How Matt Lovitz Onboards Hundreds of New HCM Deals Every Year

Welcome to Payrollin'. If you own, operate, or work for an independent payroll company, this is the show for you. We talk to the brightest minds to learn what people are doing to create payroll companies that matter and share those tips and best practices with you. I'm looking forward to learning alongside you and finding innovative ways that we can create the future of independent payroll and HR companies. Thank you for joining us. I hope you enjoy the show. Welcome. Appreciate your time. Let's talk about sales efficiency to get started. When you told me the output that you're creating over there for your team and what you're able to do in a year, I was first of all amazed and impressed. And second of all, I said, man, this guy has to be a master efficiency to manage that pipeline, to manage the deals coming in, to manage the new potential clients that he's working with. Talk to us about how you manage your time and how you manage those aspects of your, your workplace.

Yeah, you bet. I wouldn't say a master at anything yet either, Matt. I think, I think it's becoming the master of trying to be more humble and know that it can always get better incrementally. But, um, yeah, from an efficiency standpoint, I think it goes back to, uh, Probably goes back to doing digital before it was cool, right? I started my career in HCM about a decade ago with a little company called Oracle. And, you know, on the inside team of Oracle, you don't get to travel, right? I mean, you're talking, you're talking to, you know, the C-level suite of companies that are in the Fortune 500, the Fortune 100, and you're doing so over the phone without ever having an opportunity to meet with them face to face. So doing that kind of got me set up to be able to execute and do things over the phone, even pre-pandemic. Now, don't get me wrong, doing things in person certainly has a lot of advantages. It brings that local, you know, that local feel, the local flavor. But, you know, do you really need to do the, the second, third, fourth, fifth, how many ever meetings you're having in person? Or can we just skip that, know that we all met each other, we shook each other's hands, we looked each other in the eye, and just go with a a virtual meeting for the rest of it. So, um, that adds an element of efficiency, right? We look at one of the benefits of, of the pandemic for, for sales teams out there, and it's, um, look at how much time was spent— windshield time, right? You know, lost time driving. So I think doing, doing things in a little bit different of a way that way and really trying to maximize the time you have being productive has helped a ton.

Yeah, that's great. That's a really good point. We just managed one of these processes in here internally recently where we engaged with them online, then over the phone, then over Zoom, and, you know, kind of added the cherry on top, like, oh, hey, by the way, we're right here in town if you'd like for us to come out for a meeting at some point. And, you know, even though they're going to see the value of a local provider, yeah, they know that without us necessarily having to go set foot in their office every, every time too. So that's a really good point. Tell me, how big of a patch of dirt do you manage right now? Like, how wide is your territory?

That's pretty good size. It's from, uh, North Metro Minneapolis-St. Paul area on up to Canada. And then I manage quite a few different, uh, national and international COI type relationships as well. So I mean, you look at that patch of dirt's the globe, but, uh, you know, we have to focus on the area that we can control the most and that's going to be most impactful. So I would say, uh, You know, central to northern Minnesota, the outskirt underlying communities that are often underserved outside of the big metro areas, I love to spend my time in.

So yeah. And that's interesting. So we've got a lot of folks listening to this that I'm sure own small local or regional payroll companies or are in sales in, in, in, uh, situations like that. And so often we get caught up in the fact, I remember when we first started, we were like, oh, We can sell to anybody anywhere in the country. This is amazing. Like, uh, you know, don't put it on our website that we're a South Carolina-based company. We don't want to scare off that company in North Carolina or Tennessee or wherever. Whereas in reality, actually more focused we are, the higher we saw our numbers improve. Once we said, okay, hey, look, let's just purely focus on South Carolina for the time being. And then we'll start to expand after we feel like we've got a foothold here. So it's interesting to hear you talk about the girth of the territory there, but you talked about something interestingly though, that came up in our first conversation we ever had. You use the term COI. What does COI stand for?

For? Yeah, it's, it's center of influence or a referral partner, you know, somebody who's able to, uh, hopefully, uh, spread the good wealth and knowledge of what you have to offer.

So, and I know you've done a great job of cultivating a network of COIs and of referral partners. Talk to us about that process and, and kind of what you're looking for and how you're developing those relationships, how you're keeping them, uh, you know, where you're able to provide value which is also a big part of this. I think where a lot of people fail is they are— it's a very one-sided attempt at a relationship where they're coming by, you know, the old ADP rep knocking on your door once a week saying, you got any leads for me? Uh, you know, you've got to be able to provide value from your side of the relationship. So how do you do that and how are you cultivating those relationships?

Yeah, I think it's a, it's a give to get, you know. If, if you've read the book, I mean, it's a very simple, quick, tiny read, takes a couple hours. Uh, the give to get mentality of it's not what's in it for you, it's how, you know, what's in it for other people. How can you provide that value. So if I want to find a new— let's just call it an insurance company or a benefits broker, whoever might be in a position to hopefully reach the masses for you— it's, can I, can I come to them with not only proposition, but can I bring them a lead day one? Not necessarily give it to them first, but see the, see the interest, see what's going on. And then within that first day, the first 48 hours for sure, I try to give them a lead and know that at least half of the time it's never going to come back. That's okay. It's, it's all right. I gave them a lead. Now, if I'm going to give them a lead, I want to know that they're going to do right, obviously, by my prospect or client. But we just need to ask more questions in that sales process of filling in the gaps of, you know, who does your benefits, or who does your insurance, or who is your banker, Getting some of those just tiny quick questions out of the way or building them into the discovery process is going to open up the doors to be able to provide a lot more referrals outbound. And weird, the more you give, the more it ultimately comes back your way in the form of getting. So, you know, I try to limit it to a couple, you know, let's say banks, for instance. I have a relationship with, you know, a dozen banks in town. Will I refer all of them? I'm not going to say who. No, I'm not going to because I have a very good— you know, I have a bank that's right for the right size customer that's maybe grown out of the small bank. And then I have, you know, that bank that maybe is able to take a square and fit it into a round hole, you know, from a lending standpoint. So I think giving to get, but then having as many of those COI or referral partner relationships as you can possibly get. So, you know, I look at, I look at what I do now and being in this role with Bergen KDV for about 5 and a half years, I probably get 3/4 of my business now via referrals. And that's referrals from external partners. That's referral from internal people. Don't forget about your payroll processors, your support team. You know, those people are a goldmine for referrals if you coach them on what to look what to listen for. So I think that's been just super beneficial. And then your clients, right? When I do a— I'm trying to talk to somebody that's been with us for a year or 2 years, and I'm talking to them about client sat. First and foremost, are they happy? Well, if they're happy, that's awesome, right? That's your— woo-hoo! I got a golden ticket right there, right? If they're happy, then what am I going to do? Well, first, I'm going to try and help them by providing them value via an upsell opportunity. You know, let's take advantage of another module or another service or things like that. If that's not going to work, I'm going to, I'm going to ask, you know, who else in their network would be good for us to work with, right, from a referral standpoint. But how do you make that referral about them, not about you, right? It's so, it's, it, it's said a little differently. It's said in the way of, you know, in order to continue to keep providing great service like we're doing and all this emerging technology like we're doing for you, We need more happy customers to be able to keep prices low, things like that, you know. Who else do you think that you interact with that we could, we could talk to? And then if all else fails, which oftentimes it does, get a testimonial. Um, what if they're happy? Are they going to say no to saying, yeah, we'd love to do a testimonial, or we'd love to be a reference for you? Um, I think that is, that is missed opportunity 80% of the time on the one ask, but What about the 3 asks? You know, so by getting those pieces in place, you know, it ties back to sales efficiency. I need a reference. Guess what? I got a whole Rolodex of references by industry, by employee count, by module. They're ready to go. You know, so some things like that I think are super helpful. And then again, the give to get, you gotta, you gotta come in swinging with a referral form if you want them to take you seriously. And then The best referral partners you're meeting with once a month, even if it's 30 minutes virtually or for a cup of coffee, it's to keep each other top of mind. If I have, if I have a meeting coming up next Tuesday with one of my best benefit broker referral partners, for sure Monday, the day before, at worst case scenario, I'm really looking through that, who they want to get in touch with. I'm like, crap, I got to find them a lead, I got to give them a nugget of information or a piece of value that's going to help.

So, oh yeah, so much great stuff in there. I'm going to start with that give to get. We have a, you know, there's the old school mentality of ABC, always be closing. We flipped it. We say ABV, always be valuable. So that's that mindset like you're talking about. If I'm preparing for a meeting, oh please do. I hope everybody steals it and I hope everybody lives it, right? Because as you talked about, like if I'm preparing for a meeting the day before and my mindset is more What can I give this person that's going to make it a valuable use of their time, that's going to help them to grow their book of business? That, you know, if it's a first meeting with a new prospect, it's saying, what would make them want to pay for this meeting when they're done with me? Right? Like, would they— do they view this as a strategic consult from somebody who's a trusted advisor? Or do they view it as a sales call where I say, how many employees you have? You weekly or biweekly? You this, you da da da, and going through my checklist that my corporate overlords have given me. But you hit on some other awesome things in there, right? I want everybody to make sure you listen closely on that. And that is the 3 things that Matt is getting out of every client interaction when he goes and visits them, either a referral, a testimonial, or an upsell opportunity. And so those are all simple things on a client interaction. And that is, I mean, how much easier is that than going out and prospecting new prospects every day when all of us have a book of business that we can go out to, whether it's 10 clients or 10,000 clients, there's opportunities that abound there and more connections to be made. So in, in Now let me talk about— let me ask you another question going back here. So you're out in the field, you're doing that with a client. Let's talk about that efficiency. You guys use a CRM? Are you pumping that into some sort of a system while you're out there? Are you an old school note-taker?

CRM, but I, like many sales professionals, am guilty about not putting everything in there. So yeah, that's part of that constant improvement of I could be better at it. Um, you know, oftentimes it's, it's the deal is, is put in there once it it closes, um, because that's how I'm compensated. But yeah, it is a work in progress, but the CRM does get used, just probably not as much as, as it could. I think from the, the, the ABV that you brought up, you know, always bringing value too, I look at the, the buyer's journey, right? You're talking to a prospect and, and they have a need, they have a pain point, an issue, a challenge that you can solve. How do you make that as painless for them as possible? How can you be their easy button, right? If I'm a 50-person, 100-person company and I'm looking at 3, 4, 5 providers, I have better things to do in my day than to do a discovery, a demo, a pricing, an analysis, another Q&A with every single one of them. So I try to put myself in their shoes of— and call it out on that first meeting. Hey, look, I know this is probably not the favorite part of your job. I'm here to be your easy button. What can I do to make this simple for you in the process? And what a lot of people don't maybe get, or they get stuck in their processes, is they feel they have to do a discovery and then maybe another discovery and then a demo and then maybe a second demo and then a pricing. And all of a sudden we're 5 meetings deep, you know, 6, 7, 8 hours externally, not to mention any travel time or internal prep for these meetings. What if you have 3, 4 more people on them that we're Now we're doubling, tripling, quadrupling this time input to that one prospect. Not that they're not worth it, but what if we flip that script a little bit and said, you know what, I know I have a discovery. I know if that discovery goes well, the next step's going to be a demo. And if that demo goes well, what are they going to ask for? Numbers. So who's to say that I can't maybe try to get a little bit more time and, and have the, the nice screen up and be showing them a demonstration without them really planning for it while I'm doing the discovery. You know, hey, talk to me about your, your, uh, how you're doing your accruals right now. And, and I'll know, I'll know a little bit, you know, maybe they're manual. So you're not doing it like this. And so we're just having a very interactive kind of free flow, really talking through the discovery items as they're being shown. And then oftentimes if it goes really well, and again, they're incented to keep this short and not have an elongated process either, they got to bunch more people to look at. You know, hey, we're at that hour mark that we promised. You had another 15 minutes, I'd be happy to go over the investment. Or hey, I bet you're wondering what this costs. Should we go over the investment now or plan a second meeting? And I know how many people they have. We're all priced on a world of per employee, per payroll, per employee per month. There's no reason you can't have that investment ready to go before that initial meeting in anticipation that it's going to go well.

When do you typically share numbers?

I mean, I, I try to avoid sharing numbers until we've at least had a really good discussion or, or they've seen the solution. But again, um, the buyer's journey is not always our journey or our preferred sales process, right? So perfect example would be today. There's a large a large organization that is looking for a new provider, leaving a 3-letter company that starts with A, and they're looking at 5, 6, 7 providers. So they want a very short questionnaire, 15 questions. Can you do this, this, this, and then give us your pricing? Not really ideal, I'll be honest with you, from a value. So it's a Hey, quick answering your question. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I need some more clarity. Do I really maybe need clarity? Probably should. And then that gets me the opportunity to talk to them. And now I talk to them, I build a little rapport, I get an understanding of what's important in their process, who's involved, and then say, gosh, why do you, why do you want numbers right up front? And they're like, well, something's way out of the ordinary, or something's this, you know, we want to narrow it down from 7 to 4, you know, with numbers, and then we'll go deep into the process. Perfect. So then I'm gonna, you know, today we're doing instead of just emailing— that's the other thing, quit emailing proposals, people. Um, you can't ask an email questions and get an immediate answer. You can't clarify something on an email, and so much is left to interpretation. So today we're going to spend 30 minutes and we're going to walk through the investment not the pricing, not the cost, the investment of the HCM solution with them so they understand it so that when they're taking it to their committee of 6, 8, 10 people, they can effectively articulate what it is that the investment is and why.

So great subtle nuance there with the investment versus the fees versus the cost, right? That's such a subtle nuance in how we speak and how we articulate the difference between us and others. And for you ADP reps listening, I know you're out there. I've interacted with so of you, this is nothing personal with you. I was at ADP for 6 years, love the place, great people, great time there. But yes, you are now the enemy and we are going to steal all your clients. And so you're going to get some of the nuance of how we want to do that here from these conversations. And hopefully you'll pick up some things that will provide you with value when you're out there selling against us. But once they process these 2 payrolls and you cash your commission check, you don't really care anyway. So just let us take the deals back. It's fine, y'all. It's fine. Just chill out. All right. So let's go back to, you touched on something that that I run into a lot with the smaller practices, especially, especially those that don't have sales backgrounds like you or I, is that they don't really have a sales process, right? They just kind of sit down and have a meeting with somebody. They bring pricing, maybe they're asked to demo, then they do a demo that's just atrocious where they're doing a harbor tour of every feature, bell and whistle of the whole system. They don't have a slide deck that's going through what this is gonna mean, what it does, and then what it is. You know, they kind of got it all backwards. They're just showing what it is and then the pricing, and then they're moving on with their day. So first and foremost, let me just say, say this, you've got to have a sales process. Even if you've written this thing out in a Google Doc or a Word doc somewhere and you say, hey, I'm going to have a first meeting, then I'm going to do some sort of a diagnosis analysis, then I'm going to do a demo, then I'm going to do a proposal, then we're going to move to closing, then we're going to move to onboarding. And sometimes those things happen in one meeting. And then, you know, a second meeting is onboarding because it's a referral. To Matt's point, if you're getting three-quarters of your business from referrals, guess what happens with referrals? Condensed sales cycles, which is why referrals are awesome and which is why you should be focused more on centers of influence. 1 1 3. If I go out and sell one center of influence on why we're a great partner and I provide value to them consistently, it's on my board right now behind me is we're looking for partners that 1 100, who can bring 100 clients to us if we do a good job partnering with them and meeting their needs. And so, you know, we don't want the, the 1 1 2, we want 1 1 11 mentality. And so, uh, that's something that I think is a critical miss, not having a great sales process, not having a focus on trying to build and develop true referral partnerships that are value-based on both sides. But then also to your point, there's the other side of that where people have a really well-defined sales process and then they just won't get off it. And so you've got to say, look, people want to know numbers upfront now. It's not ideal, but you can give them a ballpark, right? Our prices range anywhere from $3 a check to $69 per employee per month, just depends on which solution you're on. So I can't give you an exact feel for it yet because I just don't know what's the right fit for you, but that's the range. And then they'll engage in a conversation from there and they'll understand it, right? We don't all have one product set and it's not a one-size-fits-all. So people understand that, but at the same time, you can't just be totally coy about the whole thing and say, well, you know, oh, I just can't give you pricing until you go through my 8-hour sales process.

And there's a way you go about that too, Matt. It's how do you explain that to the customer? Like you said, to so they understand it. It's a, hey, don't worry, I'm not going to make this a laborious process to get to numbers. I want to get it to you as quickly as possible, but in order for me to do that, I just need to understand a little bit more. Yeah. And then, and then I'll make sure you have numbers, but not only numbers, you know, if you're budgeting for this, don't you want numbers we can stand behind and that are going to be concrete? Or are you looking for a giant range? You know, there's just so many things you can do there to soften that approach.

Yeah. And on that end, I'll give my disclaimer that I give on every one of these we do on sales. And that's like, just because you're a hammer, not everything is a nail, y'all. You're not doing anybody a favor by dragging somebody through a sales process when they're clearly not a good fit and you've got, you know, you're putting, shoving them into your hope cast instead of your forecast. Like you're wasting their time and yours when you could be working with folks that are a better fit for your business. And typically, you know this upfront, right? Sometimes it's technology shortcomings. People are talking about a high level, you know, the one that always gets us is like job cost. Costing. As soon as I hear the words job costing, I start really digging in because it's like, well, let's just talk about this upfront because this could be a non-starter depending on what your expectations are from this. And there are those little things that you just know that aren't going to be a good fit. So dig into them upfront. We don't want to be the people who are trying to waste somebody's time. We had somebody, and I might have told this story on here before, but we had a client that came to us recently and in about a 5-minute conversation I told her, I was like, she wanted to come off of QuickBooks. She wanted to move out and outsource payroll because all the reasons you'd want to do that. But she just had these job costing needs that no matter who she went with, the way this data was going to come back into QuickBooks is not going to be the way it lives in QuickBooks today. And so if you expect it to look just like that and act just like that, I mean, you know, none of the nationals are going to do it. We're not going to do it. Like, it's just QuickBooks is the spot for you, unfortunately. And like, maybe you should get an outsourced bookkeeper who can do it so it gets off your plate. But that's probably the best solution for you. And she was like, you know, golly, thank you so much. And ADP rep just dragged me through 8 hours of sales meetings and diagnosis and conversations only to tell me at the end that it wasn't going to come back in the way I'd hoped. And, you know, A, that's an educational thing, probably more than anything. It's probably somebody fresh out of college who doesn't know any better what job costing even means. And then when their manager finally got involved after 9 hours, they realized that, you know, we couldn't actually do what the client wanted. But do everybody a favor, save that 9 hours, go work on folks that might actually be a good partner for your business instead of, you know, trying to chase down deals that just aren't a good fit.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, so let's talk about, uh, well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about the Nationals. I didn't want to turn this into a big, uh, trash in the Nationals thing, but I think everybody, uh, listening for the most part are in the locals or regionals. We're all kind of doing the same thing. We're competing head-to-head every day with the ADPs, the paychecks, to pay all the pays, paycoms, paycores, paylocities, all these new folks. But well, not new, but do you pull out of your deals from nationals today? Is that a big part of what you do?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I'd be lying if I said otherwise. You know, there used to be a— used to be a choice once upon a time, right? And the choice the buyer had was, we pick the, uh, we pick the big huge national player that has all the tech bells and whistles, maybe, that we need but maybe lacks in service, or do we— do we pick the small provider that treats us like a warm hug but maybe doesn't have the best technology. So it's bridging that gap and bringing those two worlds together and really making folks understand there isn't that choice anymore, right? You can have both. You can have that warm hug from a service standpoint. People are going to care about your business, but then also have that technology that's going to match what you need it to do, not what somebody thinks you need it to do. So, and we look at, we look at the, the competitive landscape out there. I don't think there's ever been more competition, right? It's insane. It's, it can be downright brutal. And there's some things said that make me question, obviously question some folks' morals out there, but it's, there's really a shiny object syndrome going on out there. And what that means is, is people are meeting with the Office of HR and the HR team and, and they're dangling these shiny objects and talking fancy terms and that we can have the ATS and the performance and the development and the everything all integrated, it's all fancy, but— excuse me— that comes at the sacrifice a lot of times of compliance, right? The, the good old-fashioned roots of what a payroll provider needs to do, of paying taxes in multiple jurisdictions, of getting things done on time, of bringing in things like the wage theft laws and the FFCRA and all these things that just continue to bombard our world. And I just think there's— we're missing now with a lot of the bigger providers still don't do some of those things well because they're chasing the shiny object. And it's coming at the sacrifice of the Office of Finance, right? And not having— not only is it a bad idea for your process to not have somebody from finance involved in it, but you're doing a disservice if one of those sides is going to be unhappy in the end. If HR is not happy in the end, there's a problem. If finance isn't happy in the end, there's a problem. So I think just trying to bridge that gap a little bit is interesting and, you know, just hitting home on that world of compliance.

So interesting.

Sorry, I got off on a tangent there.

No, that's perfect. That's what this is all about. And yeah, it's funny because I've talked about this before of local as a value prop. How valuable is it really for me to be local? There's 16,000 payroll people that process payroll. I don't want to say payroll companies because that might be a disservice to that statistic. But there are 16,000 folks that process payroll in America, companies. And that means, I always say, anywhere I'm standing in the city, if I throw a baseball, I'll hit somebody that processes payroll. There's multiple payroll companies in our building. The first building we were in, same thing. We're in the same building with a national and another provider. I mean, They're everywhere. And so what are you really doing to differentiate? And that's the thing. But what's more important is what can help you to differentiate is actually understanding what the client needs better than anyone else and what that's going to mean to their business. And so is being local, is there any real value prop to that? Well, it depends on the client, right? Do they want to be able to swing by here once a week? We've got clients that come by our office, you know, do Did I ever forecast any clients coming by our office? Not really. And do we have the space that like where it's very impressive when they come by? Absolutely not. So, so we're not set up for that type of operation, but that's really important to them. And if that's what's important to them and that's what— it's not going to disrupt our operations and it's not going to disrupt their operations, then wonderful. But there are others who, you know, whether they were with Gusto or with us, they wouldn't be able to tell the difference and they'd move forward. But going back to your, your point, I think you have to shift the playing field away from the nationals. And one of the ways that we do that is we separate by saying, you're either going to like them or you're going to like us. It's just very different. And then that removes the anchor of the commoditization of, hey, you guys are just the same as them. Now we're looking at dollars and cents and saying, okay, you know, especially on a payroll-only deal, right? Where it's, we're cutting checks and paying taxes. And it's like, all right, why would I choose one over the other? Well, the experience is the difference, right? And so do you want to get to know Olivia and Jason and Amanda and them to get to know you and to understand who you're working with and that they're going to actually care about your business? Or do you want to move to a queue of 18 people, which is actually what one of our clients just came on board with? They said after their company got acquired, which bonus points for those of you out there listening, as you hear about these acquisitions in your market, that is, I don't want to say ambulance chasing time, but we just picked up 5 or 6 clients really easily by simply reaching out to folks that we heard that their provider got acquired. And it's been a nightmare for everybody who's gone through the transition. And they were quick to leave because they wanted that local. Every one of these companies to a person was like, we love the fact that they were local. Now they are not. And now we are in this 18-employee queue whenever we call in and we don't know who we're talking to. We don't know where they are. And that took the whole value prop off the table because, you know, once again, let's go back to the technology is very similar from our perspective. We, you can, you can do paperless onboarding, you can do time tracking, you can do payroll. Great. That's what we need. Need, but we want to feel like we actually matter, which matters to us and is important to us and our partners. And so that's something you can offer that, that others cannot. Um, any other thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, local, you're right. I think spot on. I'm glad you brought that up. It does matter, but not as much as a lot of people think. It matters to certain clients. So I, I love, you know, the, the question, one of the questions I, I love, and it throws everybody off. Nobody asks it. It's It's, you know, talk about your, your best professional service provider. Tell me about some of their qualities and why you love them. You know, people like, I guess it's this, this, and this. Or, you know, maybe it's one of your COIs, who knows. But I want to know who their best professional service provider is and why. And that's going to tell you some of those, those, those things right there. But it's just such a different way to enter into that conversation. And then of course, What's the most important thing to you? And it's different to the HR person, to the controller, to the president, depending on what size organization. It's going to be different possibly for all those people. So finding out what's important to each one of them is going to be key. And then I've lost, you know, again, you talk about winning and taking them from the National, I've certainly lost deals to them too, right? I mean, be lying again if I hadn't lost plenty of deals to them, but When you lose, it's not— I mean, again, it's people are going to love their provider no matter how ungreat we know them to be or how, you know, how great they might be. And we need to be happy for them, right? That that company found a partner that they can work with and that does wonders. Great. But when you lose, it's also equally as important as when you win to find out why. Why do we lose? Why did we, you know, why did we lose a client? What could we have done better, right? Not blaming what that other sales rep did great, or, you know, they bashed us or said terrible things. It's looking in the mirror. What could you have done better? And there's always something, you know, again, being humble to learn that there's always something. What could you have done better to either A, keep them, or B, not have lost them. I got the breakup call about 13 minutes before we jumped on here, Matt, from a deal I've been, I've been working for the last couple months. I got— I lost. It sucks. But you know what? Suck it up and find out the why. And then move on, you know, and, you know, it's always surprising. You never want to— I shouldn't say it's always surprising. Gut check told me I was gonna lose. I just didn't know why. So now I found out why. And It's okay, here's what they thought was better about the other one, but what's that translate into? Translates into how I could have shown those aspects or talked about them differently or hit on that button of importance for them differently, maybe in the sales process to where maybe I would not have lost that, right? And again, I hope they're equally happy with that provider as they would be with us, and I truly believe in my heart that I wouldn't be doing this if we weren't going to solve that problem and really be there to end the end solution or the end vision that they had to actually put that in place.

So I want to dig into that a little bit because that's so critical. First of all, if you're not getting a few losses a week, a month, you're not— you don't have enough in your pipe, right? And so if you're sitting here listening to this and going, man, we're just not growing fast enough and I don't understand why, well, you need to be told no way more often, because that's going to happen more than you're told yes. And so if people aren't telling you no and you're shy and you don't like being told no, well then, you're just not going to grow. It's not going to be part of the game for you. But you led off that one of your questions, your favorite question with the 3 magic words, and this is something that I share all the time, just talked about on a webinar yesterday, and that is the best way to start an open-ended question, and that is, tell me about Those are the 3 magic words. And so for those of you spouses listening in and parents, like, tell me about, magical words. Tell me about your day. Tell me about how school went. Tell me about, you know, like you can't answer that with a yes or no. So that's the magic of sales is asking good questions and getting people to open up. We always say, hey, they should be talking 80% of the time, we should be talking 20%. Almost never works that way. We're salespeople. We don't shut the hell up. But the Talk to me about some of your other favorite questions that you ask in that initial interaction with a potential client to identify whether or not they're a good fit for you guys.

Yeah, no, that's a good, good thing. I mean, questions— asking the best questions means everything. It really does. And we do have, you know, the, uh, I like to— the beginning, the, uh, the corporate overlords. There is a sheet. It's not a sheet necessarily of what You have to ask, but it's used as a guiding tool. So there's different components of that, right? There's rapport-building questions, there's questions pertinent to the process, and then there's the questions you need to answer if you're going to be able to quote the darn thing, right? But one of those questions that I've twisted ever so slightly is, you know, when you're asking usually, oh, what keeps you up at night? Don't ask that, you know, or what are your pain points? Don't ask that either. I ask, you know, you're here today for a reason. You're exploring an alternative to what you have now. Tell me what you love about your current provider. People are like, what, you're supposed to be asking me what I hate about them? No, I want to know what you love about them, if anything, because that's a huge miss if you just solve for what they don't love and you don't keep the stuff they love, right? So it's, it's, it's— I, I ask that. It keeps It takes them off their guard, right? What do you love about your current provider? God, that's interesting. Not a damn thing. Or, you know, I really love that they do this and this, but now I'm going to go down a laundry list of what I hate, you know. So I think that's just a great way to enter in that. And then you, you said it, Scott, tell me, well, tell me more about that. Um, and I'll just start very simple. The best way to get them to ask all those questions that sound like repetitive and I'm reading off a script is You know, maybe you could just talk to me about your current payroll process, starting with how an employee tracks their time. And they're going to spill the beans on all of it. You don't have to say a thing. Oh, like this? Uh-huh. All right, what about that piece? What about that piece? So I like to ask stuff like that that just really gets them down a journey of— it's just different, right? We don't need to win by, you know, like a marathon. You're not winning by hours, you're winning by seconds. And in this process, in this game of all these competitors out there, you don't need to win by a mile. You need to win by 1%, a half a percent. What is that one little differentiator that's gonna make a difference?

Well, and you touched on something right there, very important. And that is, so how, how often we've all been in these very painful meetings where you ask somebody to tell you about, you know, tell me about the experience with your current provider. And they say, I don't like the customer service. And then they, they give you nothing else. Right. And so they just move on and then you move on too. Because you're like, oh geez, they're giving me nothing here. But so now you've got to double down and go, well, tell me about the customer service and get them to open up. If we get people to verbalize their pains themselves, it's so much more compelling than us saying, oh yeah, that customer service is not great for XYZ reason. And going back a step, I meant to mention this, don't ever bash your competition. Talk about what's different. For those of you out there that are spending time worrying about like, oh, you know, this company stinks or that company stinks, like just rise above that. It's the most— it's such a turnoff on the buyer side. I mean, I see it from some of our— the sales reps that call on me, and it's just— I mean, I will not do business with somebody who's gonna— especially if they're trashing somebody I'm currently working with. All of a sudden now I'm getting defensive for a group that I called them to talk about why I don't want to work with them anymore, but that's still my vendor today, right? So I've still got a relationship with them. We're not going to get in bed trashing this company together because I don't know you that well yet. So don't go there. It's never going to work out well. Say, hey, look, they do a lot of things really well, but here's what we do different. Currently as an easy way to position that.

And going back— Yeah, on that, just on that point too of the, you know, not bashing them and being part of that process. It's just, again, you have to drill into some of those things to find out more information. And there's landmines you can set, sure, but the customer service thing, don't pretend that you're perfect, you know? So I like to be perfectly candid, like we're coming off an ugly year. This year-end was the ugliest I've seen. You got, you know, you got the COVID piece and the people needing documentation for PPP and forgiveness and the FFCRA, and now the ERC credits that use the— I mean, everything is using the payroll information. You got people being remote in some cases for the first time ever, and now you're trying to keep up on support tickets. Guess what? I don't care who you were this year-end was ugly, or uglier than the last year-end, right? So I think just diving into that a little more in the customer service— well, was it, was it just recently? Was it this year-end? You know, and then I'll acknowledge, hey, we're human too, and therefore we are imperfect. So we're not always going to be the, the, the best. We're not always going to get you to in the first hour, the first phone ring, um, but we're gonna, we're gonna want to do better. Our goal is to serve you better than you're being served, but I'm not going to hide around the fact, and especially when I talk to current clients, guess what? This year end was ugly. Um, shame on us. Here's what we're doing to fix it.

So great point. And we have so many people have mentioned to me the fact that I spend a good amount of time, if I do a demo, talking about what we don't do well, because I don't— we don't want— we've already seen the client that comes to us and then a month in is just really fussing about they can't get this report the exact the exact way they want it. And we, we could have known that on the front side, had we done a better job on our side of diagnosis. And then we show them, so I'm showing them the imperfections of our model versus, you know, what they might be used to and, and trying to be very upfront about that. Because to your point, it's, it's all, you know, first of all, it kind of endears you to somebody. I, that's not my intent, but it shows them like, hey, look, we know we're not perfect. And here are some of the things that come up commonly on where we might fall short or our system falls short. They're typically system-related things. And so, And for the love of Pete, y'all, anybody listening in that says it's a seamless transition when you come on board with us, like anytime I hear the word seamless, I want to throw up in my mouth because nothing is ever seamless. And if you lead more with, hey, it's an implementation, it's going to have its hiccups, it's going to have its, you know, some, somebody on our side is going to drop the ball. Somebody on your side is going to drop the ball. It's not going to go exactly according to plan, but that's what the implementations are. And here's what we do to make our implementations easier than what you might be used to. And so don't go in with this seamless implementation nonsense. I've heard that a million times in my career. And it's just such a— you immediately lose credibility because anybody who's ever implemented anything knows that is never the case and never will be the case. And so, you know, and, you know, there's some psychology behind that, right? Setting expectations a little bit lower so that you can exceed them and then therefore, like, hey, you know, your implementation process is actually really strong. When you, when you lead with that and then you exceed and excel, like we actually spend a lot of time trying to constantly improve our client onboarding process. And we've got a pretty good process, but would I ever call it seamless? Absolutely not. There's still tons of room for improvement and all those things I said are true, but typically folks will then look back at the end and go, well, dang, like that was actually pretty easy because they were prepared for the worst, right? Like things can go sideways and it might take longer than we hope. And it could get, this could go wrong and that could go wrong. So definitely. I mean, a way to keep your credibility at the very least, because as soon as you start saying seamless, they're probably tuning out on you and you've lost a little bit of credibility. So let's talk about, before we hang up here, let's talk about those losses and some things you've learned from losses over the years that maybe have altered your behavior or altered how you format your process of working with potential clients now. What are some of the things you have learned from deals that you've lost?

Yeah, I mean, again, it's— you gotta, you gotta go that extra step and get that. I mean, now that they've chosen somebody else, getting their time is even more difficult. And how are they telling you? Is it a quick, 'Yeah, sorry'? Like, I got one last week, um, it said, 'Yeah, sorry, you know, I've been busy, haven't got back to you, we went with so-and-so, thanks for all your time.' Well, shit, what does that tell me? Yeah, not a whole lot. So now I have to chase them that CFO again, because I mean, I want to know, do they owe me that? Kinda, I think there's a little bit of me that feels they— I've spent this time trying to help them. They owe me at least 5 minutes of their time to cap that off. What's the why? And things on price, I'll lose a deal on price all day long. I don't— that's great. Sorry, sorry. We should have— maybe we should have talked about price before the demo. You know, we got that out of the way, right? Right. But yeah, I've learned so much and it's mainly been, you know, inward reflecting, honestly. It's been, that's been the most humbling part or maybe the hardest part sometimes to grasp too is, well, you lost because of this. Well, guess what? I know darn well if I'd have done this, this, or this differently in the process, that wouldn't have been the reason. Right. I know that if I had gotten 6, 7, 8 hours of sleep the night before, It wouldn't have been the reason. I know that if I had taken the time to put 15 more minutes of prep into that darn thing before I did it, I wouldn't have lost. So it's just, I think that's the biggest part in realizing that it's not about what someone else does or how they interpret things. It's, it's all about you. How could you have done it differently? And so I think that's been the biggest eye-opener or the hardest thing at times too, to grasp. Gasp, you know, it was like, man, I had a shot, it was great, but I missed. Where did I miss? You know, on this last one, you know, I'll give you, give a good example. The last one I got, it was, um, you know, the, the solution seemed, uh, I, I hate this one, but you know, you get it. The solution seemed, uh, easier to use, more user-friendly, both on the, uh, employee self-service side and on the admin side. What's that mean? Does it mean that that solution really wasn't very deep and just was really shiny on the onset and you can't do a whole lot? Maybe. Or does it mean that, um, you went too complex in the demonstration and you went too deep when you could have just glazed over the surface, right? So diving into that, the other thing they said, the reporting seems easier to use. I happen to know the reporting in the solution is some of the best dang reporting I've ever used. So how do I show that differently then next time to where it, it doesn't maybe appear as complex? Maybe I don't go build a custom report, you know, I don't know. So I think that's the biggest thing I've learned is that it's, it's on you. It's not on anybody else that you lost. It's on you. So, so own it, tuck your tail, and, and move on.

That's great. And I'd be curious, anybody listening in right now, as you're talking about, I have so many thoughts going through my mind about demos. If anybody'd be interested in hearing a session on just demos, I feel like we could talk easily for an hour on best practices on demos. And, but so I don't want to dive into that rabbit hole right now because it's so deep. But I had a recent loss too. I think that might be helpful to some folks because it kind of goes back to something we were talking about earlier where Somebody reached out, said, "Oh, we're going with the other provider." I called her, I said, "Do you mind sharing with me why?" And she said, "Well, they did more than just send me an email with a quote attached to it and tell me why they were great in the body of an email after a 20-minute phone call." And you could tell by the way she was saying that. And what I did in reality was I totally commoditized that thing. We were at a point we didn't have anybody else on the sales team at the time. And so all the inbound stuff was coming to on my plate. So everything inbound, I'm just going, "Yeah, that sounds great. We've got an amazing solution. Here's all the reasons why we're so wonderful." I'm trying to condense first meeting, analysis, no demo, not even get, you know, here's a demo video in the body of an email. Here's a link to our pricing. I'm not even, she's like, you know, you didn't even calculate what the average monthly cost would be for me. I had to go through and figure it out myself. And granted, our pricing is super simple. So that was my mindset. But at the same time, I realized like, oh, hey, First and foremost, something that we talked about early on, like you're not going to one-call close anybody who's not a referral. I just think that's a pretty good rule of thumb. There might be an outlier here and there, but it is an anomaly at best. So getting time with people, whether it's virtually or in person, building the relationship, the rapport is part of the sales process. All things being equal, people do business with people they like. All things being unequal, people do business with people they like. You cannot garner and create a relationship in a 20-minute phone conversation and sending over a quote. So shame on me on that one. Definitely good learning opportunity. And, you know, also got to get out of the mindset of like, hey, look, it's only an X number of employee, you know, deal. And so I'll just fire them over a quote and pray for the best. And if we lose it, we lose it. Whereas in reality, another hour's worth of work and we probably would've had a client for the next 7 years. And so that's something where you got to be careful not to cut corners on the sales process while you're trying to smash the easy button. You You also still have to make sure that you're taking into account the human and emotional elements of a sales process and the things that occur in more time spent with an individual. So definitely one that stung a little and has changed my process over the last few months, because I got into, you know, I know better than that sort of a thing, but it was like, you know, we became the commodity that we tried not to become, incidentally.

So, and the other thing is when you have somebody that you get a lead or you get somebody that has a question that's already on that buyer's journey, it's, you know, the saying goes, and I forget who it's from, but the individual or the organization that responds the fastest with the most complete information wins something like 80% of the time. So, 80% of your— it's showing up and being prompt and getting them the information more quickly. Quickly so they can make a good decision. And that, that right there is tough when you're, when you're doing the volume that we're, you know, each of our teammates are doing, you know, 300, 400 deals a year. I mean, it is intense. It's, it's busy, but I wouldn't have it any other way. It's what drives me, what motivates me to be better. But you need to be the fastest, but not the fastest to answer one of their 3 questions. It's the fastest answer at all, or you're not doing any, any good there.

So, all right, well, I'm going to leave on that because that's the proverbial mic drop right there, right? So if you are— have these limiting beliefs about what you can or cannot produce in a year, Matt just said doing 300 to 400 deals a year, that is an absurd— like, he opened my mind to new levels when we talk about that level of volume and what we can and can't do. And so, and going back to some of your thoughts earlier about I call it just sort of that limiting mindset of, "Oh, hey, I lose this deal and that's the only thing in my pipe." You have to have a mindset of abundance to do this. You have to understand that there's going to be tons of nos, but the yeses, there's so many small businesses out there for all of us to partner with and serve and provide value to. And I think that's been one of the coolest things as we've gotten to this journey over the last 7 years, just learning great folks like you who are willing to share your time with a guy like me and people all over the country that are willing to share their best practices and time with with each other, to help each other to get better and to help each other to improve and to help each other to really serve and once again, you know, provide value to the small businesses and hopefully the best folks win and continue to find opportunities to create that value. But I know that we're all better off for having been a part of this conversation, Matt. So I appreciate your time so much.

No, I appreciate your time, Matt, and the ABV of always being valuable and sharing these podcasts with, with the greater population.. So I know, uh, I get a huge benefit from listening. So, uh, it's a privilege to be here this morning.

Uh, thank you so much, brother. I appreciate it.

All right, you bet. Have a good one.