Our Thoughts

On the radio this morning, the daily call-in question was “would you rather have a raise or more feedback from you boss?”. They said their online poll had something like 65% of respondents say “feedback”, but a higher percentage of those calling in said “more pay”. Interesting…  While this question may spark good interaction with the radio show audience, it oversimplifies a very complex topic for all parties involved. There is base pay, variable compensation, bonuses, benefits, time flexibility, time off, and so many other things to consider when designing (or accepting) a compensation package which makes looking at the two radio options very situational. Personally, I’ve always found this topic very interesting and revealing when talking with owners/managers. Compensation policies explain a lot about employee retention, productivity, and customer service levels. It also requires the right person to be the in the right job. In the end, there are a ton of creative and impactful ways to attract, retain, and reward employees to achieve growth for everyone. As the radio poll suggest, it is not all about the money, but the money is important.

During a recent conversation with one of my consulting clients today, they made a comment justifying their lack of activity this past week because they want to focus on quality over quantity. Immediately, my internal fallacy detector went off! It doesn’t matter what industry or profession you are in – you could be a financial advisor, business banker, loan officer, wholesaler, dentist, optometrist, family practice, psychologist, a lawyer, CPA, engineer, or any other service orientated profession that needs to build a client base while delivering their services to paying clients – this fallacy of quality over quantity applies to you. It’s a great point to dive into if we truly want to experience exponential growth.  There are so many impacts that we could discuss on this topic. To one extreme, focusing on too high of “quality” could turn you into a “whale hunter”. You might land the big one, but are you able to stay in business until it happens? Another extreme is, are you educated or experienced enough in your specific profession to be able to handle the “quality” you aspire to work with? Only seeking high “quality” clients typically goes with less but bigger clients. At this point in your career, are you okay with concentration risk? Each client is a larger percentage of your business and if your “quality” client leaves you, a larger percentage of your revenue leaves you too. One way to better understand this dilemma of quality and quantity is to look at building a client base from a game of numbers perspective. Each industry / profession (and person) will have different numbers, but no one is perfect. Not every prospect you meet with becomes a client. Whatever your ratio is, it applies to prospects of any quality level. If you need to get 10 prospects to gain 1 client, you can’t obtain 5 prospects and then justify it by saying “I’m focusing on quality over quantity”. Say what you want, but if you need 10 and get 5, at best you get half a client. Now since we are dealing with real people, you can’t get half, so reality says (more than likely) you round down and get zero. Another reason why people say such fallacy is they are mentally searching for justification of poor performance. On one hand, it might just be laziness. (We’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and rule that one out.) More likely, it is poor execution skills. People may not know what to do. If they know what, they many do not know how. If they know both, they may not be very good at it. For many people this is a combination problem they need help solving. You may say, one “quality” client is better than 3 “inferior” clients. That may be true. No one would rightfully argue against quality control measures being in place. That said, if your object is exponential growth over a short period of time, you can never sacrifice one for the other in this equation. You must uphold your quality control AND do the quantity needed. If you deliver both quality and quantity at the targeted levels, the best thing that could happen is you arrive at your goal early. The worst thing that happens is you reach your goal on the intended deadline. If you miss the goal, you probably had the wrong metrics. Building a clientele is a professional exercise comprised of art, science, and execution. It is good to define your quality control measures, but you still need to do the appropriate amount of work to get the job done.

Think about how many times the concept of “perfection” is brought up. You were not the perfect person for the position, you did not have a perfect presentation, you did not score perfectly on an exam or job evaluation. Even if you don’t use the word “perfect”, the idea of right or wrong, good or bad, still applies. There are actually two ways to use the concept of perfection. One is in a dualistic (think absolute) sense and the other is in a non-dualistic (think relative) sense. It is in understanding how they differ that one can clear up the misconception of perfection. The dualistic viewpoint basically says it has flaws or it does not have flaws. Either it has mistakes or it does not. Think of a spelling bee. If you spelled a word perfectly, there are no extra or incorrect letters and the ordering of the letters matches the dictionary. That is dualistically perfect. A diamond is another good example of something that can be dualistically perfect. It will have flaws or it will not. Without even knowing it, most people apply the dualistic viewpoint of perfection to most situations. However applying it to the wrong situation can lead to lowered self-esteem, lack of motivation, improper expectations being set, and a host of other barriers to success. The non-dualistic viewpoint basically says we judge all relative things on a continuum. Think of a grandmother saying her grandchildren are “perfect”. She does not mean that their genetic codes are structured the exact way it’s supposed to be or that they never get into trouble. She is simply saying that her grandchildren are always on their best behavior whenever they are around. They are perfect according to her. Another good example can be found in sports. You might hear a sportscaster say that so-and-so played a “perfect” game. Now that doesn’t mean that they never missed a ball when they swung at it, made every shot they took, or completed every pass they threw. What the sportscaster means is that the player played one of the best games in his career. Basically, they had performed better than they did in previous games. Okay, great lesson in semantics, but is this really important? Of course it is! Many people get caught up in trying to be “perfect”. Realize you are not a diamond and do not live in a dualistic, or absolute world. You are non-dualistic. Again, you should think relative and consider your progress on a continuum. Ask yourself: Do I understand my products better today than last month? Am I more skilled today than I was last year? Have I made progress towards the accomplishment of my vision? The coolest thing about all of this is that now you have the power! In a dualistic world, you are either “perfect” or “flawed” and that cannot be changed. In a non-dualistic world, you now have the freedom to choose, the freedom to grow, and the freedom to succeed.

Welcome to fall! Whether it is the changing color of the leaves, enjoying your favorite flavor of pie, sipping an anticipated seasonal hot beverage, the equinox, or the farmers harvesting their fields, no matter how you designate the start of the fall season, it is here. For many, this signals that the year is quickly coming to an end. At this point of the year, we are conditioned to talk about the harvest. We look towards the goods we gathered from the field–the bushel of apples, piles of pumpkins, the bountiful harvest and feast that awaits. In doing so, we often overlook the labor it took to make these things possible. This isn’t just a fall phenomenon. If we had the choice, just about all of us would want the harvest without the labor in life. It would be nice, wouldn’t it? The disciples felt that way too. The Sons of Zebedee asked for their seat in glory without ever considering the suffering they would need to endure. The Twelve Apostles argued over who was the greatest before even doing any work to spread the gospel. Peter rebuked Jesus when He foretold His coming suffering. Think about it, we all seek to know God’s will for our lives. We strive to heed how He calls us to fulfill the Great Commission and “make disciples of all nations” (Mt. 28: 19). Like the disciples, we would like to reap the fruits of Jesus’ promises without the difficulties to obtain them. But Jesus calls us to labor in His fields and vineyard, and this is how His Kingdom would grow. We strive to heed this call, so day in and day out this whole year we sought to represent our Lord in the best way possible. We toiled, we made sacrifices, experienced rejection and pain all to let others know of His name. After all that labor, we do what is natural to us, we look for the harvest. We have an idea of how we think our efforts should manifest God’s plan in our lives. Unfortunately, when we seek to find the harvest and what we see around us does not match what we expect, discouragement sets in. All the effort, sacrifice, and suffering go through our minds. At this point, we are just plain tired out! It is in these moments we need to recall the words of Christ when he said, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” (Matthew 11:28-30). Jesus shared this with his disciples right after He sent them out to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 11:6). In that mission brief Jesus foreshadows the persecutions they will endure. Jesus knows the cost and suffering of those who labor in the fields. He knows they need to be reminded of how to endure so they can enjoy the harvest. While our mission may look different than the Twelve Apostles, we all need reminding of where to go and find rest. Jesus literally called his disciples to Him. How does Jesus call us to do the same? Go to church! Pray. Find your way to be in communion with Jesus and you will find the rest you need. Stop searching for the short cut to get the results you expect and take His yoke. Then the burden will become light, and we can share in the harvest with Him at His banquet.

No matter how competitive your market or how unique your industry, one goal unites all business owners and sales professionals: acquiring more new clients. Onboarding new clients means more revenue, fresh referral opportunities, and a stronger foundation for long-term success. Especially in today’s volatile economic climate, each new client acts as a buffer against uncertainty and helps stabilize your business. But while everyone agrees on the importance of gaining new clients, the real question is how to do it. The truth? There’s no single path to success. Top producers across industries use wildly different methods—from digital campaigns to old-school flyer drops—to reach elite levels of performance. So what’s their secret? What sets top performers apart is they understand that client acquisition boils down to two key dimensions: Awareness vs. Engagement and Reactive vs. Proactive. Let’s break those down. Awareness is about visibility—getting your name out there. Traditional advertising, branding, and social media posts are all awareness tools. They let people know you exist, often without direct involvement. And while awareness is essential (no one buys from a business they’ve never heard of), it’s not enough on its own. Engagement, on the other hand, is where the magic happens. It’s about interaction—creating opportunities for meaningful conversations between you and your prospects. Engagement builds trust, clarifies needs, and helps both parties align on solutions and timelines. It’s awareness with impact. Top producers prioritize engagement because it leads to better-qualified prospects, stronger relationships, and higher conversion rates. Prospects feel empowered to “buy” rather than being “sold to,” and sales professionals get to act as trusted advisors—not pushy vendors. Reactive strategies wait for prospects to make the first move. Think billboards, online ads, or SEO—tools that rely on inbound interest. These can be useful for brand visibility, but they rarely generate consistent sales flow. After all, how many times have you seen a billboard and immediately called the company? Proactive strategies flip the script. They involve reaching out, starting conversations, and adding value before a prospect even asks. Examples include: meeting with Centers of Influence (COIs), hosting lunch-and-learn sessions, or attending networking events. These proactive tactics break through inertia, help you stand out from competitors, and allow for better qualification—saving time and boosting ROI. And here’s the kicker: they’re often far more cost-effective than traditional advertising. Today’s consumers are bombarded with ads—on every screen, in every space. The human brain has learned to tune them out. Commercial breaks are for checking phones, grabbing snacks, or chatting—not watching ads. Online, we skip or scroll past promotions without a second thought. For small businesses and individual sales professionals, this means one thing: advertising alone won’t cut it. The ROI just isn’t there. Looking ahead to 2026 everyone wants more clients. But the ones who get them will be those who engage their market proactively and meaningfully. To help you evaluate your current marketing efforts and discover ways to improve, we’ve created a short video. Click here to get started—and take the first step toward becoming a top-tier producer in your space.

During the first part of July, our country has a heighten focus on freedom. Everyone gets excited for barbeques, parades, fireworks, and all the celebrations that go along with the founding of this great country. We celebrate the freedom to choose, to be, and to have the beliefs, values, and opinions that each of us hold so dear. We LOVE our freedom. As a society we apply this freedom to pursue any profession or career we desire. It is in fact, our “unalienable right” to pursue happiness. Free from any Governmental interference or control that tells us what to do or how to do it. We aspire to have great things earned from the rewards of our efforts. It is this aspiration that drives our efforts to iterate, expand, and create. As employees and business owners our efforts combine to make the macro economy grow. While the value of freedom that we all cherish and celebrate on the 4th of July is alive and well at the beginning of the month, it quickly fades. Not because we don’t want it any more, it has become unimportant, or something has taken it’s place. That passion diminishes significantly by the end of the month because we get confronted by it’s twin value that is so toilsome. What many do not know, or at least do not realize, is that the twin value of freedom is discipline. You cannot have true freedom without discipline. Do you want to get in shape? You need to have discipline to workout and eat right. Do you want to grow your sales? You need to have the discipline to do prospecting and sales. Do you want your business to grow? You need to have the discipline to manage all the departments; not just your favorite one. In our professional lives (and maybe our personal lives too), we often say we have the freedom to choose what to do. We believe our freedom allows us to delegate or leverage a tool or out source a function. This can result in cultivating an intitled mentality. We gave “them” a responsibility and we are then entitled to the result we expect. While we are free to choose, that choice also entails an outcome. Telling your sales team their quote does not alone ensure their success. Did you have the discipline to research their skills to see if they were even capable? Did you have the discipline to provide them the resources and tools to enable their success? Did you have the discipline to check in with them on a regular basis to track progress?

When people think of the year, they tend to think chronologically, January to December. It’s June. How is my year over? Another “year” exists that is rarely discussed but often felt. It has its own seasons that are disconnected from the environmental seasons of the calendar. Depending on your sales model, industry, market segment, and a few other things you feel it differently. If you are a business owner or a sales professional, it will make or break your year. It could even break your business. But do you know it? This “other year” doesn’t even have a name. It is the intersection of your strategic plan and sales cycle. Most people are aware of them separately but rarely look at how they work together. For ultimate success you cannot have one without the other. To work with one and not the other, or work with each separately, is like putting together a sports team while only looking at one side of the game. You will either have all offense and no defense or the other way around. In business you see the results a few different ways. You see companies, departments, or individuals that have a “great plan”, but never produce when the focus is mainly on the strategic plan. Other times you see great sales results, but it’s messy. Driving the sales cycle while not connecting it to strategy has a high cost in the way of energy, emotion, and money. Yes, you can succeed in either group, but it’s expensive in many ways. As of this writing, my first day of sales training was almost exactly 25 years ago. It was four hours long and we focused on two things, the psychology of the phone script to set sales meetings and what they called the “Business Diagnostic”. A “successful” phone call took three, maybe four, minutes. A lot of good detail was covered, things I still use today. That said, learning, understanding, and applying the “Business Diagnostic” has fundamentally empowered much of my professional success. It’s why I could take a PowerPoint idea for a Fortune 500 company and create a new advisor program for them that added $250,000 of EBITDA in year two. The “Business Diagnostic” is all about understanding the effectiveness of your sales cycle. Some people refer to this as the “art and science” or “skill and activity” of client acquisition. Call it what you will, the fundamental truth is that your effectiveness is the product of your skill and amount of your activity. The better you perform a skill and the more times you do that activity, the more effective you are. All this gets complicated by the fact that most sales cycles have multiple steps. Build your business diagnostic. It will empower you to diagnose your sales cycle, address the real issues, and make impactful adjustments. Once you know your ratios, then you can connect them to your strategic plan and achieve great success! This all matters because if you believe Google and AI, over 74% of sales cycles are over four months long. At least if you are in a B2B model. That means from first contact to purchase it takes at least four months. Think about it, it’s June! You need to deal with summer vacations, kids going back to school, and end of year holidays. You basically have one sales cycle left this year. Not to mention, this only deals with prospects that are now in the queue ready for you to start reaching out to them. Have you been successfully prospecting in the last three months so you have enough people to reach out to? If not, what’s your prospecting cycle? How long does it take to get new people in your pipeline? Now add four months. The year is over, Happy 2026! Yes, if you operate within a B2C sales model, or sell a more transactional product/service, your sales cycle may be shorter. In that case you have more time. It may not be six months, but at least it is a little more time that will allow for a few more sales cycles this year. The point here is many people enter mid-year planning meetings with the thought they have six months to achieve their goals for 2025. You don’t. If you want to be successful, you need to deal with the reality of your situation. If your sales cycle takes four months, and you don’t have enough prospects in the funnel to begin with, you need to do two things; 1) get creative on your prospecting, and 2) learn how to get more efficient in your sales process. At Advisor Growth Solutions we help professionals (and businesses) design the strategy and build the skillsets to accelerate growth. Click here to learn more about how to combine Strategic Planning with the Business Diagnostic to achieve greater success.

This month we will celebrate Mother’s Day, we first want to recognize, appreciate, and celebrate all that mothers do to make us who we are. A mother’s love does a lot to shape our world. While reflecting about my mom, I couldn’t help but think about all the ways that she helped shape me and the impact it has had on my business career without even trying. Although there are many stories and lessons that have had a positive impact on my career, there is one theme to mom’s parenting that seems to apply nicely to our Management Monday series. If you are a parent, you know this well. Raising kids and managing employees leverages many of the same skillsets. The wonderful thing is the skills transfer to different areas of life very easily. While mom was never a corporate manager, she instinctively knew how to manage. You see, when I was in elementary school, one of the first things I remember learning is you always do your homework before you play. Really what mom was saying was prioritize. Not that I enjoyed it much when I was a kid, but it did teach me a few things that have helped me grow in life; and also grow my sales. Let’s take a look at a few of the lessons. School work is more important than play = Prioritization: do the most important things first. Check your assignment book for everything that needs to be completed = Organization: keep things neat and clear Completed to mom’s satisfaction = Discipline: like it or not, it had to be done (mom’s way – or else…) Let your desire for play motivate you = Incentives increase productive: desire to play increase speed of finishing homework Okay, so there may be a few more “lessons” in there, but you get the point. Early on, in certainly different terms, mom taught me how to be a good employee. By learning these lessons as a child, then implementing them into my professional life, they can now be lessons that can be taught. As a manager, you cannot assume all employees already know how to prioritize, organize, and keep disciplined. Yes, at some levels you would expect that employees have already learned that. Unfortunately, lived experience taught me that is not the case. Like the time a Senior Vice President at a Billion-dollar firm asked for the agenda outline I consistently put together for our one-on-ones because he wanted to use that with his other direct reports. Shouldn’t he already have that??? You see, one of our key responsibilities as a manager is to help develop our team. Just as a mother develops her child(ren) as they grow. In the beginning you may need to prioritize with them, provide them tools to stay organized, or help them with their discipline on doing the important of not fun tasks of their role. By doing so, you empower them to maximize their achievements and grow. As you start this week, think about your direct reports and evaluate their strengths with respect to these skills. If you find they need some improvement, make sure to take the time to help them learn. Just like mom would.