Embarking on a transformative leadership adventure, I've learned that letting go can sometimes be the strongest grip on success. Join me as I peel back the layers of my entrepreneurial evolution, from a hands-on founder to someone who orchestrates from the wings. We'll examine the delicate balancing act of entrusting a team with day-to-day operations while still steering the ship through the choppy waters of critical decision-making and the cultivation of fruitful vendor relationships. Listen to the raw truths of our current tribulations, especially with our sales team feeling the absence of our star player. Discover how we're navigating this terrain by incorporating virtual assistance and reassessing our sales strategies to keep our business on the ascent.
In this candid conversation, we take a magnifying glass to the intricate workings of a business's heart: its people. I share the trials of aligning strengths, filling operational voids, and maintaining the fiscal wisdom needed for a prosperous future. It's about more than just weathering the storm; it's about embracing uncertainty and making calculated choices that propel us forward. I'm laying out the roadmap we're using to pinpoint our blind spots, leverage our collective power, and calibrate our compass towards sustained growth. Tune in for an exploration of tenacity, adaptability, and the relentless quest for excellence that defines our journey.
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Embarking on a transformative leadership adventure, I've learned that letting go can sometimes be the strongest grip on success. Join me as I peel back the layers of my entrepreneurial evolution, from a hands-on founder to someone who orchestrates from the wings. We'll examine the delicate balancing act of entrusting a team with day-to-day operations while still steering the ship through the choppy waters of critical decision-making and the cultivation of fruitful vendor relationships. Listen to the raw truths of our current tribulations, especially with our sales team feeling the absence of our star player. Discover how we're navigating this terrain by incorporating virtual assistance and reassessing our sales strategies to keep our business on the ascent.
In this candid conversation, we take a magnifying glass to the intricate workings of a business's heart: its people. I share the trials of aligning strengths, filling operational voids, and maintaining the fiscal wisdom needed for a prosperous future. It's about more than just weathering the storm; it's about embracing uncertainty and making calculated choices that propel us forward. I'm laying out the roadmap we're using to pinpoint our blind spots, leverage our collective power, and calibrate our compass towards sustained growth. Tune in for an exploration of tenacity, adaptability, and the relentless quest for excellence that defines our journey.
Business Buyers Club Enter 070499 at checkout.
Network and connect with other Acquisition Experts!
Learn DIY Due Diligence Get training from an Acquisitions Attorney to become a DIY Due Diligence buyer!
Hey, good morning. So today we're going to talk about hands-off ownership, management, trust, and I don't know what the right arrangements are. So, in case I haven't said it a hundred times before, I'm a very hands-off owner. I am probably making decisions on 5% of the business components when it comes to, like, if someone needs to get hired, someone needs to get let go. Fortunately, neither of those have happened a whole lot in the past six months. But my head management team will say like, hey, we're shorthanded on the weekend morning shift or we need one or two more instructors and we want to reach out to these people because they're the kind of people that we want to have. Is that okay? Do we have budget for this? And they tell me what they're thinking and then I give the thumbs up or thumbs down and I like that.
Speaker 1:
When it comes to vendors and finding a new vendor, that's something that I've taken on more of. I'm taking on probably five, maybe 10% of the day-to-day operational weight. It's probably 5%, in all honesty, and that's worked pretty well. It's taken some time to get there, but that's where we're at now. One area where it's a little bit tough is now, with that 5%, I have the majority vote when it comes to where we go from here, but 5% of the time, energy is put on my shoulders. Something that I'm kind of stuck on right now is we're so I don't have my OG, my top sales rep guy, anymore. He's gone, unfortunately. It's been tough. We miss him, but he's doing great in a career beyond what we could offer him. So I hired an agency. They provided a VA to do some sales work and they're basically working the leads, the follow-up, the appointment setting, the booking, making sure that leads show up to the studio, and at first we were having a tough time converting those, and now the leads are starting to pick up. The conversion rates are higher. They're back to par with where we need them to be, like that 50%, 40% to 50% conversion rate, which is good.
Speaker 1:
However, where we're getting stuck right now is we may, they're showing up but they're not buying, and that could be a few things. It could be the classic hey, our lead is showing up because they're just interested in some free class. They're not teed up to be a sale. They're teed up to show, but then they're not well-qualified, well-excited, well-prepared to be in a buying status, and so the closing rate has dropped quite a bit to be in a buying status and so the closing rate has dropped quite a bit. Normally we're at like a 60%. We're at like a 20%, 20 to 30% over the past week or past like one to three weeks, and so it's down quite a bit. That could be because the leads are not being qualified, they're not being prepared and I don't want to say juice, but they're not getting like thrilled about coming in and getting into a buying mentality of making this change. It could be a buying cycle because we're selling memberships and only right now are we starting to sell the challenge.
Speaker 1:
It could be that my sales team has gotten rusty and they're used to having slim dung leads ready to close and so they look better as a salesperson when really it was the setter that was the solid person, my old salesperson that was the setter, and so it's hard to like dissect as to all that's going on and I'm seeing like the value of having a high quality employee Before I had, I mean just the contrast. Right now I have someone who's been an appointment setter for a couple of years for various industries, a VA over in the Philippines. She has a good attitude. She puts in the effort, some of the details get dropped, like about the class times, about how to do a fantastic handoff from her booking to the actual in-club experience, and so it's been tricky. But like the, the guy I had before he's been, he had like 10 years of actual like personal training sales experience at like at like an la fitness, a lifetime fitness, like he's used to selling memberships, and like 800 personal training packages, handling objections, leading sales teams, setting goals, meeting quota, like he was like an all-around, like stellar salesperson and he he's a high energy, high talkative person but when he's in like sales mode he's very good at being calm, kind of dumbs it down so that he's not intimidating. As a gym salesperson he uses like easier to understand words and not fancy talking points. So all that to say like I miss having my, my, my A plus sales rep Like he was. He was I didn't realize how good he was until he's gone, and so now I'm in a pickle.
Speaker 1:
My manager is saying like hey, we're really struggling with this new sales layout. You know we missed the OG guy. We can't get him back. That's not a possibility. So let's not pretend we can get him back, but like this new salesperson, they're just not with it, they're not figuring out how it all works, and so, historically, my manager has made like the call when it comes to like we need this, we need that, we need this, we need that, like that's been the dynamic.
Speaker 1:
And right now, part of me is like, okay, well, I'm on contract, I have another four or five weeks with this agency that placed my appointment center, and so, whether we like it or not, I'm paying 550 bucks a week for this service. That's not really performing. And so now here's my conundrum I can either pay for it's a three-month contract for two months in, so it's a very low commitment and plus, I don't think it'd be worth hardballing them and trying to stiff them and get out of it. So I'm just going to suck it up and whatever. I'm just stuck for another month. I'm willing to accept that as my my current assumption.
Speaker 1:
So what do I do? I could either work with a below average performing setter service and just kind of squeeze out whatever we can and have crummy, crummy results, crummy employee engagement from an in-club studio team. I could just pay the cost and have the agency do zero work and tell them like, hey, sorry, we just don't want you to do anything, don't touch the leads. We'll pay you whatever, but do not provide any more value because we're going to do it in-house. And then now I'm paying for something I get nothing from and I would be paying for like an in-club or in-house setter to do like a commission only booking thing, which I'm a fan of. That's one thing. So I have an in-house manager who's done business development before. He's used to cold calling, cold emailing, working uphill to do the grind and make sales appointments and stuff.
Speaker 1:
And there's a few ways I could either do like a salary and but then they don't have any incentive to perform, but then they are going to hopefully consistently show up. Or I do like a commission only performance thing where, like, they have zero income but they make like 100 bucks per lead. That shows. Oh, hey, guys, excuse me. But then they're like oh, these are suck lead. That shows. Oh, hang on, excuse me. But then they're like oh, these are sucky leads, I'm not going to work anymore, I'm going to keep just focusing on my day job. I'm not going to work these leads. And now I'm out out of pocket because someone like doesn't, they're expecting like the leads to be like decently tricky to work. But if like the leads to be like, decently tricky to work, but I feel like the leads are a lot harder to work than like, oh, this sex, I'm out, I'm not gonna do this commission, only whatever, and I'm not gonna try and that's a risk that I would be taking that this commission only person is willing to, to take what I'm providing them and run with it.
Speaker 1:
Um, the third option is I, I completely find a new. I swap out the current rep from the agency with the new rep. So get a new person, but I'm still paying the agency fee. But then there's ramp up for the new person learning what our studio is like, learning our price structure, learning our studio nuances. When people ask like, hey, do you have bathrooms, do you have showers, how does parking work? How do cancellation agreements work? Like all the nuances that it's taken I probably took three weeks for the rep to figure out how our studios, nitty-gritty details, work.
Speaker 1:
I want to ramp somebody up all over again, like we're only two months in, but they're not. They're not figuring out some stuff. So I, I don't know. That's the conundrum I'm at right now. And so my management team was like hey, this is not working. We got to pivot. I'm like, okay, well, you make 90 to 95% of the operational calls in. I don't want to pony up the money to double up, so I'm stuck. I'm just sharing the stuck spot. I don't have a solution right now and that's fine. So that's where that's at.
Speaker 1:
My personal skill set is sales marketing systems seeing the gaps in the whole operation, plugging the holes, connecting the people and then letting those people that are very good at what they do fill in the little that makes sure the whole thing works. In general, I can see the big picture, but the nitty-gritty details? I can fill those in, but I don't instantly see the nitty-gritty detail. So that's a trying to work with my skill set in my and not act like I don't have blind spots, work with my team's strengths and skill sets and also acknowledge that they've got blind spots too and I don't know the right dynamic and all that.
Speaker 1:
And at the end of the day, what can we afford? Where is the risk? What's the upside, what's the downside, what's the downside and what's in the long term? What's going to be valuable? What's going to have the biggest six months from now? What am I going to be happy we did. What am I going to be bummed that we did and what would be like yep, this was the right call, that was the wrong call and I don don't know the right. I don't know the answer to that, and that's okay. Uh, I'm just gonna stop there because it's time to continue on with the morning, but wanted to share, even when things are in motion where you don't know it's all gonna go. So that's where we're at, that's where we're going. Let's make it a great friday rock and roll.
