The Grow Show: Business Growth Stories from the Frontlines
The Grow Show: Business Growth Stories from the Frontlines
Build Your Employer Brand
An employer brand is what differentiates one organization from another and is a major factor in attracting top talent. It’s important for organizations to work hard to ensure that their employer brand reflects what they have to offer.
We dive into the methods of identifying your employer brand, the teams that should be involved, and the collateral you should create to attract new A-players.
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All these years blood, sweat and tears. I'm still here
Scott Scully:nothing could stop me. Welcome back to the gross show. Shout out to the grown nation. Thanks for continuously supporting us. I am here with my partners in crime, Eric Watkins and Jeff
Eric Watkins:winters. Hello, hello.
Jeff Winters:Welcome back. Everyone.
Scott Scully:Guys feel in the heat today,
Eric Watkins:feeling ready to roll?
Scott Scully:I was thinking I went way back to my school days. You remember when people cheated on tests? I do remember that. There was always the kid. No, I didn't do that. Yeah, neither of them. But there was a kid in the class that knew all the answers. There was the kid in the class that was cheating off the kid that actually studied. There was the kid in the class that might have stolen the test and had all the answers. Whoa,
Unknown:test stealing. But it was illegal.
Scott Scully:You couldn't do it. You got suspended. You got detention, you got in trouble. If you had a test that day. And you needed to know the answers. And somebody had the answers. And you got caught to tell legal. You know what the good news is? We've made so many mistakes over the last. We have failed the test. Yeah, you're right. It's like we took the test so many times. So many times, we know that we now know all of the answers that work for, quote unquote, business growth, and you don't get it attention. If you have the cheat code in business. You don't go to Mrs. lindemans. Office at 7am.
Eric Watkins:She sounds me. I don't want to be a missile lindemans office. So you may not get detention. But on LinkedIn, you could still get arrested if you're giving the wrong answers if you're giving the wrong answers.
Scott Scully:But anyway, we put this show together for that. I know that we continue to talk about that. But we're pretty proud of the fact that we have landed on certain things that absolutely do work. And so we hope that you are taking some of these nuggets, grow nuggets, if you will, and implementing them in your business and having just a little bit easier time having consistent year over year growth. All right, let's do the pasture.
Jeff Winters:Unlike the Miss Lindemann of LinkedIn, yeah, you are yes, you are this week as always patrolling LinkedIn, so you don't have to separating truth from life facts from fiction, so that you can know what is right. Take back to your business and know what is it? First truth comes from Nabil and I'm gonna paraphrase this. CEOs and leaders have found their courage again, in the last few months. Amazing how it was completely lost when money was readily available everywhere. markets will go up and down, you can never stray away from your core values. Here are some of the some hard truths. I hope all leaders out there have accepted again, as I have, again, come to realize, and I'll just read a few things. Number one, don't celebrate high headcount celebrate revenue. Number two, raising money is not the same as winning. Number three, take care of your top performers. 80% of your company's work is done by 20% of your star performers for stop overpaying or hiring too quickly. And five, then I want to pause here, do not be flexible. Your core values, your missions, your rules are not for compromise on at any time. Sure, they can evolve and they should but you cannot make exceptions because of outside pressures. I think people are really feeling this right now. I think this is a great message from Nabil CEOs and leaders have found their courage again, the last few months. truth,
Scott Scully:truth and it's hard, because there's been more pressure than ever to do what everybody else wants. But I think they're probably gaining confidence because they stuck to their, what they believe in and their business is probably successful in what some people would call a time of turmoil. So that probably helps build confidence and it probably helps their team have more confidence. They didn't necessarily like some of the moves before. But now the business is growing. There aren't layoffs. They're holding true to their values. True.
Jeff Winters:I think what it comes down to is you got to do what's right for you and your business in whatever time you're in. And sometimes that is not just hey, whatever our you know, we get we talked about all the time what's best for the company, what's best for the employees, what's best for the clients. It's not always what one group wants, it's you got to do what's best for all three and that got to your point that's hard, but it certainly feels like there's some changing dynamics going on out there for CEOs and leaders and stuff. Truth Number Two TLDR be flexible with your methods and approaches, especially when When it comes to training, since every one learns, and implements change differently, but be stubborn with your outcomes, and the training focus here is so important. We talk about it here all the time, people are going to take in information differently and internalize it differently and comprehending, comprehended at different speeds relative to the medium that it's coming at him at. And you got to be so careful to not exclude a particular learning style with training. I think this is really critical. And leaders need to hear this.
Scott Scully:I think it's true, as long as those different styles are consistent. Like if you have a learning textbook, and you have training videos, and you have outside experts that are coming in delivering a particular message, I think as long as each one of those is consistent than its truth.
Eric Watkins:Yeah, I know for myself, I learned by doing so I need to be doing it. repetitions is what I need to be able to get there. And I think the like to Scott's point, just having in your training, having multiple of those different styles set up within it, so people can get a little bit from everything. If you give me a
Jeff Winters:lecture, I can't learn. That's just not me. I can get some I can try. Yeah, I can't learn that way. I gotta be Eric, I'm like you I gotta be doing or I gotta have a video. You gotta be conscious of that. And I just I think too often, it's, Hey, here's the new standard operating procedure. Here it is in writing. Go get him.
Eric Watkins:People don't writing video. Watch him do it. Yeah. And tell him 300 times, right? Yeah, it does take 322 times for something to sink. That's a statistic.
Jeff Winters:That's it. No, I think Einstein said that truth. And now we come to know about this one game, you should keep taking interviews for at last at least 30 days after starting a new job. He said he posted this advice months ago and lots of people disagreed me among them. They said what about your integrity, your loyalty, your reputation? He said I'm still giving this advice. Job is Nobody hit goals even after they said they were my boss does not actually do any coaching. There's I don't think you should keep interviewing 30 days after you took a job that is insane to me. At 30 days after you take a job, you know you should you should be doing busting your butt to be great at that job. Yeah,
Eric Watkins:I don't feel like I'm qualified to answer this question is I haven't interviewed in a zillion years. But it's worked out for me not to keep interview.
Jeff Winters:You've hired a shitload of people you want them interviewing for 30 days after the snow?
Eric Watkins:I know. I don't know, do I think it's like, just don't take the job yet. Right? If you haven't made the decision yet, don't take the job yet. Keep interviewing until you feel like you found something that you like,
Scott Scully:and you're not fully in. Yeah, like what we do is hard. And if somebody's still open minded, believing as opposed to buckling down and being committed to learning what they need to learn to be good at the job, we'd be in trouble. That person wouldn't perform
Jeff Winters:as the Sheriff of LinkedIn, I could tell you, nobody's on LinkedIn going finding a job is so easy. They just come to you. Like finding a job as a grind. And your first 30 days of any job, I would venture to say are always the hardest. Like, that's the hardest time. So now you're going to take the hardest time of your new job. And mix it with this other hard thing of finding. Yeah, that drives me crazy. That is
Eric Watkins:I just like how you justified what you said this year.
Jeff Winters:As the Sheriff of LinkedIn, I don't think we should take our kids.
Scott Scully:That was a that was a big lie. Big law, you should be able to go Mark put a mark on people's posts. Maybe they'll allow you to do that over time. Maybe Yeah, maybe LinkedIn or
Eric Watkins:like the now hiring now. lying? No.
Jeff Winters:That could be like my Twitter blew like I could have the ability. You know, like now it's, you can like a post. You can think it's funny. You could think it's insightful, but maybe just I could have like a bullshit
Eric Watkins:like a sheriff. Maybe you have a sheriff hat, right? Instead of a blue checkmark.
Scott Scully:I like it. All right, good stuff. We're heading to the 50 for 50. And I love today's I love all of them. But I'm particularly fond of today's because I think that it's something that's simple and easy to understand. But not everybody does it. And that is what is your employer brand. You know, there are people that think about their products or services and potentially how those differ from competition. But not everybody thinks about what the brand of the organization is. How are you different Why would someone come work for you versus someone else. And there's a lot that goes into building that. So for us, if you were to sit around a new hire table, which we all do, nine out of 10 of them would say, why came for the growth? We asked. I came because you're growing. And because I can, under one roof, learn a lot of things, go down several different career paths, and just always be growing. That's why I'm here. That's our employer brand. Right. That's how we differentiate ourselves. You come here, and you're going to have all of these different tracks, you're going to learn more than you'd ever learn anywhere else. There's a fast track to great money, you know, you're going to be with great people. And we're growing, the company is growing, our customers are growing, you'll be growing, always be growing. That's our tagline. And we get there. And we pounded home deep with video testimonials or case studies from people that work here that have grown, we have, let's grow chance instead of let's go we've got things on the walls, we've, you know, it's in our interview process, it's in our employee referral process, talking about the growth that's in our printed materials. That is our brand. That's how we differentiate, differentiate yourself, if someone, let's just pick the people coming out of college, if people are coming out of college, and they've got these options in front of them, the A players have three or four good options in front of them. They're going to pick us because of the growth potential. And we've worked really hard at building that brand and pounding that Home Depot. What are you doing out there? You know, what are what why should somebody come work at your organization, not because your MSP and yet, you're able to do really good work and help a company become more productive or safe for you know, maybe you've been around for X number of years that your company's stable? No, not that. Why is somebody going to work at your MSP versus someone else's? Why is somebody going to work at your organization versus someone else's? What did they get out of it? What is the word on the street, about your organization? And the benefits that people get from working with your organization? employer brand? What are you gonna say?
Eric Watkins:It's so interesting, as you were talking, I was going back to just my career here at abstract and how we've really live this brand from day one. And I was thinking how why, you know, yes, we have it in mission statements and vision statements. But ultimately, I think something that's super important about it is that it's one word. It's not complicated. It's one word, it's growth. And it works its way into as many things as we do as possible. So I think when a company is going out there, and you're like, okay, that worked for abstract. This is something I need to implement. Don't overcomplicate it, like, what is the one thing that people can actually rally behind? where it makes sense for them, it makes sense for your partners, and everybody wins in that scenario. And for us, that was growth. And it just made sense that because the service we use for ourselves is the same one we deliver to our clients. And, like it's a, it's been a probably this topic has probably been the biggest differentiator in our organization.
Jeff Winters:I want to talk about why I think people sort of have heartburn struggle here. It's because for so long hiring, has lived were in HR, hiring as an HR function, hiring talent acquisition, interviewing, I go to my HR people, how many new folks do we need, let's make sure we get them in. And then there was this switch, and some people switch and some people didn't. Whereas like this is now becoming part HR, but part marketing. And I think calling it your employer brand puts the part in marketing that needs to be in marketing, because it's easy to be like, Okay, it's hiring. Where does it live? Hiring those in HR, I know the word hiring HR hires, no, you have your hiring process, you have your interviewing process, you have your recruiting function over here. And then you have your employer brand, which has got to at least have a foot and probably we'd argue a big foot in the marketing area. And that to me is why this is such an important phrase to use
Scott Scully:in the 50 for 50. If talked about writing a book that supports these, if we were to go in order of importance. I think that right at the top would be having the best people on the team period, like people are your best asset. If you have really good talented, smart people, all of the other things that we talk about, you know number two through 50 are so much easier and you don't get those People without having an employer brand without having a significant reason why they would come join the team. And I don't know if everybody listening thinks about that. It's kind of backwards. If I were to work more on that, than I could get better people to come work here, which means that growth could be possible. They're probably working more on their company, street facing brand to prospects. Yeah.
Jeff Winters:And they've got a careers page, right. That's their employer brand is their careers page. Yeah, that ain't it. Its purpose
Eric Watkins:at the at its core, it's what what's the purpose for people want purpose these days? Like, what is the purpose of why I'm gonna go work at this company,
Scott Scully:here's what you know, to those of you that have a smaller organization. And maybe you've never done this before. There are so many of you listening that and it's okay. Like, we would probably put ourselves in that bucket in the past this bucket been, you're not great at hiring people. Like, so you want to take something away from this segment, figure out your biggest differentiator. And then kind of the extra nugget, I would say is until you have somebody in place, making sure that you have the right hiring process, making sure that someone's in place that makes really good decisions about adding the right people, outsourcing. There's so many really good people. And when you have 345 1020, people go link up with somebody that knows how to decipher whether or not that person fits in your organization or not. Because you probably don't know, you're probably writing with emotion or your gut. And if you have not hired a lot, you might screw that up. And that's just a problem worth avoiding up front. So something to think about, build your brand as it pertains to recruiting. All right, we are headed over to meinen. for growth, for growth.
Eric Watkins:All right. So for today, what I want to talk about, we're gonna be digging deeper into website here, because that's one of the best engines to be able to find gold, right, that's out there. So what I wanted to do is just give a little bit of a high level of what we're trying to do with a website, and what are the key areas that we look at that are really important. And then in future episodes, you know, we'll dive deeper from there. So just to start, when building a website, there's a lot of things to consider. And it can be pretty overwhelming. And so the goal is, once you have the high level understanding, it can help you simplify and know which areas you need to dive deeper in and focus on as an organization. So ultimately, the goal of your website is to get on the first page of search engines, primarily Google, in all of your relevant keywords and services. And you do this in really a couple of key ways. You do this by an initial build of the website with a good site health score and user friendliness. You do this with expertly crafted keyword strategy. You do this with relevant content to support these keywords on each page. And then you do this with just a consistent content strategy in general Post website launch, where you're continually putting good content out into the ethos primarily in the format's of blog content to get your competitive keywords to continue to rise. So when we evaluate a website, we really look at four key buckets. And these are the buckets that we're going to be diving deeper in as we go forward. Bucket one is website performance. So what we're looking at here is site health site performance site structure, are you mobile friendly, and then site security in general. So you really need to lock that down first, like your website, if you if you're not performing the bones of it aren't performing, it's going to hurt the entirety of your website. Second thing is SEO content. So we talked about having content Google is constantly changing their algorithms of what gets bubbled up. We'll dive deeper into content but consistent publishing, branded versus non branded traffic, and then meta titles and descriptions. So it's important that we're writing content that's really drawing the user in, they're spending more time on our page, it's going to Google is going to reward us for that and continue to raise our rank. Second thing is on page SEO. So that's sitemap and robots like the files behind the that your that are needed on your website, internal linking image tags, schema analytics, tracking heterostructure a lot of really technical aspects of what's going on on the page to help your SEO rank. And then the last thing is local SEO and we've talked about this a little bit in a previous episode, but there's just some really simple things with local SEO if you do business in your local area that If you're not doing and you're not making sure running, right, it's really setting you behind. So right now, that's the high level, the exercise from here is to go out and just Google website grader, there's 20, that will pop up. But pick one, go through a couple and see how you rank see what your website performance looks like your site health, look at your SEO content, your on page SEO, where do you rank for local SEO? Just get a feel for that website. And then in future episodes, we'll dive deeper into this content. But what do you guys think just kind of the the high level of the website,
Scott Scully:I think that a number of years ago, somebody put it to me this way, which really made me understand at a high level in a better way. And that was, look, people go to Google, because they have questions. And the only thing that you're trying to do is make sure that you know what questions people are asking. And then you give them really good answers and prove that you are the best choice for them in their backyard. And all those things that you mentioned are the ways that that you do that, in knowing keywords and doing the right things on the page and making sure that page speed is where it needs to be. Look, Google's crawling, and I'm looking, I'm looking for somebody that has the answers to that particular question. And if the websites slow, Google's running right past you,
Eric Watkins:right, or links don't work or whatever.
Scott Scully:But but all it's really looking to do in the simplest form is Eric has a question. Jeff has MSP that is the right company for him because he has a good answer. And he's close to Eric. And he's done all of the things to prove that he is indeed an MSP with a significant answer close to you. He's the right resource. And he's in he's getting there by all of these things that you're going to talk about in the in the future episodes.
Jeff Winters:I think, obviously, everybody's at different stops on their journey from a website perspective. But I'll tell you where a lot of people live, and our stopped is, we just redid our website last year, and then they won't touch the site until two years from now when they go, we just redid our website, redoing your website is not an ending point. It is a mere stop on your tour. If you're there and a Euro Hey, we just redid our website. And in some shocking turn of events, you're not getting a huge flock of people to your redone website. Do not despair. Do not even be surprised. People are not looking for redone websites. I'm glad you have a redone website. That's great. That could be step one, if you're there, take one thing away from this, have the ongoing content, set a goal be writing a certain number of words every month, and know that the person writing the words may not be the best person to create the ideas to Scott's point to answer the questions that Google has. So one great tip that we've seen and have clients doing and is, hey, if you're the CEO of the business, and you have the best answers to the questions that people might be asking on Google, like sit down with somebody who's writing the content for an hour week,
Eric Watkins:don't hold the dough, hold the secret sauce back, give it out,
Jeff Winters:right and like let that person interview for an hour and put the content on the website, I have a redone website does not generate leads,
Scott Scully:you can't go buy a new car, and then not put gas in it. And great analogy and service, maintain it. Same thing with a website. That's why with our package, or gym monthly fee, right? And then we go build the website. And then we do all of these things along the way. Because it's never over.
Eric Watkins:It's never over. And it's always changing. Yeah, you can't
Scott Scully:just go build a website now. Yep, sorry, but you can't, you can. And for 90 days or so you might get a little uptick. But then you're gonna run out of gas. You got to put gas in it, you got to maintain those pages, fix links, do all those things. So
Eric Watkins:yeah, it can be overwhelming, but we're just trying to, you know, start with the high level simplified. And then we'll dive deeper and give you a couple of things you can do, no matter where you're at, in your journey.
Scott Scully:I like it. I think this is a confusing area for a lot of people. Frustrating, I think because a lot of people that they've talked to have different opinions. So hopefully over the next few episodes, we can just make it easier to understand. Simplify, if you will. All right, awesome. Now, Eric has fixed their website and they're getting all kinds of conversions leads are flooding flooding through the doors. What are we going to do with salespeople to make them better at selling?
Jeff Winters:We're going to fast forward right to the end of the sales process. Everybody's favorite part signing the agreement. And here's here's the tip I want to give today as salespeople at sales leaders, a step in your sales process needs to be walking people through the agreement. You need to walk people through the agreement. Let me let me explain what I mean. Your salespeople, probably most of you are going to send an agreement through some sort of automated system DocuSign, we use panna doc to sign these agreements. And then those agreements, either magically come back or come back, because you've inspired that person so much, or you've called them and followed up and checked in. Or you can control that process, you can control that process, because there's a few things you need, that are really important to note, as you think about why it's critical to review the agreement with the prospect, the first and this the easiest one, they might not know they haven't. Because some of these systems come from Docusign. Sometimes it comes from us, sometimes it comes from me at dock, like there's all these different constructions, so they may not have gotten it. Second, I don't know about you, I got 37 different folders, promotion, social junk, important, not important, kind of important. Where that document goes varies every day, sometimes in those different email systems. And then last, there's gonna be some questions, or there's not, but often there's going to be some questions. And would you rather the prospect answer those questions by themselves in the comfort of their own office or living room? Or would you rather be there to Sherpa them through and answer those questions, because you're gonna get a lot. So my tip today, as you're moving toward an agreement, say something to this effect to your prospect, Eric, you know, the next step in our process sounds like, we've agreed that that we can help you and that you want to move forward with us, which is, which is amazing. We're really excited about it energized for the partnership, confident, you're gonna see a ton of value. The next step in our process, is we review the agreement, answer any questions you might have, and go through some of the finer points part of our process. So when would be a good time for me for us to I'll send it over and it won't be a good time for us to reconvene and review the agreement. Then once you do once you get on that call, they share their screen, and you'll walk through the agreement. And you make sure you take them through the finer points, you explain, you go through and you see if they have any questions. It's a game changer. Review the agreement.
Scott Scully:I love it. And the only thing that I would add is try to do it while you're on the phone with them or in front of them as opposed to setting up another time to do it. Good point. Because you're just going to increase your your win rate, because there's going to be X percentage that you're just going to have a hard time getting back in front of. But I love it. Good advice.
Eric Watkins:I like it for a lot of reasons. One are our partners here are way more successful, like the number one piece of advice we give them, which sounds so simple, is to deliver their proposals in person where applicable. And our win rates go sky high when they they're like oh my god, I can't believe I've just been emailing these over. So I love it for that reason. Second reason is not just to sell more deals, I think it sets better expectations throughout the whole partnership. So you're actually reviewing the agreement, you can talk them through, they can understanding there's a lot of like, misinterpreting, that could relate to a service issue down the road from that that standpoint. In three, why wait a week to get the objections back, right, let's get them out right then in there. Like it's such. It's such a good idea. I agree. And I love the I think the key here, people will listen to this and be like, Okay, I'll review the agreements, make them share their screen, you got to because they have to ultimately sign it. So they need to be controlling the deal on their side. Like I just think that I think that's a huge point,
Jeff Winters:honestly. And by the way, Scott is exactly right. I want to underscore that point. If if possible, always on that call. I mean some people have to go through and customize proposal. If you can do it Scott's 1,000,000% Right. huge advantage to do it on the call. Finding it's the biggest part of this finding the agreement. I can't even tell you like having them go in like tactile in a tactile way. Click the agreement open. It's a game changer. They have to find it. It's hard to find. Yeah, you can bring it to them in person. That's good. Even better. That's your tales from CES.
Scott Scully:Gentlemen. Incredible advice as always. Now we're heading into probably everybody's favorite section.
Eric Watkins:The most important to do or not to do to do or not to do. I'm going to start off today we have President's Club coming up. So we're gonna be on the beach. We're gonna be in Mexico. And the sun's different down there. It's not the St. Louis sun is not the same as that Cancun sun. And all of us take color in a little different way. You know, what I wanted to talk about today is when it comes time to lather up. What type of SPF should you be using on the beach? You know, is Do you play it safe? Do you you know, you want to get a little bit of color? Do you go a little bit lower? What do we think here? Scott, we'll start with you. 5050 Why do you say 50? Because you're 50 for 50 You're staying on brand.
Scott Scully:I don't know, for whatever reason, I'm still able to get a heck of a lot of sun with 50 and avoid pretty nasty burn. Yeah.
Eric Watkins:What do you 90 I'm high.
Jeff Winters:I do Manet's if it was cheap enough. I think it's I'm going high on the SPF and I'm, I'm sure I'm I'm very shirt on for the first couple of days. Like I go 50 Because the spray Never spray never works. I mean, and I got, you know, me and my wife. I all have a team of people with the spray and there's always some glob that it's just is not there for me. So I'm I'm 50 with a big side of shirt on. shirt on how to keep the neck good. Yeah, I'll do antao over the legs. I'll go tie over the legs to like a little blankie so I'm 50 shirt on towel over the legs reapply frequently.
Eric Watkins:I think it's I think the real answer is 30 I think you just need 30 Like you don't need to overdo it.
Jeff Winters:You're inside the next three days for 30 in Cancun. If you've been inside all winter, no little
Eric Watkins:30 little 30 will take care of you. 50
Scott Scully:He's a little darker. complected so 30 is probably good for
Eric Watkins:him. 30 What do you try to say about Jeff? He's a little pale.
Jeff Winters:come right out and say it was
Eric Watkins:I'll put I'll put our bed.
Jeff Winters:Already. Did you thought I knew that.
Scott Scully:All right, another good episode. Thanks for listening. As always, like, subscribe, follow. What's the word? Interact with us? Let us know what you think. Be kind, grow and dry.
Eric Watkins:Let's grow. Let's grow.
Unknown:Let's grow. The grow show is sponsored by outbound SDR building predictable sales pipelines.
