TTA04-Jeff Pugel

Michael J. Mahony 0:00
If you sell a product or service online, then you know how important it is to have a full pipeline. Your pipeline is the lifeblood for your company. Today's guest can help you keep that pipeline full. listen in to the information he has to provide. Hey, welcome back to another episode of the technology Alchemist. The sponsor for our show is your virtual CTO. Your virtual CTO is a technology services company specializing in increasing your revenue and profit through a close examination of your technology engine. Your virtual CTO offers exclusive coaching for business leaders. That is the only business coaching program that includes technology as part of the program. If you want to learn more about how you can make more money by tuning up your technology engine, head on over to get your virtual cto.com. Now on today's episode, we have Jeff Pujol. Jeff is the founder and CEO of ignition, an outbound sales agency focused on helping SMB b2b organizations, grow their sales pipeline and get more clients. LinkedIn has been a huge, if not 100%, part of how he has grown his own business, as well as one of the integral channels used for clients. Welcome to the show, Jeff.

Jeff Pugel 1:23
Hey, it's great to be here. Mike, how you doing today?

Michael J. Mahony 1:25
Great. So I wanted to ask you, first of all, so that listeners can understand because we always speak in acronyms when it's our business. What's SMB? SMB small businesses? That's what I thought. Yeah. But I thought, but I'm, I'm definitely I drive people crazy, because I don't assume so I asked lots of questions.

Jeff Pugel 1:43
I appreciate that. We all we all, we all have our jargon we all like to talk about. So I've learned long ago, never assume never presume.

Michael J. Mahony 1:50
Yeah, so what so when you were talking about small businesses, that can mean a lot of things? What, what is your target client base.

Jeff Pugel 1:58
So when I talk about small businesses, I'm really looking at companies, where it's probably headcount wise, you know, well, under 100, passing a 50, and under 20, and under, but I really look at it, it's more of a psychographic target of, it's the owner, or the couple of executives who are doing most of the selling themselves, in addition to running the business. So it's a really, it's a small business that isn't quite large enough to have its own, you know, fully fledged sales team, just yet, you know, it's, you know, it's gonna be the, you know, the owner, maybe a VP, maybe, depending on the size, you know, they may have one sales rep or BDR. Rep with them, but, you know, they're still kind of fledgling in that regards.

Michael J. Mahony 2:47
Okay. So, so let's say, there's somebody named john is like, the perfect client for you, um, what is it that you do for them?

Jeff Pugel 2:57
Essentially, I take

sales prospecting off of their plates. You know, a lot of companies nowadays, you know, the challenge most of my clients have, is that just, there's just not enough hours in the day to do everything, you know, they're running a business, you know, but you know, in the course of a 10 hour day, maybe 12 hours, they have 1001 things on their plate. So I come in, and just as you know, they probably, hopefully about tour some functions such as, you know, bookkeeping, payroll, legal, those type of non core functions, I do the same thing and take prospecting off of their plate. The reason being is there's a stat out there, and I've seen this myself being in sales, in one way, shape, or form for my entire career is that to do prospecting correctly, and if keep your sales pipeline full, you need to be prospecting for upwards of two to three hours a day. And it's completely asinine to expect, you know, a small business owner to be devoting two to three hours a day to fill in the pipeline. You know, the conversations I have, they all agree, yes, it's needed. But we all know being you know, business owners ourselves, Mike is things come up throughout the day, clients are kapanen, you got this fire drill, this happens, you know, next year, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, it's three o'clock in the afternoon already. I just got here. So got my, you know, my first couple copies on my desk. Oh, my Lord, you know, and then of course, you prioritize what happens? Things such as prospecting, you're kicked off to the next day. It's a wash, rinse, repeat cycle. And then, you know, my clients, by the time they come to me, they realize, Oh, it's been, you know, my pipeline is bare, it's dry. And they know, okay, I got to fill that back up. I need help doing this because I can't do it all the time. And that's usually where I come in to the conversation and help them take that big piece of the puzzle. off of their plates. For them,

Michael J. Mahony 5:01
so do you also qualify the leads for them,

Jeff Pugel 5:06
I do offer a couple different ways depending on how we like to approach things, there's a couple of different paths to take a really depends on the particular client, what they're looking for, you know, so that's all part of my normal onboarding process I go through with them, you know, it's understanding who exactly is their target audience of who they're looking for, you know, some are very broad based. So it's, you know, it's, you know, you can kind of cast a wide net, because they're kind of talking to everybody, maybe a specific job title, but you know, the kind of ubiquitous, others become very specific, so make very, very much a vertical basis. And so it depends on that, you know, how much qualification is needed, but it's really on a case by case basis, you know, my thing is getting the right solution for the right client. And because of that, you know, really, I don't have a true, you know, cookie cutter solution, because it's, each solution is gonna be slightly different for each client, because each client is going after a very different unique, you know, target audience, they have their own specific, neither trying to solve so what would not really be doing them service, if I just say, as a one size fits all right? solution?

Michael J. Mahony 6:22
Do you have any kind of specific industry you specialize with?

Jeff Pugel 6:28
One industry that's really near and dear to my heart is the agency world to advertising agencies, marketing agencies, only, because that's the world I've come from in the past. So that also includes TV stations, newspapers, radio stations, any type of media outlets working with their sales teams. But from that, it's really easy to spin it off into other professional service firms, it's really the same thing. You know, you're, you're not necessarily selling a product, or you're selling a service. So it's very easily to kind of move between those worlds. But really, if it's stopping, I like working with those professional service firms, especially because you're not selling a tangible product, you sell more intellectual, right? products.

Michael J. Mahony 7:13
So what do you think is the number one problem these businesses face, other than having to fill their pipeline?

Jeff Pugel 7:22
Big one I see, believe it or not, nowadays, is how they positioned themselves. There's a lot a lot of them when I first talk with them, their positioning is very vanilla. You know, in such a competitive world that we live in nowadays, doesn't really give them a way to stand out amongst all the competition. You know, for instance, you can come across, let's say, an accounting firm, or an accounting firm. Okay, you go to any chamber breakfast, you probably be five other accounting firms. Right over there. So my first thing I was like, do this, well, how are you? You know, How are you different from everybody else, you know, out there, you know, use focus, like we're just talking about Second, you focus on a particular industry vertical niche, you know, are you are you and let's say for instance, you know what, I'd be looking for a CEO, are you an accounting firm that specializes in manufacturing companies? Are you an accounting firm that specializes in startups? Yeah. You know, something like that. But now you start to kind of separate yourself.

Michael J. Mahony 8:20
Yeah, differentiation is not well understood by entrepreneurs. Yeah. You know, you eat no matter what your business is, you have to be doing something to look different than the next guy. Yeah. And that's where they fall short.

Jeff Pugel 8:37
Yeah, I mean, it's, I think, you know, the biggest thing I've seen a lot of times, and I've gotten this, when I go through this process, it's actually a karmic normal onboarding process with clients, I kind of do like a deep dive with them, really understanding and get under their skin a little bit, get into their business, is anything we're guilty of all this is, we're all too close for our own business to see the forest through the trees. And I'm guilty of that myself. And I remember, you know, when I was starting my business, trying to get my differentiator up, I had to bring in some outside help to help me see through it. Yeah. And that's kind of what I do a lot with my clients. I remember everyone kind of refreshed up his whole profile, his LinkedIn profile kind of spun around. It was like a makeover. He was like, Is that me? really isn't? Yeah, that's, you know, that was a conversation we have, you know, we were looking at the transcript. You just needed to pull it out your car, you'll buff it up, shining it off. Yeah. It's,

Michael J. Mahony 9:32
it's something I find interesting is, you know, just just today actually, I was having a discussion this morning with my executive assistant. And I mentioned to her that I was finalizing interviews for a copywriter. And she said, What are you trying to do build an empire with all of these people? And, you know, sort of a sarcastic joke, which I like, because that's me. But also, but I explained to her I said, I think successful people are smart enough to know what They're good at and what they're not good at. And then they work as well as they can until they can have the money to pay for the number one top priority, they need to fill the gap for, and then you kind of limp along in your business until you can afford to pay for, you know, different, completely different aspects. And I remember a year ago being advised to like write all these blog posts and do all this stuff. And when I asked the guy Well, how do I have time for that? So we pay people for it? Well, how does the starting a business pay for, you know, a full time blogger, you just don't have that money. And I think what's intriguing is, people don't grasp that, that, you know, that's why there's experts in each area, and I'm not a copywriter. And so I know that I need that. So I'm hiring that. I think it's the same thing. You know, I do CTO on demand services for people. And it's because they can't afford a full time CTO. So it makes sense to me that if I needed a Salesforce to help me fill up my lead pipeline to go to someone like you, because you don't have to figure it out, you already have tried and true methodology.

Jeff Pugel 11:11
Yeah, no, I mean, that's a great way of saying it, it's like, you know, it's like, come on come tax time. It's like you can you know, get, you know, what is it, uh, you know, what, whatever you TurboTax and do it yourself, and stumble and fumble and kill a whole weekend doing it, or you can pay the accountant is nominal fee, give them all your paperwork, and let him deal with it, and probably come out ahead.

Michael J. Mahony 11:36
Because Yeah, and you're also protected. Because, once again, you know, that's the other thing I tell people all the time, and they, they think it's a cocky statement, but it's not, it's the truth, I've been doing this for so long, that I've seen pretty much everything you're going to run into, and you go and try to hire somebody who's only been doing this for a couple years, you're going to spend a lot of money in areas because they spin their wheels, I don't have to do that.

Jeff Pugel 12:06
You know, and I'm glad you brought that up. Because this is actually, you know, a phenomenon I'm seeing right now, in the whole lead gen prospecting space, there's a lot of startups popping into the space, all of a sudden. And it's a little bit of a gold rush, which is kind of kind of to be expected, you know, anything kind of a downturn, but it's really needed, Mike word of advice here is to be careful a lot of these because I'm seeing some very themes, you know, I'm getting reached out to on LinkedIn, a lot, by a lot of these guys, these same guys, I'm looking at, you know, pulling up their profiles, they've been in business for two months now. Um, you know, they have a couple 100 connections, you know, they have a non existent website, all of these, right. And that's a, you know, in this case, be careful too, because it is very easy to go down the wrong path, waste money, waste time, which is, you know, because you're kind of getting someone, you know, you're getting someone that hasn't been there before, and I understand the catch 22 you know, you can't get experience until you get a job, you can't get a job until you get experience. But it's Yeah, you do, I think you do want someone that's been down these paths before, because to your point, Mike, we know things that you don't necessarily know if you're not in that particular world, on a day in and day out. And another thing as a benefit, you know, kind of being an agency is, you know, I'm running, I'm working with multiple clients at any moment in time. So I have a very wide view of the market. Whereas, you know, if you're, if you're just doing it all yourself, you have a very narrow view of the market. The problem with that is, if I start seeing things change elsewhere, maybe on a couple different accounts, I made some Aha, something's something's happening here. You know, there's, there's a disturbance in the Force, and then bring that imprint, you know, maybe bring that, you know, keep an eye Now on the other accounts. And then maybe, as you know, as a trend bubbles up, you can pivot those accounts, which then you save those clients, you know, Trump potential turbulence down the road and vice versa. Yeah, that's kind of sometimes a better to have you bring it on to bring outsourcing some work to someone who's doing it for multiple clients at once is, you know, you're kind of gaining their purview of the world, which can actually benefit us, uh, you know, you're not running into these potholes and mistakes. And if you're doing yourself, you'd likely would,

Michael J. Mahony 14:40
I totally agree with you. I've actually had the experience when I used to do coding. I had a client tell me they were going to replace me because at the time I was charging them like $50 an hour, and they found an Indian company that could do it for $10 an hour, and they had almost as much experience as me You know, years wise, and what they weren't expecting, though was Yeah, okay, even offshore resources are going to charge an appropriate rate for their skills. And so what was happening was these people would, they would say, Alright, I'm charging you $10 an hour. And this task took five hours to do. So that's $50. And I would look at the same tasks and say, I could have done that in a half an hour, which would have cost you $25. So you actually were paying a higher hourly rate, but you save money, because of the experience and the speed with which you get things done. Yeah. And also, like, I one time had a boss, find a person, when I was working as a developer for a company, he found somebody to, we needed help. And he found somebody for $8 an hour, well, the very first time the person touched our code, they deactivated all of our security officers. So, you know, we had to spend 1000s, of dollars to redo all of that. And they didn't just, like remark it out, they deleted it, you know, so it was crazy. But I'm to your point, though, people don't have two hours a day to spend on filling their pipeline. And so they're kind of caught in a catch 22. Because, on the one hand, they need the pipeline full in order to generate revenue, but on the other, they need revenue in order to pay for someone like you. So like, how does your How does your program work? Like, if I were to approach you about using your services, how does it work,

Jeff Pugel 16:33
okay. So they're, they're, essentially work with clients in one of two ways, primarily, the first is in a done for you environment it for clients that just want to get it all off the plate, and just in trust that, you know, someone else is doing it for them, you know, like, kind of, we're just talking about, you know, just want off the play and let the pro do it. And after that is about 90% of my clients at the moment, they get involved when, you know, someone has raised their hand, say, yeah, I'm interested in talking, that's when they kind of come back in the picture, most of them are happy at that point, they can, then they can advance the conversation at that point. The other aspect is, could be either those with maybe larger sales teams, or ones that are maybe you know, a small organization where they only want to be a little bit more involved. And I offer a done with you coaching program, I kind of look over your shoulder, you know, kind of teach you, you know how to do it all yourself. And then, you know, kind of do a little of a brain dump to you on that, and then get you up and running. I always say though, the problem with that is in business development, tactics, and results and approaches are always changing. So it's not static. Right. So that's why most of my clients, just let me run it because you know, how we started off. Maybe that's it six months ago, what we're doing now has totally changed, like, for instance, you know, these last couple months with the whole COVID-19 Coronavirus? Well, when that all hit in early March, everyone had to do a hard pivot. In terms of messaging, you just couldn't be like, I remember seeing the first week of March, your regular approaches, regular messaging, just keep going down the path. All sudden, it was roughly that Monday, March, it was March 8, that Monday, the week after St. Patrick's Day is when it all kind of really bubbled up. And that's when everything hit the proverbial fan. And since then, it's been a very different environment. We've been in the you know, for instance, the messaging approach has changed dramatically. It's no longer about just getting meetings, no one's taking, not people aren't taking means, you know, I was just on a call yesterday with a client, like, I want to move forward. He says I can't I don't know where my market is going at the moment. But with that said, I still need to keep moving forward. So I think the whole purchase changed from selling to just having discussions, but it's a very different approach. Whereas if you're just to do more like this, I like that done with you that probably would have lost some of that and that's why most of my clients at the animal soul say, you know, let's just let you let me take it off of their plates because they realize is this bob and weave that always has to happen for them to say, you know, kind of ahead of where everybody else is at.

Michael J. Mahony 19:46
So do you see a lot of people you know, that do start out with done with you approach eventually switch to the den for them approach. In other words, you know, they come on and they want you to just come alongside of them. Have them and teach them how to do it. But eventually they kind of throw in the towel and say, Hey, Jeff,

Jeff Pugel 20:05
you take care of it. Yeah, that's a lot of time. I think it's kind of like the old adage of, you know, comic, the DI wires at home, oh, yeah, I can go ahead and fix this, you know, weekend project, you know, until you right, until you start to realize, you know, I'm in a little bit over my head. And then you call in to kind of clean up the mess.

Michael J. Mahony 20:23
See, I have that I have that exact issue. I have a technology accelerator roadmap program that will get guarantees and increase in revenue and profit or your money back. And there's two ways to do it, though there's, I can teach you how to do it, it costs a little bit less money. But I can teach you how to do it, and then you can run with it, or I have the one that's a little bit more expensive. And then has some maintenance involved with it, where we do it for you. But our but but the thing is, what people seem to think about it first is, oh, I need to save a couple $1,000 up front here. So let me go with you helped me do it approach, then they start to find out that it's not that easy. And like we were just talking about who has hours to spend in their day to do these little things. So what they end up doing is they switch to the done for you approach. And they find out that their revenue goes up, their profit goes up. So the little bit extra that they spent, it's a wash. And and again, I think it comes back to with people like you and I, they they're paying for our expertise. And they're, they're paying for results. And when they do it themselves. It's what's the number one thing if you ask people in personal development, people go, they read a book, then they don't, then they don't implement what they learned. And I think it's the same thing. You could teach them how to prospect all day long. And then right away, they're going to be all gung ho. And for the first, you know, week or two, they're going to do great. And then all of a sudden, like you said, it sort of moves down the priority list. And it keeps getting shuffled to the side. And before long. You follow up with them. And it's Oh, I haven't done anything for a month. Bad I had a bad idea. So yeah, I see that. Well, thanks so much for for all of your input. I think this has been great. Why don't you tell people where they can find you and how they can get in touch with you if they need your services?

Jeff Pugel 22:17
Yeah, sure thing, Mike. You know, you can always obviously Check, check out my website is ignition dot LLC. Or you can always always find me on LinkedIn. That's usually my favorite hangout. So just just Jeffrey Pugel.

Over there on LinkedIn.

Michael J. Mahony 22:34
Awesome, awesome. Well, yeah, I suggest people connect. I mean, I've actually had a conversation with Jeff before this, we connected in a different way through another third party. But he he knows what he's talking about. And I definitely highly recommend you. You know, if you're a listener to this show on a regular basis, I would suggest you you know, you go check him out. But thanks again, Jeff for being here. I really appreciate it. This has been another episode of the technology Alchemist.

Michael J. Mahony 0:00
If you sell a product or service online, then you know how important it is to have a full pipeline. Your pipeline is the lifeblood for your company. Today's guest can help you keep that pipeline full. listen in to the information he has to provide. Hey, welcome back to another episode of the technology Alchemist. The sponsor for our show is your virtual CTO. Your virtual CTO is a technology services company specializing in increasing your revenue and profit through a close examination of your technology engine. Your virtual CTO offers exclusive coaching for business leaders. That is the only business coaching program that includes technology as part of the program. If you want to learn more about how you can make more money by tuning up your technology engine, head on over to get your virtual cto.com. Now on today's episode, we have Jeff Pujol. Jeff is the founder and CEO of ignition, an outbound sales agency focused on helping SMB b2b organizations, grow their sales pipeline and get more clients. LinkedIn has been a huge, if not 100%, part of how he has grown his own business, as well as one of the integral channels used for clients. Welcome to the show, Jeff.

Jeff Pugel 1:23
Hey, it's great to be here. Mike, how you doing today?

Michael J. Mahony 1:25
Great. So I wanted to ask you, first of all, so that listeners can understand because we always speak in acronyms when it's our business. What's SMB? SMB small businesses? That's what I thought. Yeah. But I thought, but I'm, I'm definitely I drive people crazy, because I don't assume so I asked lots of questions.

Jeff Pugel 1:43
I appreciate that. We all we all, we all have our jargon we all like to talk about. So I've learned long ago, never assume never presume.

Michael J. Mahony 1:50
Yeah, so what so when you were talking about small businesses, that can mean a lot of things? What, what is your target client base.

Jeff Pugel 1:58
So when I talk about small businesses, I'm really looking at companies, where it's probably headcount wise, you know, well, under 100, passing a 50, and under 20, and under, but I really look at it, it's more of a psychographic target of, it's the owner, or the couple of executives who are doing most of the selling themselves, in addition to running the business. So it's a really, it's a small business that isn't quite large enough to have its own, you know, fully fledged sales team, just yet, you know, it's, you know, it's gonna be the, you know, the owner, maybe a VP, maybe, depending on the size, you know, they may have one sales rep or BDR. Rep with them, but, you know, they're still kind of fledgling in that regards.

Michael J. Mahony 2:47
Okay. So, so let's say, there's somebody named john is like, the perfect client for you, um, what is it that you do for them?

Jeff Pugel 2:57
Essentially, I take

sales prospecting off of their plates. You know, a lot of companies nowadays, you know, the challenge most of my clients have, is that just, there's just not enough hours in the day to do everything, you know, they're running a business, you know, but you know, in the course of a 10 hour day, maybe 12 hours, they have 1001 things on their plate. So I come in, and just as you know, they probably, hopefully about tour some functions such as, you know, bookkeeping, payroll, legal, those type of non core functions, I do the same thing and take prospecting off of their plate. The reason being is there's a stat out there, and I've seen this myself being in sales, in one way, shape, or form for my entire career is that to do prospecting correctly, and if keep your sales pipeline full, you need to be prospecting for upwards of two to three hours a day. And it's completely asinine to expect, you know, a small business owner to be devoting two to three hours a day to fill in the pipeline. You know, the conversations I have, they all agree, yes, it's needed. But we all know being you know, business owners ourselves, Mike is things come up throughout the day, clients are kapanen, you got this fire drill, this happens, you know, next year, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, it's three o'clock in the afternoon already. I just got here. So got my, you know, my first couple copies on my desk. Oh, my Lord, you know, and then of course, you prioritize what happens? Things such as prospecting, you're kicked off to the next day. It's a wash, rinse, repeat cycle. And then, you know, my clients, by the time they come to me, they realize, Oh, it's been, you know, my pipeline is bare, it's dry. And they know, okay, I got to fill that back up. I need help doing this because I can't do it all the time. And that's usually where I come in to the conversation and help them take that big piece of the puzzle. off of their plates. For them,

Michael J. Mahony 5:01
so do you also qualify the leads for them,

Jeff Pugel 5:06
I do offer a couple different ways depending on how we like to approach things, there's a couple of different paths to take a really depends on the particular client, what they're looking for, you know, so that's all part of my normal onboarding process I go through with them, you know, it's understanding who exactly is their target audience of who they're looking for, you know, some are very broad based. So it's, you know, it's, you know, you can kind of cast a wide net, because they're kind of talking to everybody, maybe a specific job title, but you know, the kind of ubiquitous, others become very specific, so make very, very much a vertical basis. And so it depends on that, you know, how much qualification is needed, but it's really on a case by case basis, you know, my thing is getting the right solution for the right client. And because of that, you know, really, I don't have a true, you know, cookie cutter solution, because it's, each solution is gonna be slightly different for each client, because each client is going after a very different unique, you know, target audience, they have their own specific, neither trying to solve so what would not really be doing them service, if I just say, as a one size fits all right? solution?

Michael J. Mahony 6:22
Do you have any kind of specific industry you specialize with?

Jeff Pugel 6:28
One industry that's really near and dear to my heart is the agency world to advertising agencies, marketing agencies, only, because that's the world I've come from in the past. So that also includes TV stations, newspapers, radio stations, any type of media outlets working with their sales teams. But from that, it's really easy to spin it off into other professional service firms, it's really the same thing. You know, you're, you're not necessarily selling a product, or you're selling a service. So it's very easily to kind of move between those worlds. But really, if it's stopping, I like working with those professional service firms, especially because you're not selling a tangible product, you sell more intellectual, right? products.

Michael J. Mahony 7:13
So what do you think is the number one problem these businesses face, other than having to fill their pipeline?

Jeff Pugel 7:22
Big one I see, believe it or not, nowadays, is how they positioned themselves. There's a lot a lot of them when I first talk with them, their positioning is very vanilla. You know, in such a competitive world that we live in nowadays, doesn't really give them a way to stand out amongst all the competition. You know, for instance, you can come across, let's say, an accounting firm, or an accounting firm. Okay, you go to any chamber breakfast, you probably be five other accounting firms. Right over there. So my first thing I was like, do this, well, how are you? You know, How are you different from everybody else, you know, out there, you know, use focus, like we're just talking about Second, you focus on a particular industry vertical niche, you know, are you are you and let's say for instance, you know what, I'd be looking for a CEO, are you an accounting firm that specializes in manufacturing companies? Are you an accounting firm that specializes in startups? Yeah. You know, something like that. But now you start to kind of separate yourself.

Michael J. Mahony 8:20
Yeah, differentiation is not well understood by entrepreneurs. Yeah. You know, you eat no matter what your business is, you have to be doing something to look different than the next guy. Yeah. And that's where they fall short.

Jeff Pugel 8:37
Yeah, I mean, it's, I think, you know, the biggest thing I've seen a lot of times, and I've gotten this, when I go through this process, it's actually a karmic normal onboarding process with clients, I kind of do like a deep dive with them, really understanding and get under their skin a little bit, get into their business, is anything we're guilty of all this is, we're all too close for our own business to see the forest through the trees. And I'm guilty of that myself. And I remember, you know, when I was starting my business, trying to get my differentiator up, I had to bring in some outside help to help me see through it. Yeah. And that's kind of what I do a lot with my clients. I remember everyone kind of refreshed up his whole profile, his LinkedIn profile kind of spun around. It was like a makeover. He was like, Is that me? really isn't? Yeah, that's, you know, that was a conversation we have, you know, we were looking at the transcript. You just needed to pull it out your car, you'll buff it up, shining it off. Yeah. It's,

Michael J. Mahony 9:32
it's something I find interesting is, you know, just just today actually, I was having a discussion this morning with my executive assistant. And I mentioned to her that I was finalizing interviews for a copywriter. And she said, What are you trying to do build an empire with all of these people? And, you know, sort of a sarcastic joke, which I like, because that's me. But also, but I explained to her I said, I think successful people are smart enough to know what They're good at and what they're not good at. And then they work as well as they can until they can have the money to pay for the number one top priority, they need to fill the gap for, and then you kind of limp along in your business until you can afford to pay for, you know, different, completely different aspects. And I remember a year ago being advised to like write all these blog posts and do all this stuff. And when I asked the guy Well, how do I have time for that? So we pay people for it? Well, how does the starting a business pay for, you know, a full time blogger, you just don't have that money. And I think what's intriguing is, people don't grasp that, that, you know, that's why there's experts in each area, and I'm not a copywriter. And so I know that I need that. So I'm hiring that. I think it's the same thing. You know, I do CTO on demand services for people. And it's because they can't afford a full time CTO. So it makes sense to me that if I needed a Salesforce to help me fill up my lead pipeline to go to someone like you, because you don't have to figure it out, you already have tried and true methodology.

Jeff Pugel 11:11
Yeah, no, I mean, that's a great way of saying it, it's like, you know, it's like, come on come tax time. It's like you can you know, get, you know, what is it, uh, you know, what, whatever you TurboTax and do it yourself, and stumble and fumble and kill a whole weekend doing it, or you can pay the accountant is nominal fee, give them all your paperwork, and let him deal with it, and probably come out ahead.

Michael J. Mahony 11:36
Because Yeah, and you're also protected. Because, once again, you know, that's the other thing I tell people all the time, and they, they think it's a cocky statement, but it's not, it's the truth, I've been doing this for so long, that I've seen pretty much everything you're going to run into, and you go and try to hire somebody who's only been doing this for a couple years, you're going to spend a lot of money in areas because they spin their wheels, I don't have to do that.

Jeff Pugel 12:06
You know, and I'm glad you brought that up. Because this is actually, you know, a phenomenon I'm seeing right now, in the whole lead gen prospecting space, there's a lot of startups popping into the space, all of a sudden. And it's a little bit of a gold rush, which is kind of kind of to be expected, you know, anything kind of a downturn, but it's really needed, Mike word of advice here is to be careful a lot of these because I'm seeing some very themes, you know, I'm getting reached out to on LinkedIn, a lot, by a lot of these guys, these same guys, I'm looking at, you know, pulling up their profiles, they've been in business for two months now. Um, you know, they have a couple 100 connections, you know, they have a non existent website, all of these, right. And that's a, you know, in this case, be careful too, because it is very easy to go down the wrong path, waste money, waste time, which is, you know, because you're kind of getting someone, you know, you're getting someone that hasn't been there before, and I understand the catch 22 you know, you can't get experience until you get a job, you can't get a job until you get experience. But it's Yeah, you do, I think you do want someone that's been down these paths before, because to your point, Mike, we know things that you don't necessarily know if you're not in that particular world, on a day in and day out. And another thing as a benefit, you know, kind of being an agency is, you know, I'm running, I'm working with multiple clients at any moment in time. So I have a very wide view of the market. Whereas, you know, if you're, if you're just doing it all yourself, you have a very narrow view of the market. The problem with that is, if I start seeing things change elsewhere, maybe on a couple different accounts, I made some Aha, something's something's happening here. You know, there's, there's a disturbance in the Force, and then bring that imprint, you know, maybe bring that, you know, keep an eye Now on the other accounts. And then maybe, as you know, as a trend bubbles up, you can pivot those accounts, which then you save those clients, you know, Trump potential turbulence down the road and vice versa. Yeah, that's kind of sometimes a better to have you bring it on to bring outsourcing some work to someone who's doing it for multiple clients at once is, you know, you're kind of gaining their purview of the world, which can actually benefit us, uh, you know, you're not running into these potholes and mistakes. And if you're doing yourself, you'd likely would,

Michael J. Mahony 14:40
I totally agree with you. I've actually had the experience when I used to do coding. I had a client tell me they were going to replace me because at the time I was charging them like $50 an hour, and they found an Indian company that could do it for $10 an hour, and they had almost as much experience as me You know, years wise, and what they weren't expecting, though was Yeah, okay, even offshore resources are going to charge an appropriate rate for their skills. And so what was happening was these people would, they would say, Alright, I'm charging you $10 an hour. And this task took five hours to do. So that's $50. And I would look at the same tasks and say, I could have done that in a half an hour, which would have cost you $25. So you actually were paying a higher hourly rate, but you save money, because of the experience and the speed with which you get things done. Yeah. And also, like, I one time had a boss, find a person, when I was working as a developer for a company, he found somebody to, we needed help. And he found somebody for $8 an hour, well, the very first time the person touched our code, they deactivated all of our security officers. So, you know, we had to spend 1000s, of dollars to redo all of that. And they didn't just, like remark it out, they deleted it, you know, so it was crazy. But I'm to your point, though, people don't have two hours a day to spend on filling their pipeline. And so they're kind of caught in a catch 22. Because, on the one hand, they need the pipeline full in order to generate revenue, but on the other, they need revenue in order to pay for someone like you. So like, how does your How does your program work? Like, if I were to approach you about using your services, how does it work,

Jeff Pugel 16:33
okay. So they're, they're, essentially work with clients in one of two ways, primarily, the first is in a done for you environment it for clients that just want to get it all off the plate, and just in trust that, you know, someone else is doing it for them, you know, like, kind of, we're just talking about, you know, just want off the play and let the pro do it. And after that is about 90% of my clients at the moment, they get involved when, you know, someone has raised their hand, say, yeah, I'm interested in talking, that's when they kind of come back in the picture, most of them are happy at that point, they can, then they can advance the conversation at that point. The other aspect is, could be either those with maybe larger sales teams, or ones that are maybe you know, a small organization where they only want to be a little bit more involved. And I offer a done with you coaching program, I kind of look over your shoulder, you know, kind of teach you, you know how to do it all yourself. And then, you know, kind of do a little of a brain dump to you on that, and then get you up and running. I always say though, the problem with that is in business development, tactics, and results and approaches are always changing. So it's not static. Right. So that's why most of my clients, just let me run it because you know, how we started off. Maybe that's it six months ago, what we're doing now has totally changed, like, for instance, you know, these last couple months with the whole COVID-19 Coronavirus? Well, when that all hit in early March, everyone had to do a hard pivot. In terms of messaging, you just couldn't be like, I remember seeing the first week of March, your regular approaches, regular messaging, just keep going down the path. All sudden, it was roughly that Monday, March, it was March 8, that Monday, the week after St. Patrick's Day is when it all kind of really bubbled up. And that's when everything hit the proverbial fan. And since then, it's been a very different environment. We've been in the you know, for instance, the messaging approach has changed dramatically. It's no longer about just getting meetings, no one's taking, not people aren't taking means, you know, I was just on a call yesterday with a client, like, I want to move forward. He says I can't I don't know where my market is going at the moment. But with that said, I still need to keep moving forward. So I think the whole purchase changed from selling to just having discussions, but it's a very different approach. Whereas if you're just to do more like this, I like that done with you that probably would have lost some of that and that's why most of my clients at the animal soul say, you know, let's just let you let me take it off of their plates because they realize is this bob and weave that always has to happen for them to say, you know, kind of ahead of where everybody else is at.

Michael J. Mahony 19:46
So do you see a lot of people you know, that do start out with done with you approach eventually switch to the den for them approach. In other words, you know, they come on and they want you to just come alongside of them. Have them and teach them how to do it. But eventually they kind of throw in the towel and say, Hey, Jeff,

Jeff Pugel 20:05
you take care of it. Yeah, that's a lot of time. I think it's kind of like the old adage of, you know, comic, the DI wires at home, oh, yeah, I can go ahead and fix this, you know, weekend project, you know, until you right, until you start to realize, you know, I'm in a little bit over my head. And then you call in to kind of clean up the mess.

Michael J. Mahony 20:23
See, I have that I have that exact issue. I have a technology accelerator roadmap program that will get guarantees and increase in revenue and profit or your money back. And there's two ways to do it, though there's, I can teach you how to do it, it costs a little bit less money. But I can teach you how to do it, and then you can run with it, or I have the one that's a little bit more expensive. And then has some maintenance involved with it, where we do it for you. But our but but the thing is, what people seem to think about it first is, oh, I need to save a couple $1,000 up front here. So let me go with you helped me do it approach, then they start to find out that it's not that easy. And like we were just talking about who has hours to spend in their day to do these little things. So what they end up doing is they switch to the done for you approach. And they find out that their revenue goes up, their profit goes up. So the little bit extra that they spent, it's a wash. And and again, I think it comes back to with people like you and I, they they're paying for our expertise. And they're, they're paying for results. And when they do it themselves. It's what's the number one thing if you ask people in personal development, people go, they read a book, then they don't, then they don't implement what they learned. And I think it's the same thing. You could teach them how to prospect all day long. And then right away, they're going to be all gung ho. And for the first, you know, week or two, they're going to do great. And then all of a sudden, like you said, it sort of moves down the priority list. And it keeps getting shuffled to the side. And before long. You follow up with them. And it's Oh, I haven't done anything for a month. Bad I had a bad idea. So yeah, I see that. Well, thanks so much for for all of your input. I think this has been great. Why don't you tell people where they can find you and how they can get in touch with you if they need your services?

Jeff Pugel 22:17
Yeah, sure thing, Mike. You know, you can always obviously Check, check out my website is ignition dot LLC. Or you can always always find me on LinkedIn. That's usually my favorite hangout. So just just Jeffrey Pugel.

Over there on LinkedIn.

Michael J. Mahony 22:34
Awesome, awesome. Well, yeah, I suggest people connect. I mean, I've actually had a conversation with Jeff before this, we connected in a different way through another third party. But he he knows what he's talking about. And I definitely highly recommend you. You know, if you're a listener to this show on a regular basis, I would suggest you you know, you go check him out. But thanks again, Jeff for being here. I really appreciate it. This has been another episode of the technology Alchemist.