The Art of Recurring Revenue: Lessons From Scaling a 5,500+ Employee Business with Pranav Dalal

Here's a strong statement: if you are relying on one-time sales, your business is at risk, period. Without recurring revenue, you are stuck in a cycle of chasing customers instead of keeping them. As well, numbers don't lie. The businesses that increase customer retention by just 5% can boost profits by 25 to 95%. Yet most companies ignore this and keep struggling for new sales. Welcome back to Mastering Tech Growth, where we interview industry leaders to bring you actionable insights and inspiring stories. I'm your host, Mike, and joining me today is Pranav Dalal, a founder and CEO of Office Beacon, a leader in remote staffing solutions. Since 2001, he has grown the company from just 5 employees to 5,500 employees across multiple countries, and all of that without any VC funding. Pranav is also a Forbes Business Council member and a recipient of the 2024 Vistage Impact Award for his leadership. Welcome to the show, Pranav.

Thank you, Mike. Appreciate it.

So we love opening the show with this question. When I say mastering tech growth, what comes to mind?

Well, uh, for me, mastering tech growth really means, uh, staying on top of trend, understanding how, uh, the global climate could affect you as a company and your business model. Um, every day things are changing, uh, trends are changing, consumer demand is changing, and so it is very important for business leaders to make sure that they keep aligned with their vision along with industry and consumer trends.

Okay. How would you stay on top of the trends? Do you have your own secret sauce? How do you yourself keep up to date?

Well, as for myself, there's a technique I use which is called Horizons. And so Horizons are basically looking at, you know, what's happening today or now. And so I've got various research databases and subscriptions. For example, like IBIS and others that basically I subscribe to, to ensure that I'm aware and abreast of all latest trends. So information, access to information is very important. The next thing is really looking a year out. So I always look a year out in terms of the business and what I'm going to be doing, the company will be doing a year from now, as well as 3 years from now. So, for example, an example of that is AI. And AI, we started looking at that over 2 years ago because of the research that we had done and sort of the information that we've been receiving. So building up, you know, teams that are expertise, that have that expertise, can apply it not only to our own solutions but to customer solutions. Very important, especially for a company like ours, which is really in the remote staffing space. We can't be irrelevant or outdated, which can happen quickly in today's business environment.

Okay. So effectively keeping up with the trends, buying into research companies which provide reports looking forward and what's happening right now, and then building plans for your business at least 12 months out, but ideally 3 months. Is there a reason why it's 1 and 3 and, you know, why it's not 3 and 5? Is, you know, any insight into that?

Yeah, for us, I think it's the 1 year is basically goes by very, very quick. So, you know, we're planning easily a year out. You know, we have to plan out business plans, budgets, sales plans, hiring, infrastructure. So that 1 year goes really quick. 3 years is a good enough time frame, but a lot can also happen in 3 years, a tremendous amount. If you even look at the AI space and what's happened recently, it went from, you know, ChatGPT coming out about a year ago, Google responding, and just this past week, Deepseek, you know, upending the entire space, right? And then look how fast, look how fast that's evolving. So for technology that the promise was really for large companies to take advantage of. Now with Deepseek, it really can be any company that takes advantage of this technology and with AI. So it's evolving so fast. 5 years would just be way too long to really have solid plans to be able to count on.

I love that. And I love you mentioning Deepseek. I mean, for me personally, I don't know where it came from. I honestly felt like, okay, my channels are probably wrong somehow because that felt like a huge punch. When I looked at it, I was like, whoa, that's a huge product, huge solution. And I had no idea it's happening. So it's like, I need to update my channels. Right. Okay. So I want to talk a little bit about competitive advantage. So many businesses really fail to define that well. And that's why I asked about 1 and 3 years and why exactly that period. Because I feel like from that perspective, businesses should be looking forward and asking that question, you know, how we gonna position ourselves within the market and what is our competitive advantage. And according to Harvard Business Review, companies that successfully define their competitive advantages see higher retention and long-term customer loyalty. So here's a question, Ranav. What was the turning point when you realized your business actually have a unique competitive advantage in the market of remote staffing?

For me, the, uh, the point came actually very, very early on in our evolution. So probably, uh, we started in 2001, but, uh, probably by 2003, uh, I recognized a couple of things. One was that in this space in which we were a pioneer of, uh, customers were very scared about, uh, offshoring overseas staff because it was a brand new concept. It was sort of invisible to them. They didn't understand, you know, how they could reliably get work done. So I simply asked customers, you know, what was important to them. And one of the things that came back was that they were looking for a managed solution. So think about this, you know, when you— in today's world, there's, there's a proliferation of remote staffing companies, technology solutions to enable that. Most of them are freelancers, they're not really employees of any company, and so the reliability isn't, isn't there. With us, it's very different where all— every person is an employee globally. They have a manager, there's reporting, there's KPIs, we have tech stacks to, to provide complete transparency to our clients. So that managed over overhead, overhead managed staffing solution is really what's the turning point. You know, I, I kind of, uh, compare that to, in technology terms, a managed server solution. You know, when you, when you go and get a hosting service, you can have it unmanaged or managed. And, uh, you know, the smart companies are really looking for something managed because, uh, it just takes away a layer of complexity, a layer of overhead, and time commitment. So that That is where, you know, our turning point was many, many years ago.

Okay. I actually love that. I mean, you guys started in 2001, so just for the listeners to have that appreciation of how new the concept of remote teams were. And I love the fact that you mentioned that majority were just freelancers and, you know, businesses had always had that risk and fear of people just, you know, leaving, not finishing projects and all that stuff. So you asked the question and they were like, look, we need to remove that liability. So we need a fully managed solution, which was at that point in time you were like, okay, well that's how we gonna position ourselves within the market and get that advantage. So from other perspective, let's say, you know, not necessarily Remote Staffing, other businesses listening right now, how from your point of view founders can identify and amplify their competitive advantage to improve customer retention, specifically towards customer retention?

I look at it, and I actually speak about this a lot. You know, there's a methodology called Red Ocean and Blue Ocean. So, you know, looking at yourself as a company, you know, are you competing in a space where there's tremendous competition, mostly based on price, or are you able to create an environment where you're not worried about your competition, you're just focusing on yourself your customers. And that's really the secret sauce. And there's a couple of pillars that I, I really look at, and, and it's, it's based on basically, are you as a business owner working in your business or on your business? And so if you're in your business, you're essentially— what you're doing is you're looking at your cell phone, you know, 24/7. You're checking your emails constantly. You're really just trying to put out fires all the time. You can't focus on competitive strategy and competitive advantage. If you're working on your business, you're really planning and strategizing what are those things that you can add to your business that are really differentiators. And so here's an example, you know, uh, customer perceived price and value. Um, if you, if you look at any product, let's just say you go to Home Depot and you buy a hammer or a nail, a consumer really knows and understands, you know, what what they're paying for. You know, that's a commodity price. It's very, very cutthroat. You know, you can buy those products anywhere. Now, if you want to increase your customer perceived value, so you put things around your service or product that increase the value for that same service and product, you can increase the price. So some examples I often talk about are like Disney World or Disneyland. You know, that's essentially a theme park, uh, experience. And there's so many different theme parks like Red Six Flags and, and, and others that provide that same experience. But why is Disney so successful? Because of their perceived value. They buy into characters like Star Wars and Marvel to where you can only get that experience at Disney. They provide unique experiences. For example, I remember taking my kids to Disneyland, and, and there was this concierge service where you can pay to actually go to the front of the line. And during— after— right after COVID, that was a very valuable experience. And so they know how to extract value and associate dollars with essentially what is the same experience that you would get at Knott's Berry Farm, Six Flags, etc. But if you look at the profitability and the revenues, it's, it's significantly different. So that's one of the key ways to create competitive advantage, to differentiate. One of the other ways that I talk about is, can you differentiate your product or service, uh, and create low price? And a great example is Amazon. And obviously that's an easy example, anyone can talk about it, but what— look at what they did. They took an e-commerce platform which over the last 25 years, you know, a lot of companies have attempted to do, have attempted to challenge them. But if you look at their strategy, they are essentially providing value over and over again to differentiate. Their essential platform is to buy products, but what else do they do? They provide Prime, which people bought into in huge numbers, so you get delivery literally within the hour if you want it. I'm a big NFL football fan, and, and I am here today in my office at SoFi Stadium. And so what did the— what did Amazon do? They invested $1 billion a year to, to provide my Prime members Thursday Night Football for free, which is a huge value and a huge sticking point. So these sticking points, uh, really provide competitive advantage, and those are the things I look for, uh, in my business. How can I— how can I keep continuing to include areas of differentiation while providing a very competitive price.

I love that. The red and blue ocean. There's a book which I was trying to remember the title, but I think it's called The Blue Ocean or something like that.

Blue Ocean Strategy.

Yeah. Blue Ocean Strategy. There you go. So we'll have that in the show notes for our listeners. It's a very good book to understand that concept, you know, more in depth. In your business, working in your business on own your business. That's a phrase which is very often used, especially for first-time founders or, you know, young entrepreneurs who just launched a business. They find themselves in the CEO position and they get that advice very often from the board. You know, it goes like, look, you, you just way too much involved, like you need to take a step back. So from that perspective, let's say, you know, I'm a CEO, I want to get a lot more strategic. How Again, from your point of view, what is the most effective way to analyze my business market positioning and sort of look like, you know, if we have some advantage or we don't and, you know, create some strategic plans. But effectively, how do I even get that answer if, you know, if we have an advantage or not?

Great question, Mike. You know, in speaking with many, many business owners, I ask the same question. You know, how do you know you have a competitive advantage? Many business owners come back to me and say this. They'll say, well, our advantage is that we're fast, we're cheaper, we're better, we provide better customer service. And quite frankly, yes, those things are important, but I think those types of qualities of a company are really given. Like, those are things you have to have to compete. Every company has to have those things. It is not unique. And so you've got to find unique, uh, unique channels, unique ways and qualities, um, and advantages that are really, really different. And so, um, here's an example. Uh, I talk about the circus and Ringling Brothers and Circus Soleil. Both are the same sort of experience. One is with animals, one is with human beings. When Ringling Brothers was getting bad press, bad PR, you know, animal rights activists, someone really thought of the idea of coming up with the same concept, just with people. And so that was a competitive advantage. And now if you look at it, you know, if you go to Las Vegas, for example, you see 7 Cirque du Soleil shows. I just went to Orlando, Florida for a conference, and it was at Disney World. The first thing I saw entering into Disney World was this huge building, uh, which was a magnificent building, and it was actually Cirque du Soleil. Disney understood— and I don't know what the arrangement is there— but Disney understood that Cirque du Soleil provides a competitive advantage and an experience that you just can't get anywhere else. And that's the important aspect of this. Can you provide something that you just simply cannot get anywhere else? Service you can get everywhere, it's just different levels. Speed, price, you can get anywhere. You've really got to think about those unique things that you can provide, and that is really what provides the game-changing environment.

I love that. I don't like hearing cheaper. I mean, you mentioned like, we know we are fast, we are cheaper, and all that stuff. Like anytime I talk with the founders and they go like, you know, we are cheaper, I'm like, I don't think you should be bragging about this. Like, I don't think that's a good brag to have that you're competing on a price. That's, that's, you know, never a battle you want to be in. So, okay. So, so let's say we understand this and how I take this is maybe potentially quite similar to how you follow the trends. You look at your market, you look at your competition, maybe you look at their sales processes. You're probably going to be competing for some of the sales and some of the clients. You can always ask the question, you know, why did you choose us? You know, or if you're losing a client, why did you choose our competition? So this just market research in general ways, you can understand if you actually have an edge and what's your competitive advantage, and you can double down on that if it's a great one, which then leads to this question about a business having, you know, a hook or a compelling message to the market. And, you know, according to HubSpot, businesses with a clear and compelling value proposition see 2 times more higher conversion rates than those who do not and say they are faster or cheaper. So here's a question. How did you craft irresistible hook that made Office Beacon stand out in the competitive market?

Well, I love having a hook. And so there are different types of hooks through the evolution of our our 24 years, right? Um, it started simply by just having overseas staff. That was the first one. I mean, it was really pioneering that. Um, so, so, but over the years, that wasn't enough. I mean, uh, during COVID for example, thousands and thousands of companies popped up, uh, offering, you know, all sorts of virtual assistant support. And so we had to find different ways to cut through the clutter. Every company has to do that. You know, when you look at your LinkedIn, for example, and you get all these in-mails, more than likely you don't respond to 99% or 100% of those. When you get emails from people, you probably— and you don't know who they are— or phone calls, you're probably, you know, your iPhone or whatever, you're, you're blocking them or just ignoring them. It is incredibly challenging to get through, uh, to your ideal prospect. So I took, I took it upon myself to, uh, about 5 years ago to really create this entire lead generation engine. So we have a data team, uh, really compiling data and accurate data. Uh, most data that you get from data sources, for example, are about 25% inaccurate. So you have to have that. Then you have to have unique ways of getting through to clients. So we've developed about 30 proprietary ways of how to get through to your ideal prospect. I mean, some of them are very traditional in terms of email and LinkedIn and voice, you know, calling, cold calling. But then you do have to have that message. So our message is a few things. For example, when we recognize the fact that India was pretty saturated, other countries in terms of providing virtual assistants, the messaging was getting a little bit tiring for our ideal prospect. We came across South Africa, and so several years ago we started developing South Africa to be a competitive advantage, something that no other companies were really investing in, in terms of South Africa. We, we tested it with potential clients and, and really saw that they pretty much immediately recognized the opportunity just like I did. So within 15, 30 seconds, if your hook is powerful, then you can really, really get through to your ideal prospect. And you know, you're putting that hook up front and center in the subject line, in the messaging, in the voicemail right away. And so, you know, so I've kind of trained myself over the years to identify, hey, this is really good from a sales perspective. Some other ones are simply the traditional like event strategy. So as I said earlier in this broadcast, you know, I'm here at SoFi Stadium. I created a partnership with the stadium to be able to use it every single day to bring in clients, to bring in prospects. It's, it's, it's somewhat of a hook for us because it's unique. Our offices are here, um, we, we fly people in, etc., and we've created a great partnership, um, across the country with similar venues, not, not as magnificent and, and as grand as this, but, but, uh, definitely similar. And so even using that as a hook, uh, is a unique opportunity. There's other, there's other types of hooks too. For example, when I was talking about South Africa, we needed to get our ideal prospect to hear what our South African people sounded like. So I remember walking into a Hallmark one day and, you know, they had those birthday cards. You open up the cards and you hear the sound coming out of the card. And I said to myself, I said, I got to find out who the manufacturer of these cards are, which I did. And we put the voices— we've worked with that manufacturer, put the voices in the card and mailed them out so that our prospect can hear what this is about. And it's not only just having a hook, but how you deliver that. And so that was a very unique way of catching attention and then driving the results. And so our results in terms of just inbound prospecting is is really off the charts in terms of the number of prospects we get in comparison, I think, to a lot of other companies. Okay.

There's so much to unpack here. So I'll start at the top. You mentioned LinkedIn and cold emails, and the moment you said you probably get these, you know, in your inbox, and I'm like, yeah, literally never respond. I've never ever did I do business or did business with remote staffing when it comes to cold emailing or LinkedIn messaging. Which, which, which, you know, led me to think about this Hook situation and what I get as a sort of like opening sentence or even, you know, a subject line when I see those emails. Because ultimately the subject line sort of makes me to click into it because the subject line is good. And then, you know, once I click into it, you know, the couple of sentences I'll read, but the moment I'll realize what that is, I'll probably just gonna delete that. So So you do have a couple of seconds of attention in me reading. And if that first sentence really lands with me and how I realize landing with me is that it's just gonna resonate with whatever challenges or issues I'm having right now. And it's just gonna be that, you know, that poke, which will be, I'm gonna be like, okay, I know what you're talking about. Let me read more, right? What you're actually offering and how you're gonna solve this with me. So do you have how you think about, uh, you know, like, uh, hooks, uh, and, you know, any sort of like essential elements which has to be in the hook to, to, you know, to really make it like a strong hook?

Let's just, uh, keep going with that LinkedIn theme, right? So someone, someone reaches out to you, Mike, they connect with you, and then what usually happens about 1 second later is there's an in-mail from that person in your LinkedIn inbox, right? And the psychology of that is now we are conditioned to understand that whether we recognize it or not, when someone does that, a salesperson, you pretty much discount that person forever, right? So, so when I, when I connect with someone, I'm like, great, that person wants to connect. Oh wow, one second later I hear a ping and it's a solicitation. And so you've got to understand, first of all, how the psychological behavior of what's happening and, and not follow the path. So I really believe in what I, what I think of is what I call opposite thinking. You know, I usually think the opposite of how most others will behave or handle a situation. So I wouldn't do— you know, we don't do that. Like, we wouldn't send up some automated responder that will send that type of message, right? Everything we do is really personalized, tailored to, you know, whoever we're reaching out to and thinking about how they're gonna receive that information and how they're gonna think about that. So that's really critical as first step. You can have the best hook, but if you're delivering it in a way that is just opposite of what that person, how they wanna receive it, you've really defeated yourself. Um, I'm also then going to talk about like what you just said, you know, you've got 2 seconds to read the subject line. That subject line's got to be pretty powerful. Again, if you look at your own LinkedIn inbox and you look at the subject lines, they're pretty much all the same. I think they— these, uh, salespeople probably use the same software, they use the same template. You really have to stand out. And so how can you stand out? I'll give you an example. This is a crazy example. A year and a half ago, SoFi Stadium had 6 nights of Taylor Swift, which was the hottest, uh, uh, you know, event on the planet for an entire year. We had all 6 nights. We had hundreds and hundreds of tickets. We used that as a strategy and a hook to basically say, hey, win tickets to Taylor Swift, which we had in an exclusive experience. We targeted that messaging to our ideal persona of the type of customer we were looking for. For each night of Taylor Swift, we received over 2,000 interested prospects. And we have a funnel, we go through all that and we qualify everybody. You know, that was very different. If you get that in your inbox, even if you think you, you're not sure if it's real, you're going to check it out. And so, uh, it was very powerful. Uh, I, I'm stressing sort of the event strategy, but there's so many other different strategies. Like I said, South Africa is another one we're developing. We're developing some AI tools that are going to help customers with their sales and, uh, So we keep going with that, you know, with finding new and new hooks because it's always changing.

So I love that in a sense that is very different. And the key, what you said, is that they probably use the same software and they probably use very similar, if not the same templates. I do believe that to be the case. There's so much tooling out there when it comes to LinkedIn outreach. Especially cold outreach automation, and same applies to emails outreach. And, you know, they all seem to be using the same engines, AI cooked up emails based on your profile to make it more personal. But I get these very often when it comes to pitching a guest for the show from PR companies, and I absolutely see it's always the same templates, you know, it's just like couple of lines being a little bit different. So I love that you pointed that out. So your approach effectively is going like, look, 90% of the market will do this, we're going to do something else, we're going to do totally different approach when it comes to prospecting, right? And that's, that's effectively is a part of a hook. It's just don't do what else everybody else is doing. Is that, is that correct assumption?

Very correct. And if you do it right, uh, your results are going to be extraordinary. You know, most, um, direct marketing campaigns, we'll probably expect a return of half a percent, maybe 1 or 2%, right? If you're doing LinkedIn ads, Google, whatever, social media types of campaigns. But if you truly have a very strong hook, a very compelling service, right, with the right product price, etc., those returns are going to be, you know, could be in the double digits for sure in terms of conversion and ROI. And if it's not, my recommendation is you just keep working at it and testing until you find that, you know, just getting a point or two return, you know, ROI, conversion rates, or response rates is just not, in my opinion, sort of the foundation that business owners should be striving for. You know, that's really what everyone else is trying to strive for. Yeah, I, I try to strive for much more more than that.

I love that. And you have those two camps, you know, you have that sales at scale situation where you just blast everybody, you know, with the same message. Maybe you add some personalization with current AI developments. And then you have another camp which effectively sits under that show me that you know me type of situation where every prospect is approached with the real manual, to majority extent manual process of really showing them that you did the homework. And you would like to have them as a client. And it's very interesting to see at the numbers of that Sales@Scale and that Show Me, There You Know Me, where it requires a lot more time and you approach a lot less prospects than the Sales@Scale. But ultimately, when you look at the revenues which coming in in the pipeline, the camp which does the homework wins because it's really impossible to close high-ticket clients with automated processes. It's almost like, you know, impossible. If you have a service to sell for $20 or something like that, fine. But if you're trying to close high tickets, you know, tens of thousands, like it's just never gonna be cold email. It's just so unlikely. Okay. So I love that. So let's say we got people there. Actually, you know what? Sorry, I'll come back a little bit. So You got that email in, you got that subject well, you got that hook. Now I'm reading through your email and your approach, and I'm sort of reading through your value proposition. Is there, is there any tips you can give to what that segment should look like? Like, how do I craft my value proposition within that email or a message? Uh, so I actually, you know, have a chance to get that person into my pipeline.

You've got to make your initial messaging as short of— as short as possible, actually. You do not want to overwhelm, uh, anyone with a lot of words, right? Um, you know, they, they— people will just, uh, tune out, right? Or they'll make an assumption of, hey, I, I got it, this is for me or not for me. What you're— what we strive to do is really place that hook, bring them into our funnel, and talk to them. Right, really then dive into everything we do, how we do it, and, you know, how it would be beneficial to our prospect. So really, I think it's a fine line between how much information you want to give to that prospect right away. They're going to check you out anyway. They're going to go to your website. They're going to look you up on review websites, etc., if they're truly interested. So the focus really has to be on those other areas, you know, making sure your website is strong, any review websites, you know, are up to date. And so, you know, for example, we get probably close to 100,000, you know, new visitors, new businesses coming to our website every month. So, you know, we have to make sure that we're really on top of that and how we're converting and how we're looking at, you know, their experience through the whole journey. It's not just the original hook, it's everything that comes after that. Which is super, super important.

Can we, can we give this advice to the listeners? If you know what your competitive advantage is, make sure that's in your value proposition. Is that a good advice?

For sure. 100%. Yeah. Okay. And keep it short. Keep it short in your initial communication. Right. Because, because if it is truly that competitive of an advantage, you're, you're, whoever you're intending to get that information will get it right away. Yeah, they'll understand it right away.

I love that shout on keep it short. Oh my God, like, this is so, so 100%. If you ever, ever on a receiving end of these cold outreaches, I mean, honestly, I sometimes get these messages which is like 3 paragraphs, and it feels like, you know, they're just listing everything they're good at. I'm like, look, Like, man, like, what's the chance I'm gonna read all of this and respond to you? And then they do these follow-ups couple of times, like, hey, did you, you know, just trying to sort of get your attention back to my previous message. I'm like, your previous message is a blog post, man. It's like, I don't have time, you know, just put in couple of sentences, you know, maybe that will lead somewhere. That's a very strong advice. Okay, so, so we hopefully we understand our competitive advantage. We crafting our hook. We have a little bit of cold outreach, maybe even warm outreach. So we getting people coming in into our effectively sales funnel, right? So the sales platform, as you put it, Ranav, so having it repeatable, automated is effectively essential for sustainable growth, right? And according to Forbes as well, businesses that automate at least 30% of their sales operation experience higher scalability and profitability. How did you develop sales system or a process within your business when you guys were sort of, you know, scaling up?

We, uh, we really, uh, tried, uh, a lot of experimentation. So in the beginning, this was sort of like an MVP product for us. Like, we had never done, you know, sales in this way. Uh, we had really done it like everyone else— organically, trade shows, you know, just word of mouth, getting referrals, etc. My mission, uh, back, uh, before COVID uh, probably 2018, '19, was really to create a platform, um, and a scalable one which was predictable, where we could understand how many prospects we were going to get every single day, how many leads, how many quotes were going to go out. I mean, it was a— it's basically a sales funnel, but very predictable. And so the initial stages were really all manual. We had to— we weren't going to invest in, you know, automation because we needed to really understand what worked and what didn't work. And, you know, when you're automating, you may not see the fine details. Once we saw, you know, areas where we understood how the process worked, how we wanted to work seamlessly and flawlessly, those are the areas we automated. One of the things we did was we built our own CRM, uh, We were on a very major, one of the biggest platforms out there in terms of CRM, but we just found that, uh, there was, there was too much, uh, we were, we were buying into too much. We didn't need all the bells and whistles. We needed very, very specific things. So we needed control over that aspect of it. And so we built our own CRM, very customizable, tailored to our process. It's not following any other process of any other company. And so that was really crucial to us to be able to ensure that we could control that aspect. Then of course, you know, we're plugging in different types of tools to help us speed up the whole sales cycle. And that was really crucial, right? When you get a lead, how quickly can you get that person on a call? That time is just absolutely important. That is one of the critical factors of success and failure. When you get some— when you get a web lead, again, in how many minutes can you get on the phone with that person? So we did, uh, and we continue to implement strategies, tools, uh, process to keep speeding up the process. Um, so, so it's really— my philosophy is really just simply try it. Manually try, try the process, make sure that it's working the way you intend to, and then don't invest in automation and don't invest in a big technology until you're sure that that process is, is ready for it and you're comfortable then to then keep fine-tuning it after that.

I love all of these. These are such a well laid out, uh, framework or process. I love that. I don't even know what to ask. You just blew me away over here. That's such— it's just like everything got covered over there. Just for interest, any chance the CRM was HubSpot, which you moved away from?

Uh, no, no. In fact, we do use HubSpot. I mean, it's, it's not hard to understand our tech stack, but, but HubSpot, we do use it in, in part of our solution, and that's where we started introducing technology that would help us in, in various aspects of this process, right? So HubSpot was definitely, uh, something we started, uh, to introduce. We use it, a lot of great tools on it, but we do not use it for the CRM. And so, okay, and, and the amount of data we use, usually most CRM platforms are charging you based on number of contacts and all this. And because of, of the volume that we do, uh, that was not viable for us as well. So part of it was the economics as well. We needed to control it. And honestly most, um, most CRMs have way too much, you know, for what we need. You know, we don't need all like 90% of it. Um, so, uh, so that's how we controlled it.

Yeah.

So we do, we do bolt on other tech, other really proven solutions. Um, like one of the other things that I really want to talk about is really, um, you know, as, as entrepreneurs scale, uh, small business owners scale, they've really got to look at a few things. You know, it's great to have a repeatable and scalable solution. But you need some really critical things there to make that happen. One is the people. I think we get away from understanding to have the right people doing the right things is a very hard thing. My journey has been 24 years and I'm constantly looking at, you know, who are the right people? You know, we've had an evolution in management, different positions. And we're constantly looking for those people that share the same vision and passion that I do to make these things happen. And some of the people that are involved with me have been with me for a long, long time. They see this as a journey, uh, not just a job. And so that's one thing, is just having the right people with the right passion. Um, secondly, entrepreneurs really need to understand what they're really good at and get the things out of the way, confront the facts of the things that are really, uh, maybe shiny objects. Most entrepreneurs, and I'm included, get distracted by what we call shiny light bulbs. They see something shiny and it's the latest thing, but it may not be the right thing and it may be very distracting. So that was one thing that helped me. By saying no to a lot of things, um, our focus was very, very clear. We were very focused to take away things that are distracting from the core mission. Okay, when you define— yeah, when you define your core mission for scalability. What is that thing you're going to be best at? That's what you focus on, and everything has to be aligned to it. So we have KPIs, we have good reporting. I meet once a week for 30 minutes with my executive team. We review our dashboard and we look at what's red, what's good, what's green, uh, bad— or I should say the reverse, right? Red bad, green good. And we, we take the following week to really fix it. I have big, bold ideas, which we're aligned to. And then you have platforms, you have different platforms. You meant— you mentioned Vistage earlier. We became a national Vistage sponsor because it's a platform for growth for us with a business community of 40,000 to 50,000 businesses. We're part of other associations. We're aligned with the NFL alumni and NFL stadiums. I mean, these are all platforms for us for growth. That with a competitive advantage will really help any company, but it doesn't happen overnight. And you've really got to make sure that you've got all these pieces in place. It's not an easy journey for sure, for any entrepreneur. Yeah.

So at any point within their journey, there's different things which will matter more or less. So effectively, you know, the focus will matter for whatever is maturity cycle you are in within your business. You mentioned data multiple times, Pranav, so especially around the sales process, you know, you said you were capturing a lot of data, looking at the data, making decisions, even moved away from CRM, build your own, then looked at the spots which were either bottlenecks or, you know, very manual labor intensive. So you moved to automation. At which point you use this software to have predictable analytics? And maybe that's just presumption from my perspective that you used one, maybe you didn't. So maybe it's a question, did you use predictive analytics software to predict your sales for the next year?

Quite frankly, we have not. And there are tools out there to predict intent, intent to buy, We are not at that stage yet to really be as sophisticated as that. I'm really right now grassroots, you know, I believe in sort of having conversation, but creating the tools ahead of time, ahead of that conversation to make sure we've got the teed up the best person possible to talk to in an organization. So those are qualification tools. Those are understanding in different ways, you know, if that company is growing or not growing, are they in a certain industry, uh, you know, based on the economy, certain industries are winning or losing or, or scaling or not. So we kind of look at those things first. We're not really going into buyer's intent as much at this moment.

Okay.

Um, but I do predict that in the next probably year or two especially with AI and these tools becoming much easier to do that, it'll be much more effective for us to spend time on that. Right now it's too much. Right now it's a very big buying effort. Sorry, time effort to incorporate that.

Yeah, I understand. It's not as plug and play as people would imagine, especially when it comes to capturing a lot of intent data, but they do tend to perform well with, especially with AI now adding some juice into it. So that's where the question came from. So if we talk about mistakes you see younger businesses doing when it comes to sales funnel, what comes to mind? What is the like biggest ones you see often?

The biggest mistake I see is that business owners look at, the sales funnel is just a transaction. What you're actually selling, you know, as a business, Mike, is trust, you know. So your sales funnel, your sales cycle, your sales activities at each stage have to keep building upon trust and keep strengthening the trust between you and your ideal customer or your prospect. And so Customers and prospects are very, very sophisticated. You and I are both consumers as well. And when we get a solicitation or information from any new company, usually the first thing we're doing is, oh, let me check out something about a review of this company or do other people, social proof or whatever it may be. And so trust is really something that's overlooked. Reputation management, PR, all of those things are critical. It's hard to do. But trust in a nutshell is really the number one criteria I think most companies should look at, how to build that trust with your consumer.

Okay. I love that. Is there— would you change your answer if we would say that your business model is constantly new sales or recurring revenue?

One?

Or would you say the trust is equally applicable to both?

I think it's equally applicable. And this is why. If it's just a new sale, a one-time transaction, as long as that transaction builds the trust that you actually deliver what you say you're going to do, how you've marketed it to that consumer, then that consumer is going to tell probably 10 other people, right? Either good or bad. Either good or bad. They can say, yeah, you did exactly what you said you're going to do, or wow, this fell short of what you promised. And those promises are building trust or breaking trust. And so it's equally applicable, 100%.

Yeah. I love that. All right. So we're selling, we're getting some clients in, and now effectively we need to deliver our service. Again, we're back to scalability. Having a good, effective, and efficient way of, you know, delivering the service, which is effectively crucial. And according to McKinsey and Company, companies with optimized delivery platforms see 20 to 40% higher operational efficiency and improved customer satisfaction. So here's the question: what are the biggest challenges you overcome when it came to scaling your services?

The, uh, several— there's several, uh, big huge hurdles. One, you know, when you're, when you're in one country, like we started in India 2001, everything's in one location, right? You can align your staff, your employees properly. They're all there. Uh, it's very easy. We then, about 8 to 10 years later, went to the Philippines, um, you know, early on. And so Now you're trying to replicate everything you did in one country to another country with a different culture, with different, you know, people with different backgrounds and different ideas of how things should be done. So really integrating, you know, different cultures— it's a global economy now. Um, we had to figure out that challenge, and that was not an easy one. We actually had to move cities in the Philippines to get better talent, better location, better infrastructure, uh, people that could be more aligned with our vision. That was— those were huge, huge, uh, changes. Then, you know, Mexico and South Africa came along. So I think what we focused on was a process, process, process. In operations of scaling, uh, the process is crucial. And so it's an evolving— it's always evolving. There's never one stagnant, static It's changing and updating every single day. We keep improving and finding where we're falling down and falling short and improving, right? So every week we're reviewing, you know, our KPIs, what we can do better and how we can do it better. And so I think business owners who don't have a defined process, who just wing it or expect things to work out, you know, if you're not intentional about how you're doing things, writing it down, looking at where these holes can happen, having the right people to address those things, you're gonna fail. And then if you're not identifying your KPIs properly, which ones are really crucial, I think that's definitely something I've learned is that if you're not measuring it, you're never gonna be able to manage it. And so we definitely manage key KPIs very, very closely. We're never gonna be, you know, I'm never satisfied with where we are as a company. So never complacent and we keep working on it every single day on that process.

I love that. So effectively the intent or being intentional on how you will do the things, describe your process, potentially have a playbook so you can come back, see how you're executing things. You want to understand where you're falling short. You want to understand where your bottlenecks are and effectively you want to understand where you want to improve things, which, you know, leads to KPIs and just effectively tracking that process, understanding what works, what not. What KPIs are right now in your head, Pranav, which you care about when it comes to service delivery?

I care about, you know, customer ratings. So we're always, you know, talking to our clients about how we're doing. So we've got very, very clear results and tracking on that. I care about turnover, both employee turnover and customer attrition, and keeping a very, very close eye on that and looking at how we can make that better. Uh, companies may not look, uh, at our scale we do look at, for example, employee attrition because it's a global economy, there's a lot of competition out there, it's hard to retain, you know, attract and retain employees And so, one of the things I do, it's not really KPI-driven, but to help improve employee satisfaction are monthly town halls. You know, I get on a call, a web conference every month with every location separately. And we just have an open— I present obviously and talk about the company, but then it's an open forum. So, building that culture and having a culture index of how we're doing as a company, we do, we just, I just received one from, our Philippine location, which was absolutely terrific. Looking at our Glassdoor ratings, you know, how employees are, are ranking the company, even ranking me, um, you know, are very important, uh, indexes that maybe a lot of companies don't look at is internally, what are your— how are your employees feeling, and externally, how are your customers feeling about you.

Okay, so there's a— what's in your mind is affecting internal and external image of a company and you want to have that, well, you want to have that world, right? You want to have employees which are happy and you want to have customers which are happy. It's effectively a no-brainer, right? And all the businesses should sort of strive towards that.

Yeah.

So it's a big process, right? So at your scale, you have like what, 6 countries or so, 5,000 employees. You know, you're already a global enterprise, right? So there's a lot of operations which are taking place. So you have a lot of processes to look at. And I would assume you look at automating some of your service delivery. So how do you look at automation? Like how does your team or yourself decide that, okay, this part within the business, I think we can, you know, buy a tool or create some tech or something like that. Like, do you have a sort of like go-to mindset when it comes to automation?

Great question. We definitely look at that and we understand a process that's big enough in our company, you know, it's basically a cost-benefit reward. So the time we're going to spend developing automation, whether it's AI or, you know, RPA, like robotic process automation, we really look at the cost. So we say this cost is going to cost us to develop this project, but the return is going to be this over a year time span. We're going to get payback, or however long that payback is. If it's a very positive ROI situation where we can get that payback within a year or less, we go ahead with it. Now, we sometimes incorporate our clients because some of this process will affect them and the output they're going to receive. So we will engage with clients on beta testing and tell them, look, we're going to be testing this out, right? And we want your help or input. To make sure we're on the right track with this. And so we do a lot of that and we've been successful in some very big situations. We're at the infancy of it, especially now with AI incorporating that. And so it's definitely an initiative that's going to just keep growing, you know, as we move forward.

Yeah, I love that you mentioned the fact that you talk with the customers because it will affect them. And that was actually my follow-up questions, which I was looking to ask about operational efficiency and how that, how do you keep that quality going? So effectively, you, when you look at automating stuff, which effectively removes that personal touch, you talk with the clients and you go like, look, we're going to do this, which will have direct effect on you. Let's just work together to make sure that we're not losing quality as a, as a, as a business. Towards you, right?

Okay, very, very crucial because whatever work we do, again, we're a B2B company. When we work for our clients, they have clients, and so whatever we implement will have a direct impact on their business, on their sales, on their credibility, and, and their customer service rating. We have to be very, very cautious and make sure that, you know, we're testing very, very carefully, um, So it does not impact the credibility of our client in any way. So those types of situations are very controlled. We have teams that are working on our project managers that are defining, you know, what the result needs to be. And then we're scaling it, not throwing it into production, you know, all at once. We're scaling it, you know, maybe it's scaling it with a certain group of clients and then rolling it out one by one. And so it really is an ongoing process, right? It never ends. That's why we have to look at the ROI. I've had some clients talk to me about the fact that, hey, you know, the amount it's gonna cost us to automate something, it's actually a lot more expensive than having, you know, Office Beacon handle it. And so there's always that trade-off, that money, you know, an ROI trade-off. Hopefully now it's gonna get a little easier and we'll be at the forefront of it. With new AI tools, new robotic processing tools. But it's definitely something you've got to be very mindful of and the impact on the experience of the customer, you know, the end customer.

Do you have, by any chance, something like a customer board in a way? You have flagship clients, maybe CEOs of these companies as your sort of go-to when you make those big changes and have that board of advice, or is it more like selective when it comes to these big changes and talking with customers?

You know, there are— I love that question. Over the last 24 years, I'll tell you, there's two types of customers we have. One customer is purely transactional. They just really don't want to, you know, invest in exploring how we can help them grow. They know exactly what they want. They know exactly how they're going to do it. And they just tell us, this is what we need you to do. There are other clients, on the other hand, who are very interested in working with us on testing new concepts, testing new ways of doing things, new process. And those ones I find really interesting because, um, those are the ones where you find true competitive advantage. I'll give you one example. There was a company called PCNA, which is in the promotional product industry, and, uh, in literally over, uh, 15 years ago, they called me and said, we want to figure out how to, how to process this order the same day. And traditionally in that industry, back then, uh, orders like a promotional product pan or whatever it may be, it could take days, right? You get the order, you put it into production, you print it, you ship it. Literally could take an entire week. They wanted to do this within one day. You get the order today, it's printed and shipped that same day. And I really was like, wow, I don't know if we can do this. It's never been done before. We tested it with that company for over 6 months. Um, I was committed to it. And the reason why I was committed to it was because that would— I know in the beginning of this broadcast we talked about like speed not being, you know, the most important thing. But in this case, it was, because you're talking about speed from 5 days down to same day, which is huge in terms of cash flow, uh, or, you know, closing orders, fulfilling orders. I mean, it was massive. We were able to achieve their goal. We do it to this day. We effectively changed an entire industry in terms of turnaround time because everyone followed suit after that. But not every company had that same vision. So, uh, so while they were the forefront of this competitive advantage, they didn't stop there. And they keep thinking— companies like that keep thinking, okay, what's next? And who are the partners that can help us on what's next? And that's, that's what I love. I love engaging with those companies and business owners that are thinking like that, because that's how I think.

Sounds like a partnership, isn't it? Because then you're just both working together for the mutual value-add for both companies. And Correct. It just feels more less transactional, you know, more partnership. Simple as that. So for people listening right now, which is, you know, a lot of tech entrepreneurs with some businesses, a lot of them have remote teams and maybe they're hiring freelancers. Maybe they have a managed module just like the one you provide. Let's say some don't, but they're thinking about it because again of ROI. All right, so what advice would you give when they selecting a service like that? Is there some red flags would you sort of list? Like, you know, if you get this, don't go with them.

You're talking about like companies like mine?

Yeah, Remote Staffing Ones.

Yeah, well, I think, I think, well, there's, there's several factors. If you're really looking as a business owner for reliability, uh, you know, a service where you can really grow with that service, not manage it too much. Uh, you're really looking for what kind of org chart do they have. So for example, are you looking for really a freelance situation where you're going to have to really micromanage that freelancer, or a company like, like us, uh, that will manage the process for you? So we're, we're saving them and giving them time to focus on their core competencies, and that's getting more customers, getting more sales. So that's the first thing. Infrastructure is the other, you know, in this world today, there's a lot of work from home globally. And so if you're okay with that, that can work. And those are usually for higher-end positions, positions that don't need as much oversight, are not as critical to have, you know, reliable internet 100% of the time or reliable electricity sources. Power 100% of the time, that's okay. But if you're really looking about scaling big roles, big numbers of roles, you really need a company that, that provides that infrastructure to allow for that to happen without any failure to your customer or customer experience. And, and then the other thing is really cybersecurity. I mean, I can't stress this enough. I mean, when you read, uh, you know, the news and how many companies are getting attack, cybersecurity attacks, and, and the devastating impact that has on a business. You know, customer data, uh, confidential data, customer lists. Uh, I don't think business owners are really looking carefully enough to understand that. There, there— we definitely have clients who are very invested in working with our cybersecurity teams to keep strengthening those areas. There's other clients who don't realize they should be engaged with us and we make them aware of it because it's a very, very— it's a deadly threat. You know, if you have ransomware that's coming through a vendor into your own facility as a client, it can shut you down and it can cost you millions of dollars that you're probably not prepared for. So I think those are some of the key areas that you've really got to look at as a buyer of these types of services to make sure Hey, I'm with the right company long-term and we can grow with this company and remain competitive with this partner.

I love that. I love you called out cybersecurity and compliance piece. It is likely a maturity element, but there's a lot of startups which operate in fintech and healthtech, which is gaming as well, online gaming. It's a regulated market. So if you will want to hire remote staffing, you will want these companies to have effectively be compliant with some of these rules or be, you know, have frameworks to be compliant. And cybersecurity is a huge topic. We had multiple episodes and, you know, continue unpacking this. It's just such an underrated element of doing business. Nobody cares until something happens and then they realize how big that situation is. So, Couple of things which you gave here, Ranav, is I feel like it's gonna be for bigger companies and I can hear smaller startup owners listening and go like, you know what, I care about the price right now. Like that's the number one I would care about. So coming to that element of just pure cost, right? How is the market right now? Maybe from your perspective as a company, probably no competition. Is the prices pretty much the same? Or if I wanna save, should I go to, India, as an example. It's like any sort of advice you could give where people could see around managing a cost better when it comes to remote staffing. Yeah.

So, you know, our model is basically a flat rate. You pay per month. That rate could be anywhere from, let's say, $1,600 a month to $1,900 a month for a full-time person based on the location. So we're very, very competitive in terms of pricing. We do it on a monthly basis because for, for a number of reasons. We don't do hourly because we're not, we're not really like a transactional company that's just doing a project. We're really allocating and dedicating a specific employee to a, to, to a specific client, right? And so from that perspective, we're very, very competitive at a pricing standpoint. Yes, if you, if you're looking, uh, you know, just for a project, um, yeah, there are other freelance type of organizations and websites you can go to for that. If you're looking for something where you can have someone who's trained in your industry, who will learn the training, who will take on the training, um, that we will scale with you, then, then I think this is a very viable option that provides a tremendous ROI And because we have that economies of scale, a huge platform, we can invest in all those other areas like cybersecurity and infrastructure without impacting your bottom line price. So most of our clients, I'd say 80% of our clients are SMB, small business and midsize. So all of your audience out there shouldn't be scared of it at all. We are not only targeting enterprise, that's actually not our main focus. We do definitely have enterprise, but really our market is midsize and SMB.

Okay. From the countries you operate from and have the teams in, which you mentioned India, South Africa, Mexico, and some others, just from a few, you know, your knowledge, because, you know, you're hiring full-time staff over there, which of these economies are cheapest if someone would decide to go just into that economy themselves?

Okay, so that— it's sort of a double, double— I mean, that's a, that's a double-sided sword there. So let's just take a look at India. I mean, for some types of roles like data entry, which is pure just entering data into a form or a platform, yeah, you can get that done pretty, pretty cheap. Um, if you're looking at software development I wouldn't consider it necessarily the cheapest place. Uh, it's definitely the place where you're going to get a lot of talent. Um, you know, the entire— anywhere in the country, it's probably your go-to, right, um, for, for software talent. Again, not the cheapest. Um, if you go to South Africa, for example, uh, which, which by the way does— it's an incredible country. It has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. but the talent is exceptional. And, you know, we're growing extremely fast there. We— again, you could get data entry probably for a similar rate as India, uh, uh, you know, but if you're looking at marketing roles, client service roles, uh, it'll definitely be a slightly higher, but I think the, the rate, the marginal rate of difference is very minimal. Like, we, we are hiring top talent in these countries or aspiring to. And but our pricing is pretty much in a range, in a band that's very digestible and providing at least a 50% ROI to customers here in the US.

I love that. And you're right. I mean, from my experience, it's very similar assessment. So I love you sort of reconfirming what I had in my mind. So for people to know more about what you guys do and maybe, you know, go to your personal and send you a message. How our listeners could get in touch?

First of all, I'm on LinkedIn. I do look at all my messages there. I have an assistant who helps me with that as well. And so definitely reach out on LinkedIn to me, connect with me, just reference your show, Mike. I'd love to hear from entrepreneurs. The other way is simply email us at sales@officepeacon.com. Our team reference the show. We would love to entertain your audience. In fact, I'm going to throw out, if they want to try out our service, you know, we'll give them 1 month free to test it out. Yeah. Awesome. So, you know, no obligation. Just book a call, go on our website, schedule a call. In the notes, just reference, you know, Mike Sirius and your broadcast and and put my name there, and, and, uh, we'll definitely honor that. And so we definitely want to engage with the startup community entrepreneurs because those are the, those are the companies that often become the big companies, obviously. And we want to get in early with these companies and help them grow. We're just not here to just supply staff, but we're here to help them with strategies and be like a consultant without the consultant fees on helping them with strategies on growth.

I love that. Their success is your success. So it's a very, very good position to take. We're not going to put your email in the show notes because you would just get spammed very quickly. I'm sure about that. But all other links will be in the show notes. So if you're listening or watching this, just scroll down. And of course, we're going to make a post and send some emails out around that one-month, no-obligations approach. I'm sure there's going to be founders Loving that one. So that was a great episode, Pranav. Thank you very much. We went into competitive advantage, we looked at the hook, we talked about sales funnels and automating that, and we finished all with service delivery and why people should care about that as well. To our listeners, if you find value in the show, we would appreciate if you share that with your network, click that subscribe if you didn't do that already, and as always, until The next time, stay safe and see you online.