Share with me what Ignition Point Strategies is, please.
OK.
Ignition Point Strategies is a growth consultancy firm
for enterprise-level SaaS companies.
OK.
Elaborate.
OK.
So, Javonka, I want you to I'm going
to ask you a little bit of a personal question.
Absolutely.
Are you in any sort of a romantic relationship?
I am, yes.
OK.
So here's the question.
If your significant other completely disregarded you,
completely ignored your needs, and just went out and demanded
that you meet all of their expectations
and all of their needs without meeting any of yours,
how long would you stay in that relationship?
I would not be in a relationship.
Right?
You wouldn't stay very long.
Not at all, yes.
And what we find is that most businesses are actually
this way.
Most businesses treat their customers almost not
with contempt, but disregard, I think, is a better word.
Where they learn just enough about the customer
to close the sale.
And then they don't care about what happens after that.
Yes.
And so what we do is we help businesses reduce customer
churn and improve their sales conversion rates
by better understanding their customers,
by understanding what made them say yes to working
with your business in the first place.
And what is the value that they need you to deliver to them
for them to continue to be your customer?
I love that.
I'm sure, like the rest of the audience,
didn't know what was coming, but I like it.
I like it back.
Because at the end of the day, I'm in real estate.
And one of the things we call it is nurturing the person.
So yeah, you get the house, you get the client,
you find a home, you close.
You just don't leave.
Right?
So I think that that's sort of where it took me to,
because you're right.
Close the sale, and now what?
But then I guess when it comes down to it,
relationships evolve.
So you're helping not only to get the sale and to nurture,
but now you're also in their lives
to help the business evolve, correct?
Yes.
Well, it's more accurate to say that we help the business help
themselves to evolve.
Right?
Because you have customers, you sell a house.
As the needs and desires of your customers change,
or their tastes evolve, are you going to continue
to show them the same house?
True.
Are you going to continue to say that a dishwasher from the 1990s
is a benefit if it's not 1992?
You're right.
But I think that might work, though.
That might work better than what we have today.
I'm just saying, but keep going.
Yes, I understand.
Yeah, the point is that oftentimes we
focus on these features and benefits,
and we don't evolve with our customers.
Oftentimes, when it comes to innovation in our organizations,
we're innovating based off of what
we think the customer wants or needs or will benefit from,
not what the customer has told us they want or need
or will benefit from.
We don't understand the underlying job
that they're trying to do, the problem they're
trying to solve, the outcome they're trying to create.
Because we don't understand that,
it's throwing spaghetti against the wall
and waiting to see what sticks.
And spaghetti is expensive, guys.
Yes, it is.
And just don't mess up the walls.
When you decided to go into this business,
ignition point strategies, tell me about your vision.
What was your vision for this?
Yeah, so I live in my hometown.
I left for a while and got a master's in business.
But I remember I was about 17 at the time,
and this was when the 2008 market crash hit.
So I remember talking to a guy.
He lived in my neighborhood, really liked this guy,
and he was talking about how he was going to have to move.
And I was really sad, but he was like, yeah, there's
just no work here.
And so ever since then, it's been my vision
to sort of change the economy of my hometown
so that it can be far more sustainable
and that there's a lot more opportunity.
And so when I started ignition point strategies,
my vision for this is right downtown,
there's a bank that was converted from a post office.
And my grandpa's first job after he got married
was as a substitute mail carrier at that post office.
So my dream, my vision is I want to build this consultancy up
to be large enough that I can buy that bank
and turn it into what I call the ignition point launch pad.
And I want to give local business owners basically
office hours where they can come in and talk with us
for free and get insight into what they need
to do to fix their business.
Wow, I love that.
I love that.
And that finds them a brick and mortar
to be able to also receive the help that you'll
be able to provide and be there and work the business
at the same time.
I like that.
That works.
And so how long have you done this business?
I've been consulting for about five years now.
Five years now.
OK.
And how has it changed in the last five years?
Consulting in the last five years,
I mean consulting is a very dynamic industry
just because I am never tackling the same problems twice
and I have to keep on top of the trends
to understand what are my customers and clients going
to ask me about next and can I provide meaningful advice
about that.
So there's always changes in that regard.
Technology changes, things like that.
I use GPT a lot more than I did when I started.
But a couple of things that haven't changed
are our fundamental approach to how we do business.
And it all starts with understanding
who your customer is.
We don't have a typical perspective on customers.
We don't believe you have a customer.
We believe you have a customer ecosystem.
And as business models get more complex, this really plays out.
But you have payers who write the check,
deciders who choose to hire you, and users who use your stuff.
So let's take real estate as an example here.
Because you're in real estate.
So what type of real estate do you do?
Do you do commercial, residential?
Residential.
OK.
So when you are selling homes or representing your clients,
I would imagine that you find that there
is one partner in the relationship who
is more of the decision maker.
Yes.
And I'm going to go ahead and guess
that if trends are what they are,
it's probably a woman who ends up having more say on the house.
And so to me, you have this ecosystem.
Now that woman isn't going to be the person who pays you, right?
Right.
You get paid off of a commission that oftentimes comes out
of the seller's pocket?
Sometimes.
OK.
All right.
Things change, but yes, sometimes.
OK.
And then the users, it's going to be that couple.
It's going to be the seller, right?
Maybe the seller has a real estate agent
that they're representing as well.
But basically, you have an ecosystem here.
Now a lot of times when we market,
we don't focus on the right person.
Oftentimes, our marketing is targeted towards users,
but users can't say yes.
Our marketing needs to focus on the decider.
So for you, I would say focus all of your marketing content
on those moms, on those women who are the ones who
are choosing to hire you.
Because in one moment, I'm so sorry.
So sorry.
I'm going to pause it, OK?
So my recommendation is that you go and market
to those women, those moms who are going to be the ones who
are calling the shot.
They're the one who actually decides whether or not
they're going to hire you.
The husband is just kind of along for the ride, right?
And so when I talked about earlier,
businesses not paying attention and not knowing,
just like that relationship example,
this is what I'm talking about.
Because businesses oftentimes don't
know this customer ecosystem.
And it's costing them a fortune because their sales and marketing
teams are out there talking to the wrong person.
But when you get the right person in the right seat,
meaning you're talking to the decider,
you're able to close a lot more deals.
And when you understand who the user is,
you're able to create a customer experience that's
going to really resonate with that user
in a very satisfactory way that keeps them around and generates
more referrals.
Makes sense.
So you said it's the payers, the deciders, and the users.
And this is the customer ecosystem
that you created, correct?
OK.
What inspired you to do this framework for the customer
ecosystem?
Couple of things.
One is I was working with a business,
and they thought they knew who their customer was.
And they were spending millions of dollars.
But growth had just kind of plateaued.
And we came in, and we helped them figure out
that you don't know who your customer is,
that you're actually marketing to the wrong person.
And once we got those right people in the right seat,
they grew by 40% year over year for three years.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, and they increased their per customer revenues by 30%.
Wow.
OK.
That was part one.
Part two is kind of a silly story.
I'm at my office one day, and my wife says,
hey, I need you to go and pick up a can of Manwich.
And I knew it had to be Manwich because I'd
made the mistake of getting the generic brand before,
and there was hell to pay.
So I go to the grocery store, and I kid you not, Jovanka,
did I say it right?
Yes, you did.
I love it.
All right.
So I kid you not, Jovanka, I went to the grocery store,
and it took me 40 minutes to find this dang can of Manwich.
I was looking everywhere.
So I finally find the can, and I'm just like, what am I doing?
I'm not the customer here.
I'm not Manwich's customer.
My wife is their customer, right?
I was just a wallet on legs.
That's it.
And so that's really those two things combined in my mind.
And all of a sudden, I was like, well, you
don't have a customer.
You have payers, wallet on legs, deciders, my wife,
who says it's got to be Manwich, and users,
my wife, who is using the Manwich to make our dinner.
So oftentimes, like I said, because we don't break this
out, we're out there looking for something or someone
who does not exist.
And it costs our marketing a fortune in efficiency.
And that means that we're not generating the level of returns
that we could.
It means that our sales are a lot more difficult
because we're not talking to someone who can say yes.
The sales cycle is a lot longer because we're
having to sort through all of these people
to get to someone who can actually say yes, right?
And what I have found, and as I've
talked with other consultants, they've found the same thing.
When you get, like I say, the right person
in the right seat, things just fall into place.
I know a guy who took a company from,
I think it was like half a million to eight figures
within, I think it was two years, which is absolutely
bonkers and saying growth.
But he did it by targeting the decider.
Got it.
Thank you, right to that decider and saying, OK,
this is exactly who our sales team
needs to talk to every single time.
Yes.
And so when you get a client and they're wanting your services
and they're wanting to have this discussion,
what's the process that you get to a point
where how you find out who the deciders are for that person,
for that company?
So whenever we work with a client,
we have the same process that we walk through.
I jokingly say, first you dance with someone, then you date them,
then you marry them.
So I kind of feel like the sales process is like, let's dance,
let's get to know each other a little bit.
But we do what we call our spark offer, which is where we come in
and we're just investigating your business.
We're trying to get a grip on where you are, what you're doing,
what your core values are, what your unique value proposition is.
And then we start building things out.
We'll build a basic customer ecosystem
based off of what they tell us.
And that's a two to three week sort of exploratory phase.
After that is where the real heavy lifting comes.
Because in that two weeks, I really
come to know what are your problems?
What do you really need to solve?
And are we even the right people to do it for you?
So once we know that, then we start getting into it.
We're actually a very data driven organization.
And most people don't know this, but there are two types of data.
There's quantitative data, which is the crunchy number stuff.
It's anything that you can measure.
And then there's qualitative data, which is everything else.
It's kind of squishy.
It's thoughts, opinions, things like that.
Now quantitative data is what most people think of when
they say we're data driven.
But qualitative data is actually far more important.
Because qualitative data gives quantitative data context.
OK.
So what we do is we come in and we use quantitative data
to figure out who your most profitable customers are.
Because we want to know who your ICP is.
And that's it.
The people that you can consistently profitably serve.
I can drop one in and you know that you're
going to make a profit on this person
because it's just a piece of cake, right?
So we use the quantitative data to figure that out.
And then we start getting into the squishy qualitative stuff.
My partner is a product manager with 15 years of experience
working with major companies to develop product in the SaaS
space.
And what she's very good at is understanding
those squishy stuff.
And so we go out and we actually talk
to those most profitable customers.
And other people like it.
Because we want to know actually from the horse's mouth,
why did they buy from you?
What is the value that you're delivering to them?
And then we take all of that data that we get
and we turn it into actionable recommendations
for your sales team, your marketing team, your product
team, growth strategies that your company can implement.
What you need to be aware of so your company can
be seeing around the corner and focusing on the next big thing
before people know it's the next big thing.
Yeah.
And you know it makes all the sense in the world.
Because without the data and everything,
we do think of quantity over quality.
That's the way most think.
But it really is the quality, as you mentioned, over quantity.
And not just in what you do.
But I think that I've heard it several times about life
in general.
And you have so much passion behind this.
Like, I love how you could just talk about it.
And it comes with ease.
What are the greatest joys of what you do?
I love puzzles.
So the biggest joy for me is the excitement
that I get when I look at this problem
and I just am able to, using my analytical and intuitive
superpower alien brain here, find the solution.
It is so much fun.
And it brings me so much joy.
And then to see it implemented and be
successful for my clients, that's also amazing.
Getting a 63% beating growth projections by 63% is awesome.
Helping companies improve profitability by 12 and 1.5%
is pretty dang good.
Those are the things that bring me joy.
Because I understand the trickle down effects.
That money isn't just ending up in some random person's
pocket.
Oftentimes, that money is used to pay people more,
to bring in more customers, to solve
people's problems, to make lives better.
I love it.
And I could tell.
I definitely could tell that as you spit out the numbers
and you talk about the clients that you're helping
and your vision too.
It definitely shows in all of that.
Before we go, what's one actionable step
startups can take to better target their decisions?
OK.
So you've got to know who they are.
This is, I'm honestly, I'm going to tell you
the secret sauce here.
OK.
Don't tell anybody.
That's easy.
So I'm comfortable telling you this.
Because I think that, to be quite honest,
90% of your listeners aren't going to do it.
They're just not.
They can come and hire me and I can help them do it.
But the truth is there is something called activities
based costing.
And what activities based costing does
is it helps you reallocate your costs
to match with how much your customers actually used that.
So it gives you a clearer picture of how much
your customers used that.
It gives you a clearer picture of who your most
profitable customers are.
So the first step that I would say
anyone should do to better target their deciders
is go do that activities based costing analysis
on every single one of your customers.
And I mean, you can ask ChatGPT for help.
ChatGPT understands activities based costing.
So you're safe.
The second step is you'll actually
get a ranked list of who your most profitable customers are.
And then you apply that customer ecosystem framework to that.
So you're saying, OK, I know who these people are, right?
But in this context, who is the payer, decider, and user
for this transaction?
About 20% of your customers generate about 80%
of your profits.
And those are the people that you want to focus on.
Those are the people you want to know who the deciders are.
Once you understand that, then you
can start focusing your sales and marketing spend on them.
Then you can start focusing your time and networking
and attention on them.
And talking to them, understanding, hey,
do you have a problem?
How can I help you solve this?
This is what we do.
And making things far more effective at generating
a return on your marketing.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.