Revenue Growth Engine: How To Align Sales & Marketing To Accelerate Growth with Darrell Amy on Episode #0190

Intro [0:00]
EA Interviews Episode 190. Inspiration, transformation, success stories, and the Imperfect Action Round seven days a week. Join Mario Fachini for today’s Expert Authority Effect Interview.

Mario Fachini [0:13]
I’m excited to bring to you, Darrell Amy from Revenue Growth Engine. If you have a business, and you have some profits, but you want more, or you have a lot of revenue, but you don’t have a lot of profits, these things can be misconstrued. And I have none other than author, speaker, bestselling author, and podcast host Darrell Amy on today’s episode. And I’m excited to bring him up right after we thank our sponsor.

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Mario Fachini [0:59]
Here he is ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Darrell Amy. Darrell, how are you feeling today?

Darrell Amy [1:03]
I’m fantastic. Thanks for having me on, Mario. This is going to be a lot of fun.

Mario Fachini [1:07]
Oh, I can guarantee that. And it’s my absolute pleasure. You have such a great opportunity to help so many people in the service that you provide. Tell us why is revenue growth is so important to companies?

Darrell Amy [1:21]
Well, it’s important for any number of reason. Obviously, revenue is the lifeblood of any organization. And great things happen when revenue grows. I love walking into a business that’s growing. You can feel the energy. You can see it in people’s eyes. You can just tell great things are happening. The opposite is true when you walk into a business, it’s stagnant, and maybe going even backwards. It’s a bummer. It’s a bummer. So I love going in organizations that are dynamic, they’re growing, what that means is you’re creating opportunity for new people to come to work, to creating meaningful jobs. They’re able to give back to their community. And so nothing gets me more fired up in seeing an organization that has a strategy in place, all the plans and processes, to ensure that they’re growing to the best of their potential.

Mario Fachini [2:14]
How do you help companies, like you said, if they’re stagnant? You know, they might be doing okay, and maybe they had some growth early on, and then they just maintained. I’ve seen this myself. And it could be a couple of years, it could be five, or ten. And they’re just kind of still there. How do you revive those type of companies?

Darrell Amy [2:34]
Well, you know, a lot of times when you take a look at that, really behind the scenes in those organizations, there’s not really a strategy or a plan. And that happens to all of us in all different areas of life. You know, coasting based on what you know. And when it comes to growing revenue, what I’ve noticed, Mario – and this is just one of my big aha moments was realizing something that’s actually pretty simple – there’s only two ways to grow revenue. If you think about it, you get net new clients or you cross sell more to your current client base. And, really, at the end of the day, those are the only two fundamental ways to grow revenue. And what happens in most organizations, when we get complacent, we lean to what we’re good at. And I’ve discovered in the organizations that I’ve talked to across multiple industries, multiple sizes of business, that most companies are good at one or the other, they’re either naturally good at attracting net new business or they’re good at cross selling more, upselling, and maintaining relationships with their current clients. Here’s what’s cool. When you put processes in place to do both simultaneously, the math works out really, really well. In fact, in the Revenue Growth Engine book, we share examples of organizations that say, “You know, what, if we commit to modest growth, say 10 percent in each one of those areas, net new business and cross selling more to our current clients, the math actually looks amazing.” You get, what I call, exponential revenue growth, where you can actually double revenue in about 36 months if you’ll show modest growth in both of those areas at the same time. A lot of times we lean on what we’re good at, what we know, when we get complacent. But when we get strategic, then we can say, “Hey, what would happen if we put plans and processes in place to do net new and cross sell at the same time.” And that’s where things can get really, really exciting.

Mario Fachini [4:36]
Let me ask you about the other side of the coin, because that is exciting when you’re doing it proper, but there’s the companies that are stagnant for so long. What if your company keeps growing? What should you look out for if you’re one of the companies that says, “We’ve been growing month over month for the last 36, 48 months.”

Darrell Amy [4:57]
Yeah. It’s a great question. Actually right before our conversation, I was on the phone with a technology company in the southeast and they, you know, had been growing year over year and doing quite well. You start to have that conversation about how do you set goals for growth. And what I’ve discovered is there’s a number of ways companies set goals, some of them are a little bit scary. Like, for example, one of the ways it’s more common than we all might want to admit when it comes to setting goals is, what I call, the spaghetti on the wall approach. Like, we had a meeting at the beginning of the year. We had to set goals for the end of the year to set for the following year. And we threw a bunch of numbers on the wall and they got buried in a folder somewhere. And then, you know, at the end of the year, we’ll go, “Oh, we hit that or we didn’t.” And a lot of companies do that. I think one of the reasons is they don’t really have a model for setting goals. The other way people set goals is, what I call, the ruler approach, where you go, “Okay. Well, we did this. Let’s see if it’s right. We did this last year, we grew 10 percent year over year and we put the ruler on the last few years of growth. Well, we’ll commit to that next year.” Well, is that realistic? Or maybe the bigger question is, is that leaving a lot of money on the table? I think for a lot of organizations, the ruler method, while it feels good, because it feels conservative, it may be leaving a lot of money on the table. So what I challenge people to do, and I challenge all of our listeners to do today is look at your company. And don’t just think about the big number for revenue. Go down a level deeper and think about two key drivers. Remember, we talked about net new business and cross selling where there are current clients. What are the numbers behind those? They’re actually fairly simple. First is, what’s the total number of clients that you have? How many active clients do you have? And then the second number is, what is my revenue per client? Which is actually really simple math, take that first number total clients divided from your total revenue, and you get the revenue per client. And now we’ve got a baseline that we can say, what reasonably do you think we can do in terms of net new business, new logos, new clients coming in? And what could we do if we got strategic in terms of cross selling more additional products and services to our current client base? What can we do to positively affect our revenue per client? But, once again, if you show modest growth in each one of those areas, reasonable 10, 15 percent growth in each one of those areas, you get the spreadsheet out. And we actually do this with our clients, we have it on the Revenue Growth Engine website, RevenueGrowthEngine.net, where you can go get the toolkit. And just play with the numbers inside that spreadsheet. And those two drivers actually give you what I would call aggressive but realistic growth goals for your organization.

Mario Fachini [7:53]
Is there a certain percentage you should be aiming for? Or, is there some goals you say, you should hit before you try to get to another one? If someone’s going, “I want to go from six figures a year to seven,” should they have a in between goal of 500,000 or 600,000 before they try to jump from A to B?

Darrell Amy [8:12]
Yeah, I think so. I mean, a lot of those types of goals are kind of the spaghetti on the wall goals. There’s the pie in the sky. I want to be X million dollars a year, whatever your number –

Mario Fachini [8:24]
What would a better goal be?

Darrell Amy [8:26]
Well, a better goal would be to say, “Okay. I have 100 clients now. I think that reasonably we can grow that by 15 percent this year and on into the future.” So my revenue per client is X dollars per client per year, I think we can grow that. Set the goals at that second tier level and then do the math and add it up. And then you can see what a reasonable goal is. If you want to work that backwards, and you say, I want to go from 500,000 to 500 million, or whatever that number is, you can also work those numbers backwards and go, “Okay. Well, what would we need to do in terms of new client growth and revenue per client to pull that off?” And I think that’s where a lot of companies, if you just keep it at the top line, if you just keep it at a bottom line, in this case – well, top line revenue – sorry. We were talking about profit earlier, Mario. If you just keep it at the top line, you miss the nuance of what’s actually driving those numbers. And so the goals aren’t quite as meaningful until you boil it down to net new and revenue per client. So whatever your goals are, I challenge you next time you set revenue goals, to not just look at the total number, but go a level deeper and look at the drivers. And a lot of companies when they do it at that level, they’re surprised by the potential of their organization. You know, there was a great story about the British cycling team. And several years ago, the British cycling team was the worst team in cycling. And, in fact, it was so bad that bicycle companies did not want their logo, like, “Don’t buy our bikes, please.” Because they’re that bad. And so it’s a great story because a new leader came in and you know, the Olympics is coming up. And he’s like, “What are we going to do? I mean, this is embarrassing. The country is embarrassed at how bad this team is.” And he came in, he said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to aggregate marginal gains. We’re going to look for areas where we can make a 1 percent difference here, another 1 percent difference there.” They’ve made all these changes. They changed the shape of the seat. They changed the fabric of the clothing they were wearing to reduce wind resistance. They just looked at numerous different areas. They made 1 percent adjustments. And his deal was, if you aggregate all of these marginal gains, you’re going to improve. And sure enough, they won the Olympics. They went from last to first. And I think the illustration is the same here with our businesses, you can’t make changes sweeping changes right away that are going to stick in that are going to revolutionize things. But what you can do is you can say, “Okay. If we want to grow our business year over year, say, 10 percent in net number of clients and 10 percent in revenue per client, what are the marginal gains that we could get? What are the things that we could adjust systems or processes that we could put in place that would allow us to get those marginal gains?” And, Mario, I think sometimes when it comes to revenue, we just think like, big sweeping numbers. But it’s got to come down to what are the realistic numbers that we can hit, what are the things that we can do inside our business to make the adjustments to ensure that we’re making the marginal gains. And those things add up over time. And when you do both net new and cross sell at the same time, they compound and the results are pretty exciting.

Mario Fachini [11:57]
You are just a wealth of wisdom. And I appreciate you for sharing all of this. I got to ask you, how did you start all of this?

Darrell Amy [12:05]
Oh, my. So I am a sales nerd with a marketing degree. I started in sales long before graduating from college. Actually as a kid, I was the son of a carpenter. And so I was actually making some lawn furniture for my parents for their anniversary, when one day someone pulled over on the side of the road and said, “Hey, how much is that thing you’re building?” So I said, “$100.” And they said okay. And I was like, “God, this is good.” So I got in sales. But my first professional sales job was was coming straight out of college. So I worked in technology sales. I was in sales management, ran a branch, started training sales people in 2004 when I started my first company. And as a sales trainer, my very first client came to me and said, “Hey, Darrell. All this stuff you taught my sales team is fantastic. But our marketing doesn’t say anything about what you just said. Do you build websites?” So I said, first client, “Yes, sir. We build websites.” So I’d actually built one for nonprofit and for my church before that. But next thing you know, I got swept into this river 17 years ago of marketing, and digital marketing, and search engine optimization, and social media, and inbound marketing, and account based market, all the different things going on out there. So it’s been a fun ride for the past 17 years. I’ve been very involved in sales and sales training, training salespeople, designing sales programs for global technology companies. And at the same time, I’ve also run a company and lead a team of digital marketing professionals. And here’s what I noticed, I noticed that the salespeople were obsessed with sales. The marketing people were obsessed with all the gadgets and trends. But the real goal behind both of those things, is driving revenue. I mean, that’s what we’re all about. So when we would do our quarterly business review conversations with our clients, we would ask the question, what are your goals right now? What are you focused on? Where are your challenges? Those just top level business questions. And over and over again, people would say, “We need to grow revenue faster.” And that’s when the lights came on to say, “You know what? We need to stop talking about marketing. We need to stop talking about sales. What we need to talk about is the end result, which is revenue growth.” And that was the beginning of the journey that ultimately led to the writing of the Revenue Growth Engine book and now the Revenue Growth workshops and strategies that we put together for companies.

Mario Fachini [14:45]
That is fantastic. Because I could just tell the more you were talking, I was like, you didn’t just like roll out of bed yesterday and just like make all this up. Because I could tell you had – I knew you’re knowledgeable even before we approved everything to book a time and all that. But the more you talk, the more impressed I’m getting.

Darrell Amy [15:07]
Well, that’s very kind, but it all comes down to the execution in the real world. And I think a lot of the revenue Growth Engine was formed out of a passion and maybe even a frustration to see things work. And right before I wrote the book, and actually what ended up kind of culminating in the Revenue Growth Engine model, the framework that we present in the book, I was presenting at a conference on growth. And so all these businesses were there. They wanted to grow their business. And half the room was full of marketing people. And the marketing people were gaga about the latest marketing trends that they were talking about. And by the way, I’m a marketing nerd. I love all that stuff. I love the gadgets. I love the technology, the platforms, all the innovation in that space. I just think it’s amazing what’s going on in the marketing world. So the marketing people were there, they were really excited. The other half of the room was sales managers. And you could see the sales managers, you could tell who the sales managers were because they were sitting there with their arms folded, leaned back in their chairs, going “Come on. The leads you send is garbage. This is a waste of time. Can we get something that’s useful?” And, of course, the marketing people are looking back over their shoulder at the sales managers going, “You all are a bunch of Neanderthals. Get with the program.” And then the funniest thing was at the back of the room were the owners. There were several company owners/executives back there, and they’re at the back of the room, and they’re drinking their coffee looking out over this landscape of people. And I know they’re just looking going, “Can’t y’all just get along? I mean, can we work together, please.” And I think there’s been a lot of misalignment in organizations, large and small, between sales and marketing. And, you know, sales is thinking about selling, marketing is thinking about marketing. But really, what we need to be thinking about together is revenue growth. And I think it’s not a coincidence that in 2018, about 18 percent of Fortune 500 companies had a position called a chief revenue officer. Companies that said, “You know what? It’s time to end this marketing and sales thing. Let’s have a chief revenue officer.” That number jumped from 18 percent to 31 percent between 2018 and 2019. And so the trend at the enterprise level is to say, “Let’s focus on revenue, not on sales and marketing. Let’s begin with the end in mind,” as Stephen Covey would say. And so we’re seeing this now proliferate across medium and small organizations, even solopreneurs, that go, “Yeah. You know, what? All these gadgets and techniques and all that are great. And they have a role and they’re fantastic.” But let’s focus on the end result, which is revenue growth. And when you do that, things start coming into perspective and alignment.

Mario Fachini [18:03]
I agree. And I think it’s great that you not only are sharing this and teaching it, but you have so much out there as far as assets, like your book, that are focused around it. Because I remember hearing long ago, I think it was my friend, Chuck. We’re both speaking at an event. And he said, RPAs, Revenue Producing Activities. What RPAs, did you do for this week, this, and that? And I was like, “Well, that’s cool.” It’s like, “Where’d you learn this?” And I’m like, “You’re a genius.” He’s like, “I think I got it from real estate or something.” But the reality is, I see people selling content creation courses, which is good. Because if not doing content creation, no one’s seeing you. However, if all you’re doing is content creation, you might not be selling. I can’t tell you how many audiences I’ve spoke to from my books and trainings and I go, “Okay. Give me your business cards, flyers, whatever, and let’s take a look at it.” And I go, “Where’s your headline? Where’s your benefits? Where’s your call to action?” So to your point with the leads, yeah, you might get 1,000 leads a day. Very good for you. Merry Christmas. But if they’re all junk, you just wasted a lot of time, energy, and money, and everyone’s getting irritated in the process. Conversely, if you get ten a day and they’re solid gold, who’s better? What do you want, 1,000 or 10?

Darrell Amy [19:35]
Well, and I have some opinions about leads. So I’ve been in the world –

Mario Fachini [19:39]
Oh, do tell.

Darrell Amy [19:40]
Oh, my goodness. So I’ve been in the world of marketing. And I come from the b2b space. So you need to know that. I’m a hard charging b2b sales professional. And most of my marketing experience has been in the business to business world. So I’m not a great guy for consumer marketing. So if you’re in that space, what I’m about to say probably doesn’t apply to you. But in the business space, what we began to realize was if you’re going to drive revenue, net new and cross sell are the two ways to drive revenue. The way to accelerate revenue growth is by focusing on your ideal clients. So if you think about it, it’s a great question for everyone to ask, and we asked this at the beginning of all of our workshops is, who’s your favorite client? You know, who are some of your favorite clients? What do you like about working with them? I’ve gotten to the point where I can pretty much predict what you’re going to say at this point. They love working with us. They respect what we do. They value our advice. They’re willing to pay for it. They pay their bills on time. They give us referrals. You know, we’re like part of their team. These are the themes of an ideal client. And, you know, it doesn’t matter what type of business you’re in, we all have ideal clients. And then I’ll ask the question, what if that ideal client that you just talked about was to purchase everything that you offer that can help them over the next ten years? And we start adding the numbers up over ten years, and that’s kind of fun, right? Because the numbers are usually really big. And it puts into perspective what the value of that client is. And then I’ll say, “Hey, by the way, what about if you’re just average up and down the street bread and butter client? What would it look like if they happen to be loyal enough to you – most of them aren’t – to last over the next ten years? What would that client be worth?” And when you contrast the average client to the ideal client – and I’ve done this across multiple industries, multiple markets, multiple sizes companies – without fail, the ideal client is worth 20 20 times or greater more than the average client. So what does this tell me? If you want to accelerate revenue growth, focus on your ideal clients. Now, that means two things – by the way, a little footnote, sometimes people go, “Darrell, what about our average client? We’d die without those people.” Well, maybe. I’m not saying ignore those people. But what I am saying is from a sales and marketing perspective, that the policy in the company the focus should be, “Look, we’ll take an order from anybody,” but 100 percent, without fail, our ideal clients are going to get taken care of. And the ideal prospects are going to be contacted and worked on according to whatever plan we’ve put together. So we can do business with whomever but, without fail, our ideal clients and prospects are going to get attention. So what does this mean related to leads? Well, if you know who your ideal clients are, and then you develop a profile, and you know who your ideal prospects are, you’ve literally purchased and built the list of ideal prospects, you don’t need leads, you already know who those people are. What you need is engagement with your ideal prospects. And this is a huge paradigm shift for a lot of b2b sales teams and marketing teams who look at marketing like fishing. Like, they were just going to put a lure out there, we hope something swims by, and bites on it, and we’ll create this magical lead. No. It’s not like that. You know, who your ideal prospects are. And so the job of marketing turns from just hoping somebody swims to saying, “These are the companies that we need to engage with. And we’re going to figure out how to engage with the decision makers and influencers in this specific set of ideal prospects.” And it’s a huge mindset change from, “Yeah. I hope that, maybe, somebody attracts, convert, close.” The inbound marketing motion shifts to more of a focused, what we call in the Revenue Growth Engine model, outbound marketing, where we say, “You know what? We know who we’re going after. So, we’re going to develop strategies to get on their radar with a focus message that resonates with them, so that we can engage with our ideal prospects, our future ideal clients.”

Mario Fachini [24:05]
Yeah. It’s so important to be focused on that, because, like you’re saying, 20 times the leverage, 20 times the revenue, 20 times is a lot better. It’s also 20 times cheaper and more cost effective to go after, you know, when people say, “Oh, should I go speak at this event? Should I even attend this event?” Well, what if one event is 100 a ticket versus 1000 a ticket or 10,000 a ticket? Well, if that’s where your ideal clients are or your ideal prospects, customers, how many events do you have to go to or speak out or whatever? You know, with publishing books, it’s like, who are you giving them out to? There’s so many things that go into it. And if you just boil away all the time you’re wasting, energy, and money, and everything, I agree with you. When you have the ideal prospect, it changes everything. But the thing is, most people never take that first step and go, “Who is it?” I ask people all the time, whether I’m meeting them for the first time or, generally, meeting them at an event I’m speaking at in the audience, and it’s like, “Tell me about who’s your ideal prospect. I can help everyone.” You’re going to enjoy this. You’re going to enjoy this a lot because you don’t speak to everyone. You may be able to help everyone. But that’s the differentiator. Do you have to put agents in support and doing all these extra things for everyone? No, you don’t need to. That’s why you have different packages. And let people choose. It’s not to say you don’t want to help them. It’s to say, “Hey, if you want to play at general admission, glad to have you. If you want to play at better admission, whatever, glad to have you. If you want to play at VIP, well, that’s why VIP always gets the perks just like first class.

Darrell Amy [25:53]
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. And I’m just remembering being at an organization in South Florida. And it was, it was this classic story. I mean, they had a product and service that can help just about any business in that marketplace. Well, guess what? There’s 90,000 businesses in the South Florida area. That’s exciting until you realize, “Hey, the sales team of six people.” So you’re asking each sales rep to cover 15,000 businesses like, “Okay. Do the math on that.” If you work 24 hours a day trying to do that, it would be virtually impossible. From a marketing perspective as well, you know, this business trying to market in the South Florida market. So we went through the exercise. We looked at who are your ideal clients. Then we applied that profile to the marketplace. And at the end of the day, it boiled down to about 1,500 businesses. So, now, we’ve got a reasonable number. We know who those businesses are. They can be assigned to a sales rep. They built a targeted account program to ensure that the sales team was being managed to activity around the decision makers and influencers in those accounts. And, now, marketing changes their focus to go rather than trying to hope that somebody maybe possibly in this giant ocean of 90,000 businesses, comes to us. Marketing said, “You know what? We’re going to go to the 1,500 businesses that are ideal clients and make sure we’re on their radar.” When you start getting creative in that area, there’s all kinds of ways to do that. We outline many of those in the Revenue Growth Engine book in the chapter on outbound marketing. And the idea behind that is to say, “Look, when you know who your ideal client is, everything comes into focus.” And what you need to do actually comes into focus. You can build a plan and execute that plan consistently. And all of that leads to rapid revenue growth with the type of clients you really enjoy working with, which makes business all that more exciting. Fewer annoying clients and more ideal clients is a much happier thing on Monday morning to come come to work for, isn’t it?

Mario Fachini [28:09]
Yeah. It definitely is. And the most important thing is you’re getting that traction, like you’re talking about. When you said 15,000 per agent, I’m like, “That’s crazy.” But now when you break it down and it’s only the 1,500, you know, that comes down to between 20 and 21 a month and you only have to service 250 a year per agent. And, now, you can get that traction and make the progress like you’re talking about and no one’s pulling their hair out, because people like to be around winners and people that are going somewhere in organizations, but not at the expense of it’s costing them their health and their life.

Darrell Amy [28:43]
That’s right. And I think when you have that just broad pool, that 90,000 businesses, really all sales people end up doing is just kind of picking the low hanging fruit. But no one is strategically going after the real accounts that could make a difference. And marketing is the same way, and so when you get the focus on the ideal clients, to me, that’s step one of accelerating revenue growth. It puts everything into perspective and allows you to focus your marketing and your sales efforts on the types of clients that are going to really drive business. If other clients come on board, if the other 85 or whatever the math is on that 8,500 clients come on board and want to buy something, hey, that’s fantastic. But what we do is we say, our marketing efforts and our sales activity, without fail, our company is going to go after these 1,500 prospects and they’re going to know who we are. And when it comes to managing clients, however many clients you have, there’s a certain number of those clients that fit the ideal client profile. Well, guess who gets the VIP treatment? Guess who gets the periodic business reviews? Guess who gets you know the best benefits in your client loyalty program? Who gets the best perks? And it’s not that you don’t like your other clients, but you know, I’m American Airlines frequent flyer. And so American Airlines knows that I fly a lot. And so as a result, you know, I get to the front of the line. I get, from time to time, to the front of the plane. They take care of me because they know that I am someone that moves the needle in terms of revenue for them, as opposed to a casual flyer that might go on vacation once or twice a year. So is that smart? Yeah. Absolutely, it is. Because I have a choice every time I book an airline ticket. And so I think when you look at your client base as well, you need to have a clear understanding and clear demarcation in your company of these are our ideal clients, these are our A-list clients, we got to take great care of them. And we need to think about the experience that they’re having with our company and look for ways to improve that experience.

Mario Fachini [30:54]
I want to ask you about your biggest transformation in a client. You don’t need to use their name if you don’t want to, but percentages and revenue growth, obviously, those help us learn. Who’s your biggest transformation story?

Darrell Amy [31:09]
Transformation happens in so many different levels inside this model. But I’m going to continue with that since we’re telling the story of the South Florida client. What happened inside that organization is twofold. First of all, with client management, when we went in that organization – this illustrates what we’re talking about earlier what a lot of companies when it comes to net new – revenue growth, they’re either good at net new or they’re good at cross sell. And so when we came into that organization, we said, “Well, what are your goals?” And they said, “We want to drive more net new business?” I said, “Fantastic. What’s your goal?” They said, “Ten percent year over year net new growth.” I thought to myself, “Well, that’s reasonable and doable.” And I said, “What did you do last year?” They said, “9.8 percent.” So I was thinking, they’ve said out loud unfiltered, “Why are we here?” But that’s what you know, if you’re good at net new, you think, “Well, that’s where we need to focus.” Then I asked about their cross sell business. And in this case, they had a new service package that was a great fit for some of their ideal clients, for sure. They’d invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in personnel and partners to roll this program out. And I said, “How’s that program going?” And they roll their eyes and said, “Oh, geez, Darrell. Terrible.” So I said, “Well, what would it look like if we put processes in place to cross them over to your current clients?” So we did that. And, you know, we put some very simple – we looked at the onboarding process and we came out with – you know, they didn’t have a consistent way to onboard clients. We helped them implement a periodic business review strategy, where they met with their clients, in this case, on a quarterly basis, to talk about their business goals and additional ways they could serve the company. And asked for referrals from ideal clients. And then on a marketing standpoint, we put together a client communication process and then they’re currently rolling out a client loyalty program. Well, guess what? When you drive 10 percent net new and you drive 10 percent, cross sell, this company has now accelerated their revenue growth. And the amazing thing is, the stuff they’re doing to take better care of their clients and expand those relationships is also yielding more net new business because they’re getting referrals, because they’re in there asking for referrals, and they’re treating their ideal clients with a white glove treatment, and they’re happy to give referrals. So in that case, you know, you’ve got an organization now, their revenue is growing well past the 10 percent because they’re getting those new clients on boarded with new programs. And, you know, they’re on a trajectory now to double their revenue in probably between 30 and 36 months. And that’s without buying anybody. It’s without acquisition or anything fancy. It’s just a matter of saying, “Hey, this is the area of business we weren’t good at. Let’s get good at it.” And now, we show marginal improvement in both net new and cross sell, and the results are exciting. So, yeah, it’s something that any organization can do. And it requires a little bit of discomfort in saying, “You know what? Now, we may be great at net new business. But we’re not going to cross sell. Another organization that had clients that they had literally had for 25 years. I mean, they were that good at taking care of their clients. But their net new business was in the single digits. It was low single digits. It was dismal. There were no processes there. So what are we doing? We’re putting processes together for strategic prospecting, target account identification and programs. They’re doing an outbound marketing program. So this is very new for this company. But what’s exciting is, you see a company there that has an incredible track record of taking care of clients. They’ve just never told anybody about it. So if they are able to maintain their client relationships and grow net new, they’re going to be on a track record to double their revenue in 36 to 48 months. And all without massive changes in their organization, which is really, really exciting.

Mario Fachini [35:24]
Wow. That is exciting to hear, because I don’t know of any business that wouldn’t want to double the revenue in that short amount of time.

Darrell Amy [35:31]
Yeah. And, once again, it sounds crazy. It sounds aggressive, and it is aggressive, but when you go down a level and say what can we do to grow net new? And what can we do to increase our revenue per client? Those two things, that’s where the marginal gains begin to add up. And you start putting processes in place in areas where you really weren’t focused before. And the small things add up and make a huge difference. And, you know, I challenge anybody, you know, go to RevenueGrowthEngine.net, click on the free toolkit, download the growth planner. And you can see, I mean, it’s a simple spreadsheet you could create yourself. You just add that up and the marginal gains add up when you do those two areas at the same time into exponential growth. And it is incredibly exciting.

Mario Fachini [36:21]
Well, I’m so glad you’re sharing this with us. We are going to go to the Wheel of Whatever, and come back for the Imperfect Action Round after we thank our sponsor. So I have this here. Oh, come on. There we go. It’s the Wheel of Whatever, it always stops where I need it to and it’s always on the right question.

Darrell Amy [36:43]
All right. Here we go.

Mario Fachini [36:46]
Look, we’re stopped. And look at that question, it’s the best one and it’s right for you. Who is the company or entrepreneur you would love to have the opportunity to work with that you know you could help them increase their revenue?

Darrell Amy [37:03]
Man, so I’m going to answer that in a general sense. What really fires me up, Mario, is working with organizations that have a generous heart. I am on the board of several nonprofit organizations. And I noticed that the things that really move the needle for nonprofits in these organizations, there’s thousands of them doing incredible things, they need to be funded. Who moves the needle for nonprofits more than anyone else? It’s generous business people and forward thinking entrepreneurs that have a heart to make the world a better place. So the people that I enjoy working with the most are forward thinking business people who say, “Yeah. You know what? I want to make a profit.” And I, certainly, have ambition for myself, so that includes creating meaningful jobs for people and also giving back to my community. Because the world has a lot of problems that need to be solved. And the nonprofits that are doing that work, they need the resources. And they need that. And so I get the most fired up about working with forward thinking businesses that are giving back.

Mario Fachini [38:15]
Excellent. That is a great answer. And I’m glad you shared it with us. We’re going to thank our sponsor and we’ll be back for the Imperfect Action Round.

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Mario Fachini [39:56]
And we are back with the Imperfect Action Round. Darrell, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Darrell Amy [40:01]
I am ready. Bring it on, Mario.

Mario Fachini [40:03]
All right. We got three rapid fire 60 seconds answer questions. The first one is, what is the fastest path to the profits?

Darrell Amy [40:12]
Ideal clients. It’s always ideal clients because they value what you do. And because they value what you do, you’re going to be able to generate profit. And it’s those those bread and butter clients, those up and down the street clients that grind you for a nickel every time. And then they don’t renew with you. It’s the ideal clients who are going to value what you do. And that’s always the fastest path to profit.

Mario Fachini [40:34]
Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it today?

Darrell Amy [40:41]
The biggest problem is they’re talking about themselves. People don’t buy products, they buy outcomes. If you think about it, you know, nobody – Harvard Business School Professor Theodore Levitt walked into his classroom every year at the beginning of the semester and held up a drill bit, “So this is a quarter inch drill bit, nobody’s ever bought a drill bit. What they bought was a hole. Don’t sell the drill bit. Sell the hole.” The corollary to whatever business you’re in is, people don’t buy your products, they buy the outcomes as products deliver. So stop talking about your products, stop talking about yourself, and start talking about the outcomes your clients want.

Mario Fachini [41:16]
Excellent. And number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Darrell Amy [41:23]
It’s to consider the experience you provide to them. So for a long time, we were in a product economy. It was all about making a better product. Then that kind of came of age. And products became commoditized. Then we said, “Let’s make a services economy.” So it became all about services. But guess what service is expected now, and it’s a commodity as well. Joseph Pine and James Gilmore wrote a fantastic book called The Experience Economy. And they said, the new frontier is thinking about experience. So what we challenge people to do in Revenue Growth Engine is to map your client experience. And at each stage of the prospect and client engagement, what’s the client thinking? What’s going through their mind? What result do you want? Where are the gaps? And and how can you improve your client experience? I think it’s the final frontier of value creation right now. So think about the experience and how you can make it better and you will unlock value in profit.

Mario Fachini [42:24]
You’re awesome. I don’t know what else to say. I’m like, “You’re awesome.”

Darrell Amy [42:30]
There we go. Lightning round. That was great.

Mario Fachini [42:35]
All right. Thank you. This is great. What books have helped you in your life?

Darrell Amy [42:41]
I’m a book junkie. In fact, I’m always reading and reviewing my favorite revenue books. So I mean, there have been -where do I start? Outside of The Bible and personally, you know, Napoleon Hill anything he writes is fantastic to me. But in business, I’m going to say in marketing, Jay Abraham, How To Get Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got. Just fantastic. Anytime I need ideas, I crack that book open. In sales – oh, my goodness – I have shelves full of books on sales. But my favorite book right now that I’ve been rereading and talking to both of the authors recently on our Revenue Growth podcast and the Selling From The Heart podcast is, The Challenger Sale. And it’s corollary to Challenger Customer by Brent Adamson and Matt Dixon. And I think there are lessons there that are highly relevant for where we are in the market today. Well, that was a hard question because I could talk about books forever. And, of course, Revenue Growth Engine, my all-time favorite bestseller. I think leaders are readers. And I think one of the best things – and I’m glad you asked that question – that sales and marketing professionals and any business owner that wants to grow can do beyond listening to great podcasts like this is to have a steady diet of ideas from great books.

Mario Fachini [44:10]
You did mention a lot of great ones. I’ll make sure they’re on the show notes page on EAInterviews.com. And you didn’t need to say Outside of the Bible. I think that’s a great one. I’m glad you mentioned at first. And I didn’t say business books, I said in your life.

Darrell Amy [44:25]
Well, there you go. I’m going to add one more book. It’s been extremely helpful to me. It’s an all-time favorite, I read this book and the books by this author all the time. It’s called Wild at Heart by John Eldredge. And I highly recommend that for any men listening or if you know man in your life. That one has been personally very profound and helpful in my journey as a man. So, yeah, books, oh, my goodness, so many books. I love books. And, man, I just have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation today. What a blast.

Mario Fachini [45:00]
The pleasure has been mine. I want to ask you – I’m throwing a thrown one in here – what about The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman?

Darrell Amy [45:07]
You know, it’s funny because I’m happily married. And I think one of the reasons I’m happily married is because of the ideas in that book. So, you know, it is good. And it’s interesting when you think about what I was talking about earlier about the drill bit and talking about customer outcomes, essentially, what you need to do in business is speak the language of your clients and your prospects, which is what they want to accomplish. And I think the same is true in marriage, you need to understand the language of your spouse. And I think in doing that, things go a whole lot better. It also stretches you as a human being, because that language is probably going to be very different than the one that you’re used to speaking. Yeah. Great book. I highly recommend that. Fantastic.

Mario Fachini [45:57]
Excellent. Well, I appreciate you for sharing all that you have, all the books and everything. Where can we go to learn more?

Darrell Amy [46:03]
Well, I’d love for everybody to get to RevenueGrowthEngine.net. RevenueGrowthEngine.net has free toolkits. There’s a blog. We run the Revenue Growth Podcast. We’re always looking for ideas and thinking of ways and angles that we can help companies, great companies grow. And so go there, get the free toolkit, sign up for the blog updates, and we’ll guarantee a steady stream of fresh ideas to help your business succeed.

Mario Fachini [46:32]
Excellent. Well, thank you again, Darrell. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Darrell Amy [46:36]
Mine as well. And thank you for all you’re doing in the podcast. This is fantastic.

Mario Fachini [46:41]
Oh, thank you very much. All right. Expert Authority World, we have another great episode here today. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. God bless.

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Mario Fachini [47:23]
Hey, thanks for listening to today’s episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show. And also be sure to check out EAInterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I’ll see you tomorrow.