On The Road E01 - Introduction

Alex Mozota:

Okay. Welcome, everyone, to a yet unnamed podcast. Since this is the first edition, it'll get better, just like with everything else. It's going to be better than a C+, that's for sure.

Eli Johnson:

I reject C+.

Alex Mozota:

We're thinking about calling this Avitus On The Road edition, Cold Call Companion, Expert Services Pocket Size. Really the purpose of this podcast is to be a companion as you learn more about Avitus Group and our expert services. My name is Alex Mozota. I am Vice President with Avitus Group, and I am joined today by Eli Johnson, also Vice President. Hey, Eli.

Eli Johnson:

What's up, everybody. Thanks for making time to meet with us today by way of this podcast. And I hope this builds on the video you would have gotten as you're a new appointed consultant or a member of our Avitus Group business development team. I know there's a lot of you out there listening as well. Thanks for joining.

Alex Mozota:

Absolutely. I like that, for the people listening at home. Okay. Brief background, who is Eli? Just tell us who you are, man. We want to know.

Eli Johnson:

Yeah. I've been with Avitus Group for almost 10 years, but I had the privilege of starting as an actual client. Josh Balster, who's one of our Presidents and CEO's over the Avitus Group expert service division, he is a family friend of ours. We've known each other a long time. He was good pals with my brother growing up. So when I wanted to start a lawn and landscape company, Josh, who was a business development manager at that time, he signed me up. So I had one employee. I think even at that time, Nicole, who's his now wife, and at that point just worked for us, was our client service development rep. She'd come to my parents' house, and where I lived at the time, and helped me with my employee handbook and my onboarding of one employee. Everything that we do so much better 10 years later, I got to experience prior to being an Avitus Group staff member. So that was a really helpful thing.

Eli Johnson:

And then had the opportunity to come on as a business development associate, like I said, almost 10 years ago. What we called them then was marketing specialists, so I was boots on the ground trying to cut my teeth and building the book of business in Montana. That's just changed a little bit over the years. Now the privilege of working with a few more of our team members across other divisions, or other markets, and just love it.

Alex Mozota:

Fantastic. How many people are you, I don't want to use the word in charge, but how many people are you leading and supporting right now in BD?

Eli Johnson:

Oh, about 20. We have about 20 producers across our seven markets. But really the role of the business development manager is far more significant than what I do with the team. Those people are out with our BDAs, our BDSs, our SBDSs, which on the venture side are BCs, so we'll probably adopt some of that vernacular over the coming months. Yeah, the BDMs are the ones that are really in the fight, making sure we're getting the deals, that if we have a client that's high, or a prospect that's high centered on a situation that we get them across the goal line. There's one of your sports analogies I know you're looking for. Yeah, but about 20, and a bunch of Navy Seals is what we like to say.

Alex Mozota:

Yeah, Eli loves sports analogies. We'll talk about that later. So walk me through. We're talking directly, the audience right now is the appointed service consultants, where did the idea for that come from?

Eli Johnson:

Yeah, so the appointed consultant really was the brainchild of Travis Bruyere, who is our CRO, but it comes from our experience in the broker world. And so, the rule of 80/20 applies in so many areas, and when we turned on a broker channels, which I know a lot of the Vensure team has, we don't have nearly anything like we used to in the past in terms of broker partners sending us options that we can quote for work comp and so on. But when we first turned that valve open, we realized there's only a few that really get it. And the rest end up being part of something where they can block us from engaging with a prospect if it wasn't submitted to us. So the appointed consultant idea was born, and we would take those brokers through a training to say, "This is what we want it to look like. This is how a good co-employer prospect should be engaged with, and the value proposition instead of just the work comp sale."

Eli Johnson:

So, now, as we've gotten to be with the Vensure team, we want the same idea that if somebody wants to just refer a prospect or a client that they work with to us that we can help with accounting or IT or dental billing, great. But if they want to be an appointed consultant, please learn from us through what we've learned the hard way. Through 25 years or, in my example, 10 years, or Travis' 16 years of doing things the hard way. And now we've got our process so dialed so we know what are good prospects. Why are they a good fit? How do we approach the pricing? And is it a transactional value or is it, "Hey, look at this partnership. We're going to be with you 24, 36, 48 months from now." We don't want something for six months. So, that's kind of the vision behind it.

Alex Mozota:

No, that's fantastic. I mean, in speaking from experience, why reinvent the wheel when we have constantly been trying to get better at this every day. And a lot of the content that I believe the appointed service consultants are going to experience are things that we have been working on even very recently, whether it's the workshops, because we know that when it comes to sales, sales is just one aspect of pitching a service that ultimately has an operational team behind that that it's going to deliver that service. And we know from experience that the bridge between sales and operations tends to be pretty tenuous. If somebody over delivers or over promises and under delivers, et cetera, we are here to basically set the stage that it is going to work, and that you can trust these services. You can trust your clients with our people, if you will.

Alex Mozota:

What does a W look like for you in this? What does winning feel like for the appointed services consultant?

Eli Johnson:

Yeah. Good question. One of the guys that we work closely with, that I work closely with, is Logan Iverson. And one of the things that he shares often is realized revenue. I like that idea of what do we actually keep? What do we actually have 24, 36, 48 months from now? And that comes by way of a great fit for our company, not someone that we jammed into our mold, and we had them for two months and it frustrates operations, it frustrates the client, frustrates business development. We don't want anything to do with that. And so what looks like a win is a client that actually has a tremendous need that understands our why, and that we're helping them get back to their why. And we're able to lower the ambient noise that exists in their business because there's a lot of it. Owning a small business is no joke. And I say small business, that could be 500 employees, that could be five employees.

Eli Johnson:

But if I am a brewery owner, let's say, and I've got 15 employees, I probably was really passionate at the start about making beer. And over the years, I worked my way into a corner where I'm not actually utilizing my skillset to the best of my ability. So if I'm a Vensure rep, if I'm an Avitus Group rep, name the division partner that's an appointed consultant, I want to find prospects that understand, "Man, I don't want to do my accounting. I'm not even good at it, and I hate it." Or "I've delegated to my wife or to my CPA, and they don't like it either." So if we can find fits like that, that come into our family of services, and we're a blessing to them and, operationally, they've got a great client now, BD has somebody that's really easy to engage with and pull referrals with, and the client feels like they actually won on it at the end, that's the perfect fit.

Alex Mozota:

Yeah. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Gift niche, if you will.

Eli Johnson:

Gift niche.

Alex Mozota:

We got to talk about that. Any obstacles, I think I'm a big believer of that sort of a stoicism, like the obstacle is the way, I like to visualize the problem so that I know how to hurdle it. What are some obstacles that people can experience as they join the service that it just be good to point out?

Eli Johnson:

Yeah, absolutely. To every appointed consultant who's listening in, do not, please, feel like you have to know everything. That is the killer of all opportunities. We see it with our business development associates. I did it when I was in the field. You just feel like you have all the service knowledge before you're comfortable to wield that tool in your tool belt. And let's just debunk that right now. That's not true. So you need to be good enough, as we've said in some of the other things you may have of either read or seen sent out way of video, you need to be good enough to get the meeting to the next meeting. That's it.

Eli Johnson:

We have Andrew Miller in accounting. We have Alex Mozota in recruiting. We have all these people who are so stinking good in their lane and know how to read a P&L and understand a balance sheet and give great accounting or tax advice or whatever the example might be. All you need to do is be the conduit between the prospect or client and our team, with our expert services, and allow the process to unfold. You'll be shocked by how easy it is, and you'll learn as you get at bats.

Alex Mozota:

Right. Yeah, and I think the organic piece of Avitus Group, every service that we sell is something that we interact with daily. Right? Whether it's taxes, you know what it's like to do your own personal taxes. You know what you go through. You don't have to be a business owner to relate to tax or accounting or recruiting. When it comes to hiring, people get it wrong all the time, but they still have to do it. Same with IT.

Alex Mozota:

So I'll echo what you just said about that. I think a great BD person, whether it's through Vensure or Avitus Group, they just show up to a customer and they listen for those pain points, you know, "How can I turn your nightmares into dreams?" And then as people will start saying, "My IT just keeps failing," you're like, "Well, we can do that for you." Right? I don't have to know anything about IT other than I've got a guy like Cole, ready to go, that's going to crush it for you. Yeah, couldn't have said it better myself.

Alex Mozota:

What can we expect moving forward with this content, with this process? We're sort of at day zero of this appointed services idea. What does day 60 and 90 look like in your mind's eye?

Eli Johnson:

Yeah. This venue, you guys will be seeing more of this, where we have quick wins or a narrative created about a win that Shane McCarthy in our Bellevue office got, or Cody Boles in our Kansas City office, how he won that PEO prospect and it turned into accounting and marketing. So we're going to share some of those similar to what you all see with Sean Primo's Winners Circle by way of email. But the why and the hurdles that we had to get over, maybe, with that prospect, will be good to discuss here.

Eli Johnson:

But additionally, beyond that, you'll see BD workshops be something that are of tremendous value, and that's where we really dive deep into each service. We'll have Andrew Miller part of that. We'll have Alex Mozota part of that. We'll have Sarah Staus. We'll have other people, Cole Halpin, that can help you understand even in greater detail what some of the Xs and Os are that help you get the win. So I think the podcasts and the BD workshops are going to go hand in glove. And I hope you guys... You like that?

Alex Mozota:

I do like that.

Eli Johnson:

Yeah. I hope for the audience that it's just helpful for you to understand by way of stories how that can impact your own book of business.

Alex Mozota:

Yeah. Excellent. Well, I think that's all the time we had for today. Do you have like a sign off? Like, uh, you know, I'll see you in the locker room. I don't know.

Eli Johnson:

Alex has been really been beating the sports analogies today as we've been preparing for this. But we do like getting wins. We do like getting clients and keeping clients. We do like saying, "Let's go," with a little bit of a chest bump. But I just look forward to our team getting to engage with everybody who's listening and figuring out how we can be of greater blessing to our clients. That is it. Small business is extremely hard. It is. And so if we can come alongside and be guardrails on either side of their business so they can have a better trajectory going down the road, man, I'm all about it.

Alex Mozota:

Let's go.

Eli Johnson:

Let's go.

Alex Mozota:

All right.