Why a $15M Consulting Firm Should Own Its Events — Transcript

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1. 0:00managing partner at Eclipse Consulting.
2. 0:02We're a boutique services firm based out
3. 0:04of New York City and we provide data
4. 0:06management, risk and regulatory change
5. 0:08advisory services to highly regulated
6. 0:11and data intensive businesses. And uh
7. 0:13historically most of our clients are
8. 0:14financial services, uh particularly
9. 0:16banking.
10. 0:17>> Okay.
11. 0:17>> Um we were heavily concentrated in
12. 0:19banking, Credit Suisse, Silicon Valley
13. 0:21Bank were some of our biggest clients.
14. 0:22So uh when that sector went down, we had
15. 0:25to kind of reinvent ourselves a little
16. 0:27bit and focus more on asset management,
17. 0:29insurance,
18. 0:30>> Interesting.
19. 0:30>> private equity. Relatively easy
20. 0:32>> change. I mean, that's a
21. 0:34big change.
22. 0:35>> Well, the cool thing is data management,
23. 0:37risk and regulatory stuff, it's the
24. 0:39practice is kind of industry agnostic.
25. 0:41You need some of the specialty in the
26. 0:42industry, but uh it was a pretty
27. 0:44seamless pivot for us to be honest.
28. 0:45>> That's amazing.
29. 0:46>> We were just so uh at one point supply
30. 0:49constrained on the banking side and then
31. 0:51demand disappeared. And so we chased we
32. 0:54went to where supply was. So anyway,
33. 0:56um
34. 0:57um so we'll we'll do uh we we were well
35. 1:00over 30 million after 3 years.
36. 1:02>> Awesome.
37. 1:02>> Um with the banking crisis, we fell back
38. 1:04down. We'll do around 15 million this
39. 1:07year. Uh want to get to 100 by 2029. Um
40. 1:11pretty uh we've kind of I've almost
41. 1:14invested too much time into working on
42. 1:16the business.
43. 1:17>> Sure.
44. 1:17>> Uh
45. 1:18and I I found I had a lot of fun doing
46. 1:20it. So historically a lot of our sales
47. 1:21were founder led and so we've really
48. 1:23pivoted a I I've been working
49. 1:25aggressively. I know I can swoop in. I
50. 1:28know I can use my network and
51. 1:29relationships to drive leads and
52. 1:31referrals.
53. 1:32>> Uh-huh.
54. 1:32>> I don't consider myself an especially
55. 1:33good sales uh guy, but uh I'm only
56. 1:37>> 15 to 30 in business, you're not that
57. 1:38bad.
58. 1:38>> Yeah, I've done multiple nine figures of
59. 1:40professional services sales, but it
60. 1:42comes from the passion, the consultative
61. 1:44nature. So I think of sales as our last
62. 1:46frontier. Uh the the operations, the the
63. 1:50the people, the
64. 1:51uh the finance side, pristine like in
65. 1:53your in your nine stages where you're
66. 1:55solid eight eightish in all of those
67. 1:57areas, but sales and marketing we're
68. 1:59lagging. Yeah.
69. 2:00And so been trying to figure out in the
70. 2:03sales, if you look at our growth engine
71. 2:04from lead onward, team's exceptional.
72. 2:06There's some levers we can continue to
73. 2:08tweak and enhance. Uh on close rates and
74. 2:11on uh commercial acumen to just enhance
75. 2:13profitability. But we need more leads
76. 2:16coming into the funnel. So So that's our
77. 2:19biggest constraint we've we've been
78. 2:20experimenting with a lot of different
79. 2:22things. Um the pandemic definitely kind
80. 2:25of
81. 2:26changed up the game a little bit, so
82. 2:27it's hard to rely on the traditional
83. 2:28source leads right now?
84. 2:30So most of it's founder led. Most of
85. 2:31it's just me texting someone on a whim.
86. 2:34Yes. Okay.
87. 2:35Yeah. [laughter]
88. 2:36It sounded so fancy. Um you're like, I
89. 2:39text people. Yeah. Got it.
90. 2:41>> [laughter]
91. 2:42>> Yeah. Um okay. So So you texting people
92. 2:45that you know just cuz you've been doing
93. 2:46this for a while is how you more or less
94. 2:48source business. So it's warm outbound.
95. 2:50Exactly. Okay.
96. 2:52So um
97. 2:53it's probably in in your industry going
98. 2:55to be a combination of three things. So
99. 2:57one is So you need to dominate trade
100. 3:00shows and conferences because you're
101. 3:02going to automatically be able to you're
102. 3:03going to be elevated. That's where all
103. 3:05the fish are in one barrel.
104. 3:06Um
105. 3:07this is especially true for kind of
106. 3:09enterprise level sales like yours. And
107. 3:10so enterprise is typically a combination
108. 3:12of
109. 3:12um affiliate partners in some way. So
110. 3:14kind of like the centers of influence
111. 3:15who you can kind of do joint venture
112. 3:17type deals with where it's like, hey,
113. 3:19you do this element that we don't do. We
114. 3:21do this element that you don't do. Like
115. 3:23how can we share in deal flow? And then
116. 3:24basically co-participate in a lot of
117. 3:26deal work, which I'm sure will happen.
118. 3:29Um
119. 3:30the conference stuff is like we have a
120. 3:32great conference playbook that we run
121. 3:33for all enterprise sales stuff. Happy to
122. 3:35walk you through it. Um and then uh I
123. 3:38mean you're doing warm outbound, which
124. 3:39is always the first thing that you do.
125. 3:41And you just happen to be able to do it
126. 3:42to 30 people a year.
127. 3:43>> [laughter]
128. 3:44>> Which is great.
129. 3:46When you do that for gym memberships,
130. 3:47you get to about $5 a year. And so
131. 3:51um
132. 3:53goes to show if you add more zeros to
133. 3:54the thing you sell, you can go a lot
134. 3:55further sometimes.
135. 3:56Um,
136. 3:57but with uh, with the
137. 4:00cold outbound basically becomes a uh, a
138. 4:03back to those two as the front end. So,
139. 4:05it's basically you use cold outbound to
140. 4:07get your conferences and your
141. 4:09affiliates. That's the outbound method
142. 4:11that you're going to use as the primary
143. 4:12action. The secondary action is securing
144. 4:14the deals for both of those so that you
145. 4:16can have your playbook that you run on a
146. 4:17regular basis that you're doing to get
147. 4:20those people in the funnel. And then to
148. 4:21the same degree on the affiliate side,
149. 4:24um, doing the deals that you need so
150. 4:25that you can share in in in lead flow.
151. 4:27And so, is Sharon here?
152. 4:28Is he here? No, well, he was in here
153. 4:29earlier. So, Sharon was the um,
154. 4:32uh,
155. 4:33uh, CEO or president, excuse me, of Real
156. 4:35Brokerage, is a publicly traded uh, real
157. 4:37estate brokerage. And so, um,
158. 4:39Sharon came in and 6x the company from
159. 4:42200 million to 1.2 billion. And he did
160. 4:44one thing. He did 220 speaking events a
161. 4:46year. And then he just went from stage
162. 4:49and then stayed for 2 days and would
163. 4:51just sell every person who would come up
164. 4:53to him. And that's how they took it from
165. 4:55200 million to 1.2 billion.
166. 4:57And so, sometimes it's like we had
167. 4:59dinner and I I think I've told this
168. 5:00story before, but like people are like,
169. 5:02"So, what's the really scalable?" It's
170. 5:04like, that's what he did. He did 220
171. 5:05[ __ ] events in a year. And that's how
172. 5:07he added a billion to the business.
173. 5:10>> Oh, wow. Yeah, we're doing, you know, 10
174. 5:12or 20, so we could probably do a lot
175. 5:14more.
176. 5:14>> there's probably you probably do more
177. 5:16volume on this. There's probably way
178. 5:17more you can squeeze per cuz there's a
179. 5:19bunch of different conversion points you
180. 5:20can do if you set up the event properly.
181. 5:22Um, and then on the affiliate side, I
182. 5:23see these as really good long-term
183. 5:25things that you'll also still be able to
184. 5:27source from the from the events that you
185. 5:30attend. So, it's kind of a really nice
186. 5:31cycle in terms of acquisition. So, it's
187. 5:33like we do the outbound so that we can
188. 5:34get the events. The events then feed us
189. 5:36in these multiple ways. One of the
190. 5:37things that we triaged at the event is
191. 5:39potential partners so that we can
192. 5:40actually, between events, have this as
193. 5:42our ongoing kind of lead gen uh,
194. 5:44component. And then obviously we do
195. 5:46direct deals from the event itself.
196. 5:48>> Yeah, that's interesting. So, we have a
197. 5:49robust alliance partner framework and so
198. 5:51we have a lot of alliance partners.
199. 5:54Um our challenge has been
200. 5:55>> activation, getting them to continue to
201. 5:57refer business?
202. 5:57>> Exactly, cuz part of it is we almost
203. 5:59have too many alliance partners.
204. 6:00>> Yeah, but they're not activated, that's
205. 6:01the problem, right? So, we we think
206. 6:04about affiliates as a second customer
207. 6:05base. So, basically with every every
208. 6:10So, Alan had three levels as the
209. 6:12software company that we had. Um we had
210. 6:14SMBs and then above SMBs we had agencies
211. 6:17and then above agencies we had agency
212. 6:18influencers. So, people who like helped
213. 6:20agencies do stuff. And so, we actually
214. 6:23had to have three tiers of service
215. 6:25uh
216. 6:26and when I started I thought I was going
217. 6:27to be serving SMBs and then I realized
218. 6:29agencies were really the people that
219. 6:30needed to use our software to service
220. 6:32SMBs. And so, that became a huge level
221. 6:34of leverage for us to scale the business
222. 6:35really quickly. But then we're like,
223. 6:37"Oh, wait. We also have these super
224. 6:38affiliates that have 500, 1,000 agencies
225. 6:41that are in their network that could
226. 6:42basically push us 100, 200, 500 agencies
227. 6:45with one email." And so, we had to
228. 6:47basically create the how do we make
229. 6:49these guys feel amazing all the time
230. 6:51that they're the best and then these
231. 6:53people who are coming in, we only made
232. 6:54money when they activated and actually
233. 6:56used the platform. And so, it's
234. 6:57basically customer success has to get
235. 7:00put in as a function on top of the
236. 7:01affiliate base.
237. 7:03And so, then that becomes a regular
238. 7:04cadence of communication with them and
239. 7:06then the same thing that we were talking
240. 7:08about earlier with the sales uh sales
241. 7:09coaching thing, which is like what are
242. 7:11the quantifiables? What are the what are
243. 7:13their demographics and what are the
244. 7:14behaviors that they did? The ones that
245. 7:15are the robust partners that do send you
246. 7:17leads, what differentiates them from the
247. 7:18ones that didn't? And then we just
248. 7:20reverse engineer that into the actions
249. 7:21that we put into activation on that
250. 7:22regular cadence for the affiliates.
251. 7:25I know that was a lot of information,
252. 7:26but
253. 7:29>> [laughter]
254. 7:30>> But that Does that Does that make sense?
255. 7:32Uh but that Does that check out?
256. 7:34>> Yeah, that's great. The the playbook
257. 7:35sounds really interesting. So
258. 7:38>> Rock and roll. No, I appreciate you. If
259. 7:40If not getting as many leads as you want
260. 7:41and your business is demand constrained,
261. 7:43[music] meaning you could service more
262. 7:44customers than you currently have, then
263. 7:46this is for you. So, marketing is
264. 7:48changing, and I think ACQ tends to be on
265. 7:50the bleeding edge of this stuff. We
266. 7:51certainly spend the money
267. 7:53to do it, but we also build [music]
268. 7:54custom software, and we pay amazing
269. 7:56vendors and very expensive people to
270. 7:57figure out the system that we have right
271. 7:58now, and I want to share it with you
272. 7:59kind of open kimono style. If you're not
273. 8:01getting as many leads as you want,
274. 8:03boy, do I have the thing for you. Click
275. 8:04below, book call, and
276. 8:06hopefully I'll see you in Vegas.