The IT Experts Podcast

In this episode, I had the privilege to interview Gavin Page of Excelerate360 Ltd.

He is an experienced sales and marketing leader, and runs a leading UK outsourced sales and lead generation company.

He also works with VCs and Incubators advising start-ups and mid-tier software and technology companies on scaling sales operations.

Furthermore, Gavin has a track record in creating new strategic revenue opportunities, developing sales teams into new markets, restructuring sales teams for revenue growth and regularly exceeding those targets.

Today, you will learn how to resonate with your target market better, how to sell more products, services and solutions.

In This show we talked about:

That Sales is all about building relationships, trust and having a fair exchange of service and a solution. Thus, it all boils down to understanding your target market and what problem you actually solve.

Gavin then shared that first, you must ask these questions yourself;

1. Are you ready for the market or is the market ready for you?
2. What are the things you need to do to understand your Market?
3. How Market Analysis can help you identify your potential customers?

We then went on to explain that for you to understand your own Market Analysis further, you need to start with again, 3 basic questions;

1. What clients might buy from you today?
2. What vertical Market do they fit in?
3. Where have I had that success before and why?

Then once you have these questions answered, you need to start looking for what relevant actions you need to focus on and analyse where those customers are coming from.

The best and easiest way to do this Analysis is;

• To go out and talk to the customers and understand why they bought from you in the first place.
• Secondly, talk to new prospects and just get on the phone get to understand more about their market. Understand whether or not there is an opportunity and If we are offering this out, what would they expect to see in return.

Then you can start to analyse:

• Is the Market ready for my product?

1. Is my product even ready for the market in your chosen vertical field?

Other than the Market analysis, Ian and Gavin also talked about the important element that people need to know about in terms of Sales Process.

How does it work and why it is so important to enable you to scale your business.

We then discussed Lead Generation and understanding your target audience (an avatar or persona) and knowing their personas, as they fondly call it, and all to understand their pain points.

Speaking of which, Gavin also talked about the Pain chain - One person's problem/issue could potentially be the the reason for another person's problem/issue. This can then cascade to cause many challenged in business.

Ian also then discussed the 2 areas around who you are actually selling to:

• Are you selling to individual business owners?
• Are you selling to a larger group and middle management within a larger organisation.?

Finally we shared some key topics such as what you need to do with your CONTENT and how it works to build relationships, your USP and more importantly how to stand out from your competition,in which according to Gavin you have to deliver great customer service and really understand their need and your competition.

The best way for you to stand out is to be PREPARED at all times most specially during product presentation. Always remember when you present a proposal it's always about them and not about you...Focus on the value and the proposition on how to meet the customer's requirement.

ITS Quick Fire Round

If you were to 'bottle' one part of your business journey and sell it, what would that be and why?

Spend more time eating my own dog food. Most of the time, we always tell everyone else how to do it but sometimes you have to do a bit of looking inwards yourself.

What is your biggest learning/regret and advice to listeners when scaling their business.

• FIRE people faster
• Getting external input from other Experts, Coaches and people who have done before.

What is your favourite App on your phone and Why?

Wordscapes.

Guest Details

To contact Gavin Page, visit his website at www.excelerate360.com or contact him through his email at [email protected].

Links and Resources

If you are looking to scale your IT / Tech Consultancy Business and don't know where to start, then check out our IT Experts Growth Academy Group on LinkedIn - a collaborative and safe environment to learn the foundations to IT and Tech Business Growth - click here to request access - https://goo.gl/weymKj

You can also download the e-book by clicking this link - http://tiny.cc/ITE-Ebook19

Quotes

Sales is all about building relationships, trust and having a fair exchange of service and a solution. Thus, it all boils down to understanding your target Market. – Ian Luckett

Focus heavily on the value and the proposition on how to meet your customer's requirements. – Gavin Page

You will learn how to build your confidence so that you can increase your leads, how to increase your profit margin, and how you can make your business a nicer place to work.

In addition to the 5 Step DRIVE for business program that we understand in the previous episode, this week I get to test you out by giving you actions after each step to help you get your very own growth plan together.

In the show notes below, I repeat the actions that I talk about after each step in this episode, we have also included a link below where you can get your hands on a copy of the ebook as well.

Here we go! :-

Step 1. Why Grow Your IT & Tech Business?

Action: Take an A4 Sheet of paper and on it write down WHY you started your business? What was the reason, the purpose, FOR YOU? Then note down WHAT winning looks like for you and what you want to get out of growing your business – Is it more spare time? Is it flexibility or is it more money to invest elsewhere?

Step 2. Defining Your Business Purpose

Action: Take another A4 sheet of paper and make some notes and have a good think about your ultimate business purpose. What are your values? What are your products and your solutions? Who are you fixing with those products and services? Then look at your structure, your organisation and people and check to see if they all align to enable excellent customer service and efficiencies.

Step 3. Who Do You Actually Help?

Action: Your action for this page is to make a note of your key clients with whom you have a great relationship and that you can just phone up over the next week. Schedule it out day by day and ring them. Call them and ask them how they are and if there is anything you can do to help them. Ask them about THEIR Business and then match their issues to your solutions.

Step 4. Connecting with Your Clients

Action: Your action for this page is to make a note of your key clients with whom have a great relationship and that you can just phone up over the next week. Schedule it out day by day and ring them. Call them and ask them how they are and if there is anything you can do to help them. Ask them about THEIR Business and then match their issues to your solutions.

Step 5. Know Your Numbers

Action: Your action in this section is to take your top FIVE costs and your top FIVE Clients and have a look at each one of them. Identify ways to decrease each cost and increase the value and potential income in the weeks and months ahead.

Step 6: Plan Out Your People

Action: The key thing here is to sketch out your organisation chart. Colour in the people that are good and worth developing, and colour in (in a different colour) the ones that require additional support and development. Then highlight the critical ones that you class as risks. Immediately put together a People Plan to mitigate your risks and develop your team.

Step 7: Be Accessible

Action: Make a list of how people can get hold of you and your business and what issues they can help your customers with. Is it via your website, e-mail, telephone, post or even messenger bots? Then look at how reliable those systems are and who mans them when you are not around. Understand your pinch points and deal with any issues.

Step 8: Work Your Plan

Action: Let's test this out. Take a relatively complex plan that you are working on right now and break it down into smaller tasks over the course of the next two or three weeks. Identify what you want to achieve each week and of those weekly tasks, what you want to achieve each day. Look at that plan every morning when you get up and see how you get on.

Step 9: Your Business on One Page

Action: Take an A4 sheet and identify what key elements you could measure in your business, i.e., cash in, cash out, number of new clients, number of client presentations, advertising, marketing etc. Map this out over the next six months and monitor on a monthly basis whether you had a good or bad month. Don't make it too complicated though and focus on revenue-generating tasks!

Step 10: Rinse, Review and Repeat

Action: Now is your time! Make sure that you plan your strategic thinking time on a monthly basis, schedule it in your diary whether it be during the week or over the weekend to review your business performance. Have an honest look and see what you could have done to make it better, to make it more efficient, and to make it more profitable. Then make actions, assign owners and agree when to follow up progress.

Guest Details

To contact Ian, feel free to e-mail him at [email protected]

Links and Resources

If you are looking to scale your IT / Tech Consultancy Business and don't know where to start, then check out our IT Experts Growth Academy Group on LinkedIn - a collaborative and safe environment to learn the foundations to IT and Tech Business Growth - click here to request access - https://goo.gl/weymKj

You can also download the e-book by clicking this link - http://tiny.cc/ITE-Ebook19

Quotes

You IT and Tech business owners are absolute brilliant technical people and you love doing the technical side of the work, that's why you got the business that you got. Now, the thing that you need to look and work on is working ON your business rather than IN your business. – Ian Luckett

We have been in the space of helping IT and Tech business owners increase their sales, profit, and productivity over the last few years and as you may or may not know, I am a systems and processes guy.

The Model that we use at Innovate to Success is called the DRIVE for business model. This model has delivered many clients amazing results over the past three years, and I want to share the fundamental building blocks with you today in this podcast.

In this episode, I go deep into the individual components of the DRIVE for Business model, and explain how it can help you out once implemented correctly.

In this episode, I share with you 5 essential strategies for each of the 5 steps of the DRIVE for Business model.

1. Personal Development

Step 1: Having a vision.

Step 2: Creating a plan.

Step 3: Upskilling your skillset.

Step 4: Getting fit for business.

Step 5: How to be more productive.

1. Business Development

Step 6: Identify your USP.

Step 7: Identify your Lead Generation Process.

Step 8: Defining your Customer Journey.

Step 9: Figuring out your Sales Process.

Step 10: Delivering excellent customer Service

1. People Planning

Step 11: Recruiting the right people.

Step 12: Assigning accountability.

Step 13: Improving productivity.

Step 14: Communicating with your team.

Step 15: Performance Management

1. Finance and Commercial

Step 16: Understand your accounts.

Step 17: Increase your income and decreasing your costs.

Step 18: Increasing your value.

Step 19: Deal packaging.

Step 20: Developing your proposals.

1. Performance Management

Step 21: Setting up your KPIs.

Step 22: Setting up your dashboard.

Step 23: 360 Reporting

Step 24: Measuring your business performance.

Step 25: Celebrating your success.

Best Quote : All price is made up! – Ian Luckett

To contact Ian, feel free to e-mail connect with him on Linkedin or at [email protected]

http://www.innovatetosuccess.com/itexperts

We are going to be coming out to you weekly with some content – information, interviews, and more value to help you to focus time to work ON your business, rather than being consumed working IN your business.

Helping IT and Tech businesses owners increase sales, profit, and productivity has always been our goal at the Innovate to Success IT Experts Growth Academy. And I am very excited to officially launch the podcast.

We had been in the podcasting space for a few years now and has always been getting very good feedback on how much our podcast has helped business owners take their businesses to the next level. So, now we have a show exclusively for IT and Tech businesses.

In this launch episode, I share with you the purpose of the podcast and what it is all about. Essentially, we are here to help you to get confidence to get better at working ON your business rather than been consumed IN your business.

In this episode, we share with you our DRIVE for Business model, our very own tried and tested model which revolves around five (5) steps. They are:

1. Personal Development – your vision of you and your business, where do you want to go and what do you want to do. This section helps you to scale your business.
2. Business Development – learning how to thrive as a business and increase your sales.
3. People Planning – this is all about understanding your people and getting more out of them.
4. Finance and Commercial – here we include packaging your deals, and making sure that you are getting paid, ultimately increasing your profits.
5. Business Performance – Finally it's all about KPI's and measuring your performance because "What gets measured, gets done".

We also cover off who we are helping, why we are helping them, and how we can help you.

So basically, we aim to achieve three things for you with in this podcast.

They are:

1. Increase your sales.
2. Increase your profit.
3. Making yourself and your teams more productive.

To contact Ian, feel free to e-mail connect with him on Linkedin or at [email protected]

http://www.innovatetosuccess.com/itexperts

This is the first episode in the IT Experts Growth Academy Podcast.

We are going to be coming out to you weekly with amazing content – information, interviews, and more value to help you to focus time to work ON your business, rather than being consumed working IN your business