In this architectural episode, David VanderJagt, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of The Revenue Growth Partners, shares how he guides his clients to take their businesses to the next level with the right people, processes, and technologies to enable their success.
You will discover:
– How to scale your business by saying no
– How to shift your strategy from surviving to thriving.
– How to get the data you need on autopilot
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast and I am here with yet another high demand coach. It is the one the only David VanderJagt. Now David has over 15 years of experience structuring, developing and managing high performing b2b and b2c revenue teams that are capable of scaled and sustained growth. After years of consistently exceeding sales quotas. He turned his passions and experiences across the revenue value chain toward helping other organizations architect growth strategies that position his clients marketing, sales and customer success teams to win while enabling company ownership to achieve their exit goals as well. His direct and transparent management style revolves around the firm belief that a quality customer experience is the best driver of scalable, profitable and long term business growth and stability. Well, David, I’m so excited to have you here. I just love getting ready for this episode. I’ve got all kinds of questions for you. Before we get to any of that, though, I’d love to just hear what would you say some of the most important work that you and your firm are doing for your clients?
David VanderJagt
Yeah, the for my clients, Scott, most of them are under $10 million in revenue. And there’s so much unpredictability that happens, you know, as you’re as you’re trying to scale up, I mean, every milestone obviously is critical, but trying to get to $10 million. I mean, really, what you’re what you’re spending a lot of time, especially in that maybe one day or two to $10 million kind of growth phase is finding things that are repeatable, predictable, scalable, right things that you can, that that take some of the ambiguity and therefore the risk and inconsistencies out of your business. So the most important thing that we’re doing is, as we start to build playbooks for them, the focus is always on. Is this predictable? Can it be repeatable as we as we consider, for example, bringing on another salesperson, can they mimic or basically follow this playbook and see similar results. So we, the biggest thing that we do for our clients is we help them sleep better at night, because they know that how their capital is being invested into their business is into things that are again, repeatable, predictable, and scalable.
Scott Ritzheimer
So I noticed from your site that you guys are not, wouldn’t necessarily build yourselves as consultants, or fractional executives, but but rather growth architects. So tell me what is a growth architect? And why is that so important?
David VanderJagt
Yeah, so a lot of companies, again, that are in that earlier stage, companies probably post product market fit, but getting ready to scale up. They are, you know, they’re they’re still they’re still trying to figure out like, what’s what’s what’s what should we spend our time on? What should we spend activities on? What should we spend our, you know, limited? Capital defined as dollars, people and time? And, and so that, that getting out of that kind of early stage? Where you’re where you’re like, where do we spend time to do these? Like, where do we invest this, this, this limited capital, in terms of these types of daily activities? That’s, that’s really where we hang our hat. So to get to that point, we really need to reverse engineer how the company got to this place, understand what’s good, or typically, like, what’s profitable revenue. So we’re looking at everything. As we deconstruct. They’re kind of the revenue engine, we’re looking at how is marketing responsible for driving, you know, for some level of revenue attribution, whereas sales responsible, how is that being shared today? If you have a post sales account management or customer success group, what are their what’s their accountability and responsibilities around customer retention, customer activation expansion, right? So basically, anybody that in those marketing sales or CS functions that touches revenue creation, growth, or expansion, you know, the first thing we need to do is just dig in and understand what’s what what should what are the things that you can, you’ve consistently done that, that that that take you down this path of profitability? And then how do we start to save many times like no to a lot of the other things that really largely are distractions. So what our clients really appreciate, with the work that we do is we take a lot of like, spray and pray and we start to condense things down into a very focused approach. It’s data backed, again, it’s predictable, it’s profitable, right? And it’s things that we know that we’ve we’ve proven we have proficiency in delivering over and over and over again. So a lot of a lot of that value is figuring out what’s good, and what can we build upon? And how do we start to maybe say no, or not yet to some of these other you know, opportunities that present themselves, but are largely distractions while while we’re trying to scale up?
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s such an important skill set, I found that the reason why it’s so hard is because when we start off your ability to say no is not nearly as important as your ability to say yes, right. In those early days, he kinda to an extent and I’m exaggerating, but you say yes to whatever you can and then you find a way of making it work. Right, when you gotta get enough to make payroll, it doesn’t really matter if it’s like an ideal fit. And again, I’m exaggerating a little bit, but we get really good at saying yes, and then come hell or high water, we’re gonna find a way of making it happen. And then we do more than that. And we do more of that. And we never really develop the skill of saying no. And well, I think what you guys do and an important part of this process, and really a big difference between that kind of natural growth early on, and scalability is that ability to say no, if so, one of the things that I saw as I was getting ready for this episode is a real strong focus on data and structure. And I’m wondering, you know, the world you work in isn’t necessarily known for its data in structure, right? Entrepreneurs are not necessarily the biggest spreadsheet heroes, if you will. One, how do you? Why is that so important? Let’s start there. Why is it so important?
David VanderJagt
Yeah, so the emphasis on data, and you’re right, you know, while data will be will always be very important, survival is typically the most important thing, especially in those early days, that my hope is typically that the entrepreneur has it, while they’re in survival mode, they’re still doing some level of due diligence around, hey, I know I need to have some moderate amount of data, maybe it’s not as thorough. Maybe the CRM isn’t as clean and as updated as it should be. Perhaps there’s some data, you know, pieces that are that are maybe I know, are completely dialed in. But hopefully, as you’re starting to grow, you’re getting out of Product Market Fit stage, and you’re starting to grow into maybe one to 3 million in revenue. Annually, you’re starting to, you’re starting to assemble some some amount of data, right? And, and the reason that that’s so critically important to somebody that is more of a growth architect, like myself is because I’m trying to understand again, how can I like how can I look back at what you’ve done thus far, like your your marketing processes, your sales process handoffs between these functions, and started to just understand if I could start to look at customer segmentation? If I started to look at customer breakdown of, you know, where did these customers come from? How long have they been customers, we start to think about the unit economics of the business, how much does it take to acquire a customer, our customer, customer acquisition costs? And then what are some of our early indicators around payback periods? Because, you know, things like LTV, you know, especially for an early stage company that’s only been around for a couple of years are hard to develop. But some of these are just really critical metrics. And if I start to look at your, your customer, your audience’s right, or your your ideal customer profiles is different segments, I can start to look at, well, what did it take to acquire customer in this segment? And then how long? What was the average value of that customer like the annual contract value? And then how long do we retain those customers and at what rate and you can start to kind of like, look at these different storylines that are developing in this in your business, for what you do, whom you do it for, and how much you know how much you retain those customers through the impact that you’re hopefully continuing to have on their business. And so a lot of that, I mean, we can take guesses and sometimes gut level instinct, which will serve you well often is kind of what you need to lean into, in the early the very, very early stages of the company. Well, we want to do is get to that next kind of growth at the stage of that evolution of okay, that’s been great that we’ve been able to just move quickly got got level take, say yes to everything. But now we’re as we start to emerge out of that kind of early stage product market fit, I’ve loosely defined that as kind of zero to maybe a million to 3 million, something, something like that, we need to start shifting into okay, how do we do things that, that are process oriented, that that we that are again, like I said, predictable, like scalable, like, we know that this works? Right? And we and we’ve seen it because we have some data that has shown us over here that, that that that is supports, you know, this particular set of activities that we’re driving towards? So you know, it’s it’s a, it’s a it’s a tough thing. And oftentimes a lot of the clients and entrepreneurs that I work with, one of the hardest things to them is to say no, you see this a good example of this, where you have maybe multiple executives that are wearing the sales hat, and it’s hard to start to get people into their swim lanes, right? And they’re really like at their zone of genius. And there’s a lot of competency But oftentimes, you know, what we do as as growth architects is to is to say look, look if you best serve your organization, your company and taking you toward whatever that vision is, by playing the role where your your, your competencies and your your expertise shines through. And you actually do a bit of a disservice to the company as you start to try to wear too many hats doing too many things at one time. Not I’m not an advocate for like just go in and building out a bloated org structure. But let’s start to be a little bit more deliberate and intentional and narrow in terms of what you do and what and how that adds value to the company. Oftentimes what that ultimately means getting back or out of the question is starting to say no or starting to you know, delegate or, or shift responsibilities within the team to where they need to go. And so I’ve got a client right now that that’s been one of the biggest keys to their success. They’re probably going to double and growth this year is just Getting the the executive team, you know, in their zone of competency. So the CEO is still our main salesperson, but getting our CMO just more specifically focused on marketing. And then our CIO kind of more focused on product, project management, innovation, those types of things.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Fantastic. One of the challenges with data is that it takes time, at least more time than the golden gut, right, like then that instinctual, let’s just make a decision and go, how do you how do you help your clients justify the time that it takes to really accumulate and vet good data?
David VanderJagt
Yeah, well, I think I mean, nobody wants to spend time doing data entry, nor is usually spending time on extensive data entry, a good use of the time, especially when it’s a small team, especially when oftentimes it’s executives that are still executing, you know, while they’re also, you know, kind of carrying their C level title. So, you know, leveraging tools, I think, is where technology, even AI, you know, things like that start to play a role in helping because, you know, as, as things continue to evolve, I mean, for sure, we can, we can build our processes, and there’s levels of automation, I’ll talk specifically about the CRM, right, where we’re using automation to just prompt and make sure that we’re getting the right data entry at the right point in time, for example, as as marketing hands off to sales as a qualified lead a sales to start to take that deal through the pipeline to close and whatever information we need to download to the team in terms of transitioning, you know, that service or or, or product to, to fulfillment and delivery afterward. So I think that, you know, leverage your technology, leverage, leverage, automation, you know, build your take your business processes, and mimic that into your technology solutions. So that it just starts to keep some kind of coherence, and, and consistency in terms of, of data, and then look for places where, you know, especially if you’re hearing from folks like, Man, this got to be a faster way to do this. You know, for example, one of my clients that an executive that’s still leading sales is, you know, he sends a lot of follow up emails, and so starting to leverage things like you know, text replacement or in HubSpot, it’s called snippets and different CRM automations. It’s called different things. And building in personalization tokens that allow him to be a lot faster and more nimble, because, you know, he’s also an executive at this company, that’s also still leading sales as we’re getting ready to start to hire our first salesperson and build out that team. But you know, leverage things that make him just, you know, that that that even sometimes 1% faster, right, those things kind of compound on themselves, look for them, you know, look for the squeaky wheel, you know, and you’re hearing like, hey, this has just taken too long, and find out automate things, just you know, quicker, cleaner, automated, you know, this is where I think one of the places where leveraging technology will has had a great effect, and frankly, will continue even having more of a positive effect. The ultimate result here being you have good data, you have consistency in that data, and you can make actionable, insightful decisions from that data.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. It’s one of those things that it’s a little awkward at first, you know, and it’s a little hard to do, and it takes extra time. But the more you do it, the more it starts to accumulate, and it just becomes second nature. Yeah, but yeah, fascinating transformation. Very, very important one. I’m wondering, we’ve got a lot of founders, entrepreneurs, leaders and entrepreneurial organizations who listen to this podcast. And if you were to say, what is the the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish every one of them watching and listening to?
David VanderJagt
Well, I think we’ve talked a lot about it today. So I’ll just call it out specifically, it’s that as as you get to growth, inflection points, the answers for where you should lean in more where you should delegate more capital, again, in terms of people time and dollars, the answer is largely lie in your data. So first of all, don’t ignore data, make sure that you’re starting to develop some level of competency in consistency around how you’re getting aggregating and producing sort of data that that helps. Because as you’re starting to look at where we need to go, and where our largest opportunities are going forward, ultimately, the secret that shouldn’t be a secret is that that those answers lie in that data. So make sure you’re taking that part of your business seriously, it’s going to help you be more predictable, it’s going to help you scale up faster, it’s going to help you know, you know, the inputs, you know, our this then outputs should equal that. And so the thing that I always say is look like your data tells the story about where your growth opportunities are, at eventually post, you know, post product market fit much, much more clear and with much more with a much higher hit rate and then level of consistency, then then gut level feel, and just just just all out, you know, just grunt and build it out, you know, work hard. I mean, obviously you have to do those things. But start to look at start to look at how you can get better. And the answer the secret, you know, oftentimes does lie in your data.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s it’s so through them and there’s so much of just inertia and momentum. They didn’t just just drive it there, just drive it through. But the moment that you can get all of that energy and pointed in the right direction, so where where things really start to take off? Well, masterful, masterful episode, David, and there’s some folks listening to this, that they’re thinking this is exactly what we needed. Where’s this guy in all our lives? How can they find out more about you in the work that you do?
David VanderJagt
Yeah, find me on LinkedIn Dave VanderJagt. Email addresses [email protected]. Those are probably the two best places to get me and I would love to love to hear from folks love to engage. I’m passionate about this. This is this is what I’ve my career has been building to for a long time. So love helping organizations working with entrepreneurs, figuring out their growth plan, but love to to engage through email or LinkedIn best ways.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. Well, David, thank you so much. Appreciate you being on the show here today. And for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention in the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact David VanderJagt
Dave VanderJagt has over 15 years of experience structuring, developing, and managing high-performing B2B and B2C revenue teams capable of scaled and sustained growth. After years of consistently exceeding sales quotas, he turned his passions and experiences across the revenue value chain toward helping organizations architect growth strategies that position his client’s marketing, sales, and customer success teams to win while enabling company ownership to achieve their exit goals. His direct and transparent management style revolves around the firm belief that a quality customer experience is the best driver of scalable, profitable, long-term business growth and stability.
Want to learn more about David VanderJagt’s work at The Revenue Growth Partners? Check out his website at https://thergp.com/
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