10, 20, 30 accounts, it'll aggregate it by the account manager so I can actually see how the account managers performing against their book. And then it will actually score each client so I can see the, the, the chance of risk. Now you'll see I still have NPS up here, so I'm still capturing their NPS, but I'm capturing their stamp score, which for us aggregates all this data into that single score and tells them the likelihood that they would retain. And because I know specifically which areas I'm at risk. So we think about performance, you know, against importance, because I understand that differential. I'm looking for those things that are of high importance and bad performance. And then we actually have automations on the back end that will allow us to reach out to the client or reach out to the account manager saying very specifically, you have a product customization issue, you have an account manager, you know, responsiveness issue. Now that data, final thing, tends to go to the account manager's leadership first because we will find 20% of the time it is the account manager that's the issue. And then the leadership above the account manager can act on it. But you, you know, you go and you do this. We typically go out 2 to 3 months before that renewal happens. So now you have a very good snapshot And a playbook as to what you need to do to retain that account.

That's fantastic. Well, such a robust system, so many great inputs. It gives you so much flexibility in how you can choose to respond to that and act on it. I love things like this because they allow you to, you know, sort of anticipate and respond in advance. And we've worked with companies where we'll build, you know, sort of like a churn model Not quite as sophisticated as this solution. And then actually, we've created specific content for those that look like they're at risk that we then start targeting advertising around that content so that they think they're just kind of getting served stuff on YouTube when they're there, but it's actually specifically designed to highlight the benefits of what they're getting from the particular provider that they're working with. Which reminds them, you know, maybe I am happy. Maybe that cost to rip and replace would be more than I think it might be.

Yeah. And transparency is really important in this process. So if I've taught anything to my clients, it is to immediately react. So as soon as that dashboard comes in, so we're going through a cycle of outreach. Let's say you've got 20, 30 accounts renewing in the next quarter. you'll start getting dashboards. Some will be laggards because you got to remind them 7 or 8 times. Other ones will be very responsive, but you'll get a dashboard back. The most important thing is to take that dashboard, share it back with the client and say, you know, good or bad, hey, clearly, you know, let's say in a bad situation, we've, we've not met your expectations.

Right.

Acknowledgment of the issue is the very most and probably, you know, not only the first step, most important step of keeping that client. If the client realizes that you, you know, recognize you made some issues and you're addressing it now, you got to fix it, right? If you don't fix it, then, you know, the client will leave. But assuming you do, and then the great thing about our tools is they keep doing it. So when they come up for renewal the next year, they'll do it again. And we have all the trending data so you can see if you improve. And, you know, we have shown we can grow retention anywhere between like 20 and 60 points. We've boosted NPS scores. We still do capture it. Don't rely on it too much, but usually like, you know, 20 to 30 points when you boost NPS. And all our clients, I can't say, you know, I can't think of any that hasn't had probably about a 300 to 500% and higher ROI because most of these B2B accounts, you know, they're worth tens of thousands of dollars. You know, our platform starts at, you know, call it $1,500 a month. So you save one client, it pays for itself. And inevitably we will identify about 20% of your clients that are going to churn.

So yeah, that's so great. Such a great tool that you've got there. And Mark, you're obviously an expert in a lot of things that we're both passionate about, and we could spend all day talking about it, but I got to be mindful of your time. But before I let you go, like, for folks that have been listening, they're like, wow, this sounds super interesting to me. Like, how do they engage with you? How do they, uh, how do they learn more?

Yeah, so, uh, I, I'm a big supporter of, you know, entrepreneurs. And so I know there's a lot out there, so I'm always reachable. You can find me on my LinkedIn. You can also email me. It's MEPierce@ecgmc.com. So feel free to email me and, you know, I, if I can offer help, guidance, I will. We do, of course, license our STAMP platform. We do engagements around the acquisition model that I said. So love to help you there. But even if you're just looking to have some questions answered, I'm always here to support the fellow entrepreneur.

Fantastic. Well, Mark, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today. I really enjoyed our conversation. I know our audience got a lot out of it.

It's great to be here and I appreciate the time.

Talk to you soon.

Take care.

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.