Our Mission Helped Us Shorten Our Sales Cycle
I would consider our business, Intelecis, more of a mission-driven company. Our mission is to influence, inspire, and empower those we touch to accomplish their goals. For example, this week one of our clients, who works in the accounting department, was running payroll when something happened to her computer, I think it went blue screen, and she was frantic. She had to run payroll for 130 employees and one of our technicians got on there and was able to fix the computer. She was able to run payroll and she was so thankful. So that’s what it could look like for us to be able to help somebody so that they can accomplish their goals. But also, equally important is our team as well. It starts internally. If we’re not empowering, we’re not influencing, we’re not inspiring our team internally – how can they do it externally for our clients? We are very focused as well on the professional and personal development of our own people.
It is hard work, and it takes focus. The focus part is something that’s difficult for me. I’ve always had ADHD, so being able to focus last year on just a couple of things and getting the team aligned to deliver the results that we had was a huge milestone. We primarily focused on inbound marketing and online marketing. The number of leads that we generated was astounding. We had (what some people might coin as) some close calls. I don’t mean anything negative by that if you’re on the client side. What that looks like is we would optimize content and have content that’s relative to somebody who might be experiencing some sort of incident, say, ransomware. They found us on Google, and they would call us and say they are looking for an IT company because they just got hit with ransomware. They would ask, what can you do to help us? Then I would let them know what we could do first. I would find out what the situation was and then most of the time I realize that the sense of urgency is pretty quick, and we were ready.
Implementing This One Tool Shortened Our Sales Cycle
When we hear “It sounds like a great fit. How soon can you be here?” We send them the Adobe sign with the Stripe credit card payment. They do everything right there on the phone. One call closed. Implementing Stripe credit card payment shortened our sales cycle. So, we weren’t just closing more, but we were closing and booking that revenue almost immediately. That made a huge difference. We won ten new clients, and four of them were one-call closes. We went from about $600,000 in annual recurring revenue to almost $2 Million in annual recurring revenue. We added over $1 Million in annual recurring revenue!
Going To Rapid Implementation Twice Was The Key
What I really appreciated about Robin Robins and Technology Marketing Toolkit is creating the Accelerators Club. I’ve been a part of the community since 2014 and I first heard of Robin from Dave Ramsey’s Podcast. It was perfect timing. It was around the same month I started the business, and I had no idea what I was doing. Then I heard managed services and thought that sounded interesting.
I decided to attend Boot Camp in 2014, but at that time I was really lost. There was just so much information and Producers Club sounded great, so I joined for a year and realized quickly that wasn’t for me. It was just too much. I still stuck around the community and talked to a lot of really great people, and they personally mentored me to focus on certain things. One of those things was inbound marketing.
I’m not a very technical guy and it is really hard for me to implement a tactic myself until I hired somebody in-house to do it. Around that same time, somebody told me about the Accelerators Club, and I immediately joined in 2018. I completed Rapid Implementation and with ADHD I learn at a slow pace, so I just need multiple repetitions. I was still all over the place and trying to do too many things at once. I decided to take the Rapid Implementation workshop again, which was fantastic. The second time worked really well. Charles Henson was my mentor at that time, and he really helped me focus and take one thing at a time.
I found that focusing on inbound marketing was important, but it was the messaging that I needed right. I created a Unique Selling Proposition and utilized the templated/ “Robinzied” website. We use Vertical Axion and I really appreciate the relationship that they have with TMT. The templated site helped me humanize my site so that when someone goes to the site, they can identify with us. Charles really helped me with creating my Unique Selling Proposition which is part of the 90-day process. Making sure that we answer our phones live, Robinizing the website, and having real-life photos that convey the human concept with my picture or my team’s picture, not just stock photos. That is how I added $1 Million in Annual Recurring Revenue.
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