Chasing New Logos Is Stunting Your Business. #ChangeMyMind

Brandi Starr [00:00:59]:
The rush of landing a big new client is undeniable. But here's the hard truth. If you're focusing on acquisition at the expense of expansion, you are bleeding revenue. So let's think about it. How many customers have slipped through the cracks because we were too busy hunting the next deal? How much ARR have you left on the table by neglecting upsells, cross sells or retention? Today we are exposing the hidden costs of acquisition first mindset. And if you think new logos are the only path to growth, you might be stunting your own success. And my guest Steve Nolan isn't here to sugarcoat it. Buckle up because this might be your intervention.

Brandi Starr [00:01:44]:
Today I am thrilled to be joined by Steve Nolan. Steve is a high energy executive specializing in driving new products into new markets, scaling existing businesses and increasing revenue through strategic growth plans. Throughout his career, Steve has had many successes including reducing customer turnover by 50%, increase closed deals by 17% and cutting the opportunity life cycle by 25% at CRO at the Myers-Briggs Company. At Penn & Foster, he grew revenue by 26% and 19% in consecutive years, reversing a multi year sales slump. And he also spearheaded a strategic market expansion for Learning Express that in just 18 months enabled a successful acquisition. All that to say I brought in somebody that really knows how to drive revenue ste. Steve, welcome to Revenue Rehab.

Brandi Starr [00:02:46]:
Your session begins now.

Steve Nolan [00:02:49]:
Thanks Brandi. It's so great to be here. I've been looking forward to this and I love, I love the content you're putting out there. So thanks for having me.

Brandi Starr [00:02:57]:
Well, thank you. I am excited to talk about this. A lot of my career has been spent in customer marketing focused on upsell cross sell and this is something I believe passionately about. But before we dive into that, our industry loves its fancy jargon. But let's be real, some of the bud buzzwords are just fluff and they can truly hold us back more than they can help. So tell me what overused buzzword would you like to erase from existence?

Steve Nolan [00:03:32]:
Well, Brandi, I looked at all the ones you collected so far, and boy, those are all the ones I wanted to use. But the one that makes me crazy is the term time boxing. I feel like the English, I don't think the English language is so bereft that you can't find a word that's already in our lexicon to use it to say, hey, let's spend a little bit of time on this and move on. And it just drives me nuts. And I hear it in every other meeting. I hear it and I hope it goes away as fast as it came here.

Brandi Starr [00:04:01]:
Yeah. And it's one of those things that I agree with you. Like, there's so many more simple ways to say it. Like you could just say, let's stick to an agenda or let's make sure we don't go too deep. I mean, like, there's so many simple ways. But, you know, people love. I'm sure there was some expert that came up with the methodology around time boxing. And so was born another buzzword.

Steve Nolan [00:04:26]:
Yeah.

Brandi Starr [00:04:29]:
Well, I can promise, at least for today, that we will put that in the box and we will not time box in this conversation. And so now that we've gotten that off our chest, let's transition into our topic. Because this issue impacts so many companies, yet it is often misunderstood or overlooked. And so I want to start with myths. What's the most damaging myth about net new acquisition versus customer growth and expansion that you feel like is holding companies back?

Steve Nolan [00:05:06]:
I think first of all that companies, when they're looking for revenue growth, automatically go to head count. Well, we need to grow by 20%, so let's just hire more people instead of looking at what's keeping those existing people from being more successful and. Or they look to marketing and say, let's buy more leads. I walk into this all the time. I've never found a company that's successfully grown and scaled lead, reliably scaled, stable revenue by just hiring more salespeople and bringing in more leads. I think the secret is, and you got to it at the top of this is in customer success, but not customer success on an island. How they work with this triangle between all the revenue teams of marketing, sales and customer success. Oftentimes I come to companies and marketing does not do anything or service the customer success team, which is shocking to me.

Steve Nolan [00:05:58]:
They're the ones that are essentially making sure we all get paid. And the focus on looking at upselling and cross selling, I think we just say hey, let's have that customer. Hope that customer success team can do that. Hey, when you're talking to people putting these ridiculous vanity KPIs, talk to more people, you'll get more sales. It's about training your customer success team and, and making sure they are aligned with the marketing and sales, going to that strategic plan and they have specific goals and then training them on these processes. I've been to companies where customer success has really, really understood that. And somewhere they're just sort of waiting to get called for help, you know, when a customer needs help or something. But they are an incredibly, incredibly powerful part of maintaining, retaining customers and growing your existing, your existing customer base.

Steve Nolan [00:06:55]:
It's often overlooked and I think that there are some simple solutions to really supercharge them.

Brandi Starr [00:07:01]:
I agree completely. And it is always shocking to me how customer success is very much left on an island at so many organizations because not only are current customers a huge opportunity in revenue growth, but the customer success team is also a huge wealth of knowledge in terms of why are people buying, why are they staying, what problems are you really solving as opposed to, you know, what is your marketing collateral say? And I feel like we talk so much about the broken relationship between marketing and sales and, you know, lack of alignment and battles and all of that, and that relationship between marketing and customer success and sales and customer success doesn't get enough attention. Why do you think that so many companies just ignore what seems, at least to both of us, as like a glaring green flag where you should be paying attention?

Steve Nolan [00:08:06]:
I think companies oftentimes, and probably in my career, I've probably been guilty of the same bias, which is our customers love us, our product is so good, it's so innovative, it helps people, it's got great ROI that it takes care of itself, but it never does. It's like any other relationship. You don't pay attention to it and they go somewhere else. And the real challenge here is understanding the cost of a lost customer. What is churn costing you? It's costing you a heck of a lot more than just the revenue they've delivered in the last 12 months to you, the sales you've made to that customer. You are, you have rep, you may have reputational damage. These people don't stay, these buyers don't stay in these companies generally their whole career. But they will carry with them a less a bad experience with a vendor wherever they go.

Steve Nolan [00:08:54]:
And they're happy to talk about it wherever they go. And I understand that that's human nature. So I think there's that. And I think also that, that that what we ignore are certain dynamics. For instance, I'll give you a great. For instance, you have a big in. I'll just use an example, a big industrial customer and you're selling whatever you're selling fed learning and training and development. Well, they've probably, unless they're completely vertically integrated, they probably have 6, 700 vendors for suppliers in their network.

Steve Nolan [00:09:26]:
They probably belong to an association of other people in that same business or industry. Ignoring that is terrible. And that's where you get to. I don't like to use the word getting referrals. I like to use the word introduction because introduction means I'm asking you to do something and you're never going to hear from me about it again. I'm not asking you to do my work for me. And I found that over the years that's incredibly valuable. If people have a great experience with you, you have to help them find a way to sing your praises elsewhere where you need it, but making it very easy for them and giving them some reward for it too.

Brandi Starr [00:10:03]:
Yeah. And we'll get back to advocacy in a minute because I do think that that is a key component of really focusing on, you know, the customer journey and how you drive the largest customer lifetime value. And you know, because you are right, revenue is a huge component, but that reputation is even more important. And you know, I was just having this conversation with someone and I won't call out the technologies, but we were talking about multiple competing technologies and the people that were involved in the conversation all felt strongly that technology A is still and has been for quite some time the best platform for what it does. However, technology B and C VI for the largest market share. Like I'd say between B and C, they probably take up 60% of the market share. And it is more because people have had such a bad experience working with company A that the tech being amazing no longer matters so much. The others are fine enough to not have to deal with them.

Brandi Starr [00:11:19]:
And so yeah, that to your point, the cost of churn is not just revenue from that customer, but it is revenue from all the people that, you know, will listen. I mean, I see it in, in, you know, I'm in Pavilion and CMO alliance and CMO Coffee Talk. I see it all the time. Anybody have experience with, whether it's a tech vendor, a consultant, whatever, and you're going to have people chime in like, oh yeah, great experience. I'd avoid them, would never work with them again. And you don't you don't see these things. And so my question for you because it's so hard to quantify, quantify if I'm a CMO who wants to try to get more, whether it's budget, resources, attention, buy in trying to get more of whatever, I need to shift the focus from being so, you know, net new, heavy to really giving some solid effort to current customers. How do you quantify that in a way that is compelling enough to get people to listen?

Steve Nolan [00:12:21]:
Well, I think it's great. I mean, I think that you've got to get everyone to understand their role in the strategic plan, the go to market plan. Right. I think we, you know, you probably hear you've probably had a lot of these podcasts and a lot of guests talking about alignment, cross collateralization, you know, across the company, making sure everyone's aligned. But sometimes you'll find marketing is singing their own tune. They think they're aligned to the plan and sales and customer success, the same thing. But I think really, it's about really using, I like to use a lot of data, but I like to, you know, earlier you asked something and I was thinking about the voice of the customer. A lot of times that exists in marketing, but really you were right.

Steve Nolan [00:13:06]:
It's the customer success team that has all that information and getting the customer success team, sales and marketing to align on that voice of the customer. So sort of get in a room and figure out where the choke points are. Right. To retention. Because sometimes we think that I was at a company where we said we need to identify who our best customers are. The natural thing is who contributed the most in the last 12, 18 months. That's almost never the story. That's never a complete set.

Steve Nolan [00:13:35]:
Usually you'll find a little farther downstream a subset of accounts that make up a huge amount of your revenue. But individually, they're so small that you sort of, you assume, oh, they love us, they're going to keep working with us. What we did is we identified that group and we did some real deep diving on voice of the customer, worked with marketing, used a lot of business intelligence tools to say, what do they need? Where do they need to go? Once we identified that and approached them in a different way, meaning they might hear from us once a year. Now they're hearing from us very regularly and they feel very important. Boy, did that data come back. That information, they are happy to tell you. And then you're talking to, let's say 1,000 of those customers. You're going to see commonality and you just take that and you just got to say, it might be 80, 20, you may not have 100% of the data.

Steve Nolan [00:14:22]:
You should use that. We would action that. And we saw almost immediate results in growing our revenue from that subset of accounts.

Brandi Starr [00:14:30]:
Yeah, and I think you, you hit on another good point there is that so often companies think and they really give all of the attention to that handful of top accounts that spend the most with them. And not saying you ignore them, obviously, but I think it is one of those things where it puts your business at risk because. Because 1, 2 handful of accounts are bringing in so much revenue. One of those leaving is, you know, a huge hit and which is why people give so much attention to them. But if we think about from a stability and consistency perspective, that mid tier of like, they're spending a good amount, but they love us, they're singing our praises. You know, they want to continue to grow and buy more. You know, they haven't hit the max of what they could be spending with us. I feel like those are the sweet spots of more of that, you know, predictable sustainable revenue that everybody's chasing.

Steve Nolan [00:15:37]:
That's the one that keep. Those are the groups of accounts that keep you in business because the ones that are spending, let's say you say you're. Say you're a $50 million company and you've got a couple of customers are spending a million. That's good. We love them. It's. It's not. You should not rely on that.

Steve Nolan [00:15:52]:
That's way too much money. We saw in the last year or two, budgets completely changed. They shifted. Getting to those budgets completely shifted. And we. What I've done, I'm doing with a couple of my clients right now is looking at their sales team along with their account managers are doing QBRs and they're saying, hey, anyone that's doing over $200,000 a year or more with us, they get a QBR. And I'm like, well, it's not a gift. It's not your Christmas list.

Steve Nolan [00:16:23]:
So what I'm doing with these customers, these are fairly small. That number is probably a little high. 200, let's call it 50. 50,000. Where we are training the customer success teams on how to do a QBR and taking it. You know, account managers will deal with the big, big accounts because that's where the CEO's looking. That's where the board is looking. That's where the PE guys are looking.

Steve Nolan [00:16:44]:
What's going on with this big account? How can we move it? They're doing a 800,000, we need them to do a million. And training the customer success team who speaks to that subset. Those power group groups, those power groups of accounts every day, every week or month to do QBRs and just change the paradigm, saying, it's not about, hey, let's do this, and we have a big global plan. It's like, how can we move the ball just down the field? We don't need to score touchdowns with you every time we talk to you. How can we provide more value to you? How can we make you happier with your team? And how can we provide better ROI to you? The sky is the limit. Because when you hook onto a couple of those, you find out, well, you know what? Everyone else has that same problem. So let's bring marketing in, create a package and deliver it to them and say, it's on us. This one's on us.

Steve Nolan [00:17:35]:
We want to help you grow your business. That way you really entrench yourself as that trusted advisor and you don't have to do it that often. You don't even have to do it quarterly. You can do once a year for them. But that was a paradigm shift. I'm like, we've got to figure out a way to show the love in a more formal way to them. And it really, really works. And you get a great feeling about it, because that's when people start posting on LinkedIn about how they love your company and how the CEO of that company is in a meeting with you all of a sudden, which you did.

Steve Nolan [00:18:06]:
You. You never. You've never seen them ever, or you get invited to their kickoff meeting. So, you know, that's. That's the, that's the real sweet spot.

Brandi Starr [00:18:14]:
Yeah. And that, that is huge. And you. I think one of the key things that you said that is important is you figure out how to scale. Scale it. No, you can't do the same thing for every account. It's just not logistically possible. But I think so many businesses take that all or nothing.

Brandi Starr [00:18:34]:
Like, we can do QBRs for our top 20%. So that's, you know, that's what our AES can handle. That's what we're going to do. And so it's not necessarily saying, okay, that means everybody else gets nothing. It is saying, how do we do this? I've seen companies where, for those top accounts, the AES fly out and it's in person and they do a dinner, you know, for that next tier of accounts, it's still the ae, but it's remote. And that, you know, and it's. You tear it out. And so, yeah, I've definitely seen similar outcomes from that focus.

Brandi Starr [00:19:08]:
I want to go back to something you said where you talked about how the executives, the board, the PE firms, everybody is constantly asking the question, what's going on with this big account, that big account. And I know that consistent visibility mentality, the way that the sales teams are often incented, where they're often incented, you know, more for net new. That all of those things is what I have consistently heard as the biggest barrier from CMOs of why they don't spend more of their resources, whether it's headcount or budget, to do more customer marketing, even though they understand the value. And so how do we shift that mentality at the top of that, you know, and that's why I called it an addiction. Because it really does seem like, you know, it's like that next new logo, you know, is like the next hit. And it's like they're, they're chasing that and they want that feeling like how do we break people away from that being that dopamine hit that they want to really look at, how do we grow and sustain? Because so often, I mean, we've seen it in our business. I've seen lots of companies, they're able to grow faster focusing on current customers.

Steve Nolan [00:20:34]:
Yeah, I think you've touched on something. I'm not sure you're going that definite direction about compensation philosophy. People are motivated by the way you set up their compensation. So if you say, I just need you to go in and kill things all day long and just kill, kill, kill and close business by any means necessary, what happens is your, your, your stability of your company gets affected, your process gets affected, your ability to deal with the marketing folks and with your customer success folks, and even your account managers diminishes and gets hurt. Now for some businesses, that's absolutely the way it should. That's Wall street. That's absolutely the way it should work. But more and more what we're seeing is connecting.

Steve Nolan [00:21:18]:
And I'm a, I am a fan and a student of something called a living organization. But it's really about saying it's a people first process. It's like bring your people, your salespeople into the mission. Make part of their compensation, part of not even necessarily company's financial performance, but different performance, different things connected to the mission, where they might have a bad year, they might not hit the revenue targets, but they're still going to get 20% of their comp, their variable compensation. Because they're doing the right things for the company, for the customer, for the future customer. They're showing up in a different way. They're getting less transactional and more focused on the customer. I am a huge.

Steve Nolan [00:22:00]:
My whole existence is about being customer centric. Every question I ask when a salesperson comes to me, hey, I want to do this. Why is that good for the customer? I just blurted out, why is that good for the customer? They have to be able to answer that question. So I think if you can get a sales organization of revenue teams all geared towards what is good for the customer, you'll be able to create a compensation structure that pleases everyone. It moves the company down the road. The reputation get stronger and stronger. Your customers are happier and happier to share their contacts, share their network with you. Put, you know, help you in whatever way you want.

Steve Nolan [00:22:38]:
And it makes you feel good that, hey, I really did this. And you know what? Things out of my control. I missed my number. But I still. I'm still able to have a great Christmas because my company took care of it. They realized it's not all about dollars and cents.

Brandi Starr [00:22:51]:
Yeah. And, you know, I had started going down a different path, but I'm glad you brought it back there, because I do. You know, we talk about all the time, what gets measured, gets done. And comp is the most important part of how people are measured. That's what they're. They're aiming for. And it is one of those things that in order to promote the right behaviors, it is imperative that your comp structure align to that. Because I can remember, you know, many, many moons ago when I was in a, you know, a managerial role, having conversations with sales where they blatantly told me, I agree with what you're saying.

Brandi Starr [00:23:33]:
I understand. I'm not comped on that, so I'm not paying it any attention.

Steve Nolan [00:23:39]:
Yeah.

Brandi Starr [00:23:40]:
And it was one of those, like, okay, we're in a conundrum here because this is the way we hit our target. But you're telling me if we hit our number, but we hit it not the right way, then. Right. You're not making any money.

Steve Nolan [00:23:58]:
Right.

Brandi Starr [00:23:58]:
And that does seem to be one of those things that consistently it seems like no one wants to tackle because it's not. It's not an easy feat.

Steve Nolan [00:24:10]:
You. I'm surprised that I'm actually amazed that you gave an example of someone that actually said it out loud that, I'm not doing that or I'm not, and it's honest, and you got to accept it. If that's the way it is. If that's the way you set it up with your sales team, you can't get mad that they're not willing to help their other teammates or they're not gonna. They're not looking at what three years down the road is gonna happen with this customer. I totally get it. And we talk a lot about culture, and I think when we talk about culture, we talk about things like respect and things like that and communication and being authentic, showing up as your authentic self. You can't if the company doesn't let you, first of all.

Steve Nolan [00:24:46]:
And secondly, I think it's important to set up a, a culture in the company. And I think the revenue leader, a CRO or, or even a cmo, it's really their part of their job to make the whole company fanatical about customers. Once you make everyone fanatical about customers, your complaint, you can, you can, you can see that people are more willing to sort of go out of this little box they have. I know people that make. I know a couple of guys that make millions of dollars as SaaS reps. They avoided. They've left jobs because they're being forced to be promoted. They're like, leave me alone.

Steve Nolan [00:25:25]:
I'm a cash register. Leave me alone. I'm not going to any meetings. And that's a struggle. How do you manage that? And I guess it's situational, but I think creating a culture of being fanatical about the customer really helps you go beyond, hey, just, I just need to book this deal. I need to book that deal. It's about, how do you do it? And it's about what, you know, what are your customers saying about you? That's when I go to sleep and wake up. That's all I really think about.

Steve Nolan [00:25:55]:
What are my customers saying about me? And adjusting the culture to that I think is important. But the leaders got to show up in these companies and really be walking the. They've got to lead by example. They have to. In most of the leadership roles I've had, my variable compensation was 100% aligned to the compensation of my sales reps. I had the same thing, which is great because it forces me, not that I needed to be forced, but it forces me to get rid of my own self interests. My self interests are 100% aligned to their self interest. And that's where you can be free to be a leader.

Steve Nolan [00:26:35]:
That's where real leadership happens. When I'm not worried about, oh, my God, I've got to spend more time on Myself, because I got to make this money. I need to spend more time with my team and making them great and making them happy and productive. And if they do, I get paid a lot of money. So it's. It's a win. Win.

Brandi Starr [00:26:52]:
Yeah. And I think, you know, the more and more we talk about this, I didn't expect that for comp to be such a key part of this. But thinking about what you're saying, that's another place that I see challenges come in. Because when you have executives being hired, that's probably the place where comp is negotiated the most. And not just the base, but all the different variables and equity and all these different things. And so often some of what is negotiated is literally counter to what's ideal for the business and the way that those. That they're going to be leading our comped. And it's one of those things that, you know, it seems like they do it because, okay, we really want this person.

Brandi Starr [00:27:40]:
We want to get them in, you know, this small thing. Doesn't seem like a big deal. But I mean, I've seen multiple examples of situations where literally the business becomes handcuffed because exactly what you said. A certain leader was really focused on the things that, that they were being measured on.

Steve Nolan [00:28:01]:
Exactly.

Brandi Starr [00:28:02]:
And pushing their team to drive the metrics and the results that align to their comp, which was counter to what everybody else was doing.

Steve Nolan [00:28:12]:
Right.

Brandi Starr [00:28:12]:
And like, that's a really difficult one to solve for.

Steve Nolan [00:28:17]:
Well, I've been in situations where I, where I've been, I've been told or presented with this option. 25% of your variable comp comp is going to be based on how much cost cutting you can do. And I'm like, okay, I get, I get the reality of a business if a business is in trouble, but if a business is flourishing and I'm getting rewarded for cutting costs, cutting travel from my sales team, cutting expense counts, cutting, you know, whatever, how many meetings we do, awards, presidents club, whatever it is, it's crazy. I don't see it as much anymore. I could tell you 10 years ago, I was just. What is. It's so counterintuitive. And you know what we've seen happen? Right.

Steve Nolan [00:28:57]:
Those companies just, they. They just fall apart.

Brandi Starr [00:29:00]:
Yeah. And it, it really becomes a situation where instead of working collaboratively, everybody is essentially working against each other.

Steve Nolan [00:29:13]:
Yeah.

Brandi Starr [00:29:14]:
But I want to, I want to pull it back a little bit and get back to. To talking about the net new versus current, current customer. Because this is one of those things that I Do think that there are some companies that get to a point where they really have maximized what they can do with their current customers. They've got, you know, they've got a good flow, so to speak. Most organizations are on the opposite side in they got a customer newsletter. You know, depending on the industry, there may be a customer conference or you know, some roadshow dinners. Like there's some things happening. So they say they have customer marketing and a real focused on revenue growth.

Brandi Starr [00:30:00]:
But I'd love to hear your argument for those people who really aren't doing the, they're not doing the things. How do you, you know, what argument? What, how do you build the case to get them to understand why they need to lean into that and give more attention and effort to growing current business?

Steve Nolan [00:30:21]:
Well, I think I'm a huge proposal. I don't come by this naturally, by the way, but I am a huge nerd now about data and about data analysis and how it works and how to use it. Because you can get a lot of data. Companies have tons of data. It floats around all the time. Customers are doing things every day, all day long. But what data do you need and what kind of information and intelligence can you get from it? That has been a game changer for me because if you can, if you can synthesize the data and present it to the people that need to be presented internally, the other leaders. How can you argue against data, real data.

Steve Nolan [00:30:56]:
If you say, look, guys, 80% of last year's revenue came from upselling, cross selling or at least maintaining our core audience. Yeah, Steve, but our three biggest accounts spent less. And we've got to, we've got to just make that up with. We've got, just got to bring in new business. And I'm like, okay, well what kind of new business? If you look at your new. If you look at the last 12 months, a lot of companies that are new business and find out their customers aren't using the product. So they're not going to. So.

Steve Nolan [00:31:28]:
Okay, well, we had an onboarding. We're so motivated to just sell it and do the minimal onboarding. I just want to. You get into a mode where you're just selling things. Things. And I have been in situations with companies where I was like, oh my gosh, I'm talking to these people after the sale, after we've onboarded and I'm jumping into the first qbr. They don't know what they bought. No, it sounds crazy.

Steve Nolan [00:31:52]:
They're not using it for what it was intended to but we had such a great sales process. We had such a compelling message like your problem is such a big, we can solve it and blah, blah, blah. And it was a bad move and we had to backtrack. We had to. I insisted we go back to them and say, listen, I'm not. We need to provide more training for you. I'm going to send some people into your, into your office and we're going to do some training. This, you're not getting the full benefit of it.

Steve Nolan [00:32:16]:
And so what you see is a lot of deals. New deals are great. Oh, they're great. But they don't renew if they're only renewing at 40% or 30%. But you've got this core group of accounts when you take care of them that renew at 70, 80, 90%. It's not sexy. You know, people want to see sexy. I want to see, I want to see it.

Steve Nolan [00:32:37]:
I wanted someone, I want to hear that. You know, companies used to have the. I'd never worked in one, thank God they'd ring the bell when a new deal got signed. Yeah, everyone goes bananas and I'm the sourpuss that says, all right, well what was the deal? Okay, well, you gave them a 60 discount. Who the hell wouldn't buy that? I just bad. It's a bad deal. And I'm not saying all new business is bad, of course, course it's not. But your reputation and your ability to grow, for the most part you have to rely on your existing account base.

Steve Nolan [00:33:07]:
You have to energize that because they should, they should be the actual ones leading you to your next new accounts. Warm introductions, working through their network of suppliers and professional partnerships or maybe even professional relationships. There's a lot of growth there. It's, it's not dialing for dollars because if you. Look if I've got a great customer who's very happy with me and I present them with three names of people, I need them to do an introduction. I'm just talking intro me on, on LinkedIn or. And then don't even worry about it. You never hear from me again.

Steve Nolan [00:33:40]:
I'm going to have that meeting, then they're going to call you. These Steve really? You know. Yeah, he's. They're the best. Do you know, do business with them. Isn't that easier than getting a bunch of leads from marketing with very little information on them and running a 17 touch point cadence where by 3 o'clock I'm on Netflix or I'm walking my dog. I've just given up for the day. Because I'm so, I'm just so beaten down by the process of like, you're not letting me win.

Steve Nolan [00:34:07]:
And I think that's where it comes from. So I think using the data and get shaking everybody and got guys, new businesses, we need new business. We need new business. But our existing business, and I'm talking about a fairly mature company, our existing business is really the thing. We can't ignore it in the case of bringing in new business because you can say, well, Jim brought in 10 new deals. Yeah, they were 10,000 a piece. So he made a hundred thousand dollars in new sales last month, but he had $300,000 worth of churn over here. A lot of companies don't look at the churn.

Steve Nolan [00:34:42]:
They say, oh, that's Steve. That's the CS's problem. We have bad account managers. I'm like, no, we just, we're just not bringing in the right customers. And so I think it's, it's, it's something that needs to be taken care of every day. It's like cleaning your office or washing your car. It has to be regular. You have to make it a part of your discipline every day to balance both of those.

Steve Nolan [00:35:04]:
But you need to use your existing account base to drive that new business because it's, it's, they know they only, they're only going to do business with you if they can trust you. And the quick way for them to trust you is see who you else you're working with and what they're saying about you.

Brandi Starr [00:35:19]:
Yeah, and I definitely, I'm a firm believer that first year churn is very much a sales problem. Like, agree.

Steve Nolan [00:35:28]:
Totally, totally agree.

Brandi Starr [00:35:29]:
Yeah, when you get 2, 3, 4, 5. Okay, I can, you know, once we get past a certain point, if the churn rate is really bad, I can see putting the accountability on the account management team, the CS team. But that first year, usually it's, they were oversold, Ms. Sold, not onboarded effectively, you know, and it goes back. And I so love that you use the term unsexy, because I swear that is my crusade is that it's the unsexy stuff that is the most impactful. And this is one of the reasons we do buzzword banishment, because people are always chasing, you know, the buzzwords quite often are, you know, some new sexy trends that everybody wants to do. And it's like, yeah, that's all great, but we gotta master the basics that are super unsexy.

Steve Nolan [00:36:25]:
Yeah.

Brandi Starr [00:36:26]:
And all the, the more fun, fun things, you know, then are a piece of that. Like if we're landing new logos and they're the right new logos that we're going to be able to maintain for a long time. Yeah, that's great. But if you're to your point, if we're closing stuff because sales is given 80 off, it's like that ring a real or virtual bell for those sorts of sales. Even if it's, you know, and it's under the guise of, oh, it's a big name or, you know, a big logo. Well, half of those, their PR people say you can't even acknowledge that you work with them. So, you know, it's like you're still not even getting that.

Steve Nolan [00:37:05]:
Yeah. And again, with the new accounts, there's two things, right? You have to, you have to, you have to get their trust. And that is a training thing and it's a culture, it's your company culture thing. Do they appreciate that? Do they understand that? If I can gain your trust and truly get to the root of your problem. Most accounts that I speak to when I drop into these sales meetings, they're describing the symptoms. They've got a bloody nose. We need to get to, well, is it an allergy or is it something more serious? And all of a sudden and it's like, take my hand, I do this, I have a process. My process is we're going to diagnose your real problem.

Steve Nolan [00:37:41]:
And it might, it's almost always not what you think it is. And then we'll figure out, is that something we can help you with or not? If we can't, believe me, I don't need your business. I'll go somewhere else. I got plenty of places to set to other people to work with. And that is, that makes the net new sales really meaningful because people like, wow, this guy didn't sell me anything. But I bought a ton of it and because I need it and it solves my problem. And guess what? I've got three other people at that company I can call for different things when I need it. I'm feeling, I'm feeling like they're really invested in my, in my success.

Steve Nolan [00:38:13]:
So I trust them. So that whole net new sales thing, it's also a training. It's a training and a cultural thing on the front end very much these days. Like I said, companies are buying as teams. There's multiple stakeholders. You know, you talk about they threading. You know, you have probably have conversations every day about threading. It's real.

Steve Nolan [00:38:32]:
It's really.

Brandi Starr [00:38:32]:
I'm pretty sure that's been banished at some point.

Steve Nolan [00:38:35]:
Yeah, but it's, but it's, it's a terrible word because it seems transactional. But making sure you understand each, how this, this sale is going to help benefit or each of those key stakeholders. And sometimes they're not, you don't really know of them yet. So the new process, what I say training is who's going to use it. It's a lot more different questions. It's a different process. It's maybe a slightly slower process or more involved, but what you're going to get is someone who's like, yeah, I'm going to go fight for budget for this because this makes a lot of sense and I, I really need to solve this problem. You've, you've helped me identify the problem and the solution.

Steve Nolan [00:39:13]:
So, and that makes, when I win a sale or my team wins a sale, it's about someone saying, wow, thanks. How many people say, thanks for selling me something? You know, it's the other way around. You know, we're like, oh, thank you for spending your money. But getting a thanks from them, that's the key. And that's sales leadership today. That's the modern. It probably always should have been, but it wasn't always that way, but it is now, I hope.

Brandi Starr [00:39:37]:
I absolutely love it. And so we have talked about the problem and how to fix it. So welcome to the lightning round. All right, this is our way of wrapping up and leaving our listeners with actions they can take right now. So four questions, fast answers only. Okay, one, finish this sentence. If your company has a problem not prioritizing the customer, marketing or customers, what's the first thing they should do?

Steve Nolan [00:40:10]:
You need to get the leaders of each of the revenue teams in a room and diagnose this and set a policy around it.

Brandi Starr [00:40:19]:
All right, what's one red flag that signals a company has this problem but they might not realize it yet?

Steve Nolan [00:40:26]:
A consistently growing pipeline, but declining revenue.

Brandi Starr [00:40:31]:
And what's the most common mistake people make when trying to fix this problem?

Steve Nolan [00:40:36]:
Hiring a lot of salespeople. Hiring more salespeople and buying more leads.

Brandi Starr [00:40:41]:
And what's the fastest action someone can take today to make progress?

Steve Nolan [00:40:47]:
Oh, I'd say map your revenue flow from lead to renewal and find the biggest friction points.

Brandi Starr [00:40:54]:
Yes, I love it. All great advice advice because every good session ends with a plan for progress. So, Steve, I have truly enjoyed our discussion, but before we go, tell our audience, how can they connect with you to continue the conversation?

Steve Nolan [00:41:13]:
Oh, thanks for that opportunity, Brandi. I'm on LinkedIn Steve Nolan. N O L A N I am doing, I'm working right now with CEOs, PE firms on go to market strategy and various fun things. And if you've got any of the problems we discussed today, give me a bell. I don't charge to talk to me. Let's have a conversation. My desire is always to help people and it's right there in my profile. Reach out to me.

Steve Nolan [00:41:46]:
Let's have a conversation. I'd love to see if I could help you, introduce you to people. Whatever I can do to help and move the ball down the field for you.

Brandi Starr [00:41:52]:
Awesome. Well, we will make sure to link to your LinkedIn. So wherever you are listening or watching this podcast, check the show notes so that you can connect with Steve. Steve, I promise we could really sit here and talk all day. I've got so many rants that we could have gone down, but this was such a good discussion. So thank you so much for joining joining me.

Steve Nolan [00:42:15]:
Thank you, Brandi. It's been a pleasure. I really enjoyed it.

Brandi Starr [00:42:18]:
Awesome. And thanks everyone for joining me today. I hope you have enjoyed my conversation with Steve. I can't believe we're at the end. Until next time. Bye Bye. You've been listening to Revenue Rehab with your host, Brandi Star. Your session is now over, but the learning has just begun.