Andrew Ballard - Your Opinion Doesn't Matter

Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care. Welcome to the Exit Coach radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one. At Exit coach tip of the day on Exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Thanks so much for joining us. A pleasure to have you with us today. My next guest is Andrew Ballard, and he's with Marketing Solutions. He is the president and chief growth strategist of firms out of Seattle, Washington. And Mr. Ballads, he's the president of Marketing Solutions, a company that develops research-based growth strategies for small businesses, and he's also an author and part-time faculty member at the University of Washington. Andrew's going to talk about growing your small business and strategies that you can use that have been researched. So Andrew, welcome to the show and thanks for joining us today. Well, thanks for having me, Bill. Pleasure to have you on the show. Tell us a little bit about yourself and and marketing solutions, how it got started, that type of thing. Well, I, the beginning of my career in, in growth and and marketing, uh, really was, it falls under the category of better lucky than good. Uh, when I was in college, I kept switching my majors because I didn't know what the heck I wanted to do. So I started with psychology, I moved to economics, and then I ended out in communications. And what I know now that I didn't know then was that, uh, the intersection of marketing is those three disciplines. And so that just really worked out well. From there I went into corporate and mainly advertising and media companies. I did sports marketing for the NFL, an NFL team, and since then, since starting my company 18 years ago, I've held, I'd say every, every position in the marketing food chain from sales rep to CEO, and I think what my clients like about that most is that Uh, because I've been the CEO of a couple of companies, I come to their, um, growth strategies and, and helping them with their business with, uh, a broader perspective than just marketing. I'm really thinking enterprise wide and so that, that's kind of the background and, and, um, marketing solutions, as I said, we've been around for 18 years and, um, our focus really is helping small second stage businesses accelerate revenue generation and a lot of them are, you know, they have an exit in sight. And so we're working with a lot of people and helping them build value in their companies before they transfer ownership. Excellent, you know, it's, it's like one of those things, you know how when you get ready to sell your house, you get it all spruced up and painted and everything looks perfect and you go, why didn't I do this while I was living in the house? Yeah. Well, this place looks so nice. I don't want to move out now. Well, that's and that's true of a lot of business owners too. They are saying that is that now that I've got my management in place and my marketing in place and my business is running like a top, why can't I just go part time and be, you know, and hold on to it? And a lot of business owners will need to do that. But let's talk about what you said about enterprise wide marketing interesting term our listeners might not be familiar with what you mean by that. So can you explain that? Sure, so most of the people, uh, and companies working in MySpace, uh, marketing, advertising, growth, um, they're very focused on the traditional functions of marketing, you know, branding, generating awareness for your business, generating leads, and then converting those leads into customers, and that's, uh, the traditional marketing model. When we, um, begin an engagement with one of our new clients, whether they're ready to exit. You know, in a couple of years or maybe they're thinking 10 years out, we look at the entire enterprise. We don't think about it myopically just in terms of marketing. So we approach growth knowing that a business needs to have a functional balance across all of the different operational areas. And so I'm not just looking at marketing or lead generation or branding. I'm looking at the operations that are in support. Of attracting and retaining customers, sometimes that involves people. It may often involve technology. There may need to be work on their, their product portfolio or their service bundle. So we don't, we don't fixate just on traditional marketing. We look at the entire business. That makes a lot of sense, and that's what I thought you meant by that. So even right down to the The box that your that your product is shipped in, is that going to be something that somebody might say, Hey, you should look at this. So it all points lead back to a new potential customer or sale or a repeat sale. Is that what you're getting at? Absolutely. And a customer's experience with your product, your service, or your people, you really have to look beyond just the traditional components of marketing. And, um, one of the best ways you do that is to really have a good understanding of what your customers, what your best customers care about. And do many companies understand that when you, when you first talk with new company new customers, do they understand that or do they get it? I, I, I don't think so. Um, usually when my phone rings, somebody wants, um, some sort of a marketing strategy to make the cash register ring or to generate new business. And they automatically default to, well, we've got to do more promotion, more advertising. I need to be better with my online marketing communications, etc. But the problem might not have anything to do with their promotion. The problem might have to do with the way they position themselves and maybe they're not doing a good enough job distinguishing their brand from others that are competing in their space, or maybe the product is outdated and competitors are offering more attractive alternatives. It could be something along the lines of service, um. Uh, what we see often is we're able to increase revenues for clients sometimes without even adding a new customer because maybe their retention rates are low or they don't have opportunities to upsell or cross sell their existing customers. Really it all boils down to delivering an exceptional customer experience. And often the experiences customers have with a brand, a product or a service go way beyond traditional marketing. And so that's why we really look at it from a larger perspective. But Bill, you're very intuitive when you say, do they get it? And, and they don't, they're thinking more myopically, you know, what's going to make the cash register ring? And there may be, you know, there may be other leaks in the bucket that they're not even aware of. Yeah, it sounds like it it really, and for most business owners, you know, to be fair to them, of course they're involved in, you know, they're in the forest. I mean they're basically Uh, at the line of fire every day they're dealing with all these issues, but someone like yourself and your team can come in with a fresh set of eyes and a a microscope to really delve into these different things. Is one of your first, uh, I'm I'm going to take a stab at this, but is one of your first ways you get involved with them to be to go through a customer experience with them, buy a product and see what happens? You know that that's an excellent point, and rarely do we do that on the front end. Usually we're doing that more in the middle stage of developing a growth program. The first thing we do. I go through a discovery process to try to get to know their business as well or better than they do and you're right, we try to do it from a different perspective. We come in with a blank canvas and we're a lot more objective and we're going to see things that they're not going to see because they're living in the day to day and they're more operationally focused, and we come with, you know, more of, we start at least with more of a higher level strategic purview. And work our way down into street level operations, but um we're typically asking questions that they hadn't really thought of before, and that's usually what's, you know, generates a rich conversation. And after really understanding them and going through our discovery process, then we delve into um interviewing their customers and studying their competitors and when we study their competitors. Um, we try to experience their competitors the way their, um, their customers would experience them, and when we secret shop our client's top competitors, we also secret shop our client. And so that kind of gets back to your original point, but it's more of a midpoint than a front end. That that is fascinating though. I mean that must create some very eye opening results for for business owners to see what your experience has been not only with their product and service, but with their competitors' products and services, and that's a great way to really point out the differences in what's happening in the marketplace. In your experience, what's the greatest business challenge with regards to increasing sales revenue for your clients? Well, you know, that's kind of a toss up. There's two big things that, uh, we come across most often, uh, things that really cause business owners heartburn. And the first is the lack of focus. Um, I, I don't know, there was a movie and I'm forgetting the name of it, but, uh, there was this dog and he goes, bird, and he just kind of gets off on what he was doing and he's completely on a new track. The second is the lack of data. So with regard to the lack of focus, um, that's a big issue because if you don't have a vision or a North star that keeps you on track, um, then you can really get fragmented and distracted in the way that you operate and the way you make, um, you know, resource allocation, and, you know, small business owners, they have two pots of resources. They've got financial and human capital. And so without that North Star, it's easy to get off track. With regard to the data, our experience is, and we've run hundreds of companies through our process, is that they really lack the data or insights they need to make informed decisions. And so they're acting on unproven assumptions. And you know that's what puts their capital or their business at risk, um, acting on what they believe is true, and our research based process really exposes, um, um, those unfounded, um, assumptions and usually leads us to, um, kind of get them back on the right track. And again it's based on, um, and this is what the book is on, but you know, using the voice of the customer to grow your business and not relying on, on your own attitudes. Yeah, the book is called Your Opinion Doesn't Matter. It's been a great, great name for a book on, on marketing and fact-based research. I love that because it doesn't and the end result, it's whose opinion matters, the customer, right? It's the customer's opinion. In fact, my wife actually named the book because 25 years now she's been hearing me say basically the same thing before we accept a new client, and I'll just be very straightforward and say, hey, listen. You know, unless you're willing to buy, write a check and buy up all of your own inventory, your opinion doesn't matter. It's, it's your customer's opinion that really counts and, you know, it's, it's what they care about and just as importantly, you know, what they don't care about that matters and that should be driving, uh, your business and marketing strategy. Those are words to live by for a business owner, by the way. I mean, sometimes their customer, well they're while they're operating their business, their customers, the person that's buying their product or service, when they're selling their business, their customer is going to be the person buying their business, and it's a whole different approach. Your opinion doesn't matter what the business is worth. Why it's such a great, it's going to be what the opinion of the of the buyer is, whether it's a customer at the retail level or at the at the business level so great information. And how do you help we talk, you talked about lack of focus and lack of vision and getting that data together and that's so important uh uh how do you get business owners to get back into having that focus and that vision? Well, dealing with that challenge, uh, we find that many businesses don't have a long range vision of their preferred future. So we'll work with them at the beginning to establish a vision, um, so that they have a North Star, and from there we'll have them take, um, um, kind of stock of their current situation. And a typical tool is a situation analysis. So, um, from there it's a matter of drawing a path from where they are today. Based on that situation analysis to where they want to be tomorrow, which is articulated through their vision. And once we have that path, and we just call it a strategic path, uh, toward their growth, uh, we just, um, have them and encourage them to stay fixated on that path like a laser beam. So that that's really the area that we help them deal with that. And in terms of, so that that gets to the focus in terms of the other challenge I alluded to in terms of the data or the lack of data and I touched on this briefly but we research their customers, we research their competitors. And we really understand their industry and we benchmark our clients um against best practices and ratio averages in their industry so we know where they have opportunities to grow, you know, where they may be underperforming on their industry or whether, you know, where they're overperforming and maybe there's a leverage point there. But when they have that data, um, they're able to make a better informed strategic business decisions on that real-time and reliable market intelligence. And I always joke, um, with clients. I said if I was Yoda talking to Luke Skywalker, I'd say there is no guessing, only knowing. But and you know, I would imagine with the information that you come in with, it helps business owners to be able to assess themselves against benchmarks of companies that you've already evaluated. So it sounds to me like you come in with with fresh eyes and a magnifying glass to really look at the existing process, a microscope to even go deeper into those, and the telescope to look far and focus and bring people back into focus on all these types of things. Um, it sounds like, I mean, a lot of business owners had that vision at one point, but along the way they may have forgotten or lost it or maybe they accomplished that goal and they didn't set a new one. Is that what you're finding out there? I really am, especially when a company is early stage before they're thinking about exit, um, they, without the long range purview, maybe some of the business and branding and marketing strategies that they're employing. Um, actually could hurt them from the ultimate exit rather than than help them, you know, they might be so focused on top line revenue and reducing their tax burden that they don't think about what, what it takes to set their business up long term for an optimal sale, you know, like you said before, what they think the value of their business is is irrelevant. Um, it's what the buyer thinks, and I've never run into a A business owner, um, that didn't have, um, an exaggerated value or an an inflated view of what their business was really worth, you know, they think, hey, I should be able to sell this for $5 million and you know, an exit strategist or a coach like yourself might come in and they take a look and it says, well, you know, you're not at $5 million you're not even at $2 million and so that's where we come in and working with exit strategists to help them. Uh, work on both top and bottom line growth strategies. I love it. I love what you're saying and the work that you do. It sounds fascinating, and the book is called Your Opinion Doesn't Matter. It's been praised in both corporate and academic circles as being innovative and insightful, and it's all about how to use the voice of your customer to grow your business. You can go to Amazon and type your opinion doesn't matter for a special offer on the book. And Andrew, how do people get in touch with you, find your website, that type of thing. The the website they can get to me through email. So the website is MKTG-solutions.com. So that's the abbreviation of marketing the M as in Mary, K as in kite, T as in Tom, G as in George, and then a hyphen, not an underscore, and then the word solutions with an S on the end of it.com. Great information they can find out information about um the, our, my emails in there, etc. I look forward to getting on and checking it all out and of course reading the book and I hope that you'll come back again sometime and we can go deeper on the topic because it is fascinating and just the the whole moniker your opinion doesn't matter, deserves a place on Exit coach Radio. As a as a in quotes, we'll quote you on it, Andrew. So thanks very much for joining us today. It's been a real pleasure. Oh thank you, Bill. It's been my pleasure. We're gonna take a short break. We'll be right back after this. Please stay with us. Just thinking about what will happen to your business if you're gone keep you awake at night? Will you get the price you need from your business to carry you through retirement? The BEI Network of Exit Planning Professions is the world's leading advisor network with the power to help business owners transition out of business on their own timeline and terms. Ask your most trusted advisor to create a BEI plan for you, or visit us at exitplanning.com. That's exitplanning.com. You're listening to Exit Coachradio.com, the information station for age 50 plus business owners, where we're interviewing top advisors for their best tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. We upload new one minute tips every day. Exitcoachradio.com. Come listen for a minute. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.