Cold Star Project

What does it take to charge a $50K setup fee for working with your firm? Jim Padilla of Gain The Edge is on the Cold Star Project to share his experience and the details of what it takes to do so.  

* the value 

* the mindset 

* the sale you first have to make to yourself 

* the credibility elements 

* the process necessary to work with the buyer  

are key and all explained in this episode. Just wanting to bill big fees is not enough: you need to have several pieces of the puzzle in place to be able to take this impactful step. 

 Book a call with the experts at Cold Star:  http://bit.ly/talktocoldstar 

"If you are not growing, if you are struggling to find clients or actually get something out of your partnerships and relationships, then you aren’t doing a good enough job making it clear what you do best."  

Geographic proximity can be a huge factor in recommendations and referrals, so getting around this issue was key to TJ's success. Specialization and partnerships, he discovered, were the tools to get the clients he wanted.  

Right Hook Digital partner Scott Seward is on the Cold Star Project to share what it took to build his agency to consistently well over $200K MRR. It's a story with mergers & acquisitions, realization that the internal processes were not up to further growth, contrarian thinking in lengthening rather than shortening the sales process, and a lot more. 

Agency work is not just about sales, and Scott has learned this lesson well. The right systems need to be in place to support those sales figures, or else customers will leave when fulfillment of the service is lacking.

If you're ready to get serious about your processes and systems, talk to us at Cold Star Tech https://www.coldstartech.com 

In the beginning you'll cobble together a solution for your customer's problem, using a patchwork of apps and systems. But if you're solving a genuinely important problem for your target market, you'll soon discover this is no longer good enough: it's inefficient, clumsy, and frankly unappealing. When you arrive at that moment, what will you do?  

Jonathan Kiekbusch of SEO Butler knew he not only could but had to improve the infrastructure of his solution, so he would be able to provide a much better experience and outcome for his customers. The answer was to invest a significant amount of cash into a complete redesign of the company's website...and the systems behind it.  

Sure, you can go around identifying symptoms and taking actions to resolve them. But you're not identifying or reaching or handling the root problem.

The things we think are problems are frequently only surface level symptoms of those deeper problems. It's easier than you think to get distracted and make this error.

We also look at a proven problem solving methodology, so you can get the idea of how to use it in your business.

Ready to have outside expert perspective look at your situation? Book a call with us at bit.ly/talktocoldstar

 Attila Dobai is Manager of Strategy and Innovation at Avis, the vehicle rental company. I thought this would be an ossified industry--after all, it has been around forever--but was surprised at how interested they are in continuous improvement. There are about 50 six sigma improvement professionals there.  

Attila is on the Cold Star Project to share details of an innovation he has recently made at Avis, giving access to a new distribution channel for truck rentals with a major retailer. We also discuss his proprietary DOITS continuous improvement methodology.  

Traditional problem solving methods for efficiency and effectiveness in service or transactional businesses are difficult to implement and sustain or scale.  They often focus solely on cost reduction thus missing opportunities for real growth.   

I have developed the DOITS method for continuous improvement in service/transactional businesses.    

DOITS stands for:  

Define - define the problem to be solved and the optimal problem solving method (fire fighting or stop gap, efficiency/effectiveness improvement to margin, or innovation).  

Observe - observe the problem and identify potential root causes in context.    

Improve - start improving with a mentality that failure is ok.  We want small rapid failure to discover the best solution.  

Test - Test the improvement using solid data analytics.  Did the improvement drive the desired outcome.  

Sustain/Scale - If your goal is to maintain an improvement then implement methods to sustain it and scale it for the rest of the business.  If your goal is to grow then implement methods to scale the solution beyond your business.   

Continuous improvement implementations in service/transactional businesses seem to have a lifespan that is shorter than their manufacturing peers.  I believe this is because service and transactional businesses solutions are more centered in human behavior.    

Business owners/executives may feel that traditional continuous improvement fails to deliver improvement over the long term or they may feel that it puts them on a race to the bottom.  They may feel like traditional CI disavows the intuition that they have relied on to get to where they are.  I recommend the DOITS system for CI for businesses that want to drive growth and scale.    

If you're ready for the transformation having clarity on your processes and being able to put your finger on the areas needing improvements will bring to your business, we should speak. Book a call with us at http://bit.ly/talktocoldstar 

Derek Schmidt lives in the same town I do, so we were able to meet in person! For the first time we have an on-location shoot for the Cold Star Project, and we're talking about Swell Systems. Swell is an integrated business management solution: marketing, sales, and customer relationships.  

 TurnOnDynamics founder Peter Joeckel is on the Cold Star Project to share the disturbing truth about ERP sales processes and implementation projects: they're broken. And SaaS founders will recognize exactly the same problems occurring in their field.  

No ERP implementation project ever had a bad demo...but that doesn't make the system a good match-up for solving the customer's problem. Peter Joeckel covers the serious issues with RFQ, bid document, presentation-dependent, and features-heavy sales and purchasing processes, and how these result in bad projects.  

Is it time for you to get serious about the systems and processes in your company? Do you want to get to the bottom of what's wrong with your operations? Then book a call to talk with us at Cold Star Tech at coldstartech.com 

FreeeUp co-founder Nathan Hirsch is on the Cold Star Project to share his challenges encountered during scaling his Virtual Assistants marketplace business.