The Growth-Drive Hot Seat

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Hi, this is George Samman. I'm the founder and CEO of Growth Drive. Growth Drive is the number one best -selling business advising platform, and this is our podcast, The Business Advisor Hot Seat. Now in the hot seat, you're going to hear from industry leaders, thought leaders, your colleagues who are going to share tips, techniques, war stories about building a thriving advisory business based on delivering client wins. We're going to get into it. We'll get into it about the Growth Drive methodology, the clarity software, what we see out in the world.

so much more than just the system. And I'm also the author of The Growth Driving Advisor, which is based on over a decade of being an advisor to advisor, working with you and your colleagues, helping them build their practices, helping them through client engagements. And it's really proven strategies for leading businesses from stuck to best in class. Check it out. So strap in. We're going to light this up. Here we go.

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This week you're hearing from Chad Connery of Peak Advisors. Instead of a long intro, let's hear what he does and why clients hire him directly from Chad.

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This week's episode is brought to you by Growth Drive, highlighting the Growth Drive Summit, held this year in Charleston, South Carolina, September 23, 24, and 25. The theme is business advisory and quantum age, harnessing technologies and delivering client wins. This is unique content. You can't get anywhere. And to learn more, go to growth -drive .com. Look under events.

Thank you. See you there.

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Welcome ladies and gentlemen. And in this episode this week, we are talking with Chad Connery. Chad and I have known each other for a very long time. Chad has a background in sales and marketing, investment banking, business advising, and actually Chad, why don't I turn it over to you? Welcome, and you'll do a better job of introducing yourself than I do. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, George. Always great to spend some time with you. My name is Chad Connery. I am the

founder and CEO of Peak Business Advising. I've been at this for about 10 years now and spent, you know, majority of my career in corporate and thought it would be best for me to get out of the corporate world and be able to bring a lot of these experiences and training to more of the small to medium sized business world. So glad to be here and hopefully you guys will get.

a few nuggets out of some of the things that George and I will be talking about today. Yeah, absolutely, Chad. That goes without saying. In fact, why don't we jump right in? Let's start with one of my favorite topics and I think yours as well, the concept of centers of influence. Maybe I should start with a question. Chad, what do you think? Are most of your business advisors and most of our colleagues, better off?

spending their time pursuing CEOs or doing something else? Well, I think that, you know, I think it depends on what they're trying to accomplish. I know, at least for myself and my business, at one point early on, I was going after, directly after these CEOs, CFOs of these companies, which was working pretty well.

Certainly getting new clients, new engagements, but come to find out those weren't necessarily the type of clients that my model was designed for. So I quickly realized that I needed to switch gears, change my strategy, and really start focusing on those COIs, those center of influence, and quickly realized that

that was the best path for me. So I started getting more qualified leads, better quality, and obviously it's much easier to land a new client when it comes from a referral than it is just a complete cold call. Yeah, absolutely. And let's take a second to talk about, I love that. And actually that's what we, from the Growth Graph perspective, advocate, right? Most business advisors are,

not marketing gurus, but they are really good with people. And let's leverage that strength. Hey, COIs, it's a term that gets used out there a lot, centers of influence. What we really are talking about are our colleagues, our fellow advisors, but in a different profession, right? And you tend to develop long -term relationships. Do I have that right? Yeah.

Yeah, you know, it to build a long term relationship certainly takes time and a lot of effort. You can't give up. You know, it's just like anything else in life. You know, there's that that honeymoon phase where you have to get to know each other, learn about each other's business model, you know, learn what what they're capable of and not capable of.

So a big part of that is, you know, earning the trust. Yeah. Of that center of influences. And once you can do that, you've got a pretty sticky referral partner, or COI. Yeah. And, you know, it's funny, we talk about, you know, I use, we use the word strategic everywhere, but a strategic COI is someone who's going to, with whom we collaborate, right? That's the name of the game.

It's strategic because there's something in it for the client, most importantly, right? But for them, for our colleague, and for us, it's a virtuous cycle. And I use the word strategic from our perspective because it's something, it's a relationship we nurture and value and design to maintain over the long term. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, we're all human, right? We're all going to make mistakes. But I feel like if you if you have that trust and transparency and openness with whether it's your your customer or client or your your COI, I think that's crucial to be able to work through a lot of very challenging, challenging things. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And you have a background. You want to talk a little bit about your background specifically with sales process, with marketing process? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So my first job out of college, actually, I went to work for the Yellow Pages, selling Yellow Page advertising. And that was a great way for me to cut my teeth on business.

sales marketing. you know, so, so I learned a lot about sales and marketing at that point. work my way into corporate sales training. you know, here I am, you know, young, young guy calling on business owners, explaining to them why they need to spend two to $3 ,000 a month on a yellow page ad. but the biggest takeaway, that, that I got from that,

was learning the sales process. Yeah. I find that I use that same sales process today, 25 years later. Sure. And I see a lot of sales organizations or not sales organizations that they don't have a sales process in place. And it works. It's there for a reason. It's proven.

And if you follow a sales process, you will close more deals. You will reduce the time it takes to close that deal. And typically, you'll earn the respect of your clients. I totally agree. And let's stay on this thread for just a second. And then we'll loop this around to it to talk about COIs. So sales process, I mean, that's in the first dimension of business growth. In the three dimensions of business growth are

our core methodology and having a sales process in contrast to a group of salespeople doing their own thing. Having a sales process is accretive to making a business easier to run and to stabilizing cashflow. And Chad, could, you know, I'll throw you a softball. Why is the sales process...

better and more important than simply having a gifted sales techniques? Well, by having a process, you can manage the entire process better. Like I said, you're able to reduce the time it takes to close a deal. But from my exit strategy and from a growth strategy,

a growth drive strategy, you know, again, that is a big part of what we talk about is by having a sales process in place, one, it increases the overall value of your business and just becomes, makes it more repeatable and sustainable. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it gives us by staying with a process, we have something to judge, right? If we're doing the same thing every time and we can very quickly figure out,

what's working and what's not. And that goes from which conversations to have when, how to address, how to address concerns from our potential clients, what collateral to send. And the same applies. Let's bring that home to a COI. We're trying to win a COI and then extend our sales process through them into their Rolodex. How do you tackle that? Well,

is pretty much the same sales process that I use, I'll use on anyone. Again, it's really fact finding, uncovering the customer's needs, presentation, recommendation, overcoming objections, closing. And then one of the biggest pieces that, or biggest parts, I guess, of the sales process,

that a lot of people miss is the last step. And the last step is asking for a referral. Yeah. And, you know, I've been able to put together a lot of referral programs and really paid close attention to help businesses grow just by asking for the referral. You know, you've already gone through this entire process. You spend a lot of time. You understand their needs. And hopefully, if we're doing our job,

you know, most customers are completely happy and they want to give you a referral. They want to help.

Yeah, and you know, it's interesting. It's a very, very powerful question. And people may feel awkward asking for referrals or, you know, life is a series of relationships. If you simply ask someone, hey, Chad, who do you know that I should know? You can ask that of anyone, right? That's not a threatening question. They can say no one. Let me think about it. But typically I find at least,

that you're going to get a, you know, you really, you might want to talk to Jane and yeah, who do you know that I should know? You're absolutely right. And ask for the, you know, you just got out there. That's it. That's part of your process, right? And you, and you use it to good effect. Well, you know, and to George that you can simply non -threatening ask in a way to where, you know, Mr. customer,

You know, this is how I grow my business. I certainly appreciate any referrals that you can provide. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, it's interesting. And then the CEOI relationship, that is a referral relationship. You said, you made a comment a couple of minutes ago that I'd like to pick up on, which is, which gets to the, you know, why would,

Let's pick who should we use? What profession should we use as a good example of a COI? Wealth advisors, attorneys. Yeah, certainly. We could use growth advisors, financial planners. There's CPAs, there's attorneys out there. There's marketing and advertising sales folks. I almost like to say you could look at any B2B

profession that you could use as a COA. For me, I've had good luck with CPA firms. Okay. You know, CPA firms, they obviously they are looked at in most cases as their trusted advisor. Now, we also understand that a lot of CPA firms do not provide the services that

a lot of the growth driver consultants offer as well. So again, for me, the CPA firms have really been a very good source of referrals and COIs. I know that a lot of customers, they wish that their CPA firm would provide more services. And that's where CPA firm may call us in as an extension of their team.

which is not non -threatening whatsoever. And that just helps solidify and make that client more sticky for all parties. That's, you know, it's interesting because you're getting into using a collaboration with you or with another business advisor, growth advisor, as a way to deepen the CPA firm's impact.

with on a given client, which is incredibly smart. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that, you know, financial reporting is laced throughout the growth drive methodology, the three dimensions of growth. I mean, we have three specific financial reporting growth driving objectives. And then on top of that, we had things like margin.

We had things like a diversified customer base, profitability, you know, there's a ton in there where the CPA firm has a vested, they have the services and you are providing the plug to say, hey, you know, maybe our business flow scorecard is, it doesn't, you know, it's frustrating to use because the numbers aren't good. Why don't we go back and look at,

our bookkeeping, our, you know, et cetera, et cetera, the way we're tracking cash. And yeah, you know, there's a huge, I guess what I was getting at, there's a huge what's in it for, there's a real, very good reason that's great for the client, but is also good for the CPA firm for bringing you in, because you're going to uncover opportunities for them. Absolutely. Absolutely. Again, it just, it compliments what they're already doing.

and you know, going back to our earlier conversation about, you know, the sales process, right? I'm not sure that a sale or a CPA is going to pay particular attention to what their client sales process is. Right. Well, having that defined sales process, and, and understanding the KPIs around that.

will certainly provide that CPA additional information and ammunition to help their clients. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right.

Okay, you mentioned CPA firms. I'd love to go down the, I think marketing firms are an underutilized referral resource for business advisors. They are often the first call. I want to grow, I want to grow. I need marketing, I need leads. How often do we hear that, right? And it's well -intentioned and it's correct, but we break, you know, but there are other things that need to happen before.

this, you know, the marketing so that the marketing can deliver a maximum ROI. And that's where that's where you come in. Well, and let me mention this to George, you know, that's one of the benefits of growth drive is, you know, some of these clients may may think that that is what they need, right? They they need sales and marketing, which is probably true. But one of the benefits that growth drive,

provides is, well, let's take a look at some of these other areas before we go out and start investing into marketing and adding additional salespeople, right? Whether it's HR, operations, depth of management, right? So that's a huge plug for Growth Drive because it certainly complements everything. Yeah, thank you.

And I thoroughly agree. I mean, what I like to call violent agreement. You know, there's so many ways in which we can help our clients. And what I like about what you're saying is you bring a holistic approach to the table. So you're saying, hey, you represent the tip of the iceberg. Let's talk about everything that's under underwater here and what we should work on. So tell me, Chad, would you be willing to share an example of a very productive,

I hate the word referral because referral is a handoff, right? We're referring to a collaborative long -term relationship that we're going to start and nurture and hopefully maintain over the long term. Can you talk about an especially productive relationship you've had? Yeah, so I'll give you an example. I had a banker who had reached out to me.

and one of their clients had lost approximately 40 % of their business overnight. And this client was needing some additional sales and how do we recoup that lost revenue? Right? Well, that's scary. So the banker made the referral to the business owner. I went in, got the engagement, went through the entire process.

And it was about a six month engagement, about six or seven month engagement. But about three months into it, I uncovered that this particular business owner, which is a small manufacturing

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This week's episode is brought to you by Growth Drive, highlighting the Growth Drive Summit, held this year in Charleston, South Carolina, September 23, 24, and 25. The theme is business advisory and quantum age, harnessing technologies and delivering client wins. This is unique content. You can't get anywhere. And to learn more, go to growth -drive .com. Look under events.

Thank you. See you there.

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facility,

so I went in and went through the the assessment process. Took me a couple of weeks, landed the engagement was there about seven or eight months. But more importantly, I uncovered.

about three months into it that this business owner was shopping for about a million dollar piece of new equipment because this was a small manufacturing facility. Well, because of my engagement, I was able to uncover that. And so what happened, I immediately picked up the phone and called the banker and said, look, you know, I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but the client,

is in the shopping for a potential piece of new equipment. It's going to cost about a million dollars. So I'm not sure if you're aware of that or not, but if not, it probably would be best for you to come have a conversation. So my point to that is that COI made the introduction. I landed that engagement. It was a win -win for all parties, but I brought it completely circle.

and brought the banker back into the equation, whereas he may not have ever known that this customer was looking. So he got a million dollar loan for a new piece of equipment. Nice. And that's what we're talking about. That is that's collaboration right there. And and maybe that's a good opportunity to talk about to segue a little bit into.

You can either have a perspective of abundance or you can be another one of these who move my cheese. Whose client is it? Well, the client is their own person, right? And we're here to help the client and we're here to collaborate with our COI. When people get, let's talk about territoriality. So often with referrals, suddenly I'm saying, well, that's my client. There's no one's client. There's no ownership here. And by the way, you take that attitude, what's going to happen?

But I'd love to talk for a little bit, use this as an opportunity to discuss the difference between collaboration and referrals. Because what you just referred to is a beautiful example of a mutually beneficial collaboration. Have you seen it go the other way, go poorly? Yeah. You know,

My philosophy is, if we take a team approach, together everyone achieves more. We will make this a win -win for all parties. I played a lot of sports and baseball, and I really try hard to drill that into, whether it's my COIs, my clients, my employees, my staff, whoever.

You know, at the end of the day, we have a job to do and that is to help our clients. Yes. Period. Period. And if we can do that, that's our goal has been met. Now, sometimes it may be ugly. Sometimes it may get bumpy. Sometimes, you know, the COIs and

And us as the growth drivers may not see eye to eye on every single thing. No, and that's to be expected. Yeah, I agree. But at the end of the day, if we can all help the client achieve their goals, that's what we're trying to accomplish. And that's what you're getting at. And you're a deeply principled guy, right?

That is the importance of guiding principles right there. And in a relationship, often in family businesses, they end up creating a family constitution. What's in a constitution? It's just principles, right? Free speech, thou shalt not kill. I know that's a commandment. But guiding principles in a COI relationship, and there are going to be confrontations, right?

It's going to happen. Differences of opinion. But those long -term relationships, the relationship itself sort of mandates that you talk through it like grownups and have the spine to sit down and say, listen, I know this isn't good for you, but this is what needs to happen. What? Well, I think that's a big part of where growth drive comes in, George. I really do.

You know it lays out the road map for you. It does a lot of the work for you. Now certainly we have to. You know input our experience and training in that as well. But a lot of times you know the platform itself. Provides. A lot of that yeah. Thank you it.

It does because it's a holistic view of the business. Absolutely. I got to get Mike Garrison on here. His specialty is referrals per se. You and I are talking about the process of winning COIs and then collaborating with them in client engagements. It's interesting. Maybe we could game out.

What does it look like? When we pick up the phone, we identify a CPA. You meet someone at a mixer. You meet someone as we do, right? Random encounters. And this is a CPA, this is, let's say, a CPA firm, or it doesn't matter what profession. What's the first thing that, what is, where do you start your own process if you're willing to share that?

As far, you mean as far as, it's really, it's really a story, right? So we, you know, we meet a CPA, we say, huh, you know, I'm, let's see what kind of services they offer and where the holes are. Is that where you're? So, I mean, that's, that's what anything, and something that I see a lot of advisors or just sales reps in general do is, is perhaps maybe they don't prepare enough at the beginning.

to have that conversation with one of their COIs. You obviously want to be prepared. You want to understand as much as you possibly can what that, let's use CPA as an example, what they offer, what they don't offer, and be able to go in knowing that you've done your homework. So that right off the bat shows the CPA that,

you've done your due diligence and you're not coming in as a competitor. Yes. That the CPA should not look at you or should not be threatened by any form. So, you know, one of the first things I really do is to make sure that I'm prepared and I understand as much as I possibly can about that CPA firm. That's number one. All right.

a little bit easier said than done, but to get the appointment.

Explain why you would like to have 15 to 20 minutes to explain to him or her, you know, why partnering with, with me would benefit you, Mr. CPA and the client.

again, that's a lot easier said than done sometimes. but persistence and if you, if you keep at it, you stay in front of them, you send them case studies, you send them testimonials of, of, you know, success stories of what you've been able to accomplish with maybe another professional service person, whether it's financial planner or attorney. Sometimes you may not want to share.

that success story with their competition. Sure. But the more you chip away and explain to them and show them, hey, OK, he's in it for the right reason. And you start to slowly build that trust. Yes. Yeah. And I'm sure as part of your in part of your process,

Are you letting them know that you honor their relationship with the client? Absolutely. I mean, my process, my sales process is exactly the same with a COI as it would be with a direct CEO. But I make it loud and clear that this is their client.

You know, they can be as involved as much as they want or as little as they want, as little as they want. I would like to lean on that CPA for certain things because of their expertise. Yeah. And if, again, if they're in it for the right reasons and they want to help the client, I feel like eventually they will understand that it all comes together.

And once it all comes together, that client is going to look at that CPA firm and go, wow.

I will never leave that CPA firm because they brought in subject matter experts in sales and marketing where they have resources available, not just from a accounting or tax standpoint. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's nothing that's going to earn a client's. One of the best ways to earn trust is to not do something.

that would be really good for you because it's not in the best interest of the relationship. And it's, yeah, there's navigating that line, right? Well, and you know, yes, you were right, George, completely. But if you lay the expectations, you lay the groundwork upfront,

and you're very transparent, open and honest about everything early on as to what we're trying to accomplish. There should be no concerns or no questions. Yeah.

Clarity, right? Clarity, that's right. Total clarity about what we need to do to get the success we want. That's right. Now, you work with your colleagues, with other people in the community, to help them sharpen up, create, and follow their own sales process. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, even my COIs, they will bring me in.

or specific engagements to help with in -house sales or sales process. And sometimes it may be, you know, other areas. But yeah, and I'll use another example. One of my COIs, which was a CPA firm in this case, they had three offices. And after building the relationship and explaining to them, you know, what my...

area of expertise was. They brought me on board. It was about a 10 month engagement and I rolled out an entire sales process and process training for their entire staff. A lot of CPA firms, they may not have a designated sales person. They may have some marketing people. But in this case, I took the approach of

You know, we're all salespeople in the organization and each and every one of you, whether you're a tax professional or accountant or audit, whatever the case may be, you need to understand the sales process. So we rolled that out and it changed their entire business model. It was...

It was very rewarding for all parties to see how it changed how they did business. But more importantly, I was able to experience how that changed a lot of their lives. Yes. How it built confidence in their lives. And when I was able to experience that,

That was very rewarding for me. That's awesome. I remember that case. Now that you bring it up, I remember you and I chatted about it. That was, I'm glad it worked out. So it is really rewarding, right? It's rewarding for us when we help our clients, when we help our colleagues. Absolutely. That's one of our, the growth drives guiding principles, be a net giver, not be a net giver. We attract net givers, right? I don't tell people what to do, but that's who we attract. Hey, Chad, you want to talk about,

CEO workshop marketing events and collaborating with another professional in front of probably their clients to educate the clients and maybe uncover some opportunities? Yeah, I would love to. I appreciate that, George. So one of the marketing and technology firms that is one of my COIs,

we are putting on a, what we're calling a technology slash, marketing, bootcamp, on may 15th. it's two hours every, every Wednesday, from 11 to one. And, I'll certainly send out a link, if you would like George, but yeah, you know, marketing today as, as we know, it has changed forever.

It's more technology than it is just the traditional marketing. And, you know, I'm able to identify pretty quickly with clients that if they don't change the way they're marketing their business or the way they're investing their dollars, they're wasting a lot of money. They're not getting the results that they should be getting. And, you know,

that goes back to, again, the growth drive. We can go in and quantify what that looks like by not having a solid marketing and sales plan in place. And so the bootcamp really takes a deep dive and really explains more about the changes, the technology. Part of this particular technology and marketing company that I've partnered with,

It's really unique. You can actually set up a real -time dashboard that you can log into at any given point. And you can identify and monitor anything you want from lead generation, clicks, emails, phone calls, you name it. And it's really...

that aside, a lot of the question marks about, well, is my marketing dollars working? Yeah. Because we can now log in real time and we can have access to all these analytics. And we can determine what's working best and what's not working. That's not working. We can make changes immediately and, and readjust.

I love that. I mean, you're kind of doing a bootcamp execute. A lot of those, a lot of the information, the data you're going to be gathering are things that we would be tracking in the business flow scorecard, you know, in that promoter score, marketing, you know, marketing volume, velocity, sales, pipeline value. And yeah, you and I will be in violent agreement. I mean, having a well -plantified

sales pipeline and what each step of the process means is incredibly important. Hey, Chad, it's hard to believe. We have now been chatting for a little over a half hour and I...

Which means, unfortunately, we have to wrap up this conversation. We're gonna need to do this. I say this often at the end of a podcast. I'm like, wow, we could keep talking for the next two hours. Hey, if there's one, let me put you in the hot seat for a second, a little bit on the spot. If there is one takeaway, if there's one thing about centers of influence and sales and marketing process that you would want,

folks to have out there to write down, get a pen, write this down. What would Chad, sorry to put you on the spot, but what would that one thing be? So whether or not I am talking to our growth drivers in our community or a CEO or a HR person, it doesn't matter. The one thing that I would highly encourage,

and suggest is to get a sales process. Yeah. Follow the sales process. And I'll be more than happy to help teach you, guide you. You will see a tremendous amount of return and in multiple ways. But yeah, George, I would say. Learn your sales process.

I'm not surprised that that's your advice. You know, it's interesting. Jaco Willink says discipline equals freedom. And what you're talking about, and it's so true, you follow a process and you fine tune a process and it's incredibly liberating. Maybe you should have said discipline is liberating, but yeah, I thoroughly agree.

Listen, Chad, thank you very much. A great conversation. Yeah, George. Yeah, it's my pleasure. It's really my pleasure. It's a pleasure to have you in the community and you and I have known each other again for a long time. And I'm sure another, you know, another conversation like this, that right down the road. Absolutely. Thank you very much for having me. And, I greatly appreciate your friendship and what you're doing with growth. Thank you very much, man.

Listen, ladies and gentlemen, Chad Connery, Peak Business Advising, all things business growth and especially today, sales and marketing process. So thanks, Chad. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

And now I'm going to turn off the recording. There we go.

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Hi this is George, thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, you can subscribe, like, and please take two seconds to leave a review. It tells the world that you like what we're doing and it helps us understand how we can improve the show. Thank you and see you next time.