← The Ops Experts Club Podcast
The Ops Experts Club Podcast
90. How Ops Leaders Should Approach Q4: Smart Revenue Moves, Cost Cuts, and Holiday Strategy
00:20:16
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A
Welcome to the Ops Experts Club. If you're at all interested in anything we talk about here in this episode, go ahead and check out the description down below and click any of the links there.
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B
Or if you just want to know.
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A
More about us, click the links below. Now on to the episode.
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B
Ops Experts Club. I added a little extra Woo wee. Was that like.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Spicing it up?
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C
Yeah, A little pitch to your screen.
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B
Dude, I just mean, like, I mean, bottom line is you got to mix it up every once in a while. Tara, nobody likes when it's always the same. That's the truth.
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C
Yep.
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B
So, hey, Ops Experts, glad you're joining us. Taryn Turner, excellent to see you today. I like your hat. I like that you're named the Collab Team headquarters on the screen today. Because Taryn is the hq. If you know what Taryn does at Collab Team. Indeed he is headquarters. So, Ops Experts, I thought today we could talk about something might be kind of exciting to discuss would be what are you doing for the holidays? And I don't mean like, are you getting yuletime cheer and are you going to go see grandma? What I mean is like, what are you doing for business for the holidays? And how do you make those decisions? Because I think what I watch a lot of our clients really struggle through is what are they going to be doing? Where should they be putting their energies? And if you're just listening to all the people around you, they might be like investing a ton of their money into ads. And should you be investing in ads and what should you be doing promos in fourth quarter? Should you just be gearing up for quarter number one? So I thought today we could talk about making plans for the holidays. Taren, have yourself a merry little Christmas. I thought that we could just get into that.
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C
Yeah, that sounds great. I mean, I know we got very applicable to what's going on with our clients and where we're at with people. So it'll be easy to talk through today.
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B
Yeah. What I was thinking about was you. You know, we had the same exact conversation last week. You know, last week on Ops Experts, we talked about a SAM plan, sales marketing plan, and we met with our cmo, our fractional cmo, Rachel Stivers. She comes out of Pete Vargas Organization Platform consulting and is amazing genius around marketing. And one of the questions I came to her with was, are ads even something we should be doing right? Like, is this a number one? I don't feel like I cracked the code on what works for us with ads. I feel Like I'm not a consumer based product. What we offer at the Collab team isn't something I'm going to go to all the consumers with. Right. So I'm going to have to pay meta or pay whoever. I'm going to put dollars into a far higher price to get drilled down far enough to my avatar. And then is my avatar always thinking about what I want them to be thinking about when they're surfing their social media feed? I mean, is that, is there is their head even in the right space? You know, and so, you know, we talked back and forth with Rachel about it and what we came up with was really probably a better push for me in season rather than paying ads and competing with Amazon and some of the big players out there. Even like, let's talk about not even Amazon and Target and some of the huge players that are out there, but what about just even guys like, you know, Tony and Dean who are throwing a big launch right now, you know, I mean, or other big players in the space that are actually going after my exact same avatar who have way more ad dollars. They're spending Steven Diaz's of the world spending a million dollars a month on their ads. Yeah. I mean, because they know that there's a row as that a two to three row as so they know that like they're going to get that money back. But I'm not going to put a million dollars in my ads, which means they're going to get way more eyeballs than I'm going to get and the consumer is going to have a choice to make. And I know that ops is not nearly as sexy to my, my avatar as making more money. So it's like asking yourselves, should we be paying for ads in the marketplace in holidays? Taryn, what are your thoughts?
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C
Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I hear people say it's gonna be the most expensive period is almost probably now up until first week of December with a small break and then it goes up again for Christmas. But then right after that you can get some of the cheapest ads after that point. So that's a good, good time for it. But yeah, it's, it's going to be the most expensive ad spend of the year.
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B
And so I know, I mean there are some people in our space where, you know, like I would say we deal with a lot of New York Times bestsellers, you know, I mean, where they may take a backseat, right. They're like, hey, I'm not going to get involved in the noise. Why? Like my Publishers are pushing my books. Like, I'm going to take a step back and just kind of quiet down for the holidays. I know people who are. Who shut down shop, you know, for November, December, try and really scale back any energies because they're just going to lean into family. If you're able to do that, man, God bless you. I don't feel like I've gotten our business to a place where I can take, like, take off the holidays, you know, and just like, kick my feet for some yuletime cheer and some eggnog, you know what I'm saying? I feel like I still need to be leaning in. So then if I've chosen not to do ads, the question then just becomes, well, I say let's start there. Maybe you need to ask yourself, would it be better for me to lean away from promotion this time of the year and lean back into promotion in January? I know there are a lot of people that are like, that's what I'm doing. I'm going to lean away from. From promotion right now. Lean into promotion come January. Cause like, you're saying, t, that's when ad prices really drop, you know, so, man, they're going to really go hard and fast after it then. But then I would. So I'd say, is your business one of those where you can just determine. This fourth quarter is just where we take a break, we lean back, we focus on cleaning up the processes. I keep my people busy on making us lean and mean and tight for January, once we kick off January. But if you're still like me and you're like, no, no, I still need to bang, bang some dollars before the years up. I have an annual goal. I haven't hit it yet, so how do I get to my annual goal? I would say you have to be a little bit more creative on how you're going to actually find your client base. And I think there's a couple different ways you could do that. Taren, what do you think we should talk about first when it comes to how to find new clients outside of ads for the holiday season?
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C
I mean, one of the best ways is rewarding your customers. They're probably looking for a way to earn a little extra money for the holiday season as well. So how can you incentivize them to bring you more customers?
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B
Yeah, so referral programs are great. You know, I think that that was something that we were talking about with Rachel last week was, what if I went to my friends list? What if I went to my buyers list? What if I went to whatever list I think I have the warmest amount of good energy with and offer referral deals. Hey, why don't you do like so for our clients? Maybe it's a referral bonus that you offer them. If, if it's somebody that has a lot, a big list, maybe it's somebody that you come to and say, hey, you want to do some joint venture stuff with me where you bring all of my stuff to your list. Why don't you take a pause? Maybe it's, that's where you work with authors or these people that have a list that aren't going to be harvesting it in the month of November and December, coming alongside of them and saying, hey, would you be interested in doing some sort of joint venture webinar with me? Would you do be interested in doing some kind of joint venture promotion with me where, you know, we split it even? I know I'm, we're doing a promotion this week with Ray Edwards. You know, like, Ray Edwards is one of the greatest copywriters of all time. I think, you know, he's written copy for some of the biggest names that are out there. But I know that he goes a little bit quieter come the final quarter. And I said, hey, Ray, why don't you do a joint venture with me and we'll talk about, you know, what we have by way of an offering that we offer. And you know, we DO A, an eight week rollout of US Level 10 meetings where we come and help people, like plug US Level 10 meetings into their business. And Ray, why don't we take that to your list and I'll just break that in half with you, you know, and so for Ray, it's great because all he's really offering up is like blanketing his list with a set of emails and maybe jumping on and doing some social promotion. And then, you know, we are off to the races. Come to the webinar and then any sales that come out of the back of that, I give Ray half. But also, I think you're right, you can go to your, your customers too and say, hey, if you've experienced great things in our product, I would love to incentivize you to bring a friend, refer a friend, and then just give them some incentive because those are lists that you control.
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C
Mm. Yeah. And you know, sometimes people, that's all it takes, a little bit of incentive and they might be like, oh, yeah, I didn't think about this, but I did enjoy it and I want to share it with some people.
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B
Yeah. So not only like a joint venture opportunity, not only a referral list, but I think another thing too. You know, sometimes we've talked about it on the show as well, Taren. But my good late friend John Rulin, who wrote the book.
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C
Giftology.
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B
Giftology, Dang it. I was looking for generosity in there somewhere. Giftology, Amazing, man. He's doing great things. His wife Lindsay has become a dear friend of ours. You know, he just passed away this past year in August. But John would say, hey, be leaning in with gratitude. Like maybe not around gifts, maybe not all those things. But what is going to win you most clients is if you can get in front of them and just express some gratitude. You know, get in front of them and maybe use this opportunity as a way to say thank you and maybe beat the holidays to the punch. You know, could I get something in somebody's inbox now? Late October, early November, before they get started getting blown up with all the other cards and gifts ideas of the rest of the season. But this could be an opportunity where I actually turn it into, I'm going to say thank you and maybe I'm going to put some dollars into saying thank you with the hope that that's going to stir up some fond memory of how I've helped these people in times past that could lead to more work. I know, Taryn, you read that book. Maybe give us a little bit of insight. I know John says stay away from the holidays on trinkets and gifts at the standard holiday time, but I think he would advocate for, hey, beat him to the punch. Hit them at the times where maybe they're not expecting it.
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C
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, he does say don't do it around the holidays. But what he does say you can do is you can still send your handwritten notes. That's still a great thing. You don't need to put monetary value on that. Just thinking about you and your family during the holidays and that's it. That could be enough.
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B
Yeah. You know what I've seen go a long way too is even just like video memos, dropping a video memo. Somebody somebody haven't talked to in a little bit. Somebody that you just. And just no angle, like not no pitch, just expressing gratitude. Hey, man, we're coming into a holiday season where I'm spending some time reflecting on gratitude. And I just want to say I'm so grateful for your friendship, so grateful for the ways that you've allowed me to come alongside of you and your team. You know, I was just thinking about today Taren Touchstone. The Touchstone crew, you know, and how, you know, they were with us for, you know, like those couple of years, you know, and we're so grateful for the time that we got under the hood selling, you know, our serving such a big real estate brand in England and the big impact that Paul and Oniko have when it comes to reach with real estate education. And they're not clients anymore, but I know that they probably, you know, don't realize how grateful we were for the time we got to be spending with them and just like expressing some gratitude. I feel like we express gratitude on the way out the door, but everybody just likes a good, like, like infusion of gratitude. And I think that in that it brings me up on the front of their mind too, of man. I. I liked working with Aaron. I liked it when we got to team up on things. Is there other things that we could bring Aaron into? And it's kind of an indirect, like maybe give you some stimulus into the pipeline of tying things off.
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C
Yeah, it's beautiful.
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B
What else. What else are some good Q4 ways of generating clients? We've talked about refer a friend. We've talked about joint venture partners. We've talked about sincere expressions of gratitude that would keep me top of mind. What are some other things we could do? Tarantinor?
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C
Well, you can target the people who are already your customers for discounts. Everybody's expected a discount around this time of year for Black Friday sale. So if you do have something you want to re offer to them, go for it.
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B
Yeah, your organics. Right. So I'm not gonna go pay for ads, but maybe I'll do internal campaigns. And it's just organic. I'm just gonna be pushing it to my list, to my, my page, you know, on the social medias and, and just get out there. Everybody's offering a Black Friday deal. Everybody's looking for that. I mean, you could take advantage of all those days, you know, Pink Friday, Black Friday, like all the, like, small business Friday, like everything that people do around the holiday season because people are already expecting something, I know, a promotion. Last year I bundled a couple of our products together and I feel like we had pretty decent success, more than I would say we have normally when we just sell products. So I think that's a great idea. Just thinking through creatively, how do we generate business, you know, and maybe, you know, we've talked about annual planning the last couple episodes. I don't want to beat a dying horse. But I think also thinking through, like, why do we do what we do? And how can I align the tying off of the year with who we are and how we can bring that to people? And so for us, a lot of that's around annual planning for us, you know, I mean, just keeping it in front of people. So even if it's just value add that I'm bringing in my newsletter, but I'm exposing a pressure point on have you thought about annual planning? Like, here's some free tools for annual planning. Maybe think about doing annual planning. And for me, it's me just raising an awareness. Point of before you tie out the year, encourage you really to have a plan coming into the next year. Otherwise you're going to be under the, under the gun of coming into January and I don't really have a plan. And then you're trying to do your annual planning the whole month of January and then your people really aren't going to be able to get to it to the end of January. And then you're into February by the time you're even rolling out quarter one instead of. No, no. I'm going to beat to the punch. I'm going to have some conversations now about it so that I'm able to address the things that need to be addressed once I come into the new year.
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C
Mm, yeah.
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Creative expressions. Taryn Turner. Creative expressions. I know, too. Like, I've seen, I've seen some of our clients trying to do maybe some live event like here at the end of the fourth quarter. Once again, just something that you can do to your list, whether that's virtual or it's in person. I know Pedro Deo's got a live event he's got going on, I think this month. I know a couple of guys that are actually a couple guys that just did. I think John Gordon and John Maxwell are doing a live event right now. So I think that there are guys out there who are saying, hey, I'm going to take one last push maybe before I get too deep into this. And I know for us, like we talked about doing a webinar coming up here on Thursday, anyone listens more than welcome to join. On the 6th, November 6th, we're doing a webinar, 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern, talking about ops. Like, how do you build your ops? What's the ops machine you roll out? And I give you insights into that. I give you all of our tools for free. So maybe just thinking of creative ways that you can throw events, something that you can maybe pony up to somebody else's event is There something that you can get involved with of somebody else's event that they're already putting dollars towards, where you could sponsor something or attend something, or be somewhere where you're just rubbing shoulders with people that are already putting money at events. I think is another creative way to be thinking about. I could come alongside of a friend, I could come alongside of somebody that's a business adjacent and provide an opportunity for them. That would be a win for them. Sponsoring something, providing, offering to buy a booth at somebody's event, but putting out some energy at the end of the year to really get you some momentum coming into the final stretch and then into the beginning of the new year.
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C
Now, what about Aaron, if you're not trying to pack your last little bit of the queue for full of sales.
- [15:41]
B
What should we be doing then? How should we use our time? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think something. I love that you do. I feel like you do it pretty consistently, almost monthly. But I think this is something you should definitely be doing quarterly at minimum. And that is tightening up shop when it comes to your technology. Like the two ways you can make money, right, is either winning new clients or banging down your expenses, right? Those are the two ways you can grow money in your business. So either I'm going to win more business, which is the entrepreneur's go to move knee jerk for an entrepreneur, is I just need to win more sales then. But there is opportunity where you can also drop your costs. And so this quarter we've been looking at like vendors. What vendors are we using that we still need to use? Is there a way that we could do that cheaper? What technologies are we still spending? I know, you know, Taryn, we've been talking about for the last couple of years and you've been pushing me of hey, is now the time to walk down Smartsheet and just rolled what we do with Smartsheet into what we've paid for now with Asana, now that we've upgraded our Asana account, you know, so like, are there things that we can put our people's hands to that actually is money saving revenue and therefore is going to increase your profit, profitability by dropping your overhead. So I think technology is great. You've got a great sheet that you share with folks on, hey, like these are all the subscriptions we've got that are hitting us on a monthly basis. Who's the owner, right? Who's the person that's owning these? What department drives that and are we still using them and do we need as many seats in each one of the things that we're using. I think that's a great way that you can cut costs. What are some other things that come to mind for you Taryn?
- [17:11]
C
I mean it's a, it's a pretty good month to do any sort of, you know, operational projects if you are going to be a little slower. Great time to change CRMs, implement new landing page software, get a website moved over. Yeah, any, anything like that's great. Rocks for this quarter.
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B
I love doing those I think too like if, if you are an entrepreneur that's looking for a little bit of free time for yourself, those are things that you can ask of your people that as you take some time for yourself they can stay busy and they probably would be excited for that kind of a project. You remember that just because you lose energy around those things doesn't mean your people lose energy around those things. And I know like most ops driven people love like cleaning house, love getting things lean and trim and cutting out the tags that don't make sense anymore. Like asking ourselves like where can we trim things up and cut down on any operational confusion because they know that you're gonna probably come at them hot and heavy come the new year and the more confusion there is on the field, the harder it is to run fast, to run hard. So I think that's a really good idea. Things you can clean up. Good stuff. Taryn Turner so in summary of the show today, think of creative ways. Don't just follow the tribe, don't just follow the pack. Like everybody's spending on ads and I think that if you go to masterminds, if you go to different gatherings, you're gonna hear all your friends talking about what they're doing and their ad strategy and how they're spending. And I think we can just kind of follow the trend if we're not careful. But to really ask yourself, is that the best thing to drive revenue for me in this final quarter, could there be some other creative ways I could do that? Either my buyers or my friends, joint venture opportunities, things that are business adjacent that I could partner with, things that they already have a lot of energy or monies put into that I could just tag along and be a blessing to them, some blessing back. But also if you're choosing not also organics that are the things that I could be pushing to my list, bundles taking advantage of like holiday trends that people are already following but could be speaking just to my people, maybe something they've been on the fence about buying from me and I could just discount it down but also flipping the script also and say but if I'm choosing not to drive a bunch of dollars this final quarter, if I'm okay with slowing it down a little bit, how could I as the owner take a step back and empower my people to clean some things up and prep us for quarter one, I think and then getting them in there, clean the guns, man, because we're going to come out firing in January. So man, let's polish those things up. Let's make sure they're working right because we're going to need to use them at full potential come the new year. So I think all good things for you to consider in your holiday and how you're procuring customers, how you're building your business in quarter four. So yeah, Ops experts, thanks for joining us today. Taryn Turner, thank you for being the deep and well of wisdom that you provide. We're grateful for you and thanks back here next week. Right, Experts Club.
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C
All right. See you around.