Nextree Business Growth Consultancy – Part 1

DETAILED SUMMARY

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Well, hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of BizBites.

We’re going to talk all things business growth today with someone who puts relationships front and centre with all of the clients that he works with.

And there’s lots of, I guess, pieces to that puzzle that we’re going to unlock a little bit.

I’m fortunate to have known Ross Keating for a number of years now, and we’ve done some work together, and I thought he’s going to be a great guest on the program.

So, Ross, welcome.

Hi Anthony.

Thank you very much for having me here.

And yeah, this is a while since we first got to know each other, isn’t it?

Yeah, it’s amazing how quickly those years go by and but I think it’s been a a fun ride to date and I think there’s going to be lots of things into the future and and you know I’ve always been an admirer of of your work in the way and the thoroughness in the way that you think about the relationships because and we were chatting just before we started the podcast to say how do I introduce you.

Because even though I know your business couldn’t quite put the right words around it before.

And obviously we talked and we came up with what we what we how we introduce yourself.

But when you go into a more broader explanation of the the depth and things that you cover, what do you tend to talk about?

I do talk, Tim, talk about business growth because most business owners and executives, what they’re trying to do, they’ve got a successful business and they want to make it more successful.

But what they’re finding is that the business doesn’t meet the expectation so much.

They’re they’re frustrated to a degree that they throw the resources at it.

They and the team are working all the hours they can and it doesn’t meet the expectation.

So don’t meet those goals.

So it’s sort of a successful business, but they want it to be at the level that they want it to be.

And business running business is many different parts.

It’s not just one thing you can touch one thing that can impact it.

But so often they’re integrated and have a symbiotic relationship on the dependency relationship on it.

So when I’m looking at it, I’m looking for business growth for them.

But the pain point I be around somebody saying hey I need a marking automation tool.

Well why The question is always why don’t we do everything and that’s where I I come from is you touch one thing and it’s going to touch everything else.

So I look at that and it’s it’s about the business growth, the business sales, the productivity, the marketing, the efficiency and the the staff will be employees what they’re doing and how they interact and the technologies and the strategies.

I think it’s interesting because when we thinking about when we first met and I thought oh he at first I thought you’re a business coach and then I know you used to talk a lot particularly about CRMS and and that’s obviously central to a lot of the things that you’re talking about.

But I love this business growth speciality because it does talk more broadly and I think you’re right that too often you know we both have it.

Clients come to us for one reason and actually when you scratch below the surface there’s a whole bunch of other things they think they’re in one place, but really there’s often a whole bunch of other work that needs to go on before you before you get there And it’s amazing how much that can unlock and and in a sense that can be over overwhelming for people.

So having someone that’s there to guide them on that journey is, is really important.

Yeah, it’s the guiding.

I don’t know their business like that.

I know their business.

Nobody will know it as well as that.

And they experience the pain as their baby.

And it doesn’t matter how long they’ve had, how big it gets, whether it’s a, you know, $100,000 business or it’s a $30 million business, that’s their baby.

And they know the insurance and outs, They know the squeaky wheels, They know the bits that are really running smooth.

But they don’t have often don’t have the broad experience and they can’t see it objectively like we we can.

You and I, we go in and we look at it differently and your guests all look at things in a different aspect of it.

But one of the things that I do is I look at it across their business, across the different paths to see what happens.

But they you’ve got to solve the pain point.

My first client, I got fired.

You know, that’s my my worst success.

I’ve got the client and after about six or seven months, because I was focusing on something that wasn’t as important to them as the other thing that they were, we were focusing on both.

But I had an an emphasis on on one particular aspect and he let me go and I I was really disappointed being my first client in all and that was way back in like 2005, two 2006 or must be in 2006 when you let me go.

And it still hurts today that I I lost a client because I didn’t do what was important to them.

Solve that problem 1st and you can look after all the other ones.

Yeah.

And I think which raises a really important point and I know this is again that’s something that you and I share in common is is the actually the the art of listening.

Because you the challenge I would have thought in that particular scenario was you may well have been right in the focus, but you needed to listen to where their pain point was and take them on a journey to understand what they needed to be focusing on 1st.

And I think that whole idea of listening is something that is lost and something that ultimately that’s what you and I do in different ways for the businesses that we run.

But but ultimately we’re we’re trying to listen in to what people need and to take them on a journey.

And that’s it.

And we go back to that marketing automation like the person put a Facebook post up on the on the the one of the groups and said which is the best marketing automation tool when you know people came in the HubSpot, Constant Contact, Active Contact, you name it, they came up with it and all it was all good advice, good, good suggestions.

But I went and said, well, why did you, you want a marketing automation tool?

How’s it going to integrate with your sales process?

What are the goals that you’re expecting?

What are the results you’re going to expect that’s going to improve?

And they said maybe we should have a discussion.

Well, eight years later, that’s still a client and they don’t have a marketing automation tool.

They have ACRM that does a lot of you know can be used.

In fact they use Nimble CRM and it does group messaging, segmented messages, database, but it’s not automated, OK and they don’t because they don’t need it.

They focus on a specialist market from that point of view.

Yeah.

And I think that’s some and that’s really important advice.

We can get sucked into technology very easy you know whatever the latest and greatest thing is and and certainly there’s been a phase and continues to be around CRMS is a good example.

Well, I’ve got to have ACRM and I’ve got to have this component to it.

I’ve got to have that to it and I know I went through that process myself as a business sort of 18 months or so ago in in determining that and and had people trying to sell me certain things and I went, yeah, I don’t really need that and I think we can get taken swept up in Oh well we must have the latest and greatest We we we kind of fed that in advertising through lots of things.

I mean a good example is our phones, right.

Most of us use a very small percentage of what our phones are capable of doing and quite frankly when you upgrade from one model to the next, you very really can tell much of a difference, right.

And it doesn’t really impact us hugely on a day-to-day basis.

And yet wow, well, well our our phone is 2 years old.

We we better get a new one.

You know, it’s it’s a it’s a very interesting relationship that we have with that and trying to take people back to what really matters and scratch below the surface and what really is going to improve the businesses.

As one of my business coaches are fond of saying out what’s going to make the boat go faster?

That’s got to be the focus.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But what’s going to, what’s going to make go forward, take it forward, go, go to that next level, reach your expectations.

And I always say that to clients, I can only do 55 things.

I can, I can increase their sales, I can help them generate more leads.

I can help them close deals faster.

I can get their productivity and efficiency up and I can get them all bang for their marketing buck.

But ultimately those are the only, those are the five key drivers we’re always looking to pull from that point of view.

Everything relates back to that.

The marketing relates to all of those.

You know the customer service that they provide relates back to that, their profitability relates back to that.

The expenses relate.

So it’s looking at those, those ultimately that’s what I’m looking to drive when I’m, I’m working on it and the phones, the latest things, it’s the basics and that I find that they have trouble with so often, particularly businesses up to around about a million, a million and a half.

The owners and the the directors often don’t look at the profit and loss on a monthly basis in depth and actually watch it.

They say the accountant producers are for us and we look at it and but they don’t actually look at it to see what’s why it’s there.

What are the exception points they don’t have.

They’re not working to a written plan and if you listen to anybody I don’t know any of the big it’s, you know 500 ASX 200 companies that don’t work for business plan.

Why do they work for business plan?

Because they have to.

We can’t work off our our head because we change it.

I know my brain goes at 100 miles an hour and I oh dude, this has a fit.

You were talking before about how does it make the machine the the business move forward.

And the other aspect that they often do is they want that bit of technology without understanding it and they haven’t looked at it overall.

And that’s the, that’s the key thing.

You know what?

What’s this?

Basics of running the business.

Yeah, it’s it, it, it.

And and I think I know I wanted to extend on that because we started off by talking about relationships as well as being a key to that and the basics of it.

And that human element is something we can’t underestimate.

And I know that’s a big factor.

I mean, there’s because because the whole point of having ACRM in place of course is to get to know the people, but the and and try and engage with those people.

But of course you’ve also got to start with your own team, don’t you?

You’ve got to start with the people that you’re working with and understanding them.

And I think that’s an important aspect that is undervalued by people and they don’t, if they do any kind of intuition in that space, it’s often just in the recruitment process.

And then that’s kind of it.

And they’re not taking it any further with any real depth of understanding.

And I know that’s a subject that’s that’s close to you as well.

You thanks for I I like that lead in but I’ll take that one another step further.

One of the basis behind that when I was forming the brand Next Trip business growth Consultancy but I was working with Lauren Clement and doing it and people said yo why are you use.

Well I don’t use a farming analogy.

Well, farming analogy for most animals has a really bad ending And so we don’t want to think of one, I don’t like to think of clients and and people like Business Network as as animals.

And two, there’s something about a tree and is the the key thing is, is that if you think about the roots of a business, you’ve got you as the owner of the business and the directors of the business and the executives.

Then you’ve got the employees like you said.

But you’ve also got the business community which from which you get your business or supplies and things like that.

And then you’ve got your customers and then you’ve got your family, your own family.

And it’s all those people are interacting either directly or indirectly.

And if you can help and if you can understand the personality, what’s important to those people, then you are going to be better able to influence them to more your way of thinking.

You know, get them to do something, you know, for employees to get them to do what you want them to do because they see the benefit of it, because that’s how I’m looking at relationships and we can explore that further as well.

Yeah.

And I and I think that those whole that whole idea of relationships is sometimes I think people just they gloss over it and they’re they’re so involved in the nitty gritty of an operational function that they forget about the people and understanding the kinds of people that you need to work with.

And it’s interesting I I you know as we speak at the moment I’m recruiting a staff member and to the people I’m using to recruit I have made it very clear that I don’t want someone creative and and the the simple reason for that is, is that I’ve got more than enough creative energy to last the to to make up for most of the company.

But we do have other creatives already in in within the business and I need you know, I need someone of a particular type that is going to counter my creativity.

And I think you know that is it’s really it is really important to understand those things because sometimes going out and just recruiting the best person may not be the right person for you.

And understanding how people that are already working for you, how you can get more out of them or whether indeed maybe they’re better off not in your organization.

All of those things or how they might transition and how you might need to work with them over a period of time.

I think those things are really important, and it comes down to going with some kind of understanding that’s better than just a gut instinct on who the person is that you’re actually dealing with.

Yeah, yeah.

And that’s why we’ve got all those psychometric tests, you know, Miners, bridge, Disc, the Big five, true colours, very effective tools and develop and for roughly the purposes of employing the right people and getting them in the right teams and getting it through.

And that is really great.

But often that doesn’t.

Then what we’ve got to do is translate how that interaction goes in day-to-day situations.

And often we’re not, we have to guess.

And that’s where with customer relationships, it’s really important when I use.

So I’m trying to use the term personal relationships, but people might think that I’m talking about you know, dating in your home relationships.

Well, those are important, OK.

But I’m talking about if you use customer relationships, the word that already implies customer.

But before that you, as I mentioned, you’ve got employees, employees, you’ve got business people here, suppliers, the people that you’re using to create your creators and people who are trying to deliver your services.

You’ve got those leads, you’ve got prospects and you’ve got customers and you’ve got past customers and having as you’re interacting with them what’s important to them, what are their values.

And that’s why I’m the last two years been using a Co bracket technologies bank personality profile.

And you know you you know me and Anthony I love to share my cards.

It’s the only type of cards that I play with besides my credit cards.

Those four cards are four different personalities and we’ve all made it up for one personality.

And of of all four personalities, but one or two will be dominant, just like in disk and in Mars Breaks You, you have those dominant personalities.

But, and the thing about the Code breaker Bank methodology has been scientifically validated by independent university studies to actually predict buyer behaviour in less than 90 seconds.

The others take a little bit longer than that.

And you can’t ask your clients to do it.

But I can ask you, Anthony, would you do me a favour?

Just read these cards and the values on the cards and tell me, put them in order.

Which is most important to you?

The least important.

And all of a sudden there’s 12 values on each card, and as soon as you move it to a give me the cards back, I know roughly how to communicate with you to what’s important to you on the type of things when I’m talking about a value.

And then you can communicate because there’s.

I don’t like using too much.

Researchsalesforce.com found that 87% of salespeople are under prepared when they go out to talk to clients and 66% of of clients get tuned up by the presentation.

And one last statistic I’ll try not to use anymore.

There’s research done that found that 18% if you present them to somebody and not in their personality type, then only 18% would buy from you.

But if you change your presentation to meet their personality type, then 82% would buy.

And that’s university studies again.

Now the thing behind that Tony Robbins talks about it let your prospect determine your presentation and that’s what it’s all about you know is when you so your prospect in your case might be employees how do they fit in the team if you’re going to have somebody that is into their their key drivers are structured personality and and low risk and don’t interrupt my day because I’ve got my day planned out.

You don’t really want them answering the phone and being the the receptionist perhaps, unless I’ve got other other things that can manage that or whether there’s another personality.

You know they’re nurturing personality.

But the key thing is when you’re talking to customers, you’ve got to present cause.

67% turn off by I hope.

You’ve been enjoying the conversation so far.

We look forward to bringing you Part 2 in the next episode of BizBites

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