Rate Your Client Value Meter

You’ve likely heard that it’s less expensive to retain an existing client than it is to acquire a new one, right? 

Believe it or not, it’s a pretty notable difference…

The first sale always takes more time, energy, effort, and investment. Acquiring a new client can cost up to 5X more than retaining or growing an existing one. 

Plus, there’s an increased success rate of selling to a client that has previously bought from you…

A 50% increase! 

So why do so many companies get so laser focused on attracting new clients that they essentially ignore their current clients?   

To understand better, let’s first get crystal clear on what client value is…

Client value is the level of satisfaction your clients feel towards your business. It can be calculated in several ways, but for this particular case let’s think of it as how much are they spending with you year-over-year. 

As far as cost of acquisition vs. the cost of retaining. If you’re always burning through ad revenue and other acquisition channels, it adds up. 

Some of those allocated funds could go to new product development, R&D, better software, incentive bonuses, client appreciation, etc. 

There are a lot of ways to spend money to grow a business. Acquiring clients is obviously a crucial one, but sometimes solely focusing on that directs money away from some other very important activities too.

I knew two partners at a bank in Tampa years ago. One of the partners was always hustling new clients. Because he was spending so much time chasing new business, many of his existing client relationships suffered, and therefore migrated elsewhere.

His partner, a veteran Entrepreneur who had actually built and exited a few companies in his life, had four main clients that he catered to EVERY week.  He rarely got involved with chasing new business. 

To some it would seem pretty static, but year-over-year the veteran Entrepreneur outperformed his partner just by focusing on his core clients, their investments, their needs, their portfolios, etc. 

It may seem counterintuitive to think this way, but good clients that you keep delighting can help create the ultimate advantage for a business. 

Let’s never forget that raving clients turn into cheerleaders. 

Cheerleaders create referrals. 

What is the cost of a referral? 

In most cases, absolutely nothing.

Let’s also not forget what we Entrepreneurs are pretty infamous for…Shiny Object Syndrome. 

My team teases me all the time when I go off on a tangent in the middle of discussing something else on our agenda…“Squirrel!” is jokingly uttered amongst my team.  

Let’s face it. It can be fun to chase the next big client. It can be fun to rebrand and do interesting creative things with your business. It can be fun to be “out in front.” All those are good things (and of course should be done), but to focus on them completely and ignore other core business building principles is NOT going to get you where you REALLY want to go in your business in the time frame you want to get there.

Plus, remember, the constant “chase” can burn out your team (always chasing something “new” and never allowing them to finish what they’ve started). 

Here’s another biggie…Opportunity cost.  The time taken away from your existing clients…Who are primed for repeat purchases and upsells if they trust you. 

All this said, there is something else that matters too.

Your Branding. 

Sometimes people interchange branding for client value, but I’m here to tell you, they are VERY different. 

Here’s a question…Do you solely base every one of your purchasing decisions on the item’s functional value (i.e., what can it do for you)? 

Of course not. 

Products and services are purchased for reasons much more complex than simply because you “need” them.  

As human beings we’re more likely to make our purchase based on the emotions the product or service stirs up inside of us (i.e., what does it make me feel like)? As far as buying decisions are concerned, our logic informs, but our emotions persuade. 

There are three factors that come into play when determining what products and services you purchase and who you trust to deliver them: 

These are Emotional, Functional, and Social components. 

Now, when you position your product or service in relation to each of these components, what you are accomplishing is what us marketers call “branding”.  

Branding allows you to resonate with your target market on a much deeper level. Not only that, statistics have shown time and again that people are willing to pay more for brands they recognize and have positive feelings towards. 

My team works a lot on branding with Entrepreneurs and their organizations, and I’m here to tell you what you stand for does matter. How you present your company to the world matters. How you resonate with your clients and prospective clients matters.

So ask yourself this…If you have the sleekest, most beautiful brand in the world, and you don’t take care of core client needs, how long is your business REALLY going to last? 

Your branding might get them in the door, but it sure as heck won’t keep them there. 

A while back, American Express found 33% of customers will consider switching companies after just one instance of poor customer service.

Your sustainable, competitive advantage is right there in your client value. 

So how do you focus on client value more?

Honestly, it begins with eating your own “dog food”. 

Start by going through some of your processes. 

Look at your client onboarding. Look at your client journey. Look real hard at your value ladder.

Listen to how your clients are communicated to. 

Send emails with surveys and get feedback. 

Send some marketing assets and written communications to friends and family and get their feedback. 

Does it tell a clear story? Is the CTA clear? 

Does it represent you as how you want to be seen?

Working on your own process will identify where the gaps might be. 

Then ask yourself if you’re creating a connection with your clients beyond just the products themselves. Would they have a reason to care about you and what it is you sell? 

Are you telling them cool, interesting, relevant stories? 

Are you greeting them on their birthday? (Seems small, but it can feel huge in your client’s mind). 

Listen to them. Schedule 30-minute conversations with existing clients. Take the time to understand their needs. Put off some internal meetings to understand your clients better.

Don’t stop connecting with the people who have trust in you.

Do you stop focusing on branding?

NO!

Focus on both and realize there’s an interplay between them – branding helps reel them in, and their experience with you helps keep them there. 

No one cares about a funny IG photo when they can’t get their core questions answered; and in this day and age of infinite competition, no one even cares tremendously about category dominance if the customer experience suffers. 

Many giants have been slayed in the past 20 years in part because the upstarts found better ways to engage customers–faster and more intuitive. 

How can WE help you drive client value?

We’ve worked with many clients solely on their client value efforts. 

That means workflows, emails to customers, communication style, offerings, and even the hiring side of the business. Think about it. If you hire C-players, expect they will act like C-Players and treat your clients that way. If you hire the right team members, they will value your clients—creating a symbiotic ecosystem. 

However, most Entrepreneurs I know aren’t very good at hiring for their businesses. They are too busy and focused on other things. Some that are forced to hire their own team members (left to their own devices), really don’t know what to look for (in some cases they don’t know who or what they really need). We can help with that too. 

Both directly and indirectly, having the right team in place will not only help your company grow and scale, your client value will reach a new level. 

To your success, 

David 

P.S. Recruitment and Hiring is the #1 Entrepreneurial Blind Spot which is why most avoid it like the plague… 

Let’s face it, the entire process can be utterly frustrating & time consuming, AND often results in attracting and hiring the WRONG talent for your team and/or business. 

But what if ALL the heavy-lifting was done for you, and you were only handed the highest qualified candidates that checked every box you were looking for? 

Head to this link to see if Nitrogen Hiring Network™ could be your talent recruitment solution. 

P.P.S. Not sure how to find and attract more of your ideal clients? If you have a proven high ticket offer, we know EXACTLY how to fill your pipeline with a constant stream of qualified and highly-motivated leads through our exclusive Leads on Demand™ program.

Simply click this link for more details.

David Asarnow

Hiring Mistake #3: Missing Culture - Hiring the Wrong Talent

There is a lot of content online debunking company culture. Some express culture as a “mere myth”. 

“Not a cultural fit” became a blanket excuse for candidates that didn't meet hiring managers' preconceived idea of what the right person for the job should look like, sound like and even dress like.

That's just one of the many results a 'culture fit myth' web search will get you.

The true meaning of the right “culture fit” is not only in the interest of the business as a whole, it’s as equally important for your team and the candidate.   

Like plants, people need the right environment and conditions to thrive.

Culture encompasses not only the attitude, but the behavior and values of an entire company (and their mission). 

It should be no surprise that people quit their jobs because a company environment is not healthy for them. In fact, in today’s world we often hear about people leaving higher salaries and other benefits the company offers if the culture of the company feels toxic or not aligned with their values. 

Why? Because their happiness, mental health, and growth are so much more valuable to them.

If your business growth is paramount to you, it’s a good idea to check to see if your company culture has been established and positioned for your team to thrive. 

Quickly check if your company culture checks all the boxes high-performing talent is looking for: 

• Team members are acknowledged and recognized for their hard work, contributions, and excellence. 
• Team members feel heard and understand how their work is part of something bigger. 
• Team members thrive in their work projects and are able to collaborate with one another regularly. 
• Team members are given opportunities to grow and refine their skill sets and leadership skills. 
• Team members are given the opportunity to “move up” and are encouraged to take on more responsibility to drive the company forward.
• All team members know, live and breathe the company’s core values and always hold each other accountable.

You guessed it… Everything listed above lead to more innovation, greater trust in leadership, and an increased bottom line. 

According to Forbes, research shows that organizations with “highly engaged workers” are 21% more profitable.

With that being said, the importance of a culture fit on your team shouldn’t and cannot be overlooked. 

Culture fit is just as important as the skills and talents one brings to a team.  

All too often, we try and fit round pegs in square holes.

If your business is a fast-paced environment with ever-evolving changes, it might not be the right environment for people that do not like frequent shifting and pivoting. 

This doesn't mean they are incompetent, or unskilled, it simply means that hiring them might slow down the work pace and overall growth. 

If your business culture is one that includes a core value about “doing what we say we are going to do”, and you bring on someone who does not adhere to that core value, your team and your business will quickly suffer. 

Here’s another example (using a company we are all familiar with as an example)…

Southwest Airlines is widely known for their culture of recognition, appreciation, and celebration. 

With core values of a “Warrior Spirit,” “Servant’s Heart” and “Fun-LUVing Attitude,” Southwest asks employees to embody hard work, perseverance, proactive customer service and possess lighthearted fun in everything they do. Managers are encouraged to hire for attitude and train for specialized skills.

Southwest makes everybody feel important and loved through celebration. The company's history is full of fun and creative events, and employees enjoy annual company-wide celebrations such as parties, chili cook offs and Southwest rallies. Southwest employees are often featured in the airline’s commercials, ads and in “Southwest: The Magazine.”

This example shows the importance of a stellar work environment and culture. What does that equate to? 

Workers thrive, therefore the company thrives.

Southwest Airlines has a 2.5% turn over. Not only is that impressive for a growing company, it's remarkable for the airline industry. 

Southwest Airlines leads with culture, and it directly affects their bottom line. 

So how do you know if a candidate is culture fit?

The answer to this question will guide you in the right direction every time: 

Do they embody and align with every single one of your core values? 

Which also means, (as a reminder) your core values should be displayed publicly (on your website and/or on your social media pages so anyone can find them (in this case candidates who are interviewing with you).  

During an interview, it is best to first interview asking questions that are aligned and opposed to your core values to see how they would answer without them selling you on why they are a core value fit.

After that you can start to dig deeper and find out if they are a fit by their responses to your probing:

Is this an environment they feel they can succeed and bring value to? 

How have they demonstrated their embodiment each of your core values in business and in their personal life? 

Do they share the same business values?

What do they really care about? 

What drives them? 

Do their professional goals match with the goals of the company? 

You probably already know a lot about the passions and motivations of your current employees –are these similar to the candidate’s passion and motivation? 

After meeting with the candidate and asking these important questions, you will know right away if this candidate’s professional passion fits with your company’s mission and culture.

Ensuring candidates are a culture fit result in a higher probability you have the right-fit candidate for your unique business.

Right fit talent = High-performing team members.

High-performing team members are highly engaged team members.

 Always remember, not only does your business need to be a right fit for them, THEY must be a right fit for your business. 

Skills are not the sole need. Culture alignment is just as crucial.

To your success, 

David 

P.S. Recruitment and Hiring is the #1 Entrepreneurial Blind Spot which is why most avoid it like the plague… 

Let’s face it, the entire process can be utterly frustrating & time consuming, AND often results in attracting and hiring the WRONG talent for your team and/or business. 

But what if ALL the heavy-lifting was done for you, and you were only handed the highest qualified candidates that checked every box you were looking for? 

Head to this link to see if Nitrogen Hiring Network™ could be your talent recruitment solution. 

P.P.S. Not sure how to find and attract more of your ideal clients? If you have a proven high ticket offer, we know EXACTLY how to fill your pipeline with a constant stream of qualified and highly-motivated leads through our exclusive Leads on Demand™ program.

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Aligning Sales & Marketing

Do you ever feel like your sales and marketing teams are on opposing sides? 

It’s been a constant battle for decades for many business owners. These two “sides” always seem to be chirping at each other… 

“These leads aren’t good.”  

“You don’t use our content properly to sell.”

Tell me something…Is this representative of your sales and marketing teams? 

WATCH THIS FUNNY VIDEO 

However, the real question is… 

Does it actually matter if your sales and marketing teams are aligned? 

Will that really help you SCALE your business?

I can simplify those answers for you in a few bullet points:

• You absolutely need sales.
• You absolutely need marketing.
• You ABSOLUTELY need them on the same page.
• Period. 

Sure, you’re selling. Revenue is there. But it’s just OK. 

Just OK is NOT how you are going to scale your business. 

At this point you might say, “Well look, if I’m selling, I’m selling. Marketing does their thing, sales does theirs.” 

And I’d agree, that works to a certain point. Say, up to about  $2M/year. Beyond that? 

No. 

Why does the alignment matter? Because sales people need the right assets to start and then continue conversations to build relationships…

Cohesion is needed on all fronts: branding, messaging, and especially offers. Remember, when a prospective client senses any type of inconsistency, trust is BROKEN. 

A great example is a pretty big insurance company a few years back. The sales team were ignoring everything the marketing team was creating–in fact, they were creating their own assets. Nothing was brand aligned, nothing was on-message with what the company’s marketing conveyed. 

Basically, everyone was selling from a different playbook. 

It worked for a while, but it crashed and burned. Buyers talked. People were getting different info, angles, and deals from different salespeople. 

Nothing was consistent. What eventually happened? 

People ended contracts. Eventually the brand was sold for pennies on the dollar to an apex player. 

The lack of cohesion killed them. 

What else can you do to better align your sales and marketing?

Two things. 

Incentives & Culture. 

Incentives are often overlooked by business owners. As a company scales, the folks at the top are generally the first to be taken care of – so they don’t always remember to create an incentive structure for the rest of the team that are in “the trenches”. 

It’s important that this incentive is one that motivates everyone to work together to reach both the short and long term goals of the company.  

Truthfully, sales and marketing have different incentive structures by nature. Sales is much more trackable. You sold A and B, or you didn’t. You sold them within this quarter, or you didn’t. Your pipeline is XYZ, or it’s not. 

Marketing is much harder to track. We have more marketing analytics than ever before in human history, but we don’t use them as well as we could. (A topic for another newsletter.) We’re not always sure whether A-piece of content or B-video or C-infographic or D-banner at the trade show drove those prospects into the funnel. 

We think we know, and we claim to know, but it’s not always as obvious as we want to believe.

Business loves “what’s measured is what matters.” So we focus more on sales, especially when there’s pressure from investors or the market. 

When we focus too much on sales metrics (and ignore marketing), and a strong company culture doesn't exist, it results in a few negative off-shoots. 

A lot of times in a company where revenue generation is seemingly the one and only metric goal, all the other important aspects of a business – customer satisfaction, employee connection to the mission (and eventual employee turnover) – fall by the wayside. 

Entrepreneurs can become overly-focused on immediate success instead of what long-term success would look like, and as a result, they might not even be a company in 8-10 years. 

Specifically at the sales and marketing levels, we see some flare-ups too:

• Sales starts treating marketing like their admins (example: “Schedule these calls for me.”)
• Marketing gets laid off because their ROI can’t be proven in tight, stressful windows. (And honestly, many Entrepreneurs we’ve worked with don’t even set up their analytics properly. They can’t prove ROI on anything outside of sales. That’s a bigger topic, again for a different newsletter, but–it’s definitely a problem.)

It’s a race to the bottom.

I’ve seen Entrepreneurs do pretty creative stuff around incentives…

 Extra days off, beer gardens, taco trucks, KPI-tied bonus structures. Those all work. But always remember, we can always go a step further… 

All of us want to belong to something. It’s a core principle in the hierarchy of needs. 

Oftentimes, the simplest incentive is respect and recognition and acknowledgement of a job superbly done. 

A few years ago we integrated something called “snaps” (and I can’t take credit for this idea, it all goes to Chris Tuff, author of The Millennial Whisperer). 

He says rewards and recognition are essential in any organization. They don’t have to be financial either. Chris calls out his team members in meetings, and gives them “snaps” for the good things they are doing in the company.

We took it a step further…

We encouraged each team member to give “snaps” to other team members when they do something worthy of recognition. 

We then added a quarterly award for the team member who got the most “snaps”. 

9 plus years of doing this, I can see the enormous impact that positive accountability has created within our team around our culture. 

Going above and beyond had become “THE” standard amongst the team. Performance soared. The team was happier than they’d ever been. 

Everything was just BETTER. 

It’s all about Culture. 

Companies miss on culture because it’s a poorly-defined word, almost amorphous in many organizations, and Entrepreneurs are often product people or idea people – they don’t always know how to corral the fluid energy associated with culture. 

When you are missing culture, chances are you also have high turn-over, which makes it nearly impossible to align sales and marketing. 

Here are some things to think about regarding both pieces of this puzzle…

Consider these questions on the incentives piece:

• Is your head of sales meeting with your head of marketing at least once a week to discuss wins and pain points? (If this role is the same person, are they meeting with people from each team once per week?)
• How can those in marketing earn more as the company scales?
• What is sales’ biggest win and biggest complaint about marketing?
• What is marketing’s biggest win and biggest complaint about sales?
• How often do the two sides meet and discuss their goals, individually and collectively?
• How transparent are the metrics everyone is being evaluated on?

Consider these questions on the culture side:

• What is your culture? Can you define it?
• Do you have core values?
• Can people on your team recite those core values without checking your website? 
• What activities, remote and in-person, shape your company culture?
• How often are you talking with and involved with all your team members?
• What’s the most fun thing about working with you, and your company? 
• What do they tell their friends at happy hour about working in your company?
• How often do you revisit this idea of culture and reshape it?

These are big questions and they take time, and they look different at different growth stages. A company with five employees and $2M has a different culture and incentive structure than a company with 200 employees and $3B. 

You may prattle on about “the DNA” of your culture, but the jump from $2M to $3B changes virtually everything, and it’s best to lean into that reality as you go.

So where do we come in? Well, the good news for you is, we’ve been doing all this stuff for decades now, collectively. We maximize sales and marketing output all the time, and work with teams on culture (and even now hiring) daily. 

We put much of this under the umbrella of strategy, but we can also help with the nitty-gritty around Leads on Demand and more.

If you want to build an Infinite Business that people enjoy growing with and yet still make money hand over fist for your own family’s legacy to prosper, you need the right people, incentives, and culture. That’s what we do, so let us know if you want our help to get you there. 

Simply reply to this article and we’ll set up a time to chat. 

To your success, 

David 

P.S. Recruitment and Hiring is the #1 Entrepreneurial Blind Spot which is why most avoid it like the plague… 

Let’s face it, the entire process can be utterly frustrating & time consuming, AND often results in attracting and hiring the WRONG talent for your team and/or business. 

But what if ALL the heavy-lifting was done for you, and you were only handed the highest qualified candidates that checked every box you were looking for? 

Head to this link to see if Nitrogen Hiring Network™ could be your talent recruitment solution. 

P.P.S. Not sure how to find and attract more of your ideal clients? If you have a proven high ticket offer, we know EXACTLY how to fill your pipeline with a constant stream of qualified and highly-motivated leads through our exclusive Leads on Demand™ program.

Simply click this link for more details.

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