April 22, 2024 • 12 mins
Colin and Carl delve into the world of strategic planning and key performance indicators (KPIs). They discuss the importance of focusing on essential strategies that have a significant impact on outcomes, using the Pareto principle to streamline the planning process. Carl shares a compelling story about finding the most crucial KPI, emphasizing the concept of a "campus visit" as a leading indicator for success in various organizations.
Follow the Host:
Collin Mitchell (Partner, Leadium)
Our Episode Guest:
Carl Cox (CEO, 40 Strategy)
Sponsored By:
Leadium | The leader in outbound sales appointment setting
*If you'd like to be a guest on the show or have any questions, email us at guest@salestransformation.co - Just tell us why you're reaching out and we'll contact you as soon as we can!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Announcer (00:00):
Welcome back to Sales Transformation brought to you by
Leadium. In this episode, wehave Carl Cox joining us to
discuss the importance offinding your most important KPI.
Get ready to uncover the keyindicators that drive success in
your business. Colin, the flooris yours.
Collin Mitchell (00:17):
Alright. Welcome back to another episode
of sales transformation broughtto you by Leadium. I'm your
host, Colin Mitchell. And today,I've got Carl j Cox on. He's the
author of stuck at CEO.
He's also the CEO of 40strategy. We recently had Carl
on the show where we talkedabout what KPI you should focus
on. Lots of good nuggets there.Definitely recommend you
(00:39):
checking it out. We'll drop thelink in the show notes.
For anybody who may have missedthe first episode, Carl, just
give us a little bit ofbackground on yourself.
Carl Cox (00:47):
Yeah. Once again, 40, CEO of 40 strategy. And why
we're called 40 strategy is mostpeople only spend about 2% of
their time on strategy, which isabout equivalent to 40 hours per
year. So take a look at us whenyou're trying to be a little bit
more effective with those 40hours. So, basically, that's the
the key thing.
2, my experience has beenprimarily within companies. I've
been with 7 different companies,gone from 2x to 7x in scale. And
(01:10):
so I've had a lot of rapidgrowth within that, managed
every function of departmentwithin the company, and just
been fortunate enough to havebeen trained by Fortune 500
executives and primarily been,applying that to small to medium
sized businesses, throughout mycareer, and it just had a lot of
fun going through that process.And I'm really excited today,
Colin, what we're gonna talkabout to carry on from the
previous episode of talkingabout leading indicators to
(01:32):
lagging indicators. This nextone's a fun one.
Collin Mitchell (01:36):
Yeah. I'm guessing you you gave up on the
battle of trying to get peopleto spend more than 40 hours on
strategy. So you figured, let'sjust make them most effective in
the amount amount of time thatwe know that they're willing to
spend in this very importantthing.
Carl Cox (01:48):
You know, what's fun is when when no. You nailed it.
I mean, what's so interesting is90% of strategic plans fail to
get 2 thirds of their strategicobjectives done. 90%. And That's
a good number.
It's huge. And what's crazy isMackenzie is only 20% successful
with implement implementing, butthe problem is nobody gets fired
from hire Mackenzie.
Collin Mitchell (02:09):
So, you
Carl Cox (02:09):
know, our our concept is you're right. You know,
people are only gonna spend somuch time on strategy, but if
you do strategy the right way,our clients get they're in the
top 10% or better. You know, weour clients crush it because we
do our 7 principles that we layout in Lost at COO book because
that's what we wanna do. Wewanna make sure that people are
doing it the right way. And whenthey do it the right way, it
(02:31):
actually starts becoming fun,Colin.
It's not just a waste of timeand a a strategic plan that ends
up collecting dust, you know,and that nobody wants to talk
about 2 months down the road. Weactually get things done, which
is a lot of fun.
Collin Mitchell (02:43):
And why do you think that so many failed? Do
you think it's because it's nota good strategy to begin with?
They don't focus on the rightthings, or could it be that they
just have a hard time gettingthe team bought into the plan?
Yes. All of them are.
Carl Cox (03:01):
Fair? Is that fair? Yes. I it it is. The number one
reason is time, actually.
So 98% of core corporations orsorry. People within a
corporation say, we just don'thave enough time to do it.
Often, the reason why they don'thave enough time is they have
not focused on the essential fewstrategies that they should be
doing to have the biggest impactin the outcome. We're a huge fan
(03:22):
of the Pareto principle, whichif you are not familiar with
that already, 20% of theactivities that you typically do
has 80% of the results. So whatwe do is we trim throughout the
entire process of the strategicplanning process to get to do a
design of a plan that'sessential for you to get it
done.
We then make sure there's atracking mechanism to follow
(03:44):
through and go through thatprocess. And as a result, we
have much higher success rate.
Collin Mitchell (03:50):
Interesting. So the last time we had you on
Carl, we we talked about, youknow, some KPIs to focus on, you
know, what people typically lookat, what they should be looking
at. And so we thought we'd haveyou back. And then today, we
talk a little bit more aboutfinding your most important KPI.
And you talk told me, you know,before we started recording, you
(04:11):
said something about what isyour campus visit.
So I'm I'm sure people arecurious to find out what the
heck does that mean.
Carl Cox (04:19):
Yeah. This is a super fun story. As matter of fact, as
when I was with a strategicplanning software company when I
when I uncovered this concept,if you may. And it was just a
fun experience. It's a greatstory, and I think it's gonna
resonate with everybody here.
But the one thing I want you tokeep in mind as your listing
story is, what is your campusvisit? So what happened is I was
working with a charter school ofall things. Okay? Working with a
(04:43):
charter school, and I askedthem, so what is your most
important KPI? What is your mostimportant key performance
indicator that you have to makesure you're hitting?
Now once again, sales audience,that's sales. Right? You know,
you're talking about I we needto hit our sales number. Of
course, it is. Right?
That's your most importantindicator. Well, for the school,
it was students. That was theirmost important tracking thing
because if they didn't havestudents, they didn't get
revenue. Simple. Right?
(05:04):
They don't become a charterschool. So alright. So great.
That's your most important KPI.How do you know during the year
your students are increasing ordecreasing?
And they're like, well, we trackthe number of students. And, of
course, this was a CFO. And as aformer CFO, recovering CFO,
that's what happens. You know,people just looking behind. And
so I was like, okay.
Okay. Let's ask this again. Howdo you know you're making you're
(05:26):
making a difference? And andstill kept on going towards the
student. I said, okay.
What is something that reallykind of more of a leading
indicator that's gonna tell youthis? And they went number of
applications. I said, hey.That's that's better. That is a
better, you know, if you madeleading indicator to the
outcome.
But I said, are you in controlof people actually completing
(05:46):
the the applications? They werelike, no. We have no control of
that situation. We don't knowwhat's happening. I said,
alright.
So they said then finally, aswe're going through this and
kinda, you know, spitballingideas, the superintendent goes,
you know, Carl, when aprospective student is here on a
campus visit, we'll roll out thered carpet for them. We will
(06:11):
have one of our best studentswalk them through you know, as
as a current student, they'llwalk them through classes.
They'll get the the buildingwill be clean. They get to see
the teachers and how engagedthey are with the students. We
show them the facilities,athletic facilities that we have
that are world class.
You know, we we give them thisamazing experience. And then
(06:34):
they come back, and at the endof the discussion, they'll come
and shake my hand. And he said,you know, I knew every single
time whether or not thatprospective student was a good
common sign to be a part of ourorganization. So I asked an
important question, Colin. Yeah.
(06:56):
So do you track your campusvisits? What do you think the
answer was? No. Yeah. It wasabsolutely no.
Collin Mitchell (07:07):
You must Yeah. You must have been ripping your
hair out. Like, what do youmean?
Carl Cox (07:11):
Yeah. But You
Collin Mitchell (07:12):
just told me how important this activity is.
This ex well, experience. Right.
Carl Cox (07:20):
And you're not tracking it. Exactly. And so so
what's crazy is about this thisthis concept here, right, is the
most important thing. So westart talking more about this
concept. It's like, yeah, man.
It was it's so important. He,like, went on and on. It's so
important. I can't believe we'renot tracking it. Right?
It was a good acknowledgment.Boy, we better start tracking it
(07:42):
going forward. And then he saidsomething really interesting. He
said, you know, I haven't beendoing I haven't been handshaking
the students recently becauseI've been busy working in my
PhD. I wonder how it's goingnow.
Right? So the most importantaction leading indicator to help
(08:03):
convert a sale, Let's call whatit is. Right? They're trying to
sell a prospective student,like, coming to be a part of
their charter school. They'retrying to get that done, and
they couldn't.
They didn't know. They didn'tknow. Let me clarify. They
weren't tracking. They didn'tknow for sure.
And even worse, thesuperintendent was like, I don't
know what's happening anymore.So this is where I like to
(08:26):
always leave our audience andtalk about this is, what is your
campus visit? What you'll findoften is the most important
leading indicator, the mostimportant thing we track is not
actually being tracked in yourCRM. It's not being tracked in
your Salesforce automationsystem, and it's definitely not
being tracked with theexecutives.
Collin Mitchell (08:47):
And and what is it?
Carl Cox (08:50):
Well, at since that what's that? Say that again.
Collin Mitchell (08:53):
On the edge of the so for those that are on the
edge of their seats wondering,what is this that you're talking
about, Carl?
Carl Cox (09:00):
So if you may, and this is where it's a little bit
of a riddle, it's different forevery organization. Every
organization has its campusvisit. It has its most
Collin Mitchell (09:12):
critical part. What are some common ones? What
are some common ones that youYeah. Say let's say, I'm sure
you've done this with manycompanies. Yeah.
What are the top 3 that come upthe most?
Carl Cox (09:23):
Yeah. For the top 3 that typically come in is is the
initial conversation with theclient. So when you first first
impression first impression.That's right. Yeah.
That experience of the firstimpression of actually talking
with the client for the firsttime is often the campus visit.
And and the secret, Colin, iswe'll go back to the school. The
(09:48):
strategies to improve it are area hundredfold. It's probably 5
to 10 fold, but let's just thinkabout it. Okay.
Do you have your best studentwalking you through campus? A
little comparison. My daughteris, just got recruited recently
for college to play soccer at adivision division one school. We
were she was getting walkedthrough a division one school,
(10:11):
and they brought their leasteffective communicator to do the
campus tour. Right?
Crazy. Like, crazy. What are youthinking? Right? Versus the one
of the coaches, well, it's whereshe ended up going.
I'll do a shout out to to TCU.She spent he spent 4 to 6 hours
(10:31):
with her. Right? You know? So,anyways, experience.
So that's one thing. 2, hey. Wasthe school clean? 3, did, did we
meet on time? 4, did thesuperintendent have the
connection?
5, did we have a follow-up tomake sure that they got it? 6,
did we make sure the applicationwas there? Right? Okay. Now
let's go into business.
Same concepts. Right? Did youhave from the prospect to the
(10:55):
actual meeting, did they havetestimonials that they were
getting prior to that firstmeeting that they already bought
and sold in before you had metwith them? Number 1. Right?
2, is your person prepared forthat meeting? Right? Do they
know who they're talking with?Are they gonna listen to what
their problems are? Are theygonna find a way to solve their
(11:18):
solutions?
3, do we have proper follow-up?Right? Did do we have the proper
follow-up to make sure thatwe're getting the right
questions, understanding it, andmaking sure it gets done? 4, did
we set up a follow-up meeting tohelp close the deal if we
weren't able to close it in thatopening line? Right?
There are those key things rightthere in that process of real
(11:39):
connection when you have theproper buyer in the meeting,
right, is in most k not Ishouldn't say most. For many
organizations, it's your campustour. And once again, the magic
isn't just the campus tour. It'sall the actions around it to
have it be a world classexperience that they it's a no
brainer, right, for that clientto buy your product or service.
Collin Mitchell (12:04):
Thanks for tuning in. Please don't forget
to like and share so we can helpmore people transform the way
they sell.
Welcome back to Sales Transformation brought to you by
Leadium. In this episode, wehave Carl Cox joining us to
discuss the importance offinding your most important KPI.
Get ready to uncover the keyindicators that drive success in
your business. Colin, the flooris yours.
Collin Mitchell (00:17):
Alright. Welcome back to another episode
of sales transformation broughtto you by Leadium. I'm your
host, Colin Mitchell. And today,I've got Carl j Cox on. He's the
author of stuck at CEO.
He's also the CEO of 40strategy. We recently had Carl
on the show where we talkedabout what KPI you should focus
on. Lots of good nuggets there.Definitely recommend you
(00:39):
checking it out. We'll drop thelink in the show notes.
For anybody who may have missedthe first episode, Carl, just
give us a little bit ofbackground on yourself.
Carl Cox (00:47):
Yeah. Once again, 40, CEO of 40 strategy. And why
we're called 40 strategy is mostpeople only spend about 2% of
their time on strategy, which isabout equivalent to 40 hours per
year. So take a look at us whenyou're trying to be a little bit
more effective with those 40hours. So, basically, that's the
the key thing.
2, my experience has beenprimarily within companies. I've
been with 7 different companies,gone from 2x to 7x in scale. And
(01:10):
so I've had a lot of rapidgrowth within that, managed
every function of departmentwithin the company, and just
been fortunate enough to havebeen trained by Fortune 500
executives and primarily been,applying that to small to medium
sized businesses, throughout mycareer, and it just had a lot of
fun going through that process.And I'm really excited today,
Colin, what we're gonna talkabout to carry on from the
previous episode of talkingabout leading indicators to
(01:32):
lagging indicators. This nextone's a fun one.
Collin Mitchell (01:36):
Yeah. I'm guessing you you gave up on the
battle of trying to get peopleto spend more than 40 hours on
strategy. So you figured, let'sjust make them most effective in
the amount amount of time thatwe know that they're willing to
spend in this very importantthing.
Carl Cox (01:48):
You know, what's fun is when when no. You nailed it.
I mean, what's so interesting is90% of strategic plans fail to
get 2 thirds of their strategicobjectives done. 90%. And That's
a good number.
It's huge. And what's crazy isMackenzie is only 20% successful
with implement implementing, butthe problem is nobody gets fired
from hire Mackenzie.
Collin Mitchell (02:09):
So, you
Carl Cox (02:09):
know, our our concept is you're right. You know,
people are only gonna spend somuch time on strategy, but if
you do strategy the right way,our clients get they're in the
top 10% or better. You know, weour clients crush it because we
do our 7 principles that we layout in Lost at COO book because
that's what we wanna do. Wewanna make sure that people are
doing it the right way. And whenthey do it the right way, it
(02:31):
actually starts becoming fun,Colin.
It's not just a waste of timeand a a strategic plan that ends
up collecting dust, you know,and that nobody wants to talk
about 2 months down the road. Weactually get things done, which
is a lot of fun.
Collin Mitchell (02:43):
And why do you think that so many failed? Do
you think it's because it's nota good strategy to begin with?
They don't focus on the rightthings, or could it be that they
just have a hard time gettingthe team bought into the plan?
Yes. All of them are.
Carl Cox (03:01):
Fair? Is that fair? Yes. I it it is. The number one
reason is time, actually.
So 98% of core corporations orsorry. People within a
corporation say, we just don'thave enough time to do it.
Often, the reason why they don'thave enough time is they have
not focused on the essential fewstrategies that they should be
doing to have the biggest impactin the outcome. We're a huge fan
(03:22):
of the Pareto principle, whichif you are not familiar with
that already, 20% of theactivities that you typically do
has 80% of the results. So whatwe do is we trim throughout the
entire process of the strategicplanning process to get to do a
design of a plan that'sessential for you to get it
done.
We then make sure there's atracking mechanism to follow
(03:44):
through and go through thatprocess. And as a result, we
have much higher success rate.
Collin Mitchell (03:50):
Interesting. So the last time we had you on
Carl, we we talked about, youknow, some KPIs to focus on, you
know, what people typically lookat, what they should be looking
at. And so we thought we'd haveyou back. And then today, we
talk a little bit more aboutfinding your most important KPI.
And you talk told me, you know,before we started recording, you
(04:11):
said something about what isyour campus visit.
So I'm I'm sure people arecurious to find out what the
heck does that mean.
Carl Cox (04:19):
Yeah. This is a super fun story. As matter of fact, as
when I was with a strategicplanning software company when I
when I uncovered this concept,if you may. And it was just a
fun experience. It's a greatstory, and I think it's gonna
resonate with everybody here.
But the one thing I want you tokeep in mind as your listing
story is, what is your campusvisit? So what happened is I was
working with a charter school ofall things. Okay? Working with a
(04:43):
charter school, and I askedthem, so what is your most
important KPI? What is your mostimportant key performance
indicator that you have to makesure you're hitting?
Now once again, sales audience,that's sales. Right? You know,
you're talking about I we needto hit our sales number. Of
course, it is. Right?
That's your most importantindicator. Well, for the school,
it was students. That was theirmost important tracking thing
because if they didn't havestudents, they didn't get
revenue. Simple. Right?
(05:04):
They don't become a charterschool. So alright. So great.
That's your most important KPI.How do you know during the year
your students are increasing ordecreasing?
And they're like, well, we trackthe number of students. And, of
course, this was a CFO. And as aformer CFO, recovering CFO,
that's what happens. You know,people just looking behind. And
so I was like, okay.
Okay. Let's ask this again. Howdo you know you're making you're
(05:26):
making a difference? And andstill kept on going towards the
student. I said, okay.
What is something that reallykind of more of a leading
indicator that's gonna tell youthis? And they went number of
applications. I said, hey.That's that's better. That is a
better, you know, if you madeleading indicator to the
outcome.
But I said, are you in controlof people actually completing
(05:46):
the the applications? They werelike, no. We have no control of
that situation. We don't knowwhat's happening. I said,
alright.
So they said then finally, aswe're going through this and
kinda, you know, spitballingideas, the superintendent goes,
you know, Carl, when aprospective student is here on a
campus visit, we'll roll out thered carpet for them. We will
(06:11):
have one of our best studentswalk them through you know, as
as a current student, they'llwalk them through classes.
They'll get the the buildingwill be clean. They get to see
the teachers and how engagedthey are with the students. We
show them the facilities,athletic facilities that we have
that are world class.
You know, we we give them thisamazing experience. And then
(06:34):
they come back, and at the endof the discussion, they'll come
and shake my hand. And he said,you know, I knew every single
time whether or not thatprospective student was a good
common sign to be a part of ourorganization. So I asked an
important question, Colin. Yeah.
(06:56):
So do you track your campusvisits? What do you think the
answer was? No. Yeah. It wasabsolutely no.
Collin Mitchell (07:07):
You must Yeah. You must have been ripping your
hair out. Like, what do youmean?
Carl Cox (07:11):
Yeah. But You
Collin Mitchell (07:12):
just told me how important this activity is.
This ex well, experience. Right.
Carl Cox (07:20):
And you're not tracking it. Exactly. And so so
what's crazy is about this thisthis concept here, right, is the
most important thing. So westart talking more about this
concept. It's like, yeah, man.
It was it's so important. He,like, went on and on. It's so
important. I can't believe we'renot tracking it. Right?
It was a good acknowledgment.Boy, we better start tracking it
(07:42):
going forward. And then he saidsomething really interesting. He
said, you know, I haven't beendoing I haven't been handshaking
the students recently becauseI've been busy working in my
PhD. I wonder how it's goingnow.
Right? So the most importantaction leading indicator to help
(08:03):
convert a sale, Let's call whatit is. Right? They're trying to
sell a prospective student,like, coming to be a part of
their charter school. They'retrying to get that done, and
they couldn't.
They didn't know. They didn'tknow. Let me clarify. They
weren't tracking. They didn'tknow for sure.
And even worse, thesuperintendent was like, I don't
know what's happening anymore.So this is where I like to
(08:26):
always leave our audience andtalk about this is, what is your
campus visit? What you'll findoften is the most important
leading indicator, the mostimportant thing we track is not
actually being tracked in yourCRM. It's not being tracked in
your Salesforce automationsystem, and it's definitely not
being tracked with theexecutives.
Collin Mitchell (08:47):
And and what is it?
Carl Cox (08:50):
Well, at since that what's that? Say that again.
Collin Mitchell (08:53):
On the edge of the so for those that are on the
edge of their seats wondering,what is this that you're talking
about, Carl?
Carl Cox (09:00):
So if you may, and this is where it's a little bit
of a riddle, it's different forevery organization. Every
organization has its campusvisit. It has its most
Collin Mitchell (09:12):
critical part. What are some common ones? What
are some common ones that youYeah. Say let's say, I'm sure
you've done this with manycompanies. Yeah.
What are the top 3 that come upthe most?
Carl Cox (09:23):
Yeah. For the top 3 that typically come in is is the
initial conversation with theclient. So when you first first
impression first impression.That's right. Yeah.
That experience of the firstimpression of actually talking
with the client for the firsttime is often the campus visit.
And and the secret, Colin, iswe'll go back to the school. The
(09:48):
strategies to improve it are area hundredfold. It's probably 5
to 10 fold, but let's just thinkabout it. Okay.
Do you have your best studentwalking you through campus? A
little comparison. My daughteris, just got recruited recently
for college to play soccer at adivision division one school. We
were she was getting walkedthrough a division one school,
(10:11):
and they brought their leasteffective communicator to do the
campus tour. Right?
Crazy. Like, crazy. What are youthinking? Right? Versus the one
of the coaches, well, it's whereshe ended up going.
I'll do a shout out to to TCU.She spent he spent 4 to 6 hours
(10:31):
with her. Right? You know? So,anyways, experience.
So that's one thing. 2, hey. Wasthe school clean? 3, did, did we
meet on time? 4, did thesuperintendent have the
connection?
5, did we have a follow-up tomake sure that they got it? 6,
did we make sure the applicationwas there? Right? Okay. Now
let's go into business.
Same concepts. Right? Did youhave from the prospect to the
(10:55):
actual meeting, did they havetestimonials that they were
getting prior to that firstmeeting that they already bought
and sold in before you had metwith them? Number 1. Right?
2, is your person prepared forthat meeting? Right? Do they
know who they're talking with?Are they gonna listen to what
their problems are? Are theygonna find a way to solve their
(11:18):
solutions?
3, do we have proper follow-up?Right? Did do we have the proper
follow-up to make sure thatwe're getting the right
questions, understanding it, andmaking sure it gets done? 4, did
we set up a follow-up meeting tohelp close the deal if we
weren't able to close it in thatopening line? Right?
There are those key things rightthere in that process of real
(11:39):
connection when you have theproper buyer in the meeting,
right, is in most k not Ishouldn't say most. For many
organizations, it's your campustour. And once again, the magic
isn't just the campus tour. It'sall the actions around it to
have it be a world classexperience that they it's a no
brainer, right, for that clientto buy your product or service.
Collin Mitchell (12:04):
Thanks for tuning in. Please don't forget
to like and share so we can helpmore people transform the way
they sell.
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