In this tech-forward episode, Stefan Debois, Founder and CEO of Pointerpro, shares how he helps professional service providers overcome the inefficiencies that prevent them from ever truly achieving scalability.
What I love about this episode, however, is that Stefan shares how tech isn’t always the right answer, how duct tape digitization is the right strategy, and most crucially, when you need to change tack to achieve true scalability.
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach and I am here with not what you would call a coach in the traditional sense of the word, but someone who is massively instrumental in helping organizations and founders grow and scale their organizations. And that is Mr. Stefan Debois. He’s the founder and CEO of Pointerpro, which is an assessment software platform that helps professional services companies to automate their advisory processes. Can’t wait to dig into that. Stephen is passionate about the use of technology to build professional relationships with people at scale. Now, before founding Pointerpro, Stephen worked for 15 years in several consulting companies as a consultant as a project manager, and as an account manager contributing to entrepreneur Capterra, Crazy Egg, a bunch of other names you would recognize and know today and mainly in the areas of entrepreneurship and digital marketing. So there’s so much here to unpack. But before we get into all of that stuff, first, I want to say welcome, thanks for being on the show. And why don’t you kick us off with your story. Tell us a little bit about how you got into the place where you’re at now, how you before you launched Pointerpro. And tell us a little bit about that. That founding journey?
Stefan Debois
Yeah, sure, Scott, in that, thank you for having me, by the way. And so I graduated as an engineer, and then immediately afterwards, and I started working in consulting, because I thought like consulting was a nice way to, to start your professional career, you get in touch with a lot of different things. And so when I, yeah, I did like about 15 years in consulting. And what I’ve seen there is that, yeah, we worked like a lot with like enterprise software, and in large companies I’ve worked with, like PricewaterhouseCoopers as consultant and for a computer science cooperation afterwards. And so we had these large scale projects. And what I’ve seen is that the consulting companies themselves were decently automated, when it comes to the back office processes. But when it comes to actual giving advice to customers, which is the core business, of course of consulting company, and then there was still a lot of manual work, and a lot of things that were repeated and like not really efficient. So then, yeah, as an engineer, I always wanted to start my own company to, to create something myself. And then in 2012, I created 2.4. And based on that experience, so to say.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic, fantastic, well, why don’t you tell us a little bit about Pointerpro? What did you do and really dial in on what would you say is the most important work, or the the most important value that you provide for your clients?
Stefan Debois
Pointerpro, like, as you said, like an assessment, software and assessments that generates personalized advice reports. Of course, that’s a dual. I mean, you have an assessment like questionnaire and then based on the answers to the questions, and people that take the assessment, get a personalized advice report. So that’s all very nice, but higher level of objective, of course, for our clients, which are mostly professional services, and also sometimes in coaching. And yeah, is, of course to automate their advisory process. And thereby being able to scale. You have to scale their business without scaling the headcount basically, or without scaling their headcount as fast, because when I was in consulting force, and when you want to increase revenue, we always had to increase or like to meet new people. And all professional service companies are looking for ways to to achieve that nonlinear code. So meaning that it is always faster than the code of your headcount and digitization. Of course, one of the elements that can be used for that and our stool is only one piece of the puzzle. And that we think it’s an important piece. It automates the ask, assess advice process, we call it the three a process, ask assess advice. It’s a core process that every consultant or professional services company has to do.
Scott Ritzheimer
So it’s interesting that you’ve dialed in on professional services and from your background, it makes sense. But one of the things that, that I found, particularly in professional services is it’s relatively easy to get started right, there are hundreds if not 1000s, of one off consultants or coaches. It’s very easy to hang your shingle. It’s relatively easy I wouldn’t say that’s easy, but it’s relatively easy to build a thriving consultancy on your own very, very difficult to scale professional services. Right and, and where, you know, you kind of make up for all the ease and being able to get started low barrier of entry. Really not a huge capital cost, you got to put yourself out there. And there’s, you know, there’s a kind of mental, emotional, just momentum side of things. But once you get beyond that point, you know, folks are just consistently running into this barrier of, I’m trading my time for money, right, which is kind of that first scale point. And then even once they get a few people working with them, it’s that problem that you’re talking about. It’s like we’re swapping dollars for for time. And that doesn’t scale, right et you can marginally increase it, you can boost your rates a little bit. And for some, that’s a really big deal. But there’s a diminished return on that. And as you start adding headcount, it’s not only that it’s nonlinear, it starts dipping the other way, because you got to have people that manage them, you have to have all kinds of other investment. So, you know, with that being the backdrop, how have you seen, I’d like to look at this in a couple of different contexts. How have you seen and maybe this isn’t your world, but do you work with solo? printers that are using your printer process them to kind of scale their own practice? Are you primarily working with larger organizations?
Stefan Debois
It’s primarily with larger organizations or like larger organizations, not I mean, we have like the big ones like Deloitte and Capgemini. But we prefer to focus on the midsize. And this was not not a solo entrepreneur solo is probably a bit too small, to guys from 10 to 1000. Still, both range, of course of employees. But we see that because you’re talking about the evolution of the consultants, we see that before digitizing, you have to fix a couple of other things. Yeah, like you said, we basically, we see it as three steps. The first step is to specialize in a number of service offerings in one or more service offerings, but really choose for, don’t try to do everything. For everybody, you specialize in a couple of service offerings, and can be one man or woman company or consulting company for and with more people. And that’s specialization, that first step, then the second step is moved from time material to fixed outcome or fixed price. For each of the service offerings. You could say, Okay, you trade your time for money, indeed. But then, as you have done a couple of projects, you should be aware about the deliverables that are typically expected from a customer, the work that needs to be done for this, to make these deliverables, and then go to the next customer prospect and say, Okay, this set of deliverables, and this is the price that you’re going to pay for it. Yeah, that’s the second step. So a fixed outcome. And and the third step, even before digitization is to create a model, like a maturity model, to say, or to be able to determine the client’s performance level, in each of your service offerings, say that’s the cybersecurity for example, that your cybersecurity consultant and you need to be when you go into a new prospect or new client, and you need to be able to assess where he he is like, is like, absolutely novice in cybersecurity, or is already quite advanced. And depending on that, you’re going to give different advice. You should have a model and not even though digitize just put it on paper or on the PowerPoint. And that’s the third step. And then afterwards, the fourth step you can start to digitize was to like Arzo, in order to relate to what we that we advise to, to our prospects, and customers.
Scott Ritzheimer
And that has fantastic advice that I want to just kind of work back through that real quickly. Because one of the challenges I see, especially in the digital age of us folks jumping straight to technology, right, when they haven’t done the work of figuring it out in the first place. And I think it was Jim Collins who said technology is an accelerator, right? It doesn’t, it doesn’t really transform as much as it accelerates in whatever direction you’re heading. And so if you’re doing everything for everyone, and you try to automate that one, it’s very difficult to automate and to you’re just going to automate chaos, right? It’s just, it’s going to make you get into trouble faster, basically. So I love and it’s rare that you hear this from someone who who offers a digital solution saying, hey, there’s actually steps that need to take place ahead of time. And where you know, in our world and the language that our audience would recognize, what we’re talking about is I see folks who tried to over rely on technology to get out of the very first stage early struggle, right that they’re trying to figure it out using technology and in some tech companies as appropriate, but professional services that’s rarely the case. It’s rarely that a piece of software, doing whatever kind of automation is gonna get you out of that early struggle stage. Because you just don’t know enough about what you’re doing to even automate it yet. You don’t have something that’s working and there’s no piece of software that’s going to overcome a lack of understanding for your…
Stefan Debois
Even in other cases or situations, you always say like the cost of software like is the license price of the software is only a small part of the actual cost. Because the costs of changing people’s behavior, like before the software, they have to work like metal to A, and then after the software, it’s metal beam, because it’s, it’s with the software, it’s maybe a more efficient metal, but still, you have to move them from metal a to metal B, and that’s the most important cost.
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s so true, it’s so true. So you’ve got to get out, you know, it’s a little bit of blood, sweat and hard work, you know, like, you’ve got to kind of, you got to grind it out, you have to like you’re saying, you’ve got to get to the point where you can specialize where you know what your expertise is, before, you’re really gonna be able to start to even think about automating things. Now, from there, I love this idea of the fixed outcome, especially for professional services, because it is, you know, you walk in, and you’re like, that’s $400 for an hour of work, you know, here in the US, like, that’s crazy. But if you say, Hey, it’s $400, and I’ll solve this problem is a completely different conversation. And those two things together, I found are what really get folks out of that what we call early struggle, right? That just existential fight for survival. Fun is where we start really dialing those things in, in that third step that you had at creating a model measuring results, you know, following through assessing what’s going on, and starting to do that and works really, really well. But then, you know, that’s where you can get, especially if you put your effort in the right place as you can get up to 1015 2030 employees, you know, not all of them, coaches, consultants, or whatever the practices that you do. Some of them support staff, some of them, you know, will vary, but you can get there, but then, where you guys come in, and where we start to hit that next threshold is, you just can’t kind of you can’t grant your way through it anymore. It’s not blood, sweat and hard work anymore, right? You can, you can keep working as hard as you want. But again, you get those diminished returns. So how do you know how do you know where that crossover is? Like how to if someone’s thinking about implementing a technology solution like yours? Maybe they’ve done the three steps? How do they know when when those three steps aren’t enough anymore?
Stefan Debois
Yeah, when you have the model, and you when you have a new conversation with, like, with a with a prospect, and you use that model, maybe it’s just on PowerPoint, or just documented elsewhere, and it appeals to that prospect. And then the next prospect again, and again and again, then the evaluation of the model will then be like manually or what we often see like in terms of which will not be completely manually, but people they implemented via duct tape digitization, we call it. Yeah, the questions that are asked and the information collected to fit the model that is that normally be in Google Forms, and then it’s exported to Excel, and then some calculations are made. And then it’s inverse template, which can safely into PDF and then given to the, to the customer. Yeah, you see that when it’s when there are more when your company starts to call more transactions, and more new prospects, and that process needs to scale. And then it’s time to go to two more professional tool. So we have seen people that have made like Excel sheets with like 35, tabs, and it all questions and macros and everything. Really, really sophisticated model. And because you have two types of model, you have the descriptive model, and the PIs kept this model. So the descriptive model is only going like cybersecurity assessment, your level two out of five, and the benchmark is for example three. Now, that’s just measuring and press escape, sorry, and is then you give also advice. So you give your level two, but in order to go to level three, you have to do this and this and this and this device, of course, linked to the service offerings, you can you can provide. And so when you already have this and you have automated it right, which sub optimal tools, and you have like the transactions, the number of transactions increases. That’s the ideal moment to start to do one step further to be look at a tool like ours.
Scott Ritzheimer
Got it. So just kind of walking back through this. We’ve got someone who’s the team who’s specialized, they’ve got fixed outcomes. They’ve changed their pricing model. It’s working well. They’ve got a model that’s working. They’ve got some duct tape digitization. I love that duct tape that digitization though I can’t even say it. What do they what do they tend to try At that point before they come to you guys, and how does that go?
Stefan Debois
They they tried to go with this with this duct tape or with this suboptimal tooling to their customers. And then you see a number of pains, that, that that arise, like, the first thing is like too much manual work that I mean, they feel that they have to do like lots of repetitive work, and they can spend their time better him because all over, they have to do the same. Collecting the same information, like writing same type of reports. And that’s one thing. And then some, there are some secondary pains or benefits, if you look at it from the Tools perspective. So, for example, the consultants that are when consultants leave the company that the expertise also leaves the company, of course, when you have the expertise, like partially in a digital tool, then you solve that problem, partially because you will never get all the expertise in the tool, of course, right. And it still also consultants like in the context of the war for talent, which is an something we all experience, especially in professional services, the consultants will be able to do more Dziedzic work, and not just the data collection, the initial as this diagnostic phase, which is always the same. And if that is automated, they will be focusing on more more strategic work with clients. That’s also an advantage. So um, yeah, and these are kind of the of the things that we see the number one is the time to business impact for the customer. And what we call, like, the first conversation with the consultant and the business results, like, yeah, when you the analysis phase, the assess phase, when I was a consultant, sometimes it took two or three months, but just to document as is process how they work. Now, media still zero value for the for the customer, basically, because they just have to repeat like in workshops, I mean, I’ve been there a while and the consultants write everything down. And then afterwards, you can start to do recommendations. But that if you automate like that data collection, this initial advice, then the time to business impact is much shorter, which is an additional advantage
Scott Ritzheimer
Right, which is basically the professional equivalent of inventory turns, right of being able to roll through, and you start seeing some of the gains that that inventory driven organizations can start to make in a professional services environment just fascinating. All right.
Stefan Debois
We call it a work in progress is the same as infantry in a manufacturing company, and you have to try to minimize it in this race the company.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. It’s brilliant, actually. All right. So here’s the moment I’ve been waiting for him. I’m excited ask you this. And that is one question. What is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret? What’s that one thing that you wish everybody listening today knew?
Stefan Debois
I think in the beginning, when I started my company, a lot of people said, yeah, it starts back capitalizing on your network and the people that you know. And actually, that is, yeah, it’s, it’s good. It’s still good advice, though, I would not advise not to do it. But the secret or the less common advice, probably to weekly, go beyond your network also. Because otherwise, if you’re stuck in your network, also as professional service, and especially also as software vendor, you it’s not that the network will give you the introductions, you will still have to prove that you have a good product or good service. Because it’s not like because people know you that they’re going to be immediately and become clients, if they don’t like your product or service. And so it’s good. And then you as soon as possible, you have to use your network like these initial clients to go to beyond your network and then the for the first few dissatisfying moments that you use, yes, as a win for as an entrepreneur, I think it’s an some someone. Yeah, not from your network is, is becoming a client. Yeah. Because like even for us, like you’re based in Belgium, in Europe, if someone from Australia or the US becomes a client without knowing me just by looking at our product that our website and so on, and that is really the first yeah. Great moment. And that is a result of, of going beyond your network. That would be something that I would advise,
Scott Ritzheimer
That is excellent, excellent advice, and it really Is is a special moment. I’ve had a chance at several companies now to experience that. And yeah, it’s just like, we may have done this, you know, like we actually may be onto something these people aren’t just buying because they like so yeah. All right, excellent. So last question for you here. And then I’d love to hear how folks can get connected with you. But what would you say is the next phase of growth? For Pointerpro and for you as a leader? And what do you think are the challenges you’re gonna have to overcome to get there?
Stefan Debois
Yeah, for Pointerpro we, as from customer acquisition, we rely quite heavily on inbound marketing, like Google search, it’s both paid search and organic search. Also, some other acquisition can have channels. But now they’re like plateauing. And so they are Benton like, it’s not a secret to spend about 20,000. us all over yours, it’s almost the same to Google ads per month. And if I would double that amount, you can, or triple, I would not have like, twice or three times the number of leads. And even far from there, I think. So it’s, it’s working. It’s good unit economics, but not scalable. So we need to go for other channels to scale our business or these are twofold, like, the first is sell more existing customers. And the second is like the more the top of funnel thought leadership, which is means that people get to know us before they need our product. Yeah, easier said than done. Yes, but then you have gone in marketing, or leadership and everything, which is beyond the product, like I’m saying here, like professionalization of digital or the digitisation of professional services, sorry. And all the things that you can do without a product and to, to advise people about it, and to Yeah, to spread the word and then also good content. And then at the moment that they will need a product like ours, they will think about us. And as a as a leader, I think I am as x consultants, who has gone through the old way of consulting, and now evangelizing the new way of consulting. Yeah, I need to be the face behind that. And personally, bring the word to the world. So to say.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s so good. It’s so good. I’d love to hear how you know, someone’s listening to this. And like, you know, we’ve done the the steps. We’ve got a model that’s working, but we’re just tripping over ourselves doing the same thing over and over and over again, how can they find more out more about you and Pointerpro?
Stefan Debois
They can go to the website like pointerpro.com. And there is of course, and you can look at the tool, everything that it can do or cannot do. And then there’s also like useful blocks and case studies. And yeah, if you want to connect with me personally, and the network, or the social network, where I’m most active on is LinkedIn, so you can just connect to me and yeah, I will be happy to share like, experiences, and help help out if possible.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love it. Well, Stefan, fascinating conversation. Thanks so much for coming on. I know it was a it was so helpful for so many people. For everyone listening I just wanna say thank you for being here with us your time and attention. I mean, the absolute world to us and I can’t wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Stefan Debois
Stefan Debois is the founder and CEO of Pointerpro, an assessment software platform that helps professional services companies to automate their advisory processes. Stefan is passionate about the use of technology to build professional relationships with people, at scale.
Before founding Pointerpro, Stefan worked for 15 years in several consulting companies as a consultant, project manager, and account manage contributing Entrepreneur, Capterra, CrazyEgg,… mainly in the areas of entrepreneurship and digital marketing.
Want to learn more about Stefan Debois’s work at PointerPro? Check out his website at https://www.pointerpro.com/.
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