Baktari MD

How to Choose the Right Consultant for Your Business! (2024)

• Jonathan Baktari MD • Season 2 • Episode 46

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Welcome to episode 46 of Season 2 of Baktari MD! In this episode we talk about all of the telltale signs that you are about to hire the WRONG consultant! Want to avoid hiring the wrong people? Watch this video and you will see that all of the tips and trick you need are right here! Find out all of this and more in the full episode! 

A bad decision about picking a vendor can sometimes be fatal to a company and certainly can be very painful. Hi. Welcome to another episode of Baktari MD. As you know, this season we're going to be talking about Crash CEO School, where we give you all of the tips and tricks on how to become a more effective leader in almost any kind of organization. So what I want to talk to you about today is how do you pick an outside vendor or service provider for your company? As you know, most companies can't do everything. So a lot of times they outsource whether it’s SEO, marketing, certain products, whatever they need. And this is sort of the reverse of selling, which is how to be sold. So when you're sort of on the other side of the target, as it were, and you know, who's the prey in this case is potentially you. But in a good sense, because we all know that if you find a great vendor or service provider outsource services, it can have a dramatic impact on your company. Often they can really take a company to the next level, especially if you partner up with the right person. So what I want to talk about today in this video and what I’m going to teach you is how to vet those people out. What do you, should- What should you look for? So by the end of this video, you should have a laundry list of things to look for because A bad decision about picking a vendor can sometimes be fatal to a company and certainly can be very painful. You can, one, spend a lot of extra time wasted time, money and resources that were deflected from other things that can hurt your company. So this is very, very important. So often when we're picking a vendor, however we get introduced to them, whether it's referred to us, whether we searched online, usually the thing is done by a set up, a zoom call or phone call, but usually let's call it a Zoom call or sometimes in person meeting. But however that happens, you know, there are certain things that you really want to look for as you go through the process. But before we go through that, let me just talk about ideally, what do you want? Ideally, you want the service provider who is going to come in and provide a service that you can't do in-house for many reasons. But the point of it is they're going to provide this service as though they belong to your company, they're inside your company, and they're going to treat their company like your company. So that would be the ideal goal, right? If you could find that vendor who's going to do your marketing, your social media, your SEO, provide you with the service however it is, but they're going to give you the same product as though they owned your company or ran your company. So that's really the goal. So when you're looking to vet out a provider, the ultimate goal would be to find a vendor who's going to treat your company like they owned it, like it's their company. The other things that you want is that you want them to tailor a product for you, right? So if a company has a standard product, you want them to, you know, make tweaks in it and changes in it so they address your company and your needs. Then you want them to have really defined deliverables, right? So if you're going to hire an outside company to help you, you want to make sure you understand what the deliverables are, they understand it and they're going to provide it for you. And they're also going to give you some metric of performance that you can rely on to gauge whether they're actually delivering the deliverables. Of course, you know, transparent billing where you're not surprised, you anticipate everything is going to be important. The other things that you want to know upfront is whether the team is going to be remote, meaning all the staff are remote or they’re onsite. These days, it doesn't make that much of a difference. But certainly depending on what service you're looking for, it can. Either way, you should have that information on your list of things to ask about. The other thing you want to know is are these full time employees or are they contracted out? So if they're contracted out, obviously now you're hiring a company who's then outsourcing it to someone else, which of course, you can only imagine may be slightly different than if they work for the company, because I think we all know for the most part there's often a different level of accountability. So if you're outsourcing a service that's being outsourced to someone else, and sometimes they're outsourcing it to someone else, you can see it's like the old game of telephone. Quality's going to potentially go down as as you go further further. The other thing is really to know if the service is the people providing the service are going to be in the United States if you're in the U.S. or if it's going to be offshore. That's interesting to know and something to think about. There's three telltale signs or questions that for me, always sound the alarm bell. Now, this is not what I want to talk about, but I just want to give you these things that you may hear on that initial visit that really I find very concerning. So the first one is what is your budget? So if you get that in the first thing, which is really kind of reverse engineering, you know, like what they charge may be different depending on what you claim your budget is or sometimes if they get a sense of your budget, they may, you know, put you in a category that they actually don't want to work with because unless you're prepared to spend a certain amount of money, you know, they may not be interested in providing you service. What I find interesting about that is often if the service is so amazing, you might be willing to spend a lot more money. So you may actually by telling them, quote unquote, your budget, they may be ruling you out. But in fact, if they provide a great service, you know, there are plenty of companies we've worked with where we started off with really a nominal amount, a few thousand a month, let's say, whatever. And then we grew it to 10x or 20x that because we thought the service was so amazing and it was actually translating into so much revenue for our company that there really we didn't even have a budget like, you know, the more we did, the more we made. And so this what is your budget is really bad. One, you’re really competing against yourself because they're asking you what you want to spend and you're wondering, well, is that going to alter their pricing because of, you know, let's say you say a budget that's more than they were expecting. You don't know that all of a sudden their fees are not going to be somehow padded. So there's what is your budget? I just have a concern with similar to what is your budget is how much do you want to invest. I'm not a big fan of investing. I mean, they're not a they're not a money market fund. And I, I like to reserve investing for real investments. Of course, we understand that any time you give money to an outside service and they they help your company grow, quote unquote, it is an investment. But so is every time you hire a new employee, so is every time you buy new equipment. So when it's couched in terms of investment, sometimes that's okay. But it really does make me twinge a little bit when I hear, especially early on in a call. The next one is, you know, when are you looking to get started? I find that interesting because often there is no urgency to get started. But if we found the right person, we'd be ready to start tomorrow. But we're willing to wait six months until we find the right person. But you know, this these kind of salesman like phrases like, when are you looking to get started? You know how much you want to invest? What's your budget? I find just maybe a list, especially initially in the first call as potential red flags. Not always. Of course, there's always exceptions. So, you know, I don't want people to think that's as soon as someone says that you just crossed them off the list. But it should make you think a little bit about that. Otherwise, which is a real tangent, is when someone starts a meeting and tells you they have a hard stop at a certain time, which I get, some people are busy and they've only allotted, you know, half an hour for you. But that sort of makes me think twice because, you know, these questions, the stuff that I am sharing with you, are often very frequent in companies that are basically churning clients, meaning they're not really focused on you, they just want to plow through a lot of these sort of Zoom meetings. And, you know, they'll do 10, 15 hoping to catch one or two and then, you know, get as much revenue out of that and cycle them out as they figure out the service may not be optimal. So it doesn't necessarily mean that the people who have true hard stops, you know, half hour into your conversation. I mean, is it possible that they're bit that busy, that they need to have a hard stop but if if they're trying to sell you, you know? Yeah, sometimes, you know, if the call is going real well, you may need an extra 15 minutes. And I think being on the other side of selling, we always try to allotte really extra time above and beyond what we think should be adequate because we don't know. And maybe that client may turn out to be a lot, lot bigger client than we thought from the original stuff. So those are the four questions that make me think twice. But let me actually go into the list of things that I want you to really look out for when setting up that initial call with a potential vendor. First number one on the list. Number one is they're late for the call. Look, anything can happen. People get stuck in traffic or car accidents, what have you, technical snafus. But being late for the call, especially if they're selling, you often can be a telltale sign. Like everything I'm going to say before and after, none of these is an absolutely deal killer. But as these pile up, you should be a little concerned. Imagine what would happen if 80% of your incoming callers turned into clients. Most small businesses close inbound calls at 20 to 30%, which means you're leaving money on the table. But don't worry. You are not alone. There are a few simple rules to taking your inbound call conversion rates from 30% to 80%. Enroll in our High Converting Call Class today and you will see a significant increase in sales and clients. Next one is number two is last minute rescheduling of the call. Right. Again, things happen. It's not 100%, but it does give you a sense of how important, you know, your business may be to them. Not necessarily. But when you add this to some of the other things I'm going to talk to you about, you can see that that might be a problem. The other thing number three is like there may be four people from from their company on the call, but one person is doing all the talking. That sometimes is the case. But then you wonder, why do all these people need to be on the call if one person is going to do all the talking? And so it is somewhat of a red flag because if they really have a team, then usually they're there for a reason. You expect all of them to chime in at a certain point. Number four is when they don't introduce in detail what the other three or four people are on the call their role will be. In case you know, you come on board and you have a sense of what their purpose is on the call, why they're there. Hopefully they're there to understand more about you from whatever position they have in the company. And that's the ideal situation. Number five, and on some root level, I think this is the most important. When the other company has absolutely done no research on your company or business. This is a really big red flag. I mean, a lot of it depends on what they think your business is going to be worth. But I have found that this is a telltale sign. In fact, I take it one step further. Often when we schedule these calls, we send them our website or materials that I think are going to be relevant to us or competitors that we're concerned about. And if during and if they come to the meeting and they have not looked at any of it, it's really disconcerting. And in fact, that may be a trick. So a lot of times when you're setting up the call, send them some material, say, hey, you know, this is really relevant. Could you spend 5, 10 minutes looking at our website, looking at this brochure that we give to every client and and see if they actually will do it? You know, this is probably a telltale sign that, you know, someone may be churning you. Often, you you actually get nothing. which gets me to my next thing, which is when they don't do that, they often want to learn about you during the call. So what will happen is, you know, you're trying to hire an SEO firm to help you with SEO and you, obviously, they have your website, whatever, but during the conversation. So what kind of business are you in? Like, Well, so what, what do you, what kind of service you guys provide? Well, honestly, if they just opened up your website for 2 minutes, they'd know. But it kind of tells you that one potentially how important your business is to them. And it also kind of tells you that the thing that they may be churning you, you know, look at it in reverse. Can you imagine going to a meeting where not only have they plowed through your website, they've looked at all the senior staff on LinkedIn and what their roles are, what the company does and, you know, read their posts on LinkedIn or other places and read blogs on your website. You know, nothing is as disarming as someone coming to a meeting and saying, you know what, we've seen all your company's videos. We actually saw your website, we saw some of the stuff on LinkedIn, and we already have some thoughts about that. You want to let someone feel comfortable. And of course, we sell that you know, we we tell that in sales that if you're trying to sell to do that kind of stuff. And I think I in my previous podcast, we've talked about negotiating and going into meetings where you do your homework, making the other person feel comfortable that you really care. You know, it's really all about caring, right? That you're not churning, but you actually care. So so if you're going into a call and literally they have no idea who you are, except you're their next call. Ring, ring, ring. The alarm bells should be going off. So that's that's a real concern. The next one is they do a pitch without knowing your situation. So in other words, they're ready to sell you the prescription for your problem. You know, take take this twice a day for, you know, two weeks. But they have no idea what they're treating. And so often what you see is they're ready to give you their out of the can prescription for your problem. And lo and behold, it so happens that whatever they're selling is what you need. And and that may be the case, but this idea that, you know, you need what we're selling, but we have no idea what you need is really can be baffling and may be true, though. But still, the fact that they don't know 100%, which goes to when we teach selling, of course you have to know their situation. You know, a doctor wouldn't prescribe a medication without actually interviewing the patient. And in many ways, sales are like that. So if you're if you walk in and they say, hey, you need this, and this is the package, these are the three packages, pick one. You should be a little concerned. Of course, contextually, depending on the service, it may be more off to be more off than I am explaining. But on some level, they should understand your pain, your situation, where you are in your growth cycle, where you are compared to other people in your industry, your competitors. Okay. So moving on to the next one, you know, on one of the telltale signs that often you have a follow up meeting and what you find is on the follow up meeting, the new person is there who is actually the person who should have been on the first call and that becomes pretty evident pretty quickly. So that's really disconcerting because it kind of tells you that, so there's a group that sort of filters out the original calls, which on some level I guess may make sense. But to take up an hour of your time initially until the real person, the real consultant, the real, you know, person who's going to help you is going to be on the follow up call. What makes it even worse is when the the real person is on the call, you wind up having to repeat your whole situation, which you may have done on the first, because the transmitting of your situation to the second call is often done poorly in those kind of cases. Along the same lines, whether as a new person or not, a lot of times because they've plowed through so many sales call you wind up actually repeating yourself even if the persons are the same. So now what? We hold on a second. Don't you remember? That's not our problem. Our problems X, Y and Z. And you can just see that like they're hearing it almost for the first time. Okay. The next thing is talk about pricing. When you ask for a ballpark figure of what their services may or may not cost in and broad you really in broad terms, often you get a lot of pushback in those kind of situations where they want to send you a full proposal based on them going back and coming up with something. So now that may not be bad, but it's really sometimes awkward that you can't even get a sense for what we're talking about. We're talking about 2,000, 5,000, a million, you know, rough idea depending on X, Y and Z. So not always bad. But if you're really not able to get any range or when you finish that first meeting, you have no idea, you know, what's going to be coming in that proposal in terms of costs that is a a telltale sign. The next is if they're not willing to give you a list of current clients or past clients, or you willing that you could talk to, which I highly recommend that almost every situation you ask for. So just say, hey, is there a list of people that have worked with you that you have had great success and they don't mind based on confidentiality, to talk with us just so we can get a feel for, you know, how you've done for other clients. If you get a lot of blowback on that, again, another potential telltale signs. The last thing I want to leave you with is when you finally get the proposal. The proposals are an interesting thing because, you know, different industries, different products, I get it. But some of the things that may be a tip off that this may be an issue is often when you get a proposal where there is vague deliverables and if the deliverables seem like, you know, we're going to do broad things for you, just be careful. You know, I think a lot of times people get into trouble with hiring a vendor when even the vendor can't define what their deliverable is. Next thing is a long commitment. I get it. Sometimes the companies they're investing and learning about you so they they can have a short commitment level. But on some other level, if they're going to be making you oodles of money or taking oodles of headaches away from you, you would want to stay with them for a long time anyway. You know, think about that. But I think that's a that's a, you know, double edged sword. Next thing is when they want to front-load the costs like a big upfront fee, I'm not a big fan of that. And often you can negotiate that away, but I think a lot of companies just try it any way and especially if it's not refundable or a set up fee or what have you, becomes concerning. Next item is an urgency to sign, right? So if you get this really sense that we're sending your proposal, you know, we need it back within a couple of days. Bah bah bah bah bah. Then I think it's a concerning thing that there is an urgency. The last was somewhat similar to what I talked about. But when you get that proposal and all of a sudden you realize the team that's going to be handling you are people you haven't met, you know, based on the proposal. And the sales team will be going off in the sunset and handing you off to a new team from from what you can tell in the proposal, in which case I would recommend obviously meeting that team and basically going through the same process as you met with the with the salespeople. Because often, you know, what we have found is once we meet the other team, they'll tell you, well, you know, those expectations came from the sales team, but where the rubber meets the road, that's not really, you know, realistic. And so the level of realistic expectations may change if you're talking to the team that actually is going to do the work and not do the sales. So be careful of that. I want to end this thing with just saying, look, I mean, this all sounds bad and a lot of negative stuff, But, you know, the flip side is we we have found and many companies have found amazing vendors, amazing partners that have really altered the course of their company. So this shouldn't be a deterrent because great companies, great vendors, great partners are out there and they're often actually quite easy to spot. Now that you have heard some of that other stuff, they're the ones that really want to help you, that, you know, they're not churning you. It's not just the list of clients that they're just going to go through charge and, you know, provide bad service and then lose them and get new ones to replace them, which is the churning concept. You really and sometimes you become friends with the, you know, the other team and and develop relationship relationships. And so it's not all doom and gloom. I think what I wanted to give you on this is the reverse of selling which is being sold. And I think if you know how to sell you, all the stuff I'm saying on how to be sold becomes obvious. All the stuff that we talk about in selling. You want to get that same vibe when you're being sold. Okay. Well, I hope that helps. I hope you enjoyed that this video. Please comment like and subscribe. And if you have any of your own experiences when being sold, please leave them in the comments section below. Thank you so much. Have a great day and we'll see you in the next video. Take care. Bye bye.