Measuring KPIs Like a Pro: Tips from Two Payroll Industry Experts with Bryan Gorman

You have been in the payroll industry, Ryan?

Gosh, I would claim almost 23 years. So it'll be 23 years in August.

Yeah, it looks like you're, you're what we would have called a retread back in the day, right? So you came back to TruePay. Was I reading that right?

No, that's correct. Yeah, I started in 2000. I actually applied to an ad in the newspaper back when we did that. And I, it was a PayChoice licensee back at, so the PayChoice software, which I don't even think is around anymore. But I worked there for 5 years. I sold really small to medium-sized businesses. So, you know, 5 employee, well, 1 employee up to about 250. We had a small division, probably 400 or 500 clients, and then they sold us back to Payroll Associates. This is around 2005, 2006. And then we started up PayChoice, which I don't know if you remember PayChoice was, it had a couple licenses on the East Coast. Then Sage purchased us. But in the meantime, I knew an owner of TruPay. And we, he was kind of my mentor back at the licensee and said, hey, come over here. Spent 8 years at TruPay. We were a Millennium shop, so we sold the Millennium payroll software, really again, small and medium-sized businesses. We had a few large organizations as well. And then we, I left there and I was one of them, a taste of management, I guess. So I left and went to a management role that wasn't available at TruPay at the time. So left left and went to a company called Interlogic Outsourcing. And I went there and I worked in multiple roles. I worked, had multiple, just worked at, we had a lot of diocese that we did payroll for, which is a weird, interesting niche that we were part of. I worked on partnerships, worked on selling, managing our Atlanta office and our Philadelphia office. So I was traveling quite a bit with that role. Really loved that role. Had some— had the company ended up going through some issues and PrimePay purchased us back in 2019. So spent a year and a half at PrimePay and then COVID hit. And I got out, actually got out of the industry for a little bit, went to a company called Carew and worked, which was more of an employee engagement software, wasn't HCM related. And then got a call from Mark to come back to TruPay. And that's how I ended up back here. So yeah.

So a couple of things there. A newspaper for you young'uns out there, that was when we used to actually read news on a piece of paper. It was amazing. If you were one of the fortunate, somebody deliver it direct to your door. Actually, one of my first jobs, fun fact, was delivering newspapers and I was terrible at it because I was back then and still am today, as anybody on our team could tell you, not good at financial management. So I'd get the money, you know, or I'd struggle to harass the people for the money. Have those few. I— there was a three-legged dog on my newspaper route that would chase me. It sounds like it's a movie, but this— it was the meanest little dog, and it had three legs, and it would chase me down their driveway every time. Um, you know what, you touched on something in there I want to hit on because we didn't have in our notes on topics we're going to talk about, but I think it's really important because this happened to me, uh, when I was in corporate America. I wanted a management job, wanted a management job, wanted a management job. Finally, you know, got the opportunity to get management leadership jobs and then realized like, oh, wait a minute, It's a lot more responsibility. It is. My upside is lower than what it was when I was an independent producer, right? And, you know, the expectations are much higher and the stress is much higher. So like, that equation never quite balanced out for me. And, you know, I've taken on many leadership roles over the years and, you know, taken on a bunch of different individual producer roles. You've obviously stayed in a leadership role and you are in one today. What do you think makes for the person who should and could be in that leadership role versus those who should listening to this and think like, maybe you're just better suited to stay in that individual contributor role?

Yeah, it's that, that's a great question. And I think that it boils down to, are you a coach? Because you start as your individual producer and you're working on your quota, you're working on your, you know, your territory, your clients, your prospects, and you kind of just control what you control your own day to day, right? Your schedule is yours. Your meetings are yours and your quota is yours and you're focused solely on that. Now, when you get into more of a management role, then your quota, you still have one because now it's your team's quota and it probably tripled overnight, right? Or quadrupled overnight. So now instead of a, you know, $250,000, $300,000 quota, you're over a million dollar quota, right? And now you have to manage everyone else's time and your own time because in a lot of ways, you know, I was still an individual producer on top of a management role responsibility. So you're just, you have to be really good at time management, right? I think you have to really focus on managing your time well. But you turn into a coach, you have to make it all about them and your team and less about you. And it's a mental change. You have to really focus on that because I think as salespeople, you do get to a point where, you know, you just want to focus on hitting that number and that becomes your drive every single day., but now wait, timeout. I have to really drop what I'm doing here. This person has a question. They want their quote to be looked at, or they, hey, I got a meeting with a broker. I mean, can you meet me for coffee? I really kind of struggled on the talk track for those people. And just those different things. You're like, your focus really changes and you have to really, I think you really want, want it because your life, it just flips upside down. It's just a big, big culture shock in a lot of ways.

That's a really good point. I think you have to want to invest in others' success as much or more than your own success, which is something that a lot of people think they want. But in reality, it's funny because regardless of the role I'm hiring for, people come in all the time in the interview process and talk about how they want to be a manager one day, or they want to be in leadership one day. And I don't really think they know what that means oftentimes. I think it's just like the next obvious step of what I'm doing is that I'm going to move into a leadership role. And then they get into a leadership role and they go, well, geez, like, you know, I'm still trying to make this all about me, because that's what we are. We're selfish humans. It's not like it's about an indictment on that individual, but it's very challenging to hook your success to the success of others and purely spend your time investing in the development of those people and those processes and, and the success of others. And, and they both are very entrepreneurial roles, especially in sales, right? Sales, I feel like, prepares you for entrepreneurship a ton in the respect that you have to manage it. You know, you're the CEO of your territory, and your income and your expenses are all contingent on your ability to produce and manage that territory. And, and then when you start adding reps into the fold, then, you know, it even expounds and expands on that. So really interesting point. I love that. And I think if you're listening to this and you're not in sales and you're not in a leadership role, you really have to look long and hard and say, like, do I want this additional responsibility in conjunction with some of the other things that come along with that in the form of stress, you know, never-ending questions and just— or would you rather just contribute at a really high level and become a subject matter expert on a couple of things that you're fantastic at? So Big, big life decisions.

No, it's huge. I think accountability is a huge part of that too, because you have to really work on holding the team accountable. And sometimes that could be difficult in a lot of ways. I think that, you know, we're going to talk a little bit about KPIs and numbers and tracking things here in a minute. But I think that, you know, that's important too, is the accountability piece and having those tough conversations at times too, because you're going to have to have them. I'm thinking back as you were talking, Matt, about some of the managers that really made an impact on me are the ones that did, are the ones that, hey, you know what, that call was terrible, you know? And yeah, I'm thinking back to some of those that were just really weren't that good, right? Yeah. I think that the ones that maybe said, hey, you could have done this differently or had an after-call meeting. I think that you have a call instead of getting back in the car and getting back to your, you know, going back to the office. Hey, stop, pull over. Let's go through What went well, what didn't go well, what we could have done differently. It's not an indictment on what the job that you did, but it's great practice and helps you for when you go to the next one. I think that's where the manager has to turn into a coach. It has to, you know, and know that you have your reps' back. At the end of the day, I'm rooting for you. I'm on your team. I'm on your side. On the flip side of that, you have to be accountable too. And you have to say, hey, there is a number to hit. There are targets to hit and maybe you may have fell short this week, but I believe in you. You can do it next week. Let's go. And you have to get in the trenches with them and charge the mountain with them and come alongside. Those are the ones I know that have done, that made an impact on me today is just the ones that have come alongside and said, hey, you're good at what you do. You may have had a bad day or, you know, just a bad week, but hey, tomorrow and Monday is a new day, right? So, yeah.

Yeah, it's really important, and it's important to coach in real time, and it's important to lead with questions. Uh, two of the biggest mistakes that we see is letting things accumulate, pile up, and then we're gonna have this big conversation about it, right? So like, you know, the shavings make a pile is what one of my old leaders used to say. And it's like, sometimes by— as a leader, by the point those shavings start to make a pile, you get frustrated, maybe explode on someone, versus, you know, just addressing those small things in real time, course corrections, and keeping somebody on track. I think I've told the story on here once before about, one of my favorite managers I've ever had, telling me after a first, or after, I guess we were in a pitch meeting. I was pitching them payroll construction company and it was not going well. It was somebody I was dragging through the process, really had no business pitching them. They weren't even that interested, but we were, you know, this was in the early days when I was just going to drag everybody through a process to keep Salesforce.com up to date. And when we left, he said that, you know, I asked him how he thought the meeting went and he said it was like being in the cockpit of a airplane that was on fire and was headed down. And so I don't think that means it went very well, uh, is the takeaway I had there. And, you know, I've had that type of relationship with other leaders where you've got to be able to provide that candid feedback. And sometimes it needs that element of some humor and some levity to keep it real. But one of the biggest challenges, and this is a big challenge for me right now, and I struggle with it with our team all the time, is just like talent is at an all-time premium right now. So we're all sort of walking on eggshells. Nobody wants to criticize. Nobody wants to, to sort of like, you know, hold people accountable to certain things. And it can be a real huge detractor in a day and age where you're set— you want to set high expectations. You expect a ton out of your team, but you got to have kid gloves on when it comes to providing feedback because, you know, there's— it's a hot, hot labor market and folks are in high demand. And so it's a challenging time to be an employer for sure. What are some ways you combat that from your side, Mark? Brian, sorry.

Oh, that's okay. Well, that's a great question. I think that, you know, again, to my point earlier about just getting in the trenches with them and having those tough conversations, but doing it in a way that, I mean, just comes across like, again, you have their back and you know that you're in it to win it with them. I think that's the best way to do it is just to say, hey, and to give them your attention and your time. Because I think in a lot of ways that you can say it, but you got to walk the talk, right? I think that in some ways that I've seen managers too that just say, hey, you got to do A, B, and C and hit these numbers at the end of the week. And maybe they get busy and they just don't talk to you the rest of the week. You don't see them until the following week and they get busy. And it's just, you know, manager says, hey, we got these targets to hit and I want to review with them on Friday. Well, come Friday, you better have that meeting with that rep and you better make sure you make the time for them. Because if you don't, then I think the rep starts to get to a point where, hey, if they don't care, then why should I care type of an attitude, which is, I think, is a pretty dangerous place to be. You know, especially like to your point about today's labor market, you need to be— and that person can go really anywhere. And I think that it's hard to to find good talent in the first place. So why not, if you have good talent, make sure that you're treating them well, you're investing in them, not just with resources and things, but with your time. I think that's where you're, it's kind of where the rubber meets the road is, are you giving me the time and attention that I need to succeed? And if you are, then I think that employee becomes someone that turns into a long-term employee that can help, help win business for the organization at the end of the day.

Yeah, it's interesting. As you're talking, I'm visualizing, you know, we're, we're recording this right before Super Bowl weekend 2023. It won't come off for a few weeks here, but you know, when, when you see a good coach where a quarterback throws an interception, makes an obvious bad read, player makes a huge mistake in a critical moment, when they go over the sideline, the coaches aren't screaming in their face, right? They put their arm around them, they grab them, they talk to them, they pat them on the helmet, tell them, you know, look, here's, here's what happened, you're going to get it next time, you already know what happened, let's, let's just we're going to work through that in practice. Now is not the time, right? And that's, that's one of our— I coach a lot of sports. It's one of our coaching philosophies. We're going to coach you hard during practice. During the games, we're going to let you play. We're going to let you play loose, and we're going to address it again during practice, right? So picking those right times and that right framework to correct folks and to work through the challenges and make sure that they know that we're all on the same team, we all have the same goals. Um, so, so let's talk about that. So I think in our, our previous conversations, you've told me that you guys have recently changed the makeup of your team. How do you structure your sales team? Why is it structured that way? What are some of the lessons you guys have learned over the last few years?

Yeah. So right now we have about a team of 5 right now. We just hired a few that cover really— so we're based in Northern Indiana near Notre Dame. That's where we're located. That's where TruPay is physically. But we have reps that— 2 that are covering the outside. That are more business development reps that really manage the whole process. So they're, they're working to get, get new appointments and we call them net new appointments. But we're wanting them to do that, do a discovery meeting as the first part of the sales process and then do demos and quote delivery and hopefully closing from there. But we have two of those that are doing that right now. We actually have a person that does just client care and client upgrades. So that person is specifically calling on the client base and they are working to continue to develop a relationship with them, getting to know them and their needs. So, so for today, for example, they might just be a payroll-only client. But hey, have you, have you looked at our HR module? Have you, have you, when's the last time you evaluated your time and labor situation? So just calling into the client base to make sure that we're touching them and hopefully making them more sticky and trying to sell them additional products. So that person's that's all they're doing. They're not doing any net new business. It is just current client upgrades. Then we have a marketing specialist and that person's role is really just to focus on the marketing side of things. So they're doing, you know, the social media posts. They are doing any kind of internal communication, external communication, working through those LinkedIn posts, all that. They're really focusing just on the marketing piece. And they're also working on some of our internal things. Like if we have an internal newsletter, external newsletter for clients, working through a lot of that, those marketing functions is what she's doing. So then we just have a director of sales and marketing too. So we have a team of just 5 right now. So we've had some turnover lately in the last year, but back up to a team that we're kind of running with into 2023.

So yeah. Let's talk about that client rep for a moment. I know a ton of folks that I've talked to over the years that listen to this podcast that are smaller shops. But they have grown like really nice big bases of payroll clients. You know, a lot of them lead with payroll only when they first get going, like many bureaus do. They're building up hundreds of accounts and then, you know, now it's time to decide, do I want to layer in other services? Um, or they've started to layer in other services, but maybe they haven't really thought about that client marketing strategy. And, you know, you know, you mentioned something in there and I don't want to pick on it, you didn't intend it this way of like, you know, hey, we're trying to sell the client something. You know, one of the biggest things that happens to us every year is that we'll send out our our client survey, we'll get our net promoter score, but we'll, we'll bury this question in there that says, what additional services would you be interested in us offering? And we'll tend to put in half and half of things we currently offer and things we don't currently offer. And so that way, you know, we'll get a sense for, do they know if we offer this? And more often than not, they're checking the box on things that we already offer and they didn't even know we offered in the first place. And then sometimes we'll get the understanding of, oh, we've really got some, you know, some, some demand for something that we don't offer today. Maybe we should consider if there's a good way for us to deploy it or partner with someone who can. So what's your guys' approach to sort of educating clients on what additional opportunities they have to grow and expand the relationship? Because there's nothing more heartbreaking than somebody leaving because they say they're saying they're going somewhere else to get something that you already have and they didn't know you had it. That's so frustrating.

Yeah, I was just going to say that because we just had one this morning where, you know, we had, we had a client that we ended up meeting with and saving and because they didn't and adding some additional services because they just really didn't know we had that. Right. But yeah, to your point earlier, I think that you're starting instead of selling something really that good, the intent is to really do a client review, like to sit down and say, hey, you know, we want to make sure. And, and I think on the sales side of things too, we really try hard to, you know, do a 30, 60, 90-day review and really make sure that, hey, you've gone through the implementation process. I, from my perspective, I like to kind of just say, you know, we've sold the deal. Here's what's going to happen. Here's the process that you're going to follow with our implementation team. I'm going to kind of back out a little bit. Now, you always have access to me, right? You can always reach me if you need to, but you don't want me processing your payroll. You don't want me implementing your payroll. You want the experts to do that. But on the flip side of that, hey, we're going to touch base here in 30 days. We're going to see how everything went. We're going to see, hey, how could this have gone better? You know, any additional services you thought about during the process that I didn't touch on initially or those types of things. And then we're going to do this the same time, 30, 60, 90 days. And then, hey, you know, you can always reach me. You can always reach out to me and we can always have a conversation about how things are going with your— with TruePay and your relationship with us. But I think the initial part is huge. But then As you mentioned earlier with the client role, that's really their goal is to kind of say, hey, you've been a client for 6 months, a year, 2 years. You know, when's the last time you evaluated really just your entire process again? Like, hey, almost treating it like it's a— we're trying to earn your business again. Because a lot of times you're right. They won't reach out until it's almost too late and say, hey, we just switched to someone else and they didn't know what services you had. So I think it's really important to do the review with the client and do that multiple times during the year. And that person's role really is to do that, is to focus on, hey, how are we doing? They have a set, you know, a list of questions to ask and follow up on. And a lot of ways too, Matt, when you asked about how we're getting the new products in front of clients and new things that come on board that we know about at TruePay, but how do we get it out to our client base? I think the podcast that I do helps us do that. We interview, you know, some people that might be one of our, some of our partners and we get that information out to them via our podcast. And then we also do, you know, webinars as well where we talk about a new product or a new service and then send that out to our clients as well to join our monthly webinar and discuss new opportunities and ways that we can help improve upon your HR and payroll processes as well. So, yeah.

Yeah, and you can check out their podcast at trupay.com. You'll see it right on the menu. Um, the— and we'll put it in the show notes as well. But, but a couple of things there you mentioned that are really important is like when this is done well, it's equally as an ex— an extension of support, right? Because now I'm providing better support. What's, what's the next thing you hear all the time when you get a new client is that haven't seen anybody from Paychex in 4 years, you know, and like ever since the sales guy left, I haven't seen anyone. And so that's, you know, quite frankly understandable for a lot of us. It's not like our, our client success reps are going to go out and visit clients once every 6 months, but your, your client sales folks can be an extension of the support team. And if you're earlier stage and you've got a support person that's just, you know, would love to earn some more money, why not incentivize them to have these quarterly or semi-annual reviews where they're going through the client and they're doing a white space report ahead of time so they know what are some possible upsell opportunities because it's a natural conversation. Hey, you know, you've called, you've called us 5 times about having issues with this thing. We offer this solution. You know, here's how much it costs. Let's talk about it. It's just a really easy upsell opportunity and an opportunity to spiff out or comp out your support team and also provide better service. Well, you know, too often people get stuck in the I don't want to sell my clients. I don't want to upsell them. I don't want to upsell them. You know, we've talked about this on here before, too. I mean, you know, your average client's, your average client sales rep is carrying about a $500,000 quota. And the reason why is because there's a ton of opportunity to go out and upsell clients if you got a decent-sized book of business.

So, well, and I think one way too, I think it's a great time to ask for referrals. I think it's a great time. And I think going back to managers that you remember, I have one that for our team back at PrimePay when we talked about, hey, you know, we're not going to let you turn a deal in unless we know who the client's banker is. Who their CPA is and who their broker is. And that you couldn't get it through, which is— I love that. To this day, I still do that because I think it's a wonderful way to get in front of additional centers of influence and that those may lead to opportunities. But I think it's a great best practice is to do that. And again, during those client reviews, you can ask them about different relationships who they use. If they're not happy with some of those, it might be a good time to bring in another, um, say you have a banker that you're trying to get a lead for them. They may have given you a lead or two in the past and you want to reciprocate. I think it's a great time to say how are your relationships with your other vendors. And I think it's just a way to become a resource, right? To be able to become, um, I know we're talking a little bit about how to get endorsed too later on, but I think it's— that's an important way. You got to be a resource to them. You got to add value and almost become like a consultant and for their business. And it's, it's kind of how that the industry's really morphed and changed over the years for sure.

Yeah. And I think that's always the goal, right? We all talk about being a trusted advisor. A lot of us will use the word consultant in the, in the titles, which is, you know, the number of like people that have positioned themselves as workforce management consultants that are a month out of college and went to school for phys ed is amazing. But the, the The other piece of that, though, is, yeah, like, this is the sale that most of us enjoy more and more on the other side of the table these days because the facts are out there. 70% of the deal is done before you have communication with the prospect, right? They're doing their research. Even if you cold call them and open that door, they're going to go online before that meeting. They're going to figure out 70% of what they need to know without you. So what is that additional value you can provide above and beyond your service offering that is going to see you as a trusted advisor? So too often we've looked to the CPAs and the bankers as the trusted advisors, and we kind of layer on top of them. Whereas now we have this unique opportunity to really put ourselves at the center of that conversation and bring the others in around us. I think that's a great point. Um, so yeah, like you said, it kind of feeds into the next part of this of talking about gaining access, talking about getting indoors. What is the primary way that your team— uh, episode we're about to drop, Zach and I, our director of business development, just did a last 10 deals review where we just pick apart our last 10 deals, last 10 closed ones. How did we get in the door? What were the services? You know, what did the sales process look like? What were the competition? Exercise I've been doing for years and years and years. And, you know, for us, of those 10, I, I, uh, have a little trouble recalling now, but I'm pretty sure 10 out of 10 were some form of referral or inbound. Um, tell me a little bit about your gaining access process, where the bulk of your deals are coming through from, and what you guys are doing to, to get indoors these days.

Yeah. Well, it used to be, you know, back in the day where you used to put up like 100 brochures in your car and you were an office on wheels for, for the next, you know, month or so.

Right.

And you just walk into places and, and drop information off your card and your brochure and then you would follow up from there. So that was pre-COVID in a lot of ways. And but, you know, a lot of that's coming back, though, too. I think that it depends on where you are, but a lot of ways you know, we're starting to see our reps gain some traction just by doing that more. I think that in this, in today's day and age, I think we tend to want to hide behind email in a lot of ways and just send, hey, maybe use ChatGPT to send out an email that is well-crafted and directed towards an HR director. And we're going to send that email out to them 100 times and nobody's going to respond to it, but we're exhausted, right? Because we just sent 100 emails out for the day.

But Man, I'm grinding. Rise and grind, baby. Who's going to sit down and fire these emails out today?

Yeah, but I think that we've, in the last several years, have just become that way for whatever reason. Like, I think it's good to add that as part of your overall game plan. And I think emails are great, but I think picking up the phone. I mean, when's the last time we, even from a sales leader perspective, I can't remember the last time someone called me to get an appointment. It's, it's always been via email and, and you get a ton of them and you're to the point where you just, you get so many of them you just don't see them or you, you tend to just delete them and move on. But I think that, you know, getting back to just picking the phone up, calling, and, and really just going through the process of asking for an appointment still works. And I think that's just a, a way that we do it here. I think that, um, we have, we had a new rep that started in the last 90 days that is doing a tremendous job of just picking the phone up and calling and getting appointments that way. And it just like, hey, I mean, it blows your mind because that's how we used to do it back, you know, 20 years ago. I went today, 20 years later, it still works. You know, I think, but today's tools are just so different. We use a lot. We use ZoomInfo where we, you know, we can send those emails and those cadences out to different organizations and really get specific on who we're going after. But I think a lot of ways of, and I think LinkedIn posts work well too. And I think I mentioned our podcast earlier, but using different podcast episodes to say, hey, just be different and to send out an email with a podcast episode attached that I thought of you, thought this might be a good episode for you to listen to and to learn more about us. We even did a podcast episode where we interviewed Mark Rutledge, our president, and have sent that out just to say, hey, have you ever heard of TruPay? To get to know us a little bit, here's an episode from our president. You can get to learn about us before we even meet, even doing one on implementation. So I have recorded one with our implementation director and talked about how is our process different. You know, if you go with us versus one of the big guys, what are we going to do different? And we spent 45 minutes going through the process of what a client can expect because, I mean, you and I both know that you're at the end of the day, that's, that, that's, that's the tough part is trying to convince someone to, to change what they're doing and to go through that process of, changing vendors, which can be sometimes, you know, an adventure, I guess, or can be— it's work, right? And I think that, um, uh, those— that episode's really been great. I think just trying to leverage all those different things and, and just coming up with different cadences and, and seeing what works and maybe doing A/B testing, like, hey, you know, this is working well, I'm going to send a bunch of emails out, but— or make a bunch of phone calls, those are working, I'm going to try emails, I'm not getting anything out of email, so I'll just focus focus my attention on, on just picking up the phone. So it's just, it's a lot of trial and error. But, um, I, if, if I were, you know, a new rep or a new manager managing my team, I'd say, hey, you know, let's— you can get back to the phones and, and kind of dropping in on person because— in person, because that's working really well right now.

I couldn't agree more in the respect that me as a buyer as well, of if you show up here I'm going to remember that, right? Like, hey, you're probably going to— if nothing else, I'm going to hear that you came by. I might not come out and see you, but I'm going to know that you came by. You bring something physical, you leave it. I'm going to have it in this pile of junk that's all over my desk here that's getting out of control. But then you're following that up with an email and a phone call. And, you know, I pulled up while you're talking a local 10-touch campaign that we recently did. It's been one of the most successful outbound campaigns we did in a while. It was tied to an acquisition. Uh, you know, touch one mailer, uh, value first in the mailer, right? The mailer was a resource we sent out, not a, you know, hey, I'm gonna call you and try to sell you something. It was, hey, here are some free HR resources, right? Follow it up with an email with a video, follow it up with a LinkedIn connection request, follow it up with a call, follow it up with another email, follow it up with another call, follow it up with an email, follow it up with a call. Um, let's say it says 10 on the thing, but only 8 touches. But either way, wait a minute, says Local 10-Touch Campaign is the title and there's only 8 touches in here, man. This is a— you robbed me of my last few touches. But I think too often people get hung up on one of those channels and say, I'm all in on email, I'm all in on LinkedIn, I'm all in on phone, whatever it is. The reality is you got to do a blend. And it's, it's that, you know, third, fourth, fifth touch where you might finally break down the door. For some of these folks, they may come in on that second third touch. You just don't know. But too often I just see people firing to your point, you know, I'm just going to fire off a bunch of emails and that's it. And I'm not going to put in the work to really make it a one-to-one thing. So yeah, in this particular campaign, I mean, I think we only put— we put less than 100 accounts in this campaign and shook out at least 5 deals, uh, which is unheard of for as far as a hit rate. But it was super targeted in that we knew who their provider was, we knew they were acquired, and so we were able to kind of go right after it.

Yeah, that's great.

All right, so let's pivot over to— so we talked about the, the sales team, kind of philosophy of going out and gaining access, fishing from a bunch of different ponds. So let's— what's the next kind of natural thing there, or sort of previous natural thing, is like key performance indicators? What are you guys measuring? What have you learned from that? Why do you measure those particular things? Let's talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, we, we measure quite a bit, um, in, in maybe, I think, in some ways you may measure a little bit too much, but I think a good indicator of some of— and really some of the score— we call them scorecards, but the scorecard measurables that we use are, you know, number of new clients sold, like how many clients are you, you know, selling every week? What's that total amount? We have a goal of a number that we want to hit each week and we measure to that number. And then we also talk about, you know, new dollars added to the pipeline. You know, pipeline is everything, right? So if you don't have a pipeline, you're going to be you're going to be in trouble eventually. And I think that we have a number that we want to hit. We want to add that each week to the pipeline and make sure that we're doing that consistently. And then we're tracking really total new revenue sold. We want to see exactly how much revenue we're bringing in each week. And then we want to go after a specific target market. We really are focusing really 50 and above is what we're really trying to focus on. With, with, with TruPay. So we're really saying, hey, how many meetings are we having that are focused in that target market? Because we really don't want to go below that 50-employee mark if we, if we can help it. We want to go above that. So we want to make sure we're tracking how many meetings in our target market. And then how many proposals are we generating in that target market as well? And then we're also going after net new, net new appointments. So discovery meetings, how many of those are we having each week? We're targeting those. And then how many demos are we doing of the, of the software as well? How many are we having through the week? So those are the categories that we're doing. We're also tracking though how many current clients that we're meeting with each week as well. And we've gone as far as tracking, you know, how many CPAs are you meeting with, how many bankers and how many brokers or insurance brokers are we meeting with each week too. I said earlier, it's a lot to track, which I think it is. We're automating a lot, most of this. But I think it's a good way to kind of get a good snapshot of what's going on in the organization from a sales perspective. And, you know, when we're going into management meetings and with meetings with the ownership, you're able to really dial in and say, here's where we are. Here's what the pipeline looks like. Because that's, again, pipeline for me is everything. You want to know what's in the pipeline, what's coming. So that way implementation knows exactly what to prepare for, what resources they need to have for these accounts that are coming on. So I think that it's very important. But again, if you aren't measuring to those KPIs, if you aren't keeping track of them consistently and not having discussions with your team about them, then it becomes, from a rep's perspective, why am I even bothering? If they aren't going to worry about these numbers, why should I worry about these numbers? So you have to really, really get focused on tracking them, but also explaining to your team why it's important that we're tracking these, because that, that will help them, you know, update Salesforce or update HubSpot or whatever CRM you use to track this information. That's, that's critical, and you have to make sure that that's done consistently.

How are you guys handling the— and we have a very similar— I pulled up our dashboard here while you're Talking weekly new pipe added, monthly new pipe added, weekly opportunities closing. One of the things we're focused big on this year is increasing the average deal size. So we're a little bit different in that we're 50 and under predominantly. And so we lead with a PEO, which is obviously a higher average deal size. And, you know, we do, you know, for the sales reps, I would love for them to be on that sort of higher, you know, more in that 15 to 35 employee range than that 0 to 15 employee range because that makes your life a lot easier. And that's a really sweet spot for PEO and ASO deals, that kind of 15 to 35 employee range. So we want to keep folks in there looking at total closed won, monthly new opportunities, weekly new opportunities, weekly quota tracker. And yeah, to your point, I mean, we were able to build this out on the homepage of Zoho in a few weeks and it's, it's easy to see, it's great visualization. Wonderful job, Zach. Give you a shout out. I know you'll be listening to this at some point and the dashboards look tremendous. But you mentioned something in there that jumped out at me and it's something that we often kind of go back and forth on of how much, how many of your appointments should be focused on COIs or partners, right? So, so when you talk about that, you know, hey, if you're going to go have X number of appointments this week, what percentage of those do you want to be partner focused or COI focused?

I've always really, a lower percentage. I think that for me, and I go back 23 years, right, from when I first started in the industry, I think that, you know, the goal, the number we always tried to search for or shoot for was 6 appointments, 6 net new meetings a week with different organizations. And then you filled in your time with your centers of influence meetings. And it always used to be kind of like 2, used to be 2 clients, 2 CPAs, 2 2 brokers, 2 bankers. So that, that's kind of what we really tried to fill in. And those are ingrained in my head with these numbers and trying to hit those numbers each week. So yeah, I think it's a lower percentage. And I think, again, to your point, I think you guys are looking at under 50, and a lot of your CPA leads are going to be that under 50, right? So I think that, you know, we're trying to go more, maybe we can spend more time in the broker community learning, you know, trying to get more time with them to get to some larger organizations. But I think it's a lower percentage with the centers of influence. It's kind of trended that way. I think it's important though. I think it's something you should continue to do because you just never know from a networking perspective who knows who and who can get you into a door. But I think that, you know, it's becoming— I've seen you just trying to focus more on you're getting involved with more large organizations and spending less time with centers of influence, but not to neglect them. I hope that comes across well because you don't want to neglect them. You want to stay in front of them and from a name recognition perspective, from a marketing perspective. But I think that you need to be able to make sure that you're not spending all your time just having coffee all the time with centers of influence. You know, you want to make sure you're moving your accounts through the pipeline consistently.

Yeah, it's interesting because you're absolutely right. Ours has flopped a little bit in that we need to spend a pretty substantial amount of time with them, whereas when I used to sell upmarket, it was, you know, first of all, we weren't even allowed to because they were owned by a small business, those relationships. So it was like, you know, brokers were our thing, right? So you want to get aligned with healthcare brokers who are selling 50+ assuming you're not competing with them. Uh, now the The, uh, big thing that we try to focus on when you look at the, the partner side of the house is just making sure that we're giving that value first, that we're creating new opportunities for them, and that we're not just going out, uh, you know, when you get these CPA-centric reps, they're calling 25 CPAs a week, however many it is, and it's just like, how can you develop any real relationships, provide any real reciprocal value there? So we try to keep a, a pretty tight circle as it relates to that. Um, now, and it's funny you say that thing about the 6 appointments because— and, um, and I apologize if my audio keeps cutting in and out. I'm just getting these little notices on the bottom of my screen, so hopefully this recording actually works. But, uh, otherwise it's been a hell of a conversation.

Yeah, it's been fun.

Um, my first boss told me when I first started this industry, he's like, look, man, I was coming into an underperforming territory. It was the only territory the previous year that the person did not make President's Club., and that was year 2007. I came in in 2008, which, as you know, in 2008, uh, the economy melted down. Um, I took over the territory, broke the sales record in the territory, made President's Club, was the only one on the team to make President's Club. And the, the thing he told me going into it is like, look, if you get 2 legitimate appointments every week, you will make President's Club. And what he meant by that is like, you know, legitimate being that keyword, right? Like, you know, taking 6 people and having 4, you know, that you just kind of once again dragged into that process and cajoled over the phone because you're just really good on the phone. But if you just get two people that actually have some genuine interest and might go through a sales process with you, you know, the size of the deals, you're going to work them out where you're going to hit, you're going to get a couple of home runs in there and you're going to hit your nut. And he was right. And that was, you know, I definitely had a lot more appointments than that because I was a little bit more brute force, but a lot of them were terrible appointments and I would drag him along on all those appointments. And that's, you know, Listen, newer sales reps, you didn't hear this from me, but your sole job in the early days is to get your manager to come on appointments with you so that he can or she can close deals for you while you set appointments and then reap the commissions afterwards. And eventually you'll figure out how to close those deals on your own. But just be a glorified appointment setter for a while and it'll treat you well. That's all I was for the first 6 months.

Absolutely. That's a great point.

All right. Anyhow, so bouncing around a little bit there. Definitely good stuff on those KPIs. I think it's interesting too, as well, of just how easy it is to track this stuff, even if you, even if you don't have a sales team and you're just like, what am I going to track? You know, looking at that pipeline is so huge of just, just a simple, hey, if you're not going to track every appointment you have, track every real opportunity. And just that way, when it closes and you look back at year-end, it's always been very, uh, sort of, you know, relieving to me, even when we haven't had sales reps in territory, to be able to pull up data out of the CRM and say, oh, here's how much we booked last year. Because bookings versus real revenue are kind of hard to translate, right? So if I book a $50,000 deal in July, um, you know, it's a great booking that's going to mean a lot in the long term, but it doesn't mean a lot to me in July because I don't recognize all that revenue inside a year, and it's harder to report against, right? So you don't really know what your bookings versus revenue, which is an important thing to understand. Um, so, so definitely make sure that you put something in place even if you don't have salespeople. You need a CRM. I'm pretty sure I just did this same proclamation in another episode that'll be released about the same time.

But, um, all right, so Well, you're right, because I think the technology is so different than when we got back into the start of the industry too, right? I think that there are so many different tools out there and they aren't easy to set. I mean, they aren't hard to set up, I should say. I mean, you think it's— you get to spend the time to get the dashboards working, you know, and then you can just do your day job. You can get the appointments, you can run them through the process, you can, you know, continue to build your pipeline, whereas those dashboards are collecting all the data. And they're helping you manage those opportunities, but it's helping you manage your business too. I think that technology has really helped us to do that, whereas before it just was more of a challenge.

Yeah, if I'm going to give like one broad— there's a million CRMs and a million different reasons to choose each one, but like just pick the one that integrates with your email provider. Like if you just— all things being equal, if it's got a Gmail integration and you use G Suite and like it's going to work seamlessly and report things in and out and allow you to update things directly from natively inside of Google, that should rise to the top of your list. Um, because most of the other functionality starts to get very similar after a while. All right, so let's talk about— you're closing all these deals, you guys are just crushing it out there. And so now the deals start flowing in, like you talked about, that pipeline, right? We got a tsunami of deals coming in and we got a support team that's maybe not ready for all those deals. How do you guys maintain the good relationship with your support and implementation folks to make sure that everybody gets what they need out of this relationship?

Such a great— I'm so glad you wanted to— when you sent the email over this morning, such a great question. Um, and it's, it's so important, that relationship with implementation and sales, you know, it's, it's vital. And, and it's so important to, um, to communicate well. I think that's something we do extremely well here, is just that sales and implementation are constantly kind of singing from the same hymnal, right? They're on the same page. We meet regularly. We talk about the accounts that are coming. One of our processes is to have what's called a pre-welcome call. So even after we get done here, Matt, I have a pre-welcome call for a new client coming on board where myself, implementation, the person that's running a point on the process, we all get together. Depending on what module they have, that we have an HR implementer on, or we'll have our training person on to talk about the ins and outs of the, I guess, what they do, what's different, what's unique about this client. So we'll meet with them and we'll kind of go through the process of what they can expect. And then we'll have the welcome call with the client where sales is involved with that implementation team and the client, and we do a handoff to them so they know exactly what the process is going to be. They meet the people. It's a 15, 20-minute get to know you. And then they work on the cadence of the implementation from there. So that's how that process works. And it works extremely well. But then we were able to talk to our implementation team can also look into the data that we're tracking, the KPIs that we're tracking so they can see what's coming in March, what's coming in April, what What can we expect? And, you know, once the deal goes into Close One in our CRM, they're able to see that and they can track, you know, those, those accounts that are coming on board. So they know how to staff for those implementations. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's such an important part of, of the business because you need to be able to, to communicate well because the last thing you want is for someone to sell it, turn it in. And we used to call it like the dump and run where you have all these documentations, implementation's not in. Oh, great. I'm going to leave it on their desk and I'm back out there. So guilty as charged. I've done that a couple of times.

Kick it over the fence, as we say. Just kick it over the fence and we're back on the road.

Exactly. But I think, yeah, that's critical to the success of the client. I'm a big client experience guy. I like personally when I go, you know, I have to have a good client experience, but I want clients that we work with and the prospects that we work with to have a great client experience with us. So that they, you know, someone told me years ago this when I had signed a deal that, hey, this better not be an event. You know, payroll should never be an event. I've always stuck with me that, you know, I want to do everything I can to make sure this is— it's a big decision to change anyway. Let's see what we can do to make it as seamless as possible for the client. Make sure implementation knows what's happening. They're looped in on every detail. And then that client that first payroll is seamless. It's that they— and we had a client earlier this year say, you know, I wished I would have found you guys earlier. And that was probably— that made my year for him to say that, just to say, we wish we would have found you earlier because of the experience that we had. So I think that's just a— yeah, that's a great question. I think that that is such a critical part of sales, getting it right with the prospect and with the client., but also with, I mean, you're, you're your teammates, right? You're all on the same team. You play for the same team. And I think it's important that implementation, you guys, I mean, cause you need to make sure that, that, um, that, uh, the client gets it right. They get it right. And that, uh, it goes well from the beginning.

Yeah. I use that team piece, right? It's not like the, going back to the football analogy of like, you know, the offense and the defense can't be completely at odds with one another. Right. We both got different jobs to do, but ultimately the team success is built on us performing at a high level on both sides of the ball. Yeah. Uh, quick question for you, which CRM do you guys use?

We are HubSpot.

We use HubSpot. Okay. Yeah, HubSpot's one of the three I'm running right now. No, no further questions. Um, the kickoff call thing you mentioned, I was thinking about this as you said it, and I was like, you guys call it a welcome call, we call it a kickoff call. And I want to— I'm curious about your responsibility, a sales team, and what they're responsible for in the implementation process. I'll ask that when we're done, but Thinking about the kickoff or welcome call, and it's a pretty common thing in our industry. You probably won't stand out by having a kickoff or a welcome call, but you will 100% stand out by not having one. Yes. Uh, so if you don't have a formal sort of, hey, here's what the process looks like, here's the best way to communicate with us, here are the expectations for the implementation, here's the team that's going to be working with you, let's meet your team, let's hear your expectations, and have that powwow to get the thing going. And some clients hate it because they view it, you know, they get done after a half hour and they go, ah, like, did we do anything there? Like, I, I want to get going, I want to get going, I want to get going. And that's fine. That's usually more in the small business space. That's usually more our world. Uh, but the reality is, like, you know, often those things that you get complaints about later on down the road are the things that you address in the kickoff call, right? The, the where we here, that mall map that gives somebody that understanding of, like, Where am I in the process? What's this going to look like? Who do I contact for what? How do I contact people? And what are the expectations on turnaround times? Right. Right. That's always a huge—

Yeah, that's huge.

Don't email Brian's personal email and expect to get a response related to this payroll. You know, like you should email support@trupay.com or, you know, whatever the thing is like, this is how and this is why, like for us, we're, you know, we're one of those companies and I know a lot of us out there, we're support@guru.co. We make sure we tell them, listen, the reason why you're not emailing Jason or Kelsey or Jenna or whomever directly is because what if they're not at their desk? What if they're off that day? What we want to be able to have it come into the support team, get assigned to the right person. We don't need you to remember who your tax person is, who your payroll person is, who your HR person is. We'll do that for you. You just send it in there. You'll get a response in less than 2 hours. But let us take care of the rest of it. And please don't email people. People directly. So big expectation we set there. But what's your— what is your guys' responsibility of the sales team as it relates to onboarding new clients?

Yeah, it's, it's really initially gathering some of the, the initial documentation, uh, that you would need to switch over, like the, you know, the, the Fed ID documentation, those types of things that you would need to, to convert over. Um, and then we have some— we call it a gathering doc where it's a, you know, 4 or 5 page document that talks about the organization, who's who, who has, who in the organization is responsible for processing the payroll, who's our main point of contact, just some initial questions to kind of just start the process. And then we turn those in and then that we're pretty much done from there. Although we are on the pre-welcome and the welcome call. I think you're right. I think that you won't stand out by having it, but I think you also will stand out though if it goes well. If the welcome call is going goes off without a hitch and the expectations are set correctly with the client before they even get on the welcome call, then I think you can really set yourself apart too. I think just by having those and doing them well. But from a sales perspective, that's really all that we do. And then we have our follow-ups on the back end. Once those payrolls have started to process, then we get re-engaged with making sure that we're following up and staying in communication with them.

Yeah, and you're right. I mean, I try— I minimize it a little bit just because I— it is not, you know, unique. But in reality, go back to that, hey, I haven't seen my paychecks wrap in 4 years. And so you're creating comfort and trust. And let's face it, we also have this obstacle as local regional providers where somebody's planting that seed on, are you really comfortable with this company? Like, didn't you hear about that other company that took everybody's money and ran with it and moved to the Caymans? Like, you know, so creating some comfort and trust in the early going is a important for a ton of reasons, but a well-done kickoff and welcome call is definitely one of the easier ways to do that. And you nailed it. I mean, this is part of the client experience. We want to roll out that red carpet, make them feel good, warm and fuzzy. And, you know, the more sales is involved in at least facilitating— love that. We do that sort of pre-call as well to make sure the handoff is solid, you know, give the implementation team some of those great nuggets that sales already has so they're not asking a bunch of redundant questions, which is the other super annoying thing when you buy something or start a new service and they ask you a bunch questions you've already told sales or you've already filled out in forms or ask you to fill out, re-enter your name 65 times into 65 different forms instead of doing some of it for you or automating it. So it definitely just gives you that ability of credibility, trust, comfort in that relationship.

Absolutely. And one thing we do different too during those pre-welcome and welcome calls, we actually have the person that will be their, their day-to-day service rep after they get through implementation just to, just to get to know who that person is. Because I think a lot of ways you look at your your national providers. And, you know, I've seen this happen time and I'm sure you have too, Matt, time and time again where the client goes through implementation. They run their first few payrolls. They get sent over to your day-to-day client care person and they have no idea who they are. They have no idea who this client is. They're almost starting through implementation again after they've gone through probably, you know, 2 months of implementation. And to me, that has to be the most frustrating thing about our industry is when you get a larger provider in there and that's the way they operate, then it just leads to frustration. It's great for us because we can come in there and hopefully, you know, win a new client. But I think that it's— we hope we try and mitigate that by having that person at least, hey, you're not going to see me for a while. But once you get through implementation, I'll be your day-to-day, you know, client care person. You can always reach me. Hey, now back to your implementation. We'll see you later. But I think it's great to have that initial contact. So that way they know that person's involved with the client from the beginning. There is no fumble in the exchange, right? When it goes from implementation to service. And that's where I think, again, another piece where you can really outshine the competition is in that little minute detail right there of, you know, making sure that you're not going through implementation twice, really.

I love that. Very topical for us right now. We're, we're at that growth stage right now where we just literally made the decision this week where we're gonna have to have dedicated implementation people. We've always had the philosophy that it's very nice and kumbaya for them to have the same person setting them up that's going to be serving them later. It's great experience for them, the support person gets to know them better. But, you know, the reality is that it's just getting to be too chaotic and that people can't properly serve clients and implement a bunch of clients all at the same time. And so we've, you know, we've fallen in line with everybody else, and we're in the process of hiring some implementation-only folks. Uh, I think I took a note here. I'm like, that's another episode in and of itself, the implementation versus support mindset. But, um, Brian, what are some ways people can find you if they're interested in connecting with you and learning more about you and the organization?

Yeah, uh, our website's trupay.com. Um, I do have a couple couple podcasts. The podcast we do for TruPay is called Inspired Insights, and you can see the link on the, on our website as well. I'm on LinkedIn. We'll connect on LinkedIn primarily there. And then I have another podcast called Essential HR that I do as well. So, I would love to connect and appreciate you having me on the show, Matt.

Awesome, man. We'll link to all that stuff in the show notes. Appreciate it a ton. Great to see you as always.

Absolutely.

Thanks.