The Power Of Process And Continuous Learning To Drive Growth
Tim Fitzpatrick
MSP & B2B Professional Service Firm Marketing Consultant/Advisor | Fractional CMO | Build and manage your marketing engine to get where you want to go faster. | Remove Your Revenue Roadblocks
Welcome to the Rialto Marketing podcast. Today's episode is a Revenue Acceleration Series interview where we talk to seven-figure B2B business owners and their growth-minded executives who are actively trying to grow their business and get to the next level. We talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly so that you can learn from their experience.
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The Power Of Process And Continuous Learning To Drive Growth
Tim Fitzpatrick
Welcome to the Rialto Marketing podcast. Today's episode is a Revenue Acceleration Series interview where we talk to seven-figure B2B professional service firm owners and executives about what they are doing to actively grow their business. We talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly so that you can learn from their experience. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialta Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am super excited to have with me Scott Woods from ITS. Scott, welcome, and thanks for being here.
Scott Woods
Hey, Tim. Thanks so much for having me.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, man, I'm excited to dig into this with you today. Before we do that, I want to ask you a few rapid fire questions. You ready to jump in with both feet?
Scott Woods
Let's do it.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, man. Very quickly, what do you do? How long have you been doing it?
Scott Woods
Well, currently, I'm the vice president here at ITS, responsible for business development. We've only been doing this part of the role for a year or two, and this has really added on the sales and marketing aspect, where originally I was brought on as director of operations. And once we clean that up, shifted to being responsible for sales and marketing as well.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Awesome. So what's the most important thing you've learned so far?
Scott Woods
Is to never stop learning. Really, you can't get stuck thinking that you're the best at everything, especially in the wild world of being an MSP. It is best to ask for help. Don't pretend that you know it all. We all are those ducks who look calm on the surface, but below the surface, our feet are flapping furiously stay afloat.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I love that one, man. One of my mentors early on said, The day I stop learning is the day I die. I don't know, something about that just always resonated with me. I love that. So, dude, I know biz dev, sales, marketing, there's nothing that's easy in business. Growing a business is hard. Do you have any mantra or a motivational saying that you say to yourself or share with people on the team to help you guys push through those times when you're hitting roadblocks?
Scott Woods
Definitely, we do. It's about being comfortable, being uncomfortable. To me, taking some of my past experience, I was able to find success when there were times of adversity, times of pushing through through growth similar to going to the gym and working at your muscles, and they come away really sore, and you're in a lot of pain, but you grow from that. So if you're comfortable with that discomfort, you're going to be on that growth mindset, be a lifelong learner. So that's part of how we all work together to push through those tough projects, those hard moments, those customers sometimes yelling at us, but we push through that because we're very comfortable being uncomfortable.
Tim Fitzpatrick
When we're in that place of being uncomfortable, that's where we grow, right?
Scott Woods
Absolutely.
Tim Fitzpatrick
If we're always comfortable, we're not growing.
Scott Woods
Growth is pain.
From Doing Sports to Doing Business
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, that's right. Well, so, dude, that leads me to the first thing that I really want to dig in with you. You played basketball at Stanford. Very cool. What did you learn from that experience that you're now applying in business? How has that helped you after the fact?
Scott Woods
Yeah, I will start off by prefacing saying I'm actually 6'10. It doesn't come off in the video. That was obviously a big factor in trying out basketball. But nevertheless, some of the takeaways I got with that competitive edge is really understanding that there's a process. And if you do the process, which is those daily actions, it's going to lead to long term results. It's almost like if you want to be better than the next player, you want to get in the gym more often than they are. It really is just a daily grind, just as making cold calls every single day, sending emails, following up, doing drop-ins. You have to be comfortable with the constant process. So that's been extremely helpful, and really ensuring that we have those measurable actions, because it's really easy to see, Hey, if we put this input in, these are going to be the results long term. Really, it's that daily commitment.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Are a lot of those steps in the process, they're not necessarily large steps, I mean, there are little daily actions, little things that are easy for a lot of people to overlook and not do. Is that right?
Scott Woods
Yeah, I think as a lot of business leaders tend to want to look at the big picture and fix and tune every little single piece at a time. But I think it's more important to focus on those individual skills similar with basketball. If you want to improve your ball handling or you're shooting, you're going to work on drills and continue to build off those previous skills that you've developed, right? Fundamentals, and then building it from there. A lot of business owners are going to skip the fundamentals. They think that we do this really well already, or I've had success in the past for this way. But really, it's just the constant grind every single day, trying to get better. You take a week or two off, and look what happens. You start to get a little rusty. You don't feel as in tune to everything going off the business. You may lose some of that It's just important to just set aside a little bit of time every single day to focus on this important bite size projects that you want to improve on.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. One of my favorite quotes on the fundamentals from Michael Jordan, and he said, get the fundamentals down on the level of everything you do will rise. And on the marketing side of things, that's always stuck with me because so many people skip the fundamentals of marketing, and they wonder why stuff's not working. And it's because you skip the fundamentals. We got to go back. The fundamentals are not sexy and cool, right? But it's what allows you to be great over and over and over again, right? So, yeah. Thank you for bringing up the fundamentals, because when it comes to marketing, I love the fundamentals.
Scott Woods
That brings up a good point, too. And you don't have to be Michael Jordan of whatever business vertical you're in. Every player, as long as they're committing their time and energy, they will get better regardless. That's just the important part of it.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Well, and the fundamentals lay the foundation for some of those more advanced skills, right? You can't step up to a Major League fastball before you get the fundamentals down, right? I You can't skip all those steps. You're never going to be successful that way.
Scott Woods
Exactly.
A White Glove Service Delivery Offer as a Differentiator
Tim Fitzpatrick
There's fundamentals in every discipline. It's not just sports. It's every discipline within our business, within our personal lives. It's so Fundamental super important. I want to shift gears a little bit because I know one of the things we talked about in the pre-interview was this white glove service delivery that you guys offer at ITS. I'm just curious, what inspired that and how does that help set you guys apart from competitors? Can we dig into that a little bit?
Scott Woods
Yeah, absolutely. So the owner of our company really put that motto in place. She wanted the company to feel like Nordstrom. That white glove experience, essentially, that comes with maybe that type of shopping experience. So we found that business owners, they really tend to understand the value of that trust and reliability that comes with having more of a strategic IT partner that they can trust with their business rather than us just being a reactionary, calming with you when you need something type of business. So that means if they're requesting something, we're going to go above and beyond to communicate all the steps necessary to help ensure that all parties involved get communicated to for our technology type services. We handle it to make it as simple as possible. So even a fifth grader, it theoretically have the technology of their business be perfectly handled. And it allows us to create long term relationships because we've handled their matters so excellently, whether it was a customer service follow up or whether it was an actual technical type project that was just done so eloquently, where the user walked away and said, wow, I see now the value this is going to provide to my business, and this was so wonderfully set up and it's easy to use. That white glove approach just ends up leaving us with clients that may stick with us for 20 plus years. And the lifetime value of a client who's paying us every month is incredibly valuable.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Do you have that white glove service branded? Do you have a name around it? Do you talk about it in your sales process or in your marketing?
Scott Woods
It's a differentiator for sure, especially when it comes to our IT support. It helps explain why we are going to be one of the more expensive people that you would be working with. I have a product, we call it peace of mind. It does align with this white glove service, where if you get this peace of mind add on to your existing service, we tell them, Hey, you can call us anytime, and we're going to handle any issue you need. We're selling a phone system, and they want their holiday schedule updated on Monday, and they call us Friday at 4:45 because they didn't want to do it themselves, and they were just leaving the office. We'd be happy to take care of that for them, like a concierge or really an in-house IT with some really good manners would be.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I love that. Do you find yourself... Do you use the Nordstrom analogy when you talk about your white glove of service?
Scott Woods
It's very digestible to prospects. They know the difference between a Lexus and a Toyota. They know they're not a Mercedes or cars or different stores. These real world analogies do become very helpful in understanding the perceived value of what we do as a company, which is provide technology services. So that's a great real-world example. For a business owner to really align with.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, yeah. You're Nordstrom's. You're not Walmart.
Scott Woods
We try not to be.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.
Scott Woods
We're not going to we're not going to sell on price ever. It's a complete selling on value. I think if we sell on price, you lose on price. We'd rather have long term relationships with people who truly value us and appreciate the work we do for them.
Tim Fitzpatrick
When I think most people I don't know. I don't hear about this stuff as much anymore, but when I was growing up, especially with Nordstrom, I mean, everybody had a story that either they had personally experienced or they knew somebody had experienced at Nordstrom with something, right? They took back something that they bought, whatever, a year ago or two years ago, and there was no questions asked, right? Those types of stories. So the minute you talk about Nordstrom, it just conjures up these feelings, this impression of what your business is like. And they know that they're going to pay for it, but they're willing to pay for that because of the value and the service that comes behind them. So it's a great analogy, right?
A Focused Approach with Targeted Marketing Campaigns
Tim Fitzpatrick
I want to talk a little bit about marketing. I probably should. One of the things we touched on that you shared with me in the pre-interview was that you guys have started to take more of a focused approach with targeted marketing campaigns. Can you share with us a little bit more about what are you doing now that you weren't doing before?
Scott Woods
Well, what we may not have been doing before is actually pretty interesting. I think we were doing it right before, but we as organized. So if we took marketing as a whole and put it into two categories of content and distribution, we used to definitely have content. Here's a sales sheet, here's a data sheet about our product. And if you ask for it, we'll provide it. Our distribution was these shotgun blasts of information to groups of audiences that we hope may be stuck. So as we've evolved, we've really tried to narrow down what that audience is going, what's helpful for them, what content is helpful. And the distribution has gone from maybe one or two touch points to now a consistent process of 10 to 18 touch points. For example, part of our content distribution may include a four-week campaign, where every week on the Thursday, they receive... We send them a postcard, and then on Tuesday of the next week, we're calling to follow up. So we've systemized the entire approach rather than it just be like, hey, we have a list of people. And every time we come up with a new blog or we come with a new piece of content, we send it out. But now we look at it a year in advance, understanding Which target verticals, which audience we're going after for each campaign, what is the content we have? We now do blogs, ebooks, motion graphic videos. There's a few more pieces as well, including infographics, but we are trying to just provide them so much useful content, not just like crappy content, but actually stuff that may apply to, let's say, a specific type of business owner in this specific type of area. And narrowing down our approach, the metaphor of a sniper shot versus the shotgun blast has, hopefully, is going to lead us to some success. It is a long term game of marketing. As you know. So I think we started this in 2024. Right now, we are really just dialing in that process and consistency.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Are you targeting specific verticals with your campaigns, or are you targeting in other ways?
Scott Woods
Specific verticals is the best way we can build an audience. If we go in to LinkedIn sales navigator and build a list of, let's say for my area, it would be family law practices who focus on divorce in Ventura County or LA County, for example. So extremely specific. So that each script that we're using, when we're code calling, when we're mailing, is definitely tailored towards family law firms. All the content we're providing value, as in, is only going to apply really to their type of business.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. I... Man, I want to pull some stuff out here because this is really good. And I see this all the time in the MSP space, but it is not relegated to just the MSP space where, man, I'm a huge fan of focusing on specific verticals because I just think it's the simplest way to narrow and specialize. There are certainly other ways, but there are a lot of benefits with narrowing in on specific verticals that you just touched on. Your message can be catered specifically to that, right? And the more specific we are with our message, the more it's going to resonate, it's going to convert better. The other thing that I love about narrowing down on specific industry verticals is it becomes much simpler to identify where they're at. I call it an ideal client GPS, right? We will guide clients through it or we'll do it for them where we create that list of where are your ideal clients. The ideal client GPS tells you exactly where you need to go to get in front of those people. It is much easier to create that list when you go by vertical. You mentioned divorce attorneys, right? Well, where are divorce attorneys? Are there people they follow? Are there podcasts they listen to? Are there YouTube channels that they watch? What's the local bar association that they belong to? What events or conferences do they go to? Those are all opportunities for you to market to that specific audience. So many people are afraid of doing that. But the other thing that you touched on is, man, you can certainly go all in and say, Hey, we're the IT firm for divorce attorneys. That's one way to do it. A lot of people are scared to do that, and that's okay. But you've got to focus your marketing efforts at the very least, which is exactly what you're doing. You're saying, Hey, we're going to take this marketing dollars and we're going to focus on divorce attorneys, or we're going to focus on CPAs. You're being targeted with your marketing. It doesn't necessarily mean that those are the only people that you're going to work with.
Scott Woods
Absolutely. Yeah, that ideal customer profile is really important to understand. For a type of company that provides something that's complex, it's a lot easier to know what that end user is going to behave like, what their needs are, what pain points do they usually have. That makes it a lot easier to sell because you've worked with other types of businesses and you've solved those issues before. You also... Are you able to provide social proof? Hey, prospect, did you know that I work with five companies that are just like you, and they're extremely happy, and this is what they've said about me? Would you be interested in hearing about what I do? Social proof, I love that you mentioned conferences. If you do know that you're only targeting one or two specific type of verticals, it's a lot easier to look up just those one or two conferences. If you're saying, Hey, I want to be the biggest type of this company in this type of area, you're going to go to every single conference. So you might be two or three conferences a month, who knows? And you might be talking to 50 different types of businesses that you don't know how they're run or how that you could actually help them. So it's super important Any prospect, anyone we talk to, we take a needs-based approach. So if we don't understand from the get-go what type of needs they might have, it's going to be a lot harder to have any opportunities to solve those needs or pain points as a business for them.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Well, and just to speak with the attorney lane, here, if you can start to talk about the specific types of software that attorneys typically use, and how you guys create this seemingly IT infrastructure with those tools, you're speaking their language. I mean, that is hyper relevant to them. So there's so many benefits to focusing on industry verticals with marketing efforts. Again, it's not the only way, but, man, I think it's one of the most simple ways. I was talking to an MSP the other day about... He was talking about how they're networking more, right? And they're going to local networking events. And this comes up all the time, and it's like, okay, great. So you go to a general networking event where there's a bunch of small businesses there. Maybe there's a client, but wouldn't you rather go to a local attorney meeting and know that everybody that you talk to there is targeted? It doesn't mean that still both situations, you're not going to be able to help everybody that's there. Man, there's a much higher likelihood, and it's much more targeted if you're very specific about it. And so thank you for sharing that because it's a very difficult It's not a thing for people to make the choice to do, but it's something that needs to be done because as small businesses, we don't have unlimited marketing budgets, and you have to be targeted with your marketing if you want to maximize that budget.
Conclusion
Tim Fitzpatrick
So super, super important. So where do you... You guys have been in business 34 years. Where do you see the company going in the next five years? What are you guys doing now to help get to that place?
Scott Woods
We're right in the way of a technology. As more and more automation, cheaper intelligence is getting brought into the workplace, we're definitely taking advantage of that to help maximize the value for our clients, making sure that their problems and issues are solved quicker. Taking care of our employees' happiness as well is super important. Anything we can automate, we'd like to, and we hope that improvements and efficiency can help drive that growth. But on the other side, the sales and marketing and the process that we've developed and we've humbly learned from people who know a lot more about us, we're hopefully going to see some success for the next five years. So our goal is to bring on 18 new clients a year for the next five years, 12 to 18 new clients a year for the next five years. That would be around $40,000 in new revenue a month per year, additionally. So that would be really great for a business of our size.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. If people are listening and you're not in the MSP space. Yeah, those are good goals. Yeah. So thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate that. Before we wrap things up, I want to ask you one last thing, which is knowing what you know now, anything you would do differently?
Scott Woods
That's a great question. I would say to don't spend my time on the things I find easiest. I think as business leaders, we're going to gravitate towards things we like, things that are more comfortable maybe for us. But we all, I think, know at the end of the day where our business needs the most attention. And it's usually on the stuff that's annoying. And I wish that I had not distracted myself and allowed myself to say, Hey, let me make our portal super good, or let me make this super efficient, or let me make this product as super awesome as it could be, when at the end of the day, I should have just spent my time picking up the phone and calling people, or calling my clients, and asking for referrals, or doing the important stuff rather than the stuff I thought was important. But it was really just easiest.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Somebody I knew through a business group used to call that. He always used to refer to that as playing office. It's like, Stop playing office and do what you really need to do. There's always an email that you can write or some other thing that you need to do. But what you really need to do is pick up the phone, talk to clients or talk to strategic partners or whatever. We know what we really need do, but we play office to avoid doing it.
Scott Woods
Absolutely. And delegate, empower your team, create a culture where your team that you have is making their own decisions. Yeah. That's super important.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it. Scott, I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your thoughts. Where can people learn more about you?
Scott Woods
They're interested in learning about IT services and how we can help deliver meaningful business outcomes with thoughtful use of technology. They can learn more about us at itstelecom.com. We can schedule a meeting, talk for 15 minutes about how technology affects their business. But we're not really looking to sell anything. We're offering free advice as needed, looking to support any small medium business, really in the California area, but happy to refer other folks. We have a big network of MSPs we work with.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Awesome. I love it. Well, thank you, Scott. I really We appreciate it. You'll check out itstelecom. Com. We'll make sure that that shows up in the show notes as well. Those of you that are watching, listening, thank you. I appreciate you. If you want to connect with us, you can do that over at realtomarketing.com. The other tool we've got for you, Scott shared some of the cool things that they're doing to grow. If you want to know which of the nine revenue roadblocks are slowing down your growth, you can do that over at revenueroadblockscorecard.com. Takes less than five minutes. There's a ton of value in that report, so go check it out. And until next time, take care.