165. No Leads, No Clients? Fix This First.

When we think about the sales and prospecting framework, there's really kind of four components to it. At some point, you got to think about team. Team. I listed last in this framework for a reason. I started moving from clients that were $2 million a year out to $43 million. The client we landed last week, our largest client we've ever landed. Things that worked in sales and marketing before aren't going to work forever for you. You've got to be flexible and just recognize that the market demands and the market needs change. You got to understand your numbers. So what does your pipeline need to look like? And in order for you to have one new client, if you don't know what your numbers need to look like, you really don't have a clue yet about prospecting in sales. When we think about the sales and prospecting framework, there's really kind of four components to it. The first one is lead growth. If we want more clients, we've gotta start by getting more leads. All right? And so when I talk about lead growth, that's about prospecting. Okay. That's about how do we go out into the market and find more people that need our services. And there's several ways you can do this. If you are super bold and a little bit crazy, you can go cold call people, you can cold email people. That's not where I thrive. I'm not a big fan of cold calls. Where I thrive is I like to go out and speak on stage. I like to go and do masterminds, I like to go and do webinars. I like to build what I call a referral network. The client that I landed last Thursday came from one of my referral partners. And so if you don't like cold calls, you don't like going to networking events. Maybe it's time you build out your referral network. And, and so who are great referral partners? Business attorneys, CPAs that don't offer advisory services, M and A firms. It might be coaches, it might be industry thought leaders in your niche. And so I've said this before, and I just believe it to my core. It's so much faster for you to leverage someone else's existing audience than for you to try to build your audience from scratch. I don't have anything against trying to build your own audience, but I'm like, hey, if I could go and connect with somebody on LinkedIn that already has an audience of 100,000 people, and those hundred thousand people are coincidentally the ones I want to serve, boy, it'd be A lot faster if I could just go talk to him and get him to let me on his stage or to do an email for his audience, or to do a free video for his audience and then let me get leads off of that. That's the. I think that and speaking are the two fastest ways to get new clients. But I really want you to think, as we're getting through Q4 here going into next year, what are you doing to drive leads? Is your jam cold calls or do you like doing small webinars? Do you like going to CPA firms and talking to other numbers nerds us and just sharing with them how we could help them and help their clients be more successful? I don't really care what your thing is, but I think it's important for you to figure out what it is that you're gonna do so that you can get more leads so that you can get more clients. The second thing is lead conversion. Lead conversion is just that process of moving a lead, somebody that's interested in your service through your sales process and turning them into clients, turning them into a new client, converting them into revenue so that you can serve them and have the impact that you want to have with them. And so when I'm thinking about lead conversion, what I'm really focused on is sales, right? It's that sales process. And so a great example is if you've seen my eight step sales framework, you may have noticed that I've changed a lot of my philosophy on how that works. Because I noticed that what was working with that eight step sales framework for years wasn't working nearly as effectively. Especially as I started moving from clients that were $2 million a year to 5 million, to 8 million, to 10 million now to 43 million DOL. The client we landed last week is our largest client we've ever landed. As my price point has gone from $500, which it was, I can show you in my QuickBooks where I had clients at $500, is that is moved from $500 to $5,000 to now $12,000 a month. What worked before isn't working so well. And I think there's kind of two reasons that the lead conversions were dropping. One is things that worked in sales and marketing before aren't going to work forever for you. You've gotta be flexible and just recognize that the market demands and the market needs change, but also just the needs and the expectations of a $40 million client are different than a $4 million client. And so over the last six, seven months, I've really had to go back and spend more time on lead conversion and really evaluate what's working and what's not working. And I've shifted to more of a two call format. Now. The first call is a discovery qualification call. The second call is that sales call, what's traditionally been a sales call. But just be aware that you may see your sales conversions drop over time as the market changes, as your ICA changes, as your price points change, you might just start to find that what works before isn't working now. In my encouragement for you is when you see those things dropping, avoid this, like write this down. Avoid the temptation to say my price point is wrong. There's a lot of times when we get on these sale calls and we get some no's, you're like, shit, I'm charging too much, let me drop my price. That should be the last thing that you resort to is price. Ask yourself, how can I level up my sales skills, my lead conversion skills, rather than leveling down my price point? The last thing normally is price point. And then right along with that, in the trap that will kill a fractional CFO firm is saying, oh, I need to add more services. I need to increase my scope of work if I want to sell more. Because it's just not true. My $12,000 client that I just signed, same scope of work, is the one that I signed eight months ago or a year ago. At $8,000, same scope, they have bigger problems. Our tools still solve those bigger problems. Same toolbox solves bigger problems, but there's more value for the client associated with that, so they're willing to pay more. I just had to learn how to convey that value a little bit more effectively.

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And then the third component is you gotta have a daily operating system. I just know this to be true, that if you're like me and you want that predictability, you want scalability, you've gotta have a daily operating system for lead growth and lead conversion. And I want you to think about this. Daily operating system is like that systematic approach to finding new leads and nurturing either existing leads or referral partners. It's a systematic approach. We are all numbers people here. We love a good process. We love a good procedure. Your sales and prospecting shouldn't be any different. It's got to have a process, it's got to have a procedure. More importantly, it's got to be on your calendar to do it every day if you want to grow your firm. If you're like, hey, I'm happy with where my firm's at, maybe don't worry about it. Then the fourth component, there's really three parts to it. Number one is metrics. You've got to know your numbers. You got to understand your numbers. So what does your pipeline need to look like in order for you to have one new client? How many leads do you need to reach out to a day? How many sales meetings do you have to have? How long does it take? I call it, Think of it a little bit like a P and L, you know, how much revenue do you need to get in the door? What do your margins need to be in order for you to have a given net profit? In order for you to have a particular dollar amount of free cash flow in order for you to do XYZ with your business, it's really no different. How many people do I need to reach out to on LinkedIn? How many podcasts do I need to speak on? How many CPA firms do I need to partner with? And for each of those, how many leads am I going to get from them? It just starts to become a numbers game at that point. So if you don't know what your numbers need to look like, you really don't have a clue yet about prospecting in sales. If you're saying, like right now, mike, I'm new to this, I have no idea what my numbers are. Take a guess. Take your best guess. Be super conservative and then start executing on those and then adjust accordingly. And typically you're going to overestimate how good you are and Underestimate how many at bats you need to have in order to get what you want. So take whatever you think and like double it. However much work you think it's going to take, just kind of double it to get started. You've also got to skill up once you understand your metrics and what your pipeline looks like and what typical conversion rates look like. Like, figure out where you're bottlenecked, where do you suck, and then go get the skills that you need to suck less at that thing. So for me, for a long time it was leads. I was really good at sales. I'm closing 80, 90, 100% of my sales calls, but I just needed more leads. And so I'm like, okay, I gotta skill up on leads. And so I start reading books and watching YouTube videos and doing the things, I get more leads and I'm like, my sales started dropping. I'm like, okay, I gotta figure out what's going on with my sales. And so just kind of look to see where is your bottleneck and skill up in those areas. Finally, at some point you got to think about team. Team. I listed last in this framework for a reason. Building a team to help you prospect and do sales is literally, I think the last thing you should do. I've been doing this nine years now almost. I'm now at the point that I'm adding sales and prospecting team full time. All right, my friends, I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, it would mean the world to me if you would leave.

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