HITT- Enhancing Advisors Success through Best Practices Nov 19, 2024
This HITT training is about best practices for advisors, aiming to boost productivity and innovation. Key speakers, including Telarus leaders, share insights on achieving outstanding results and the importance of collaboration. Advisors are encouraged to focus on specific target markets and leverage resources to enhance their professionalism and client relationships. The discussion emphasizes the significance of understanding customer needs and improving the sales experience through training and effective communication. Overall, the session aims to equip advisors with actionable insights for successful planning in 2025.
Introduction to HITT Training
We begin today’s Telarus Tuesday call with HITT training. It’s a revealing look into the best practices seen among the advisors in our industry.
The proven strategic habits and behaviors set apart top performers from the rest. Today, we’ll learn what the best are doing to enhance productivity, foster innovation, and achieve outstanding results.
Joining us today without compensation from any of the major campaigns our three Telarus leaders, all laser focused on what makes advisers win. Tim Bosa, senior VP of sales, Josh Lupresto, senior VP of engineering and host of Next Level Biz Tech podcast, and Koby Phillips, Telarus VP of cloud. Tim, Josh, Koby, welcome back to the three of you to our Tuesday call.
Good to be here.
Excited. Great to be here. Good to see you, Doug.
Glad to have you all here. This is a great end of year presentation. Tim, I’m gonna turn it over to you. We’ll see what comes out of this one. I’ve got my, note taking materials at the ready.
Yeah. Sure.
So the format for today is just unpacking some of the best practices that we’ve discovered in the field, not only this year in twenty twenty four, but also going back in time.
Revisiting Business Fundamentals
Sometimes fundamentals are key to business, and we ignore the fundamentals, and it’s good to revisit them. Also, unpack some things that are fresh and new and exciting. I’m actually gonna turn it over to Koby who’s gonna moderate the discussion today, and we’ll, we’ll jump into things between, Josh, Koby, and I. And I think we’re gonna have a a super productive session as people plan their twenty twenty five. I think there’ll be a few nuggets that you can insert into your plan that’ll help drive you to the next level of success as you strive to achieve your most ambitious goals.
So, guys, just to clarify a couple of things.
Tim is not seeing Colby. He’s from Michigan. Excuse his accent. He throws an l in there, just to get a hold of any jokes that are gonna be coming my way after we, conclude this.
But I am excited to be here because, this all came about we were talking about some of the most common asked questions that we get from advisers and then even people outside the industry that are just more like, what do you what do you say you do here? Right? What do you guys do for for a living? And, Tim, you have something on your LinkedIn that I think really kinda summarizes what our value prop is and what we drive towards for our advisors.
Defining Our Value Proposition
I always say, we work in a place where we try to help other people make as much money as possible, which sounds super cheesy. But at the end of the day, that’s what our ecosystem is about. You said a little bit more, streamlined or a little bit more profound. How how does it go on your LinkedIn page?
Yeah. On my LinkedIn page, it says that my goal is to help our advisers achieve their most ambitious goals.
And the simple backstory to that is during COVID when everyone was locked down, I was pacing around the house talking on the phone all day, probably like many of you. And one night at dinner, my daughter said to me, hey, dad. I used to think you worked really hard, but all you do is talk on the phone to your friends all day. And I said, that’s exactly right. I talk on the phone to my friends, to my colleagues, and together, we help solve each other’s biggest problems and help each other achieve our most ambitious goals. And so it just stuck, Koby, after that. Really, what we do is we want to meet advisers wherever they are in their journey, start up, scale up, and help them conquer challenges, achieve goals in the in the best way possible for their business.
Ecosystem Evolution and Resources
Yeah. I think I think that’s really when I when I reference our ecosystem and the evolution of what we’ve done, we’ve added a lot of resources that help our advisors. And today, you know, Josh, you guys are at the center point of that with your, solutions architects and engineers. So we’ll look forward to hearing from you as well.
But, Tim, you we started doing these anchor in series, where you went around, I think, between you and, Sean Kane hosting those throughout the country this last year. And on a number of topics that were a little eye opening. I remember I said in one, we did one for marketing, one for sales. Right?
Those are the focuses. Yep. And just how to better put yourself in position as an adviser. What are some of the key takeaways and highlights that you got out of those events, and then just some nuggets you can provide for everybody?
Sure. I think the biggest thing that sticks out after hundreds of those sessions and gathering data is a lot of advisers try to be all things to all people. That I would say, what’s your target market? And they would say, any business anywhere. Well, that, in my opinion, based on the data, is a recipe for success.
Focus helps you achieve your goals. So you should focus on a market. Maybe it’s Atlanta. Maybe it’s where I’m at in Metro Detroit, and then a market segment. Maybe it’s owner operated businesses with twenty five employees to a hundred and fifty employees. Maybe it’s higher than that, but you shouldn’t wanna be all things to all people in terms of business size and scope. The next thing is a lot of advisors pigeonhole themselves into a single technology.
So while it’s great to be a specialist, a UCaaS specialist, contact specialist, cloud specialist, it’s a bit like being known as a plumber. If you’re a plumber, all you see is the plumbing jobs that come your way. All you get asked to do is fix leaky faucets or toilets or may you know, silly analogy, but you get called in to do a plumbing repair or a new plumbing job. So think about that if you’re focused on cybersecurity, you just get the call for cybersecurity.
Becoming a General Contractor in Technology
Where if you’re a general contractor and you’re and you’re focused on a specific market, then you get called in to take on the whole project and help pick the best plumber, the best window, the best roofing. Same thing in our business. The most successful advisors are becoming expert general contractors when it comes to technology. They’re able to bring in the resources, the Telarus resources, the provider resources, and really craft and participate in the crafting of a technology road map for their customers where they can impact all of the spend.
In the same way that we wanna help our advisors achieve their ambitious goals, our our best advisors are helping their clients achieve their ambitious goals by putting the right people on the right projects at the right time.
Yeah. And I think what I take from that in leveraging the the resources, I you guys might have heard me use this analogy before. I don’t see our advisors at any disadvantage from a large consulting firm anymore. If you think about the reach and scope that they have do you know, Josh, I’ll I’ll you’re in over here, and I I expect you to know this off the top of your head. As far as technology certifications as a whole, how many of those are you setting out on your team right now?
Sadly, I do know that number. Four hundred and sixty five.
Alright. So four sixty five. So if you think about, like, an Accenture Deloitte team, and what I’ve seen is they’ll hire somebody, you know, pretty fresh out of college, train them up a little bit. They’re not training them to be cloud experts or cybersecurity expert. What they’re training them to do is provide an excellent sales experience and bring in the right resources at the right time. Again, to be more of a contractor and a generalist.
Strategies for Business Growth
And then they bring those in and overlay those on top. I don’t see our motion being any different. I think that’s what I’m seeing on a lot of advisers that are scaling out. Because it’s, you know this probably off the top of your head, Sam. How much harder is it to find a new logo versus sell to an existing customer and and have more stuff? Like, is it twenty five times more or something?
Well, I it’s I don’t know the exact data, but from talking to advisers, one of the things I ask almost at every session, whether it’s sales, marketing, or business mastery, is I talk about the ways to grow a business. And, really, there’s just three ways. Right? So number one is get a new customer. Number two is add more sales to an existing customer, and number three is to raise prices. That’s it. Well, most advisors can’t raise prices, although some do provide professional services.
Everybody has a book of business where they can increase the spend. Right? But to go get a brand new customer is very, very difficult. And all although we unpack that in the ways to do it, the best way to do it is to be a professional consultant like you talk about. And we’re seeing advisors globally really step up the professionalism of their practice too. They’ve hired firms to create, better deliverables.
Professionalism in Advisory Practices
They’ve built evidence packs, right, that prove their business cases out, whether those are case studies or, information that they can just use from a collection of providers who’ve published documents, and they put those into great packages that looks like in a a Deloitte or in a center. So, sort of consulting by the pound. Right?
Yeah. And I think I think being able to deliver the value to the customer is what’s always gonna be at the forefront of this discussion with advisors. And the way I see it, our advisors with the ecosystem and the tools and the and the resources from technology, experts, we can streamline that buying process and that buying journey unlike anybody else. Because I think one of the biggest advantage I see of an advisor and working in the way that we work with them is essentially they, like, these big consulting firms almost delay and drag it out to get more consulting dollars in the door and things like that.
And that’s that’s all well and good, but it’s it also slows down the buyer’s journey. And if you’re looking at organizations, they’re trying to get stuff done and implemented, and there’s a force multiplier of why. And our advisors, when they can really put out, hey. This is our methodology, like you’re talking about.
Here’s here’s what we’ve done. I always call it the three c’s. Right? Here’s here’s what we’re capable of doing.
Here’s what my teams are certified to do, and here’s a case study to show that we’ve all done it. And that speaks volumes to customers.
Overcoming Knowledge Barriers
You know, Tim, what what else are you seeing that that’s helping advisers win as far as, like, grow into either existing customers or, you know, grab some new logos as well?
Yeah. One of the things is getting over the fear of not knowing it all. One of the conversations we often we often have with Josh and his team is our advisers don’t need to know it all. They just need to know who to call. So they engage with their Telarus teammate, and our team can bring in supplier resources or Telarus resources.
One of the things that Josh’s team and I’ll let Josh comment on this, but Josh’s team sees is the whole field of play. Going back to your point about consulting, if they’re trying to stretch out a project or just be be good enough to get the next project, where our advisors really shine is the advisors are working on a lifetime relationship. Now many of our advisers, once they secure a client and they go broader with that client, that client’s a client for life, and our interest and the adviser’s interest are in the always in the best interest of the client, And the adviser can only see so many providers, so many solutions, so much of the field of play where Josh’s team sees at the very highest level at the certification level, the technical requirements that are required, but also the strengths and weaknesses of providers at any given time at any given cycle. So, Josh, I’ll let you unpack that a little bit.
Trends in Technology and Consulting
Yeah. I I think the theme here I’ll I’ll go into some some examples. We’ll dive into, you know, I I surveyed the team, kinda what we’re seeing in security, what we’re seeing in cloud, what we’re seeing in CX, and trends in AI. So we’ll we’ll talk about some of that.
I think the the overarching theme though that that I would want everybody to get out of this is we’re going to give people time back. I think that’s a big struggle that that these IT managers, these customer experience managers, the security managers are are battled with right now, is times and budgets. And how do we maximize all of those things? And I think that’s the theme.
You know, we talked a little bit about the GSIs, the Deloitte, and things like that.
A a big awesome consulting engagement is great, but I think the value that we all bring to this table is the sense of urgency around helping complete some of these projects. And Koby talks a lot about this of how many of these projects don’t get completed. And when they don’t when they do get completed, it’s not on time and it’s not on budget. And so I think we we inverse all of that with some of the things that that we talk about. So, I I’d love to go in Koby, you wanna go into some of the verticals? Maybe we wanna start, in one of these product areas. Let’s talk trends a little bit.
Yeah. Yeah. Once you hit, not biased at all, so we’ll we’ll hold cloud back to maybe the second or third. Yes.
If we have time, we’ll get to cloud at the end. I mean, we’ll just see, you know.
Yeah.
Like, if we have enough what are you seeing in CX that that’s really driving conversations and where advisors are being able to, like, expand UCCX that whole or Yeah.
UCCX that whole space?
Yeah. So, still seeing a lot of lift and shift from a UCaaS vendor that they’ve had historically to a new UCaaS new UCaaS vendor because now they’re looking the clients are mature. The clients are looking for more than just the basic features, and they’re also considering how do I add AI. And I’ll talk a little bit. I got some trends on AI that we’re already seeing, but how do I how do I add some of these things? And can I get transcription? Can I start with that?
Sorry, Kaye. Guys, fourteen minutes into the call was the first time we mentioned AI. I think that might be a record for the last three or four months. So Here we go.
The Role of AI in Business
Good job. Alright. Sorry. Alright. Gotta do yeah. Continue.
I got I gotta use these sound effects.
Look. I think that’s the does the platform I have get me to where I need to be? Because everybody’s feeling the sense of urgency around that they they they need to be leveraging these technologies. And I don’t think it’s for the sake of I have to do this.
It’s I want to do this because I think there is benefits for me either financially or help make my product better, help make my company better. So first of all, just consider, does the the the questions that we’re asking is, does the platform that you have right now do the things that you wanna layer in with AI and and all of these? So so the questions are, do we need to make a lift and shift on the platform, or can I get you things like transcription? Can I get you a tighter CRM integration?
Can I get you on the path to the CX platform? Right? Are we really trying to see some of these replace a full UCaaS shift to another UCaaS platform, or, are we just painting a path and some wedge services? I think we talk about these, at events a lot of sometimes we just have to find that right wedge in because, I I was just talking to one of my guys this morning that’s on a discovery call that was supposed to be about CX.
And it’s going AI. It’s going governance, risk, and compliance. It’s going GCP. It’s going all of these things.
Nobody intended for that to be the the discussion of the call. So that’s that’s a theme that you’ll hear here. Second thing in CX that we’re seeing, this was an interesting one, is that, you know, we’ve seen kinda hospitality sit over here. We’ve seen resorts.
We’ve seen assisted living.
All of those guys are really starting to shift some of this on prem. Oh, boy. It’s end of life. And and there’s a couple there’s a couple key timing things here.
There there there’s OEMs out there, NECs, Mitel, big end of life stuff happening, at the end of this this year on some of those flagship products. So I could think of three or four suppliers that we have, off the rip that have platforms that make sense for those and starting to see some of the lifts and shifts into those. So certainly more we can talk about with regard to wedging and AI, but those are two, I think, interesting call outs that, got mentioned more than once, more than twice across the team.
Customer Loyalty and Sales Experience
Yeah. That is interesting. I think, you know, what I’m hearing is advisors just stowed over the fence, get out of the way, and let your team run with it. Right? And that’s sarcasm in case somebody’s picking up on that. Because, guys, again, what drives the value more than anything else Tim, you’ve heard me say this probably over a hundred times now. What drives customer loyalty more than anything else?
Sales experience. Right? So I call you off I call you a proper there. That’s not me.
But it’s sales experience. Sales experience creates fifty three percent more customer loyalty than the other three, subjects. So pricing, company and brand, and product and solution make up the other three. Nineteen percent for company and brand, nineteen percent for solution, and nine percent for price is what’s driving customer loyalty.
And, if that adds up to a hundred percent, then we’re having to get Tuesday morning. If not, then somebody can get pricing in the pack. Close enough.
But that is guys, that’s the that’s the superpower, as you like to say, Tim, right, of what traffic is.
Now what Well, and if you sorry. Just real just real quick to backtrack. If you listen to Josh talk, he was actually giving you you all, everyone on this call, questions you can ask as part of your sales process. Those are ingrained in his team.
Enhancing Sales Training and Best Practices
Those are ingrained in our team. There’s things that you learn when you go to a Telarus training, whether it’s a technology training or a sales training or a marketing training, is how to level up your sales game. And sometimes we take these things for granted because many of us have been doing it for a long time. So we don’t workshop these things with our team.
We don’t role play. We don’t do situational case studies with our team. We don’t share best practices that helps to make the sales experience better, more professional, more comprehensive to help us unpack both with our current customers and our prospects the the most efficient path to success for the client. So I encourage you as you’re doing your twenty twenty five planning, wrapping up twenty twenty four, think about the training to Koby’s point about your overall sales experience.
How can you professionalize it? How can you add more detective like questions without being overbearing? You know, the who, what, when, where, why, how of it that are just conversational to make sure that your team levels up next year and that you have some standards to collect information, share information. And then when you engage us, you’ll see that we operate with those same methodologies.
We’ll be talking the same language. Sorry, Colby. Didn’t mean to cut you off there.
Oh, no. It’s it’s, turnabout is fair play, my friend, because it’ll happen, here shortly. I’m sure.
I think we keep an interruption count for me nowadays. I we’re we’re at one because I cut Josh off. But the the one thing that I wanna point out there, Josh, give some best this is all about best practices. We talk about these amazing resources that we have. But as an adviser, how what’s the best practice for them to prep or unlock the value of those resources? Like, is it a you know, can you walk through, like, what a good, interaction is to get your team ready for a good call like that?
Preparing for Effective Discovery Calls
So so years ago, at at a startup I was at, I sat in this cubicle. And so I I kind of envision taking I I constantly have this visual. I want this visual for our partners is to take my my thought process. I’m going into this discovery call.
I’m getting ready. Maybe I’m just talking to the to the customer to understand what’s what I can help them with. I imagine the Telarus upsell checklist pinned to the side of my cubicle just as a reminder of the plethora of buckets and then sub products within those buckets that I can talk to my customers and my prospects about. And I would have a unique conversation track to open up, hey, mister customer.
I wanna you know, these are all of the things that I can help you with. My list is expanded. I know previously I’ve helped you with this. Now I can help you in this, this, and this.
Whether you send them that beforehand, whether you don’t send them that beforehand, doesn’t really matter. But somebody is going to have an initiative in one or many of those, and they are going to buy those things. And I I can’t every single I I don’t even know the last time that we had a discovery call that started here and ended here. So my to to to kinda round about answer your question, it would be be prepared for the best way that it naturally comes out of you to to enunciate how you can help with some of those things.
And then let’s determine where the customer wants to focus the conversation because I don’t wanna get on there and just talk about all the great things that we can do. I wanna do it if it solves their problems, if it helps address an initiative that they have, if it makes their life easier, and if it gives them time back. So then when you do some of that fishing and you bring those back, that’s when you pull in our team and go, hey. They wanna focus on here and here.
Cool. Let us do the rest. Let us see if we can kinda waiver it from here to here or here to here. But at a minimum, we’re gonna talk about that in the beginning.
And we’ll even validate that. Right? As we get on the call, hey, mister customer, we understand that you wanna talk about a CX initiative to wedge in some transcription, maybe lift and shift, maybe move the database off prem, into cloud. Is that everything we wanna talk about, or is there anything else?
And sometimes they’ll just they’ll even throw out more more than, you know, they they said they needed an hour ago. Just just did a a big opportunity like that we’re working on that started as cloud and completely went into security within a matter of a day or two. And so, I think that’s that’s my favorite prep technique. That’s all the information that we need, and that we can go in and we know they want to talk about what we’re prepared to talk about.
So, Josh, let me go back let me go backwards real quick. Does that count, Koby, as one? Let me let me go let me go backwards real let me go backwards real quick to sort of just check off two points. One is a premeeting with your team to talk about the goal of the meeting and the flow.
Call it a meeting map. Right? So it’s a meeting map. It’s what’s important to the prospect, what the adviser what direction the adviser wants to to take the conversation, again, in an organic way, not in a forced way, right, not in a salesy way.
The next thing is the post mortem or the post meeting where we review the meeting minutes to see, did we cover the map?
Do we have who’s accountable for what? So a mutual accountability plan. Here’s what Telarus is gonna do. In your case, your team’s gonna do. Here’s what the adviser’s gonna do. Here’s what the customer’s gonna do. Would you say that’s just a well rounded best practice?
Thousand percent. And and to add one point to that, this is a best practice that if everybody wants a fat full pipeline forever, here’s what I recommend. So you’re gonna have things that we’re we’re just gonna uncover a bunch of stuff. It’s just what we do.
We ask the questions. People are like, oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Oh, yeah. You can help me.
At the end of that, sometimes we have to ask the question of, hey. We uncovered a lot of things that you’ve got initiatives on in this call. Could you prioritize that one, two, three so that we can focus on the things that you care about the most? Yeah.
And then what I would say to you, the partners, to the advisers, is jot down things that maybe we didn’t get to. Maybe things three and four, put that in their CRM, go to them in six months, pepper them on that initiative, and see if they’re ready to talk about that. So then you’re stacking that funnel full, and then you’ve you’ve you’ve kinda got those things dripping out over time while, hopefully, we’ve sold and closed thing one, thing two. Now we’re starting thing two, thing three.
So you really get into that, you know, selling multiple products to the same logo conversation.
I would also add bring to the introduction. Right? Yeah. Fill in the gaps of, like, hey.
This is who we’re meeting with. This is our personality type. This is what they do. Yes.
You can understand the political landscape. These are all things that just bring additional insight to the team, and here’s here’s the reason why that’s, mutually beneficial.
Josh, your team sees an immense amount of opportunities. They deal with a lot of different customers. So as you give more insight to to Josh and the team or or myself and and, you know, Sam or Jason or Graham if we’re involved into an opportunity, we might have some some insight back to go, hey.
This is we’ve worked with other clients like this. Here’s something that we might try. Here’s here’s some, things that we could pull through.
And just, again, bridging that I call it bridging the introduction gap and and making it fast track. It’s like if you have two lifelong friends that hadn’t met each other, you’re able to fill it in a little bit. And, also, on the on the flip side, be prepared with how you’re gonna introduce your resources. I’ve seen this go really poorly where someone’s like, oh, this is my technology expert and, you know, CX or cloud.
And then they’ll say, well, who’s Telarus? Right? Because, you know, they might look them up on LinkedIn or things like that. So just make sure you guys, have that ready to go.
Whatever direction you wanna take it, there’s a number of ways to to handle that, and that’s totally gonna be at your discretion. But just make sure that you’re prepared to have that conversation, and maybe that’s something that you discussed in the prep call ahead of time. Tim, one of the one of the other things, you know, I’m talking to you know, we’re talking about Josh utilizing his team, and you said, hey. You know, we see we’re like, don’t be just don’t be just a UC guy.
Evolving Your Sales Approach
Don’t be just a network person. Try to expand out your ecosystem.
There’s a couple of points here I wanna make. But do you have any advice on how to change perception, inside of an account? Like, you you’ve got a great marketing background and we’ll call it, you know, channel marketing that you’ve used throughout your career. What are some of the some of the big points that you can, leave there for some best practices? Yeah.
So what we see by and large is everything has to change not all at once, but your talk tracks need to slowly evolve.
So if you’re a legacy voice company, legacy network company, it starts with just slowly refreshing your marketing materials. So to become a more of an agnostic adviser, I even saw in the chat that someone said that’s their superpower. So when you align on what your value prop is, your stadium pitches that you help owner operated businesses in Metro Detroit to identify, qualify, and procure technology services or whatever it is. So it’s not that you help people save money on voice services anymore.
Right? You have a more modern approach. Your your website, your sales pitch, your PowerPoint, your team is trained the right way from by your team. That’s your auto attendant or your receptionist.
Everyone in the org knows exactly what you do and how you do it, and you’re creating, even in the discovery process or in your quarterly business review or quarterly business insight review, your road mapping, all of the language starts to frame up questions and content around the full technology wheel. So all of the areas that you can help as an adviser, that Telarus can help you. Again, even if you’re not familiar, if take that general contractor approach again. A general contractor is not gonna say, no.
They can’t help somebody with copper gutters. They’re gonna go and figure it out. You have the same advantage. So I think it starts with just taking you know, backtracking to to the beginning.
It starts with taking a look at your current talk track, your current value prop, and reframing it to be more agnostic, more, independent technology advisor, a technology consultant.
And your job is to help people identify the best technology, negotiate the best rates, get it fully implemented and optimized, and then stay with the the client on their journey wherever technology takes them. So you’re meeting them on a quarterly basis. You’re looking for ways to add value.
We could unpack marketing for a long time. There’s lots of materials that you can do. I do think and and we have this conversation internally a lot, and it’s hard to get advisers over the hump. But if you really wanna grow, this is an attention economy.
So you have to be comfortable putting yourself out there. A lot of our best advisors now are starting to create YouTube channels and podcasts, and they’re posting more on social media. They’re building authority around their business. So when they do attract a new customer, they’re the obvious choice. And for their current clients, it shows that they’re modern, well equipped, and up to date.
Yeah. I would say the death knell that are one of the worst things to hear, maybe not the death knell, is I didn’t know you did that. Right? And, and that’s the scary thing for any any adviser, any salesperson to hear from a client.
So I think, again, you just gave a lot of great nuggets there. Like, hey. Put yourself out there a little bit more. Post about what you can do.
Attach yourself to, you know, key, you know, key brands in inside the technology so they’re aware of your of your ecosystem as an adviser. And speaking of that, you know, we talked a lot about what Telarus does as a TSD, and there are a number of questions, and I think Doug will set some time aside to to address those. So I don’t want anyone to feel like they’re being ignored in the chat. So we’ll definitely, attack those.
Leveraging Supplier Resources for Advisors
The one thing that we I wanna highlight though is, you know, we’re we’re we’re a portion of this ecosystem the advisers have access to. You know, Josh, you get brought into a lot of supplier conversations as you do as well, Tim. I’m just seeing some amazing tools that these guys are offering to our advisers to help either give them data intent, or or for, you know, buyers, what they’re seeing on their websites, like, utilizing Sixense or ZoomInfo and others.
You know, any advice there, Tim, on what you’re seeing top advisors take advantage of and how they’re going to market with those?
Yeah. The first thing is any supplier that is in your portfolio as an advisor and you’re currently working with, there’s a good chance they have done for you things, done for you in quotes. So done for you email campaigns, done for you social media posts, white papers. They have testimonials about clients that are using their services that you can either private label and reuse or they’ll give you. There are also many suppliers now utilizing tools like you mentioned, SixCent, ZoomInfo. In some cases, they even have business development reps or sales development reps that can work on your behalf to help set appointments with some commitments.
But my advice would be just reach out to your Telarus contact and help them play matchmaker with some of those services, solutions, and tools that we offer, but also that the suppliers offer and find ways to creatively approach those suppliers, to maximize the benefits that are there. Sometimes suppliers, as you guys both know, Josh and Koby, what happens is suppliers come to us and say, we built these things because advisors said they wanted them, and no one’s using them. It’s the same thing you said that I didn’t know you did that. So come to us and ask for the resources, and let us see if we can unpack them for you and help you use them. And, also, in some cases, we just maybe the provider doesn’t have them, but we can give you a source to go and execute on them. Like, we have an adviser right now that wants to build a stable of video testimonials.
So we gave them advice on how to hire an affordable videographer that can travel around to some client appointments, how to ask the client to be a video testimonial, how to put the testimonial on a private YouTube channel where the password a password’s required.
And just those video testimonials, they’re not they’re professionally produced, but not overly produced. It’s helping establish credibility and taking them to a whole new market segment. So getting them to mid enterprise from lower lower enterprise and maybe even high enterprise in the future. So, again, I’ll stop there, Koby, but there’s a lots lot we can unpack.
Passion for Business Growth and Client Success
Yeah. I I think what I’m hoping comes across to the everyone on the call is the passion that, you know, Tim, that you have and that drives the rest of the organization to help people grow their businesses and achieve more. Like, everything that you said on your your LinkedIn page, it it seems to be, very, very true of how you go about your business day in and day out.
I gotta take thirty seconds on something because I just saw a question that said, will they build a list?
So in some cases, yes. But, folks, I’m Koby just said I’m passionate. I did bring a prop. This is, the Detroit five hundred.
In here, there’s a profile of five hundred businesses.
Each profile has a c level that talks about a challenge they’re trying to solve or a goal that they have.
This is a list, and it gives you clues to prospecting. You can simply you could you could mail these two folks and say, you know, hey, Chris. I noticed in the Detroit five hundred, you could even rip this out and mail it to them. I noticed in the Detroit five hundred that your your one of your challenges expanding from twenty five locations to seventy five locations. I help multi location business owners like you expand their businesses by selecting the right technology for the right price, etcetera.
You’re right. Fortune five hundred CEOs do get about a hundred emails each, LOL.
Zachary, that’s why you use direct mail because most people will open a priority mail You did.
From anybody.
And if there’s compelling evidence here, they’ll re they’ll read it. Also, you never go right to just the CEO. You have to be multithreaded.
So you have to mail to the CEO and their circle of influence. When you prospect, you always have to prospect multithreaded. And when you have a customer, you have to have multithreaded influence because your best customers become your best referrals.
And when they leave a a business, most executives stay twenty four months. So if Johnny or Susie leave a customer you’ve done a good job and they go to the next place, you now have two new customers if you did an awesome job.
And speaking of, I think, just for we’re at timing in the segment. I I wanted to go and attack some of these questions in the chat.
Understanding Telarus and Its Role
So I’m gonna take one on and but I I welcome Josh and and Tim both, to drive it. And then, Doug, I’ll turn it over you to to to drive the the q and a, but I’m gonna I’m gonna start with one. How do we explain who Telarus is? One of the best changes in our channel, which we lovingly refer to as the modern distribution channel. So if you need that, words matter. Right? Tim just laid out a lot of marketing insight, is when we change the technology solutions distributor.
And that is so much easier to explain than than the previous name inside of a customer conversation.
Distribution technology distribution is a well known, source you talk about, you know, traditional, like Ingram Micros, TD Send X, etcetera.
Those guys have a bench of expertise and resources that companies would bring in to bring additional insight for, you know, swim lane and technology, etcetera. That’s the easiest way I’ve heard it. Hey. This is my resource for my technology distributor.
They got they have a lot of depth, a lot of certifications.
And they get to see a lot of different things with different clients. So I invited them to join our our conversation today to be an additional resource for us. That’s the simplest way, the most direct, and it I’ve never seen it backfire.
And then what it also does is it gives you an avenue to expand into the other resources that, hey, this is my guy that that works in cybersecurity.
But we also they also have, you know, I have resources that have depth in CX and cloud and network. And that just is another way to help expand your purse, your, perception change, right, inside those organizations that you have been put inside a box. So it’s a force multiplier way to introduce it and then expand into that ecosystem that you that you have access to.
Transition to Q&A Session
Doug, I’ll hand it over to you for some of the additional questions that we can pull out, and we we can figure out who’s gonna take them on.
Thanks, Koby. We’ve got three Telarus leaders in house today, Tim Bassett, Josh Lupresto, and Koby Phillips, all discussing the best practices observed among our most successful advisers. And we’ve got sound effects, and we’ve got props. We need to make a little bit more use of those here.
Great job, you guys. Hey. Wanna start with a couple of questions that came in. John, earlier on, asked a question.
It was really more of a statement about the value of being vendor agnostic and what that lends to the consultative nature of what he does. Then a little bit later on, we got a question about what about the idea of charging fees? Is that something that can help build a practice? Does it take away from the idea of being agnostic consultative offering value?
How does how do fees play into what a, an adviser can do in their practice?
Sorry. Can I have just a second there, Doug?
Do you mind repeating that last Oh, yeah.
Sure. The question was asked, how is is it a good idea to charge fees for any part of the consultative or the sales process to add value to an adviser’s business?
I know, Tim. I I know that you’ll have an opinion on this. I’ll give mine. I think it’s, it varies.
Right? I’ve seen it work a ton of times. I think it’s really how you set up your own business, and how you know, what you’re looking to do. If you create a methodology that’s wide scoping and you’re doing a lot of workshops and you’re spending a lot of time and investment, and there’s an avenue to do that, then, yes.
Absolutely. If there’s, if it’s more, you know, quick hitting transactional transit you know, where you’re just kinda in and out, that might be a little bit risky because you might open yourself up to some competitive pressures to not do that. I would say it’s not to dodge the question. In my opinion, it’s it’s case by case, Tim.
Josh, I don’t know if you guys have some additional insight.
Yeah. I I would I’ll echo that, but in a different way. I think fees, there there it depends on your mindset as an adviser, and I’ve seen both work really, really fast. So fees add friction.
If it’s an if it’s another layer of approval, if it’s another thing to consider versus being a free resource and you earn you know, you you guys, of course, earn commission, then there’s less friction. There’s a easy sales pitch around how that works. Also, the opposite of that, and I’ve heard this from advisers who do charge fees, is when you charge a fee, people take you more seriously.
So I think it depends on you. The key is if you charge a fee, then you really have to be buttoned up. Your processes have to be buttoned up. Your deliverables have to be buttoned up. There’s a little bit more polish that needs to be put into the structure of your presentation, how you charge the fees, how you collect, where as an agnostic adviser where there is no fee and you’re paid on acting on behalf of the client and earning their business over the long haul.
Customer Loyalty Drivers
There’s a bit less friction there. So that maybe not as specific advice as you want.
I think it depends on you, and we’ve seen at Telarus, we’ve seen both models work very, very well.
Koby, earlier on, you mentioned that, there were four categories, that were drivers of customer loyalty. Fifty three percent was the highest, and that was the, sales experience category. Wes jumped right on that and asked, what are those other three again?
Yeah. Company and brand, product and solution, and price.
And that comes from the, the Challenger customer, which is a follow-up to the Challenger sales book. They update this, and I will tell you that the company brand and solution ebb and flow by a point one way or another. Sometimes it’s twenty, sometimes it depending on the year from, like, twenty twenty two to now. But I believe, like, the latest are nineteen nineteen nine and then fifty three.
Hey, Doug. I wanna I wanna go backwards to the fees real quick because something was put in the chat that’s that’s really important. So one of the models that is successful is a retainer or a fee that’s that’s refundable when the project is accepted.
Yes.
So another and there’s different models for that. So, I don’t wanna go too deep on it, but if I say there’s a twenty five thousand dollar or ten thousand or five thousand or whatever the fee is upfront to retain my expertise, and then if, Josh, if you decide that we’re going to proceed with the project, I’ll refund the retainer based on engaging with my firm. That also that’s a it’s a good combination of reducing the friction but commitment, and it eliminates one of the biggest issues in our business, which is people working you for free consulting.
So oftentimes, many of you probably can relate to this. In fact, some of you say, of course, but you get taken all the way to the goal line only to realize you’ve given three months, six months, nine months of free consulting. So in some cases, whether in all cases, whether you’re getting a retainer or not, you should get a commitment that you’re gonna work together, and that should be documented in writing. But if you’re gonna do the retainer upfront, you pick a fee appropriate to your hourly or to the project, get some get some commitment upfront monetarily and in writing, and then you can execute on the project. So sorry for the quick digression, but I thought that was worth pointing out.
Retainer Models in Consulting
No. That’s great.
Hey, Ed. Great. So I’m gonna be I just saw, Tim Tim just kinda threw something in there. I would say, Tim, it’s it’s gonna be, you know, variable depending on the situation.
Yes. You could definitely put that in there. I think the idea is to protect your time and interest inside of an account, and I think you guys have all the rights to do that. That’s where I’ve seen, and that’s the best practice I’ve seen is, like, hey, if you don’t use us, here’s our time.
Here’s our hourly wait, you know, wage that we put in for our consulting time that has the value.
However, if you do procure the services through us Yep.
Then this goes back through and and we’ll we get our fees accepted another way.
Sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off. No problem at all.
Great question that came in from Dreythen earlier on as well.
Obviously, Telarus consults heavily with our advisers in these processes.
Many times, we’re asked to consult also with their clients as well. Dreythen asks, what is the best way and the best circumstances under which Telarus can be brought into that sales process?
I mean Yeah.
For for that one Yeah.
Give me a give me account for one there, Koby. For that one, it goes back to the topic that we were talking about earlier of I want everybody to know the products and sub products of what we can talk about, of how we can help. And then I need the advisers to match up what are the initiatives that the customers have now or in the future. And once that match is made or a rough draft of what those matches might be, then you bring us in. And then we, you know, we have that kind of prep discussion to understand whatever it is you know about that account and about that situation, that opportunity.
And then we go in and kinda uncover and really talk about what’s the next steps in that initiative, what’s pushing this, what’s driving this, why are you asking for that? Right? It goes into Chris Voss has a great book, Never Split the Difference, where he took counterterrorism and and kind of the negotiation high strengths of that and brought it to business to just understand how to deal with the emotions of people say the things, but really what’s the why? Hey.
You told me you need to do this. Let’s uncover and let’s kinda label how you said this. But what’s the why there? What’s driving that?
It really is a great strategy because, I mean, half the time we can guess of why they might be wanting to do that, but hearing the why from customers has been mind blowing sometimes of because that the the the area that we were going down to solve does not solve the problem that they have or the why they thought they needed to do it. So the more we understand that why, it it helps us go down a right effective path.
Hey. Quick tip. You guys heard Josh mentioned the book, Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. You should read it, but also watch some YouTube videos of him role playing. And then with your team, you guys should role play some of those things in real time. I use some of those techniques in my real life.
Negotiation Techniques for Success
Most recently, I used it to renegotiate a hotel room rate because I had to I booked late, and I called and used the, hey. This is my fault. I don’t think you can help me out, and someone totally gave me a lower rate. So, read the book. You’ll be able to use it in business and in life.
Another great question from John earlier on.
Are there some general best practices around who are the best individuals within an organization to speak with about needs and solutions, and is it necessary to get to the c levels?
I would say it’s you you can have a great conversation at a director level, a VP level, and a C level. But just like anything else, it’s gotta be a concentrated conversation on what their best interest is, kind of what Josh just alluded to. What’s their why? Right?
Like, if I’m if I’m not oh, sorry. But I I am an IT director or if I could speak, I’m focused on outcomes of what my team deliverables are from that VP, from that CIO. Right? So I’m in the business.
What can you do to help me affect my day to day inside my business, make me more efficient, drive my cost down on on services that we’re already gonna procure. I might I might be insightful to where the business is going, but I’m not gonna be the driver. If I’m the VP, that’s where I’m, like, looking at business operational efficiencies and optimizations. I’m sitting there and I’m like, Josh alluded a conversation that we have a lot of great success with.
What’s your project completion percentage?
What’s the force multiplier when a project doesn’t get completed, and how far does that set your business back? And this and that. You have that kind of conversation with the VP, you’re generally gonna be invited to a conversation with the CIO because now you’re going from working in the business, in these deliverables, in all of these things that the IT teams and the VP who sits in the middle in and on. Right?
Think about that. They’re in the business and making sure all those things work, but they’re also planning on the business. Where the c levels are always on the business, how do we go from here to here, what’s not working, what do we need to change, what do we need to tweak. And so it’s really just a deliverable on the different style of conversations that you can have.
But just know, like, as you looked at it and I saw one, you know, I think it was Tim again. Thanks for being super active in the chat today.
The how do you go across without stepping on toes? Mhmm. I always ask, like, if I’m trying to go from a cybersecurity project, to a CX project, and I know I have the ability to do so with my resources, do I have the right champion inside? And simply just asking, hey, would you would you help refer me over here?
And if and make sure that it doesn’t step on their toes. There isn’t a political, you know, issue. And the worst case you’re gonna get is additional insight on that that organization. And then you get to make the decision.
Is it worth it to risk what you have or to go over? And then the other piece of it is if they won’t walk you in, you get to understand what the perception of you inside that organization is, and you get to work on changing it.
Navigating Internal Relationships
You know, I watched GI Joe as a kid. I I bet no one thought that was gonna come up on this call.
That explains a lot.
Yeah. Yes. They would do they would do those they would do all of those things. Right? And, they would always say, knowing is half the battle.
Knowing is a lot of the battle inside of these accounts, especially when you’re trying to expand across into different areas. So I would say take the take the conversation head on and ask, and then let them let that be your guide on the next move and where to make it from there.
Yeah. I think one quick thing, just, again, back to the words matter.
Referral is a fine word.
Introduction is a better word.
Yeah.
Referral is an endorsement.
Introduction is, hey. I’d like to meet Josh. Could you could you make a quick introduction? Most people will say yes to introduction.
They they think about referral because they think they have personal skin in the game. The other thing I think you should just visualize is the buyer’s table. So depending on the size of the company, SMB, mid market, mid enterprise, enterprise, this differs. Right?
So who should be in the room? Who who do you wanna connect with? Because a c level when I had a team sell into the Fortune five hundred, very often, the c level was never involved. And if they were, it was a, hey.
You take care of my team, and we can do a deal conversation. Or maybe it was a, you know, off to the side conversation with them where they were talking about business drivers. Most of the time, we are working with doers to to help fulfill the needs of the company. And the key there is, what’s the deliverable that you’re gonna provide to the people at the buyer’s table that they can take up a level?
Right? And then if you’re interacting at a c level, that’s great, but then you have to be on point with the c level. The deliverables have to be great. You have to let them know that you are working or ask for introductions to their team, and then even go downstream to an operator or the doers.
Because when when it comes time to integrate, the people who carry it out are the integrated the integration level. Right? It’s not seniors. It’s senior level.
It’s not director level. It’s integrator. So you have to have great relationships around what what we call a buyer’s table.
Yeah.
There’s a Well, here’s the sorry.
The Importance of Mutual Action Plans
I’m gonna I’m gonna jump in. Because there is a tool that mutual action plan is critical. Whenever you go in an organization that has different levels, different layers, and you’re looking for introductions in, and you can you need to have, you know, that buyer stable map or a mutual action plan. And, guys, what it’ll also do is down the road, if there is a I think we’ve all been part of this.
Somebody at the customer isn’t doing something they should do, that delay in the project. And now you’re put in a position of having to kinda snitch out where the problem is to an executive or somebody else because you’re falling behind. You put this tool into place and it just naturally shows it, and it gives you, you know, scheduled touch points to review it. Everything’s there.
We have those, you know, there’s a lot of different mutual action plans that are out there that you can go and and you’re allowed to figure out which one’s best for you. That is my number one best practice inside of a, you know, mid market to enterprise level account where there’s different layers. Put that in place, keep it up to date, and leverage it as you get get, going throughout the organization.
I just I just wanna double down on mutual action plan, meeting minutes, some of these things that look like busy work.
Discipline in Sales Practices
I’m telling you, Josh and Colby know this. Breeders.
They know this. The discipline makes the difference. You know, Jocko Willink has, quote, discipline equals freedom. It’s the same in sales. When you get disciplined in some of these things that just seem like busy work or overkill, I’m telling you, it separates from you it separates you from the competition. It differentiates you. You’ll win more, faster at higher dollar volumes, and you’ll deliver tremendous value for your clients.
Couple couple quick pro tips, to relate to this. So one of the things that we talk about on the podcast, we can drop there’s a couple things that we’re adding to this talk tracks. You know, we normally do a three part talk track. One of the pieces that we now talk about on there is business blueprints lessons from leaders about some of the things that that have been beneficial for partners.
We can throw the links to that for in the chat. We always love follow and subscribe. Drops every Wednesday. There’s one dropping tomorrow where we talk about some of these business blueprints that our partners have tried that have been successful, some that have failed, some they have struggled through.
So you kinda get to learn from these people that have have built these businesses up. So regardless of where you are at the growth and the size of your business, you can hear pro tips that have worked from other partners. And one of the ones, that we’ve talked about on a previous one is, you know, the the best time I know we don’t we don’t call it the referral, we call it the introduction, but the best time to get that is after or towards the tail end or the mid of a completion of a project. Right?
Strategies for Engaging Clients
Hey. I’ve I’ve I’ve helped you in this initiative to, you know, some of this complex cloud migration, some of this complex c this complex network redesign.
What else who’s it who’s responsible for this area of the business? Right? And maybe you’ve scoped that out on LinkedIn. Maybe you already have a little bit of an idea.
I saw a note in there. LinkedIn is a great tip for that. So have it in frame of who you want to to ask for for that. That’s one strategy that I’ve seen be effective.
The second strategy, and and and Tim and Koby were just talking about it, is sometimes on these big complex projects, we’ve seen we’ve seen them just kinda stall out because nobody at the customer side wants to make a decision. They gotta pull a lot of people in.
Silly little thing that’s been really effective for partners is set up a recurring meeting every other week, every week. And those those customers are accountable to show up to that meeting. And you know what happens every single time. Hey. You know what?
Let me bring somebody else into this call. Oh, let me bring somebody else into this call. And that has knocked down barriers over and over again. I saw a partner do that.
This is the craziest thing. And we just we can get those initiatives done faster because we have some of those people. And guess what? Everybody feels bought into the process.
They didn’t feel that IT was doing this thing and and security wasn’t included. Everybody’s included. And not everybody needs to be on every call, but drop in, drop out. And I think it helps pop some of those initiatives.
And so those are the things that we’re we’re starting to try to talk about, as we ingrain into the podcast and add some different tracks to it.
Inclusion in Meetings for Better Outcomes
So not just so not just introduced, but included. Right? Who’s in the room? Who’s not in the room?
So just asking a subtle question, Josh, like you just did, and I don’t know if people picked up on it. But at the end of the meeting, you can say, hey. Who else should be included next week? You know, in my experience, normally, at this stage, we’d we’d like to bring marketing in just to get their overall view on the customer experience, or we’d like to bring security in just to touch base on security just to make sure that they’re okay with with the next steps.
Then before you know it, you have someone from every department at the buyer’s table, and that’s a great thing.
Yeah. This is such good information, and I am so out of time here. But, Tim, while I’ve got you here, I’ve gotta have you weigh in on the Telarus tech trends report and its value to advisers, especially at this time of year in trying to finish out.
Yeah. Look.
I happen to have one right here, Doug, as another I thought you might.
So, look, the tech trends report has become widely popular as a source of information, not only for you as advisers, but also in this case, you know, your logo here, it’s something that you can brand and use as a conversational piece to help your clients set their road map for next year using some of the information contained in the report. In fact, many advisers who are are mailing this out or using it, they’re even putting a post it note on it saying, hey, Koby. Based on our last conversation, check out page twelve or page two. Let’s discuss this in our next meeting. So use the tools available to generate conversation, create authority and awareness for your practice.
We love producing this content for you, and we know it’s very, very effective. So I encourage you to go ahead and and download it and put it to practice in your business.
Thanks again to Tim Bosa, Josh Lupresto, and Koby Phillips for today’s HITT training. Great information, guys. They’ll continue to be in chat window for the rest of the call here if you wanna send something else in. Really appreciate the information.
Last I One last thought, though.
Go ahead, Doug.
Promise. That’s four.
Maximizing Resources at Telarus University
Telarus University, guys.
There is a ton a ton of value that is already in there. We’re continuing to pump it. Rachel is on. She was here to field any questions around it, but, between the three of us, I don’t think we yielded much time there.
The passion comes through on from the entire organization. We’ve been looking for a better way to get that to you, whenever you need it at, you know, whatever time it is. Telarus University is definitely that answer, and we’re gonna continue to build on that platform. And, Doug, I am all out of words now.