Ignite Your Sales Journey: Building Blocks Of Sales Success CIFC Episode 163

Hey guys. What's up? Matt here. This is a bit of a different YouTube and podcast today. I'm kind of on the run, walking around. Ex special forces sniper turned entrepreneur, I've scaled numerous businesses to eight figures. My name is Matt Rider. This is my podcast. And I'm telling you to put that coffee down. I just kind of collecting my thoughts. So 77, sales sniper. Everything's kind of going there. You know, we're on, we're booking 100 sales calls per day at the seventh level side and we're still kind of doing our thing on the sales sniper side. Definitely kind of like ramping that down a little bit just because we just don't, you know, seventh level is demanding so much time. We just can't sort of put all the time that we used to into it. So we consolidated down a little bit, you know, less clients, but providing a higher level of service and a more comprehensive service. And then we're switching to sort of more of a consulting model, you know what I mean? And I've been doing a bit of consulting. Main reason why, I mean, the money's good, you know, 100 grand for, you know, not a tremendous amount of work or. I mean, it is a bit of work, but it's, you know, time, time value proposition is pretty high. But you know, really it gives us a lot of insight into what other businesses are doing and, you know, allows us to sharpen our sword while providing value to clients who don't necessarily have as much experience as we. And I think one of the interesting things is that like what Sales Sniper did for me was it. It put me into the back end of literally hundreds of high six, seven, eight and even nine. A couple of nine figure and I think ten figure sort of thing. Yeah, ten figure businesses as well. We worked with one company that's valued at about 8 billion, I think worked with a few companies doing 5,600 million. Worked with companies doing, you know, coaching companies doing 3,4 million dollars a month. Worked with startups, you know, super interesting journey and, and it gave us tons of unique and interesting insights. I apologize about the video quality. I'm on a handheld today, but you guys can deal. So. Yeah, so it's kind of like I've learned a lot, like, and this I think boils down for sales reps and also business owners in general. Like, what is the point of business? You know, that end point, I think changes for everybody and it starts at a different point for everybody. But I think like, if you don't know why you're doing what you're doing, it's difficult to keep it going and keep it going strong, you know. So after speaking to all these business owners and even like super high level ones doing $50 million a year, you know, taking home five, you know, the big thing was like, what is the mission, what is the vision? What is the values of this company and what is the direction it's going in? And what is the outcome that the business owner wants? Or if you're a sales guy, what is the outcome that you want from your job? Where do you want to go? And I used to never really be a big proponent and I used to, you know, I had mentors in the past. I gotta nail down the vision, the mission, the values, the culture. And I was like, no, we need to fucking ramp sales and marketing, right? And now kind of like looking back and being the guy who's doing a lot of the mentoring, it's like, no, we need to nail down the vision, the mission and the values. The reason why is because it gives you like a core guidance system that you need to effectively navigate the difficulties of running a business. Right? So what do I mean by that? Like, hiring and firing is hard, right? Knowing who to hire, knowing who to fire, these are not easy things. And so if you don't have a core guiding system, it's really difficult to know if you're making the right choice. Like if you're like, the mission of seventh level is to change the way that sales is perceived in the world. Right? To boil it down, essentially what we want to do is we want to, like, we believe that NEPQ is the way, you know, we believe that NEPQ is the best sales system on the planet. Now there are tons of decent sales systems on the planet. I think ours is the best. And it's probably the one that is ubiquitous across the most amount of industries. However, we are the only sales company that isn't just screaming, we want money and look how much money we make, you know, And I think like, the more mature I get, the less you see of that of me, the mature as a business owner. I mean, you know, because like, who cares how much money I make, you know? But like what you are seeing for me, especially lately, Let me just set this up, let's get this sorted. You know, like what you are seeing from, from me and especially the company lately is, is more like, hey, let's change the way that sales is perceived. Because you know, we're in the process that we've just opened up our 501C3, which is our not for profit called 7th Level Foundation. With that, we're going to open up completely free education centers in low income areas and we're going to teach business, finance and education to underprivileged youth and then hopefully do that in America first. And then from there we're going to try and bring that over to other parts of the world as well. Because we know that if we do that, then that is a really efficient way for us to do our mission. And our mission is to change the way that sales is perceived. There aren't many sales training companies out there doing philanthropic stuff. And especially because if we can get a young, motivated group of individuals and we can teach them a better way to sell, that will have a huge flow and effect. And in 20 years, what we want to have happen is we want to have it so that like a kid can raise their hand in class and say, hey, what do you want to do? It's like, I want to be a salesperson. And people don't go like, throw tomatoes at him and stuff like that. And so that's really why we're doing what we're doing. And you know, everything became easier and clearer when we defined that mission because, you know, opportunities come at you. I think Alex Hormozi had a really good line which like, you know, the girl in the red dress from the Matrix is there to be a distraction from the overall mission, right? And the bigger you get, the more money you make, the sexier that woman becomes. So the more enticing the distractions become. And so, you know, it's a good lesson. And it's funny that, like the mentors that I had years ago and I'm just like, man, these guys are just freaking business coaching about mission, vision and values. But it's really important if you don't have a mission, right? And you don't have a vision of like where you're at. Like the vision of nepq, for example, is like NEPQ is how sales are made. Everyone. You don't even say you sold someone, you say you NDPQ'd someone. Our values are about nurturing, they're about quality, right? And these are the values that we try and espouse through our clientele and also through our employees and how we hire and fire. And this is. It helps us guide the decision making that we do. And essentially winning a business is just a series of good decisions, right? So, yeah, so what is the point of business, you know, setting up a business to exit versus Setting up a business to cash flow versus setting up a business to grow are different things and they can go and ebb and flow between different outcomes. But you have to have an outcome, you have to have a mission, you have to have a vision, and you have to have a series of values in which the company will espouse in order to keep it on track and not do things by any means necessary, you know. And then from there, once you create that, then you create a three year plan. Like, hey, what? Like what, what can we do? How far can we take this in three years? Then from that we take that back to a 12 month plan. What can we do in 12 months? Knowing that you don't have to be one third of the way to your three year goal, you can be 20% of the way because you tend to kind of go like that and then it's like, all right, if that's 12 months, what's nine months? If that's nine months, what's six? If that's six, what's three? And then from there we go, all right, let's plan the next three months. And the better you get, the more accurate you become at planning those three months and the further out you can push it with a level of accuracy. We do 12 month forecasting now and we're getting much better at it. It's a difficult skill set to perfect, but we're doing our best. And so once you have those revenue targets and you have cash and bank targets, and you have. This goes the same for personal stuff too. You want to buy a house, do this, you have cash and bank targets. Then from there you have a look at what the business would look like and how many clients or how many widgets you need to sell in order to make that money. Then you'd look back at your historicals and you can go, all right, well how much has it cost us in the past to sell a person or a widget? And then you go, all right, cool, let's have a look at what our cost of goods sold is, right? And then from there we go, all right, cool. What are the associated operational expenses that are, you know, that are going to be, go along with that? And how does that, how do those fixed or operational expenses expand along with the increase in revenue, increase in client flow, increase in production, whatever it may be? And then from there you're, you're left with a net profit, right? So then from there you can, you can sort of start to flesh out what's my gross revenue, what's my Gross profit. What's my net profit? And then you create targets, and you create left and right of arcs. Like, for us, we can't go below a 60% GP, so it can't cost any more than 40% in acquisition cost to acquire a client. Right. And that's front end. That's not lifetime, that's front end. So if we get $5,000 off someone, it can't cost more than 2 to get it right. That's all sales, all marketing. We're generally well within that. Right. But that's also like financing fees, that's payment processing fees, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a lot of, like, that's the cost of doing business. You know what I mean? So then from there, you know, you just kind of figure that out. But it all starts with the mission, the vision, and the values. And then from there it goes into your planning, and then you go into your cycles, you know, and so, you know, in order to have, I think, a successful business or a success being a successful sales guy or, you know, successful at anything in general, like, you have to know what you're doing, why you're doing it, where you're headed, and put some timeframes on that. And so if I wanted to set up a business to sell for $300 million, I'd be like, all right, cool, what's the time frame? First thing I'd be like is, well, what revenue would I need to be at to realistically get a $300 million exit? And I go, well, let's have a look at comparables. What were their gross profits? What were their net profits? What was their point of difference that got them that multiple versus this business that got that multiple. Then you'd start doing research, and then you would figure out why you should be doing what you're doing. And so, you know, I think if I can give any advice in this short podcast and short YouTube video that I'm going to be filming today is just like, if you're a business owner or a sales rep and you want to achieve serious things, like, figure out what the greater goal is, work your way backwards until you can create tangible, actionable steps. And I literally sign up people for, like, 100k consulting with me, and this is the same that I tell them, I just walk them through it, and it works. You know, also go deep into finances and acquisition models and, you know, all kinds of fancy schmancy stuff, but that's it. I hope you like this kind of content, you know, and I hope you guys got some value out of it. I'll see you later. Bye. Put that copy down, Sam.