Predictable Revenue - Book Review
Hello All -
Just finished book 6 of the year. My goal is still 52! Predictable Revenue was a good book if you have any kind of sales at your company. I recommend the read for sure if you own a business, if not it could be a pass. A quick shout out to Nii Ahene for buying me this book. Nii has one of the most impressive minds and companies I have ever come across.
Also, I don’t think I will continue because it was so much work, but I really went all out on this book report. Next book look for a more condensed version. My reports are not a full book report or review, if you want that go to Amazon. My reports are basically just my takeaways. If you want to be taken off the list or would like anyone added to the list please let me know.
Predictable Revenue - Arron Ross
- Cold Calling 2.0 (CC2) is the new method of cold calling, where you don’t cold call. Basically, you send a short email to about 25-100 people asking for a referral to the person who is your ideal buyer within their organization. The email should be short and text only. The guys who wrote predictable revenue worked at the software firm Sales Force so they might email the CEO of a company, his executive assistant, a few sales people, etc. The email would ask for a referral to the Sales Manager. Even if they had the sales managers email they would email asking for a referral to him/her. You send these emails out before you leave work and in the morning, you should have about a 10% response rate of leads that you can talk to. See the photos below:
- Use Cold Calling 2.0 to build hard money and JV pipeline:
The way that I can see our company using CC2 is focused around our B2B efforts as CC2 seems to be harder to implement into a B2C setting unless the lists of targeted consumers are easy to buy or can be cultivated by your marketing team. One way that we may try to use CC2 is to scrape lists of folks flipping homes and use the CC2 methods to try to get them signed up for hard money loans or Joint Ventures on their flips. Keeping in mind that sales people are naturally more distractible than a labrador in a crowd of new people I am thinking about putting this all on one person's plate. I know that the book talks about the need for split roles in the sales system but as a small company I think we can get an accurate test if the CC2 system will work for us with 1 person running the whole program. Although time is our most valuable resource I think this program is worth risking my time on training this person. The first sales person will be paid commission only for the first few month with commissions based on initial successes, not the closed business. Then they will change to base + commission.
- The book was written by the Sales Force guys but we use Podio and will stick with that for our entire automation flow.
- Be creative building lists and buying lists. Traditional list brokers usually suck. Potentially buy lists from Podcasts, etc.
- Predictable Revenue suggests that scripted calls are a bad idea but rather having a plan going into the call is the way to go. They use the AAA Calling planning system over scripted calls. Answers, what answers do you want to learn from the call? Attitudes, what attitudes do you want the prospect to feel? Actions, what actions do you want to happen after the call?
- The book talks about ways to build lists via marketing and ways to start building an audience of followers who are interested in what you are talking about. My plan is to start holding webinars. The goal is not to sell my products but purely to educate and get people on my list. One starting point to get people to my webinars will be to increase my presence on blogs such as Bigger Pockets.
- Webinars are huge! Start doing them on a regular schedule.
- Predictable Revenue talks about ensuring that you break your sales team into different functions. Sales people are naturally ADHD and are easily distracted. The fewer tasks or responsibilities you can give them the better. If at all possible, just have them sell into one vertical. The roles of the sales teams are in the picture below:
- Bringing on a Sales Development Rep and allowing them to do the ground work for Dillon on buyers but also on deals could be a good idea. Or the person above mentioned to run CC2 might just be an SDR for Dillon handing off hard money opportunities.
- Predictable Revenue recommends building your direct client based sales team first before working on the development of channel partners. In my business I have seen this to be true most of the time but not always. For example, in my foreclosure business, I started working with Countrywide and Wells Fargo as my first clients which could be considered channel partners. Conversely, in the same business when I tried to go after the high-end foreclosure market my same clients wouldn’t give me deals because I hadn’t established myself as an expert directly with consumers. Right now we are building a turnkey business and are building out client direct business first but are focusing about 25% of our energy on channel partners now such as HomeUnion / Home Union, Real Wealth Network, Hipster Investments, Maverick Investor Group, and Cash Flow Savvy. Getting the right channel partners allows you to focus on fewer key relationships and the fundamentals of what matters most in your business so I am slightly going against the advice of this book.
- Only go after your ideal client! In our business, that means make sure there is real motivation! We have been in the home flipping business for a long time and my acquisition guys have always waisted a lot of their time on deals where the seller and or agent isn't motivated. Sure we have bought some traditional sales before but I have always pushed back on these deals. Predictable Revenue suggests that you should literally just skip over these deals. So Sean/Dillon, stop looking at regular traditional sales deals! Motivation (short sale, REO, death, divorce) no regular sellers.
- Get Out of Excel! This is what I hear over and over in management and books on systemization but here it is again. Get Out of Excel! Basically, what they are saying is that all of your work flows, systems, and things you do need to be in a system. The goal would be to have everything in 1 system but that probably isn’t possible. One easy start is to move all your passwords to a program like Last Pass. The books mentions that your team is really going to push back on you about getting everything into a system but you have to! Don’t pay sales people if all the data you need isn’t in your sales automation system. If data is missing while reviewing something in a meeting STOP the entire meeting while the person responsible updates it. It is that important. Lead by example. Your team will only adopt these systems as much as you do. Dillon get on it!
- When you are tracking things make sure you focus on results vs activities. An activity would be something like dials per day. A result would be a new qualified lead. Escrow paperwork would be an activity, getting a contingency removal or request for repairs finished would be a result. Focus on results and track them!
- The best sales people you will every have are the ones you grow internally not the ones you hire. That is why having a career path for your sales people is so important. People come into the organization as an inbound Sales Development Rep only responding to inbound leads generated by marketing until they turn those leads into a qualified opportunity and hand them off to an Account Executive. Then they might move to an Outbound Sales Development Rep running Cold Calling 2.0 generating qualified opportunities to hand to the Out Bound Sales Executives. The person would be promoted from the Sales Development Rep side to in my opinion (The book did not cover the process of moving people up well.) a Customer Success Manager who is responsible for ensuring the client reaches their goals and getting referrals for the Account Executives to Close. Finally, probably the highest paid position is Account Executive, which is another name for Sales. The Account Executive seems to be the final role in the sales process before you move to management. The book mentions that if you are an ultra hyper growth company you may be able to move people through positions in 6-9 months and if you are just fast growth then 12-14 months. If you are slower growth 2-4 years to move roles is more the norm. I REALLY like the idea of being able to give people a career path inside of an origination.
The End.
Let me know what you think!
- James Charles Paine