Jessica Harling From Go Behind The Design

Transcript

Will Hanke – WTMP (00:00)
All right. Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes, the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning service providers or business owners about their successes and struggles related to marketing their business. Today I have our first ever return guest and you know, when you’re, when you’re really good at what you do, you got to have them back on to pull out some more knowledge. So

I’m excited to have Jessica Harling on today. Jessica is a 4th generation window treatment specialist, founder of Behind the Design and leading expert in employee and process development for design trade organizations. Behind the Design nurtures top talent through recruiting, on -site and online training, and consults with leadership in streamlining processes that increase productivity and impact the company’s bottom line. Jessica, thank you for being on today.

Jessica Harling (00:54)
It is my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me again. I’m excited.

Will Hanke – WTMP (00:59)
Yeah, yeah, you’re pretty well known in the industry. So I’m sure a lot of people know who you are if they haven’t already heard the previous episode. But excited to have you on. For those that maybe don’t know, could you share a little bit of your background and your current role in the window treatment industry and how you help businesses succeed?

Jessica Harling (01:18)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I have a love of it that is very deep. I’m fourth generation in window treatments. So my great grandfather started business in 1936 in Chicago, and that’s where I learned the business. Got into it about 14 years ago and worked with my mom and my grandpa and opened then the consulting firm behind the design about eight years in.

and just haven’t looked back. It’s been a pleasure working with other window covering companies and interior design trades to help them with their recruiting, training, or their process development, which is my favorite part, is getting in there and uncovering what inefficiencies there are and making it more streamlined so that they can scale, they can get to those goals that they’re looking forward to.

Will Hanke – WTMP (02:14)
Yeah, I love that you grew up in the industry and you’re kind of like in it whether you wanted to be or not, right? I’m sure after school you came home or you came to the store and helped out and I also love that you found a niche inside of that. You didn’t just turn into another sales, into your salesperson like maybe your parents did that kind of stuff. I love that you kind of found your own path.

Jessica Harling (02:39)
Yeah, I really, I loved it. And the funny part is I didn’t know what my parents did for the longest time, my mom, my grandpa. I mean, they knew they were in design and I knew that every year when we had a garage sale, we’d be selling a lot of fabric and we had bolts and bolts of it in their garage. But before I got into the industry, I really didn’t know anything about it and wasn’t that kid that was going into the shop and stuff. So I learned everything from

Will Hanke – WTMP (02:48)
You

Okay.

Jessica Harling (03:08)
the incredible reps in this industry and of course the knowledge that my family brought to it. But that’s, you know, all been generated from working in the industry.

Will Hanke – WTMP (03:19)
Right, right. So tell me who your target market is for behind behind the design.

Jessica Harling (03:25)
Yeah, well we certainly love window covering companies still. So we work with a lot of them, but I’ve tried to expand it to the interior design trades. So we work with whole handful of interior designers, flooring, paint companies, anything that’s gonna beautify a home or even work with commercial companies. But usually our clients are starting to hit over that million dollar mark. They might be approaching two million.

and we help them get and scale to that $10 million mark or wherever their goal is towards that.

Will Hanke – WTMP (03:55)
Okay.

Okay, that’s a great niche. They have enough revenue to make changes, get things done. And also at a million, you’re probably to the point where you kind of have to get your SOPs in place. In a lot of places, they probably haven’t done that. And somehow they’re still selling a million dollars a year, which is insane.

Jessica Harling (04:10)
Yes.

Yep.

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s just so fun working with those business owners and teams. You we’re not just working with the owner. So everyone is on the same page with those processes because they’re the ones executing on it. So they need to get behind it.

Will Hanke – WTMP (04:31)
Yeah.

Right, right, very good. So how do you position yourself in the eyes of your customers?

Jessica Harling (04:41)
Yeah, I’m big on business development and one of the things that even, you my clients have commented on is that I have friends everywhere. And so part of working with Behind the Design is a holistic view of everything in their business. mean, literally we’ve helped with restructures where they thought they were going out of business and they had half a million in debt and we flipped it all around, got them profitable, put structures in place, hired a bunch of people,

them all. So whatever the problem is, we’re there to tackle it. And I know you’re big fan of Traction by Gina Wickman. It’s one of my favorite books. And so for anyone that loves that too, we are the integrators. That’s what we do. We take your ideas, your vision, and we come up with a plan and a pathway that makes sense for everyone in the company and how to execute it. And then we help you do that.

Will Hanke – WTMP (05:35)
Love it. Every visionary needs an integrator, right? That’s great. Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome. As a business owner, we have way too many ideas, and we really need somebody to say yes or no or let’s table that, right? Or else we just have tons of ideas for the most part.

Jessica Harling (05:38)
Yes. It’s for you.

Mm

Thank

That’s right. That’s right. And sometimes to have no idea of like how to actually implement it, like might be so innovative that it hasn’t been done before. how do we create, how do we engineer something to make it happen? And that’s what we love to do. We like to take those ideas and then build the foundation around it.

Will Hanke – WTMP (06:16)
Yeah, yeah, awesome. So I went back and looked on my website. It looks like you were on episode 21 of ours, and we talked a lot about hiring. So today, we’re going to switch it up a little bit and talk more about sales and lead handling, that kind of stuff, so that when the phone rings, what do you do, right? So let’s talk about that. When a lead comes in, what really is the first step that a business should take to ensure

Jessica Harling (06:38)
you

Will Hanke – WTMP (06:44)
that it’s managed effectively and obviously moves towards a sale.

Jessica Harling (06:49)
Yeah, you know, this may sound really simple, but you have to engage in some exciting, passionate, bubbly way, whether they are walking into your showroom or they’re calling you. It is so amazing. I’ve walked into so many showrooms where the associate is just sitting there and they don’t even say hi when you walk in or they don’t even look up. And so my rule of thumb always in managing a showroom was

someone walks in the door, you stand up and you go greet them. And if they don’t need you, you can hover and go in another area, but you need to give that big warm welcome. Thank you so much for joining, know, coming in here. Not give them five minutes and then maybe you’ll approach them.

Will Hanke – WTMP (07:33)
Yeah, I like that. I listened to a phone call today from one of our clients and the phone was answered, I’ll role play here, ABC Blinds. And that’s all they said, right? They’re like, what do you want?

Jessica Harling (07:44)
Right? Yeah, you interrupted me. Yeah.

Will Hanke – WTMP (07:51)
Yeah. So I think having something in place, like you said, be excited about it. And I guess it probably gets a little bit monotonous if you’re the one on the ladder doing the installs and the phones are ringing. I can see it being a little bit of a frustration, but there’s probably ways to handle something like

Jessica Harling (08:11)
Yeah, I mean, you gotta assume that that’s your next big…

break your big deal, you know, they could spend $100 ,000 with you. You have no idea. And I had that exact example happen when I was working in the family business. We were within a kitchen and bath showroom, very large in the Chicago area. And they in the area have this reputation for not being warm and fuzzy. You know, you don’t as a consumer walk in and like get incredible service. It’s because they’re more to the trade, but they like literally will ignore you.

you when you walk in. And there was a woman that came and strolled into my section of the showroom and I stood right up. I was even training someone. I was like, all right, perfect example. Let’s stand up and greet her. And I go over and she’s like,

Will Hanke – WTMP (08:55)
Yeah, yeah.

Jessica Harling (08:59)
not a single person. I’ve been here for an hour’s greeted me.” And I was like, Whoa, well, so sorry. Let me help you now. And she goes off. She was like, that is not service. I have so much money. I could fly to Timbuktu and back in a day. And it would be, you know, like I’d buy the store. And she went off. And I was like, well,

Will Hanke – WTMP (09:03)
You

Jessica Harling (09:23)
I can help with the draperies, I can’t help you with the kitchen and bath, I’m sorry. She’s like, no, you are gonna help me with the kitchen and bath. You’re gonna follow me around and write down the things that I want and you’re gonna hand it over to whoever needs to do anything. So she was pissed. And so we were walking around and in the kitchen and bath showroom, the manager sees me and the owner was there too. They’re like, what is Jessica doing in our neck of the woods consulting client?

Will Hanke – WTMP (09:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yes.

Jessica Harling (09:51)
So I’m waving them over behind her back and everything and they come over. She gave him peace of her mind, but she then came back the next day a little bit more calm with her husband. And he, she was like, I just want to introduce you to the woman that helped me. And it ended up being the largest sale in the company’s history, what she bought. And I was taken out to dinner because of it. Like it was a big deal, all because I said hi and I smiled.

So you gotta have that excitement. You have to have that love for what you’re doing or it’s gonna come across that way. It’s going to come across that you don’t wanna be there.

Will Hanke – WTMP (10:31)
Great story, yeah. And like you said, it turned into a huge deal. yeah, answering your phone every single time or greeting people when they come in. my gosh, it’s so huge. Yeah. All right.

Jessica Harling (10:41)
So important and to have a method for it. You know, you need to be the person that’s in the know. You’re the voice and the face of the company. So their first impression is you picking up that phone.

Will Hanke – WTMP (10:53)
That’s Yep. Yep. I’ve even heard some sales training where you get yourself excited, you smile, you know, all these different things before you make a call or something like that. So I think those things work, right? I mean, they do for me at least.

Jessica Harling (11:05)
I’m good.

Yeah, we had at the family business, put little smiley face stickers on everyone’s phone handle. So every time they went to pick it up, they could smile and remember, you know, turn it on.

Will Hanke – WTMP (11:20)
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Well, we talked about showrooms. Let’s talk about the other side, which most window treatment companies do, I think, and that’s the in -home consultation. So what are some key strategies for doing those successfully with potential clients?

Jessica Harling (11:31)
You know what?

Yeah, I think a big part of it does come back to a process. If getting the lead coming in is part of the emotional side, then taking them through the actual appointment process should then seal the deal. And when you’re thinking about it, that customer on the other side, putting yourself in their shoes, they are gonna want to be comfortable with someone. They’re gonna want confidence in their decision.

And if you give any sort of impression through that sales appointment that you are not comfortable with what you’re selling, or you’re not confident in yourself, or you’re not explaining all of the things that could go wrong or right with this product, like if you don’t do all those things, then you’re gonna have a hard time getting that customer to buy from you. That’s why it’s gonna feel like a chase versus if you had a process in place.

and you follow that every single time, your close rate would go up, your engagement with your customers and your repeat customers are gonna go up. And so even if you don’t follow a particular method, come up with your own process for it because that is going to consistently build better results.

Will Hanke – WTMP (12:54)
Yeah, yeah, very important to have that. And of course, after, know, whether it is somebody that came into the showroom, you went to their home, maybe you didn’t close the deal there. What are some good, like best practices for following up with those leads?

Jessica Harling (13:11)
Well, follow -up is huge. It takes, and I’m sure you know these statistics, the overall concept of someone buying, it’s gonna take seven to 12 touch points to get to that purchase. And so if you, as one touch point, called and set up the appointment, that’s one. If you call and confirm the day before, that’s another touch point. So you’re on your third touch point before you get to your appointment.

And if they’re not buying that day, you’ve got at least five more to go to get into that seven to 12 range where so many people, they literally drop the ball on the followup. One of my favorite things is to shop the competition, to stay relevant, to understand what tactics are happening and such. And one of my early ones that I did shopping for, three companies came out within three days of each other. This was about 10 years ago.

not a single company ever followed up with me. Not one email, not one person put me on an email campaign that was like, here, we have this discount going on. Nothing. Three companies in the same area did nothing to follow up with me. And I told them all I was shopping around and getting other competitor quotes. I didn’t tell them no, I didn’t close the book. So,

That is the power of follow -up. You’re just gonna increase your close rate tenfold if you continue afterwards. Because your best shot on an in -home appointment is a 50 -50 chance. Yes or no? They’re moving forward. But if after the appointment you continue to follow up when your competitors aren’t, you’re increasing that chance to 65 -75.

Will Hanke – WTMP (14:58)
Yeah. And those follow ups don’t have to be like you physically doing something, right? Like in our lead boomerang system, we’ve got an automation for a lot of our clients where they follow up. Maybe it’s a, they send a video on, you know, on Shades or something, and then they send a case study. They drop a voicemail on the client’s phone. There’s other ways to do it besides you just have to pick up and call them back, right?

Jessica Harling (15:23)
That’s right, that’s right. And my favorite is automation because you can use your phone calls for that personal touch and you can also, which people don’t realize, you can make your automation sound personalized. It doesn’t have to sound like a robot wrote it, you know. So if you just take the time to think about what you would want to expect, again, going in the customer’s shoes, then yeah, automation is going to be your friend because you can set it and forget it, you know, and still get that.

Will Hanke – WTMP (15:37)
Sure. Yeah.

Jessica Harling (15:53)
result of people contacting you.

Will Hanke – WTMP (15:56)
Yeah, very, very much agree. So let’s talk about sales, right? Some things you can do with your sales team if you have a sales team or if it’s yourself doing the sales. What are some different training techniques, things like that that you can do or provide to ensure some great customer service?

Jessica Harling (16:20)
Yeah, I think in sales it’s hard to get away from role playing and I know it’s the biggest eye roll for everyone. It was something that I hated particularly, like I didn’t want to do it. But the thing about role playing is it’s just practice. And so if you have in your, you know, sales meetings some ability to do a role play, it will help.

I know that you just had LuAnn Nigara on talking about objections. And so one of my favorite role plays to do about objections is you guys know the objections. You know they’re gonna say the price is too high. You know it. You know they’re gonna say the spouse needs to talk to whoever. You know that they’re not ready. So come up with a script. Come up with a phrase that you’re gonna use every time those objections come up. But the problem is so many people go,

what a surprise. They don’t like the cost of it. Shocker. Okay, well how are you gonna overcome that? You have time to practice. You have time to think about it. So just put together a script, try that role play, and then when it happens on the appointment, you’re gonna be so calm, cool, collected that they’re gonna feel that from you and go, man, these people got it. They had it answered for every question.

Will Hanke – WTMP (17:16)
you

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I I’m in a program that helps with things like sales. And one of the things they do is the role play. And I’m the same way I used to be like, God, you I’m not ready, you know, but the the guy that was running it was successful, multimillion dollar business. Right. And he would say, OK, let’s just role play this ring ring. And you’re like, hello. You know, but it is ultimately even if no matter how bad

Jessica Harling (18:04)
Alright.

Will Hanke – WTMP (18:09)
you do going through the role play, you’re still going to learn something from it because most likely they’re going to give you feedback on what you did say.

Jessica Harling (18:15)
Yeah, and so many times people just practice in the appointment itself. And so that’s why you’re fumbling over your words. That’s why you feel like you said the wrong thing, because it’s the first time it’s coming out of your mouth ever. So don’t let it be the first time. Even if you’re practicing in front of the mirror by yourself and no one has to see you, but you’ve got to practice it out loud. Maybe it’s near car drive to the next appointment. You have to talk it out loud.

Will Hanke – WTMP (18:43)
Yeah, yeah, I even had a I had purchased at one point some flashcards of sales objections, right? Okay, customer says price is too high and you flip it over and you know, there’s the answer or what you should probably respond. I can see that being very helpful. You know, like you said, list down the objections, you know, you’re already going to get and then have some sort of at least maybe not pre -programmed answer, but have something in mind of what to say, right?

Jessica Harling (18:49)
Mm. Yes.

Yeah, exactly.

Will Hanke – WTMP (19:14)
Be a little bit prepared at least, right?

Jessica Harling (19:16)
You’re doing it every day. Again, it’s not a surprise.

Will Hanke – WTMP (19:21)
Yeah, yeah. So another thing that we did recently was we had Sandra VanSickel on and we talked a lot about work rooms. She was fantastic. So tell me about best practices around creating and maintaining relationships with work rooms.

Jessica Harling (19:32)
huh.

Yeah, well, any sort of vendor relationship, you need to treat that as sacred as your customer relationship, especially a workroom that is getting you the goods that you’re selling. And so to help maintain and develop some of those relationships, I would first start by getting involved in the design industry to like find those workrooms that you can work with. Maybe you’ve always used the same one, but…

you can search out others for backup when the one is too busy. So to maintain those relationships, a big part of it is giving and taking and communication. If you send them work, well then make sure your work orders are pristine for them. And they are responsive to any questions that you have or they have for you about your work. That’s gonna help build those relationships.

Again, it goes back to process. We want to make sure to a streamlined process in between that communication, like maybe you meet biweekly and you go through what open projects you have, or maybe on a quarterly basis, you review any errors that came through for the workroom. So all of those things can help enhance the relationship if you have a solid process and keep those communication lines open.

Will Hanke – WTMP (21:04)
Right. And working backwards to the sales side of things, letting your sales team know, you know, the at least the top level things about the workroom, what their turnaround time is, that kind of stuff, maybe giving them a tour or something like that so that they can talk about it in a very positive way.

Jessica Harling (21:23)
Yeah, that’s a great point because I remember when I had a sales team go to the workroom and they could actually see the work being done. Their level of respect and their level of excitement came out when they were talking about it with people. They lit up because they’re like, wow, the work that we were able to see. And they do it by their hands. You know, that’s what’s unbelievable. They’re literally crafting this stuff by hand versus a big manufacturer doing it at a factory. So.

You know, when you think about that, really helps enhance the value of what you’re selling to your customers.

Will Hanke – WTMP (21:57)
Yeah, yeah, very much so. It always really helps open their eyes, I think, to to what’s going on behind the scenes. Right.

Jessica Harling (22:04)
Yeah, absolutely. And even to develop a relationship with the upholsterers, with the seamstresses, to have them understand who they’re working for or towards with their client projects. I know working with workrooms that they just love to see the end picture. Sometimes they don’t get to see it. Once it’s out of their hands and the designer takes it and installs it, it doesn’t get back to them the beauty of their work. So just simply by…

sharing photos after installation will help enhance that relationship.

Will Hanke – WTMP (22:37)
wow. Great tip. I love that. That’s a great idea. So let’s talk about that leveraging technology. Right. So we’ve got people in workrooms that are doing physical work, but there is a way to kind of, you know, move your business in a way of technology, such as sharing on Instagram or sharing with the workroom. So what role does technology play in in our world that that you see on a normal basis?

Jessica Harling (23:05)
Yeah, well, the workrooms that we work with on the consulting side, a lot of the work is based around CRMs that we can implement and help them manage their workflow. And for example, one of the big ones that we’ll utilize can have the work order all pulled up. You can quote in the same module, you know, and…

have some of those efficiencies to get the pricing right because that’s a big pain point for the workrooms is take so much time to quote, take so much time to get those over for an interior designer that may not even be doing the project. So by utilizing those sorts of platforms, you can save yourself time. You can also save yourself from redoing that estimate a bunch of times. Like if you’re doing it manually.

and it’s not spitting it out from a computer system, then it’s that continuous time to redo your work. And gosh, who wants to do your work all over again? So it’s a lot of time saving for sure, which then goes into cost, because you can then spend time selling or connecting or project managing whatever your role is.

Will Hanke – WTMP (24:08)
Yeah.

Right. Right. And I know you mentioned automations. Our lead boomerang system, you know, it’s based on a lot of automations of things such as touch points. Right. You mentioned touch points as soon as somebody signs up, maybe send them a 24 hour notice that you’re you’re going to be there tomorrow so that they’re home. You know, those kinds of things are really nice and simple to set up to.

Jessica Harling (24:41)
Yeah, and I love those because again, like people are all about the now, the immediacy of everything. And with custom, that’s hard, right? There’s four 12 week turnaround times on some products. And so to have them wait after they were all excited and they purchased is such a bummer. But if you can utilize all of those automations and those checkpoints in between with the customer,

You keep them engaged as you go and it doesn’t get this huge roller coaster of emotions because you just went radio silent on them.

Will Hanke – WTMP (25:18)
Yeah, I guess in a perfect world, a workroom that also engaged in some technology would be cool. Like, you know, they take pictures of your stuff halfway through, or here’s Jane working on your draperies, that kind of stuff. That’d be pretty neat, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just getting somebody to actually do it, right?

Jessica Harling (25:32)
Love that. Yeah, those are great ideas.

Will Hanke – WTMP (25:39)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. So OK, after the appointment, maybe even after the install, we need to get some customer feedback, right? What are some different strategies for collecting that feedback and getting it out to the world?

Jessica Harling (25:59)
Well, I think a big part of it is you have to ask multiple times, multiple different ways. You are not just gonna get a bulk of your responses in one way. So yes, you are gonna have your installer give something to them at the end of your process that asks them for a review. Then you could have someone in the office contact them, making sure that they’re satisfied.

Asking for a review you can send an email follow -up asking for a review So it is gonna take a campaign and is gonna take multiple attempts Just like you’re gonna have to do follow -ups to close your deal. It’s no different. And so it’s just people You know, they just don’t do it right away and you don’t want to overwhelm them either for example You know if you are giving them a final closeout email and you’re like

Will Hanke – WTMP (26:43)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica Harling (26:53)
Here’s the final invoice. Here’s a review request. Also call us if you need anything. Like if you’re overwhelming them with too many calls to action in one email, they’re not gonna do all of them. They’re gonna do one of them at best. So you gotta be strategic with your review asking placement so you’re not getting muddled against everything else that is going around.

Will Hanke – WTMP (27:16)
Yeah, yeah, very important. We have bought a new refrigerator about a month ago from Lowe’s and the guys came in here and they put it all together and plugged it in and driving away. They couldn’t have been gone five, 10 minutes. And I got a call from somebody at Lowe’s. Hey, how did the install go? Everything, you know, any problems, anything like that? I was like, my gosh, this is crazy. Cool. You know, it was it was really impressive that that they had that kind of a system in place.

Jessica Harling (27:43)
Yeah, that is amazing when you can check in after. And I’m a big proponent of that in our processes, whether it’s someone in the office or your designer or whoever, someone has to follow up with the customer after the installer was there. Because so many times, the installer is the last impression. And the installers, a lot of times, they’re very skillfully crafted. They know what they’re doing. But they’re sometimes like doctors. They don’t have the best bedside manner.

And so if you want that as your last impression of what that brand and reputation is gonna be, maybe you can control it a little bit more if yourself as the manager, one of your sales team or someone in the office then follows up. I am always a big believer in that because then you can warm it up, know, put a fighting button to the experience.

Will Hanke – WTMP (28:33)
Right. Great point. Yeah, there’s a those guys are very smart when it comes to installing, but maybe they’re not great salespeople, right? And they then they don’t need to be. But yeah, but having that piece in place really does just overall makes a better customer experience. Yeah. So let’s talk real quick about business growth. So for our for our listeners out there,

Jessica Harling (28:44)
Yeah, exactly.

Will Hanke – WTMP (29:01)
What are some key strategies for planning and managing growth in the business and how can companies prepare for scaling? I know that’s an easy question, right?

Jessica Harling (29:11)
I think the first thing is an awareness thing before some key strategies and the awareness part of it is as you grow, your business changes and your people changes, it goes through different cycles. And oftentimes when we get approached on the consulting side and we get into the business, there’s so much regret as to like an apologies, as to like,

where they’re at in business and why they have to have a consultant to help them to the next level. And I always like to remind everyone, what got you here is your processes. You are at a place where you’re at above a million dollars. That is so difficult for businesses to do. And especially if you’re above that, two, three million, and then regretting everything that came before, no, no. We gotta rework that that mindset because…

Will Hanke – WTMP (30:04)
Right.

Jessica Harling (30:08)
Businesses do go in cycles. So you’re gonna get this pit like I call it in the million dollar to two million dollar mark then between like four and six million and then about eight nine million in order to get to your big next levels and so just know that your Processes are gonna change at those different milestones and it’s on purpose so that you can get to the next level But what you did prior to that is not bad

It’s what led you here. So we can take some of that and then just massage it so it makes sense moving forward.

Will Hanke – WTMP (30:44)
Yeah, yeah, good problem to have, I guess, right? If you’re growing and you’re not sure what to do. But it’s not unusual for everything to break when you hit certain points.

Jessica Harling (30:53)
Exactly. And so when that breakdown occurs, I would say to the next point is with strategy, start to identify it. You if you’re trying to figure out a process, just observe it. You know, before I created what I call the life, the client process, what I did is I observed over a 90 day period and I watched what the file did before, you know, our technology. And so literally I would star a file.

Will Hanke – WTMP (31:19)
Yeah

Jessica Harling (31:22)
and I would watch it from every stage and who hit it and how long they had it for and why they had it for that long and I just kept watching it and we tracked it and when we got the data then we could see where the pitfalls were, know, between our steps. Why is this taking two weeks? It should take three days. How are we gonna solve that? So you can’t change a process without first looking at what you currently have.

Will Hanke – WTMP (31:34)
Yeah.

Jessica Harling (31:49)
because you might be changing something that’s working and so you have to really do a good deep dive first to figure out what is the problem and a lot of times, actually 9 times out of 10, 9 and a half times out of 10, what you think is the problem is actually the symptom. So if you don’t do enough analysis, if you don’t dive deep, then all you’re gonna be doing is fixing the face value problem and not getting to the root of it.

Will Hanke – WTMP (32:15)
Yeah, yeah. I also, I really like that you mentioned, you know, something that should take a couple hours, you know, takes a couple of weeks. I think that’s part of those businesses that are, you know, over a million where they’re starting to figure out how can we start to increase efficiency, right? And start to figure out, okay, this should take this long. Let’s watch a flag if there’s, you know, more than 10 % variant and something like that. Those things are really important to continue to grow as well.

Jessica Harling (32:44)
Yeah, and you touch on a good point because I was talking to a client about this today. He is in a larger business that has four to six turnaround times, but his dad who just he bought out his dad is used to like two, three week turnaround times because he was the only person doing it. So the day it came in was the day it went out or the day he sold it was the day he ordered it. And that doesn’t happen in bigger.

industries or bigger companies and so that’s where process then becomes critical so we can shave it down to the two weeks or the three weeks and still have all the checkpoints but there is a difference there you’re right.

Will Hanke – WTMP (33:25)
Yeah, yeah. And then you start talking about things like cash flow, right? And how long do you want that money tied up? All kinds of stuff we could get into. But I appreciate the comments around the business growth. I think a lot of our listeners are in that scale mode, right? And looking for tips and ideas and ways to get to the next level.

Jessica Harling (33:45)
Yeah, it is so much like a puzzle. You just have to have the patience to dig into it.

Will Hanke – WTMP (33:51)
Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, Jessica, as always, I do appreciate your time. I appreciate your expertise. You’ve helped us a lot in sales and we touched a little bit on processes and stuff, which are always going to be a huge part of any business, no matter the size, right? I think they just change as time goes on. But thank you for your insights today. I do appreciate it.

Jessica Harling (34:16)
Thank you Will, it’s been pleasure.

Will Hanke – WTMP (34:18)
Yeah, no problem. So if you are listening and you like this episode or you like any of the other episodes If you haven’t checked out jessica’s previous one go back and listen to that for the hiring side of things She’s got some great tips in there as well. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast. We’d love to have you alerted when new episodes come out, which is every two weeks and once again Jessica Thank you so much for your time. I hope you have a great day Thank you

Jessica Harling (34:44)
Thanks, Will.