Scaling Without Chaos: How AI Is Changing Scaling for Small Businesses

In this episode of The Scalability Code, Matt Haney welcomes Tara Kinney, founder of Atomic Revenue, for a candid conversation about entrepreneurship, scaling businesses, and the practical impact of AI on modern operations.

Tara walks through her entrepreneurial journey—from early hands-on work in a small town to launching and growing Atomic Revenue—while sharing lessons learned along the way. The discussion explores how founders can better align KPIs with their company vision, overcome sales conversion challenges, and leverage AI as a tool for smarter growth rather than added complexity.

The episode also highlights:

• The shift from corporate careers to entrepreneurship
• Real-world applications of AI for lead generation
• Trust-building exercises that improve team performance
• Practical AI strategies for small businesses
• Why and when to work with a fractional COO or integrator

This episode is packed with grounded insights for entrepreneurs navigating growth, operations, and the evolving role of AI in scaling sustainable businesses.

Contact Tara: 
Tarakinney.com - https://tarakinney.com/contact/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarajkinney
Atomic Revenue: https://www.atomicrevenue.com/

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Transcript

Tara Kinney 0:00

we have a lot of clients, who say, you know, we no longer need an expert in this space because we can hire a junior person on salary and give them chat, GPT, and they can go ask chat, GPT. How do I automate this process or how do I build this system? And it's hard to be a consultant or advisor and say, I see the writing on the wall ahead of you. It's going to hurt.

Matt Haney 0:29

Yeah.

0:31

Welcome to The Scalability Code, the podcast that helps you get out of the sh*t show and start growing your business. And now for your host, Matt Haney.

Matt Haney 0:40

Alright everyone, thanks for joining us today on another episode of The Scalability Code. Today we're joined by an old friend of mine, not old, old, OLE, a friend of mine, Tara Kinney. Tara, thanks for joining us today on the Scalability Code.

Tara Kinney 0:54

Thanks for having me, Matt. It's so great to catch up.

Matt Haney 0:57

Nice to see you again. It's been a minute. I can't wait to catch up on it, but, um, we'll get to that. But first I like to start off the same way. in life we, we rush our way through introductions and we're, we're taught to get your elevator pitch out as quick as you can so people know about you, and then. Uh, get into what you're talking about, but I always like to start our shows a little bit differently because this is our chance to go unpack your background of how you got to where you are today and learn more about your entrepreneurial journey. So think back, as far as your brain will allow you to, um, how you got your start as an entrepreneur. And I don't necessarily know like your first entrepreneurial job, but like, is there someone in your life or someone that. Comes to mind that helped you realize what entrepreneurship is, and is there a way that that shaped you to get where you are? Or if no, maybe a first job that made you realize you wanted to be a crazy entrepreneur,

Tara Kinney 1:50

Yeah. I don't even think I was old enough to make a conscious decision that I was an entrepreneur when I washed gravel in the dog water bowl and sold it door to door, and my parents found me down the street

Matt Haney 2:05

pedaling gravel.

Tara Kinney 2:07

pedaling gravel. But at least I knew even then that if you wash it, it can be sold for a nickel instead of a penny. I mean, you know, the market for dirty rocks was not that solid.

Matt Haney 2:19

That's hilarious. Where was this? Where did you grow up?

Tara Kinney 2:22

Paonia Colorado Extra points, if you know where it is.

Matt Haney 2:26

Ooh, I, I'm gonna guess, uh, Northwest Colorado.

Tara Kinney 2:30

No, it is in the west, central and West. It's Gunnison Valley.

Matt Haney 2:34

Oh, I know we're Gunison Valleys.

Tara Kinney 2:35

yeah, it's a good little snowmobile ride to Crested Butte.

Matt Haney 2:39

I have fished in Hotchkiss, Colorado, which is near Pia. I know where it is. I win the award. I win the award. I have gone through Pia. I knew I knew the name of it. Yeah. I, uh, I'm a big fisherman, so I fished the Gunnison River, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison,

Tara Kinney 2:56

Yes.

Matt Haney 2:57

Hotchkiss, which is near Pena.

Tara Kinney 2:59

Yep. So my dad was a forest ranger and that was his forest. Yeah. So that's how we ended up there. And

Matt Haney 3:07

So beautiful. Oh, what a cool upbringing. A lot of orchards and planes land out there that you wouldn't necessarily think is there. That's really cool.

Tara Kinney 3:16

Yeah.

Matt Haney 3:17

And you were washing gravel, was your, so your dad was a farmer. You worked for himself or he worked for a farm

Tara Kinney 3:22

no, he was a forester, so he worked for the government for the US Forest Service, and my mom was a stay at home mom who became a school teacher. Um, as I got older, neither one of them were entrepreneurial. but they started an Amway business. They got brought into Amway when they were young. And they didn't have a lot of money, and so they couldn't hire a babysitter. So I spent most of my youth at Amway meetings learning how to pedal products, and

Matt Haney 3:51

That's so

Tara Kinney 3:52

their books at the end of the year, the checkbook, and I also did inventory of their product shelves and would help my mom each week pack up the Amway boxes for their customers of

Matt Haney 4:05

That's so cool. Early multi-level marketing at its finest. Amway certainly changed a lot of lives. And was Cutco there right after, or was cut? Cutco was sort of in that. Do you remember Cutco Knives? Is that

Tara Kinney 4:19

I do, I have some. but in the small town of Paonia, I don't have any idea. When Cutco came on the market, it was not in Paonia.

Matt Haney 4:29

That's so funny. Yeah, that was another one of those cool, um, MLM things that was cool way before all the other ones were, which is really cool. so you're, you got your first entrepreneurial taste, uh, washing gravel in the dog bowl. That's fabulous. Um, and then how did you progress into entrepreneurship? Like, sort of what was your journey to becoming your own, you know, business owner and so forth? Like, how did you get there?

Tara Kinney 4:53

yeah. Well, My youthful aspirations were not in business, um, between the Queen of California or Tomb Raider. I was trying to figure out if I was gonna go to school to be an archeologist, and I realized that my natural skills were more in the area of business. So I ended up studying business and thought I'd go the corporate standard route like everybody else. But in the corporate environment, I found that the harder you work, the more work you get to do, and you're still on a salary just like everybody else. But the people who do poor work, just sit there and collect their salary, go home at five while you stay and might work. I mean, multiple 27, 30 hour days where a company perk is. Will roll the television of the World Series into your cubicle while you finish your work. So, I was being recruited by someone who was a former boss of mine and said, Hey, I'm gonna start a recruiting company, to build marketing and sales departments. I can't offer you a full-time job, but you know, maybe I could do 30 hours a week. I can buy you a laptop and you're just gonna have to sit on my couch. And we'll do this thing. And I was so burnt out from all those 27, 30 hour days on trains all up and down the east coast that I took the leap. and that's how I kind of decided that entrepreneurship was my thing. I liked doing all the different parts of business, very operational by nature, but also able to do the forward facing parts of business and. Since I left the corporate world in 2005 and did virtual work with a flip phone and a fax machine back in the day, the world's progressed and I've just rode along with it. So currently, you know, atomic revenue is my third business. Um, and, uh, we just celebrated our 10 year anniversary last year. Uh, but

Matt Haney 7:09

That's amazing. 10 years is incredible. Well, you let the cat out of the bag. So you tell us about atomic revenue. Obviously I know about it, but give us some backstory on. On the, you know, the way atomic revenues, you know, business case came up and you decided you wanted to do it, and sort of what the business does and, and how you've grown it to, to being successful after 10 years.

Tara Kinney 7:32

Mm-hmm. So I learned early on that businesses didn't have a lot of options to fill gaps within their organization, and this is pre gig economy, pre fractional world. The options where you hire an employee, you hire an agency, and because I was a fractional CMO, even though no one called it that at the time. I was saddled with these unrealistic budget expectations, unrealistic performance expectations, and I couldn't get the labor mix to accomplish the goals.

Matt Haney 8:08

Right.

Tara Kinney 8:09

so I was representing in infrastructure as a service cloud computing company and learning how to communicate to the world that you can share servers. I said, why can't we just share a graphic designer? Why can't me and three other companies share a graphic designer? And I spun into the next business. So I was a fractional CMO for seven companies at once, and I had 32 contractors. We were the outsourced marketing department for those small businesses. but many of them struggled to hire a sales organization or they couldn't turn the value produced in marketing into revenue. And I ended up leading their sales organizations in addition to the marketing team, which became. Unrealistic. I mean, we're all human. You have human capacity. So that's how I ended up with atomic revenue.

Matt Haney 9:03

So you came up with that and the model out of that. And how did you, uh, like give us some history on like sort of how that's progressed? Like the business started as a, an apple and probably turned into an orange, or maybe it turned into a different kind of an apple.

Tara Kinney 9:17

Um, yeah, I mean it's probably a whole orchard at this point we'll say.

Matt Haney 9:21

Yes, yes.

Tara Kinney 9:23

it started off as fractional advisors and we focused on growing businesses with lead generation, sales conversion, and um, customer loyalty. And over time we started to onboard a lot of contractors to fill gaps at those organizations and did a lot of the work that I did previously where we would provide whole team. So we'd make the strategic plan and then bring in the resources to help our clients. Build the infrastructure and hire team members to take it over from us. And we still do a lot of that work today, but the world has become much more complex with bigger tech stacks and,

Matt Haney 10:09

Hmm.

Tara Kinney 10:09

more challenging data analysis requirements and AI and automation. So a lot of the things we used to do now require a lot more labor, or you have to find new ways to get the analysis done. So now we have several ways that we have deployed AI to reduce the labor within our own business so that we can control costs. Of services for clients, that helps with scalability. So now we can have our diagnostic tools that look at marketing, sales, account management across the board, and someone who is only a marketing leader can deploy the diagnostic tool without being a sales leader or an account management expert, um, and bring that to their leadership team. Um, and so that's where we're really going is trying to find more ways to get this integrated expertise into the hand of people who are siloed experts within organizations and trying to solve leadership challenges that are truly across and connecting every department.

Matt Haney 11:26

Right. Interesting. Well, you said the buzzword, but it's a relevant one. Ai, ai, ai. It's actually two letters, the buzz letters that, that always come up in these conversations. And, you know, I think the, the advent of chat. Um, and, and other sort of, you know, LLMs, has drastically changed how small businesses operate, those who have embraced it. But I do continue to find it being the, uh, the element of the unknown is, is hard for a lot of different people that don't have. Experience or a team. I mean, a lot of the clients that we work with tend to be service-based businesses, B2B or B2C, and they don't have a ton of, uh, experience, uh, with using ai. So I'd love to, to learn a little more about some of the tools or practices or programs that you guys are implementing, both in your business and then also in other businesses to help them use AI in a simple or complex way.

Tara Kinney 12:26

I think the best way to help our clients use AI is to. Build it in as part of the infrastructure that's working alongside them and not something that they have to touch or do much with, you know, to the maximum extent possible. A lot of our clients like yours are. B2B service businesses. So you have engineers or r and d technical professionals who are in sales and leadership roles. They're not technologists, so it has to be easy to use and we have to build in all of the checks and balances to avoid hallucinations and try to make sure that all the right data is in place so that. The AI systems don't run away with business, and I think that's one of the biggest risks as companies are starting to adopt AI is they don't have good data to feed the ai. So the AI is having random acts of hallucinations and their team doesn't have any experience or knowledge to understand whether or not what's happening with AI is correct.

Matt Haney 13:44

Yeah, it creates an immediate distrust between the data that whatever the output is, Interesting.

Tara Kinney 13:52

we have a lot of clients, or I should say prospects, some of them don't become clients who say, you know, we no longer need an expert in this space because we can hire a junior person on salary and give them chat, GPT, and they can go ask chat, GPT. How do I automate this process or how do I build this system? And it's hard to be a consultant or advisor and say, I see the writing on the wall ahead of you. It's going to hurt.

Matt Haney 14:27

Yeah.

Tara Kinney 14:27

But right now we do see a lot of people who you know, while some people. Don't trust AI and are hesitant to go into it. We see the inverse as well, where people totally trust it and they'll follow it right off a cliff.

Matt Haney 14:42

Yeah, no, there's a lot of analogies you could draw on. One of his, uh, you know, it's like just because you're, you know, tall enough to drive the car doesn't mean, you know how. Right. Just'cause you can step in and sit there and touch the pedals and, and you know, you, it doesn't mean you know how to drive it. You still have to have the, the infrastructure and the framework, to operate the car, or in this case the AI or whatnot. And I think everyone's. Chat, GBT you know, the term is, is sort of sometimes transposed into ai. It's like, well that's not, that's a chat, that's not ai. It is ai, but it's not ai. And it's like there's other elements to operating a business that, uh, you know, needing specialization around a tool or product or service is gonna drastically, you know, determine how successful the business is going to be when using that.

matt-haney_2_02-06-2025_192447 15:30

You are listening to the Scalability Code. I'm your host, Matt Haney, founder of Sinclair Ventures, and we help visionary entrepreneurs like you get out of the shit show and focus on growing your business. We offer fractional COO and leadership coaching services that free up that brain of yours to focus on what's next. Learn more about us at SinclairVentures. com. Now back to it.

Tara Kinney 15:50

and even though the technology's available off the shelf and anyone can go put their credit card in and pay$30 a month to get this automated LinkedIn outreach tool or whatever it is that you're doing, we are seeing it cause excessive tech stack bloat. And people are not really using all of the technology that they have, but they also haven't integrated these new AI tools that people are subscribing to with the rest of their organization. So, we are seeing some challenges bubbling up, but where we see the most success with ai. So that was my downer. Right, but where we are seeing, we are seeing a lot of success with AI where people find very specific applications and build really smart tools with human in the loop experts in the loop who can verify the information and support, uh, you know, support how the tool is set up or how it is used, and then it can really do what it's intended for businesses. Some of my favorite uses are the archeological or the, architectural tool that does space planning, right? Very different So the architectural tool, it does space planning, it gives you several different ways to build the building, and you can see how you can get the most units that comply with all the regulations on a footprint. And that takes tons of hours or the legal tools, which we had a client that did,

Matt Haney 17:36

I.

Tara Kinney 17:37

support for researching all of the documents to prove a case, and it would save thousands of legal hours in waiting through all the corporate documents and archives trying to work on a legal case. Um, so those are great applications. Um, and then atomic revenue, we just are deploying a tool actually this month, that is, uh, SOC two, compliant and FINRA and SEC compliant, but it allows us to dump all the data into it that we used to analyze by hand, which would take us,

Matt Haney 18:13

Give me an example, what would that data be and sort of what's the desired outcomes with it? Just trying to put that into a way that could, could apply to a

Tara Kinney 18:23

yep,

Matt Haney 18:23

service.

Tara Kinney 18:24

yep. So we dump in financials, planning documents. If you're an EOS company, we put in the VTO, we put in your scorecards. So we put in all of your regular reports. we put in the information from the CRM, we're looking at conversion rate analysis, lead volumes, sales volumes, pricing information, and then we dump in dozens of proposals to look at where there's high levels of customization that should be templated. and then coming out of the tool we provide an 18 month or, 24 month, depending on how much work there is to do, um, quarter by quarter plan of how to solve some of the challenges that we have discovered. Um, some of those are in people compensation, some are in process, A lot are in, um, you know, ways to improve conversion rates. So I do have to say though, I'm. I really shouldn't say it. I have to tell you though, Matt, I know we're on camera. AI turned out to be smarter than me and I'm admitting it and I'm not sad about it. I'm not sad,

Matt Haney 19:39

I, I, I have to agree. I'm ditto as well. It also remembers things a hell of a lot better than I ever could.

Tara Kinney 19:45

it does. So I found, you know, with a client, I found a. Conversion point that if you increase leads by 30%, which is expensive and a lot of work, you'd only have 0.25 additional construction projects in 18 months when they get ready to be built. and I found a conversion point in there that was, if you move this conversion point by 2%, it's worth 10 million to your top line without changing the amount of leads you have.

Matt Haney 20:19

So talk me through that. Just'cause I'm curious how, cause the way I was reading it is you could spend 30% more. And only get 0.25% of a increase. So, so I guess if the number's big enough that, that, that quarter of a basis point's going to pay for itself, right? I mean, talk me through that.

Tara Kinney 20:38

Yeah. Yeah. So there is not an ROI ON less than a whole project. Yeah, so basically what that says is you would have to increase leads by 120% in order to get one new construction project.

Matt Haney 20:57

Yeah, I was talking about something similar with someone about ad spend for services. It's like at some point, you know, the spend and conversion are running together, and then they touch, and then at the other point it's like you, you spend more and you get the same. It's like, well wait. We should just spend less and get the same instead of spending more and get the same.

Tara Kinney 21:17

Yep. But if you go through the whole process, you see that there's over the 18 months, seven or eight different conversion points where a portion of the projects don't advance.

Matt Haney 21:29

Mm.

Tara Kinney 21:30

And then looking at that, we got to one point in the process where a very small, less than 10% of the projects advanced. And by moving that one number by 2%, it was worth 10 million. So then we started looking at what's the process?

Matt Haney 21:50

hold on, I'm unpack it for a second, because there's something you saw, that allowed you to make a change during a stage of conversation or stage of sales cycle that increased conversion.

Tara Kinney 22:02

It was a sales cycle stage that we identified as where the leadership team should spend their energy. This is your most valuable thing to focus your leadership team energy and money on, is figuring out how to improve the percent of deals. That move from stage D

Matt Haney 22:22

Yeah. Right, because that's, that's the bottleneck or that's the point in which the deal goes south.

Tara Kinney 22:29

right, and

Matt Haney 22:29

Well, in this scenario, what was that particular, I'm just, I'm curious, like where, how, what was that, what was that point of, change?

Tara Kinney 22:38

Yeah, so this is interesting because it is true in more than a handful of clients I've worked with. It is when the sales team does a handoff to the technical team for pricing and building out a project, and then the sales team goes hands off

Matt Haney 22:57

Okay.

Tara Kinney 22:58

and they feel like they've handed it off. Um, to the next stage of the process, but the customer hasn't actually made the purchase yet, and a lot of organizations have in their process a premature handoff from sales so that sales can focus more on the front end. So the change there and the change with a lot of the companies is more effective use of your technical teams who can price and build proposals, better templating, and then a better qualifications process, of course, by your sales team with the leads that they have and sticking with the process until the final contract is signed. Customers don't like the handoff. They want the person that they know and trust. So if anybody gets one thing from this conversation that has been true at over 80% of the companies that I know who have conversion rate issues, it happens at a handoff.

Matt Haney 23:58

Absolutely. One person said, it's perfectly clear, the other one said. It's not clear at all. No, you're right. I, I, I get obsessed over handoffs as well, and people, you know, there's, you know, five or six different chances for people to screw things up inadvertently or unintentionally, but it actually happens and that was an issue when one of the clients that you and I worked with together is. you know, referral based businesses. I love them. I have one of them. Uh, so do you, uh, it's challenging to scale a referral based business, especially when you are the service provider that's provided a great service. No one likes to be handed off to someone that's great. Not, not, you know, are good, not great. And it's a struggle. It's a struggle in my business and, and all the businesses I've seen is going from. Building a referral business to scaling it up means you've gotta get outta the way and not do lead generation and not do business development. And, and that handoff is tricky because, you know, I do think, you know, people say, oh, if you, if you, I am exceptional at things and I think you are as well, how do you, like if I'm really good at business development, how do I hand that off to somebody else if that's my really good given strength and I'm. I don't know. It's, it goes back to that handing it off to someone else, expecting, hoping, praying that they're going to do as good of a job as you've done.

Tara Kinney 25:16

Yeah. Well, I think it's really hard with technical businesses too, because you do have to have a large amount of technical knowledge to be able to do proposals and pricing, and your customers are not gonna buy a technical solution from a non-technical sales rep.

Matt Haney 25:33

That's right.

Tara Kinney 25:35

It's really to me about phasing the role so that you become a smaller and smaller part of the sales process, but you're still there at key and critical points, in the customer experience, and the customer knows you're always there for them, even though you're not the point person. It's difficult though because a lot of us. Who are in the position you're talking about are the founder owners, and we do have a hard time getting out of our own way and letting other people run with it.

Matt Haney 26:07

better at it than others?

Tara Kinney 26:09

I don't think we actually are, but we have better tools. We have all the historical knowledge, all the case studies, all the relationships. You know, that's difficult for a new person to build up. And we get impatient.

Matt Haney 26:22

right.

Tara Kinney 26:23

A lot of us are quick starts,

Matt Haney 26:24

yeah, a lot of us. Oh, guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Tara Kinney 26:29

Me too.

Matt Haney 26:31

well, let's go back, I have a couple more questions I want to ask you around AI and AI specifically around how you, you, your teams are implementing it because. I want to talk to the unsophisticated service business person for a moment. I don't say that to be disrespectful. I just think of service-based businesses that are manual in a lot of the things that they do. do you see, and, and we can talk specifically about lead generation'cause it's, you know, every B2B or B2B service business or B2C service business struggles with generating new customers. Are there any suggestions you have? for a business owner that's looking to, to take that first bite into some AI automations, programs, agents, whatever you want to use to, like, where do you start, where do you first start on, on trying to increase pipeline? As an example, if you're a, a small services business.

Tara Kinney 27:26

Yeah. I'd start by looking at the tools you already have, and the likelihood is if you're not doing it now, no one on your team knows how to do it or how to find the opportunities. So it's a great time to call someone in who can just help you identify the underutilized leads that you already have access to. You just don't know how to find them and you don't. Know how to reach out to them in a timely manner. And so that's the low hanging fruit. Um, a lot of CRMs now, they have ways that they can tell you who's been to your website or who opened the email, or who do you know that is, you know, potentially interested in this conversation based on LinkedIn and ZoomInfo or whatever other sources are available and. Even if you just had access to how many people are already in your universe looking for you, wanting to talk to you and you contacted them, you would have more leads. Um, so that's a really low hanging fruit opportunity. And there's easy ways to use AI and automation that someone can set up that just tell you when to call someone or when to email or they email on your behalf. Um, so those are easy. Um. If you don't have a CRM and I have worked with a lot of, you know, small, non-technical companies Yeah. Who don't have a way of even keeping track of who their customers or buyers are in a way that lets you communicate with them regularly. You don't have any data for AI to read or for automation. So you have to kind of get that infrastructure in place first, where you get the contacts outta your phone and get them out of your Microsoft Outlook phone book, and put them into a system that can work on your behalf. Otherwise, you're gonna have to continue. Working harder, because it's all manual. So to, I think that's one of the things that has changed in the last 10 years is people used to be able to grow their businesses without adopting what we would consider basic business tools and just succeed on the way we've always done business. But in the last five years, it's really changed and you cannot, and your customers are expecting more from you.

Matt Haney 30:07

right.

Tara Kinney 30:08

They're transitioning too. You have younger buyers

Matt Haney 30:13

Expectations have changed drastically on response times and details and delivery and proposal turns and all that stuff. It's, it's, there's a certain level of ex expectations out there for sure.

Tara Kinney 30:24

Yep. I do not suggest though, that you, and I've seen this, that you have everybody get a copilot license or a chat GPT license and say, let's meet every week and see what you've learned to do with it. Because all you have then is a bunch of people playing with AI tools without any security or training, and they're not doing their other jobs. So you're detracting from business productivity while you think

Matt Haney 30:52

you're actually increasing Instead, it's a shiny object, distraction, and people are going crazy about it.

Tara Kinney 30:59

yep.

Matt Haney 31:00

Yeah. Well, let's switch gears a little bit. this part of the podcast, I like to throw it over to the interviewee, not the interviewer. And, and ask if there's anything I, could chat with you about, or what if scenarios that you created that maybe helpful for us to create a little more dialogue. So I'll throw it to you. I wonder if you have any questions to ask me about, business or growing companies or managing people or whatever.

Tara Kinney 31:24

Well, I've had the pleasure of working with you before. Matt and I do have a very real scenario that I would love to hear your take on it, not only as a fractional integrator, but as a fractional COO. I think it comes up often and it's very difficult to unwind unless you're in the COO integrator seat. So not everyone has a good COO or integrator, and some people don't have one at all. So, um, I'd like to ask you what you would do. Um, I. Have run into this repeatedly, but recently have been having a lot of conversations about a client that has a vision for how their business is gonna operate and how the people within their organization are going to grow the business. And it's a great vision and everyone's on board and wants to proceed in that direction. It's very collaborative. It is. You sell and refer business to the other people within the organization, and everybody wins together and kumbaya, right?

Matt Haney 32:36

Yes, all the happy feelings,

Tara Kinney 32:38

and everybody thinks that that's a great vision and they're on board. But when it comes to KPIs and performance measures, KPIs are based on what you sell and do for yourself. And you don't have any control over the corporate costs that might be allocated to you or any control over what, how those costs are used to serve you. And your only recognition is how well your business unit does, which actually deters the cross selling and referral

Matt Haney 33:18

Yeah. Why would I send it out to someone else if I can keep it myself?

Tara Kinney 33:22

Yes. And so it's very hard for me to set up a CRM system that cares for the needs of the users when there is this conflict, and that's at the very tactical day-to-day level. But I'm curious what you would do, and if you've ever run into that before in your roles.

Matt Haney 33:41

Interesting. Well, I mean that specific scenario, um, yeah, actually I'm, I'm dealing, it's kind of a different scenario, but I'll give you a quick scenario that we're, we're struggling, we're struggling with one of my clients through our retail sales company, literally have a brick and mortar sales front, and one they sell jewelry and, uh, very successful sales team sells repair team repairs. Until the repair team starts to sell, then it becomes, well, that's my revenue. It's like, well wait, we're trying to grow it. Well, who gets it? Who wants it? And there's just this division of understanding who's responsible for what. And again, in theory, everyone wants to grow. You know, rising tides lift all boats. That theory works great until one person's compensated differently and you take a sale for me. So, so to go back to your question, it's misalignment of expectations. and in theory. you're, I always tell folks like, don't take a number. Don't accept a target that you're not comfortable with because you're gonna be held to it. And I think that sometimes people don't have the choice, but I always say, you've gotta be bought into your sales revenue numbers. And if you're not believing that you can achieve them genuinely, you might not be in the right seat. the number might be right, and you're just. Sandbagging, or seven other reasons as to why, but. I think, uh, that comes back to mismanagement of expectations or just a poor structure that says we're, we're not set up to do it this way. We're saying we want an outcome, but our systems aren't allowing us to do that. and repeatedly we're, we're, you know, looking over a, a negative KPI or, or a negative scorecard that's saying we're doing well, but we're not. So, um, I may argue and push back to say that everyone's not been bought in on the vision. Because, right. I mean, if, if you were, would be pretty clear that, the, these issues weren't, aren't really apparent. So gimme a little more, and gimme a little more backstory on this to help me understand sort of the nuance around the circumstance here.

Tara Kinney 35:44

Yeah, so the company. has a executive team that is a visionary and a CFO, but not really an operational leadership team. The leadership team is each of the practice area leaders that's responsible for their number in their practice area. So even from a leadership team perspective, it's hard to be unbiased when. You know, if I don't spend my time growing my practice area and I spend my time growing your practice area, eventually I'm gonna run out of time and not hit my number.

Matt Haney 36:29

right,

Tara Kinney 36:30

and I think it's true with sales reps in general, it's why a lot of reseller models don't work, right? It's, you think it's exciting'cause that company has 300 of your potential clients, but. Uh, they don't know how to sell your service and your area. And so instead of, so it is beyond not knowing how to sell. But I think that the KPIs are really challenging because that's where it comes into at the end of the year, how am I gonna be measured? I'd love to grow the entire organization and I'd love to help my friend out in the neighboring practice area. so I'm bought into that part of the vision,

Matt Haney 37:10

Is there a scenario where you can, you can, you know, really look at how we're measuring success and how people are monitored and compensated, because it sounds like it's cannibalistic at times. It's like, we really want you to do these things, but not really because it takes away from this thing. It's like, it's a misalignment of, of, of tracking and compensation. I think. I, I mean, but reality is like, if this is a leadership team issue. empowering those leaders to, to continue to surface the issue as it comes up because it's very easy to work for a visionary founder or or in a corporate world where they just tell you that's the way it is. I'm sorry. And that's kind of a bullshit answer because you're not gonna last at that firm or that organization. If the answer is that's the way it is, rather keep throwing those issues to the board for conversation because eventually people are gonna get sick of hearing the same issue. Colored or shaded a different way. But the reality is, is you can only say the same thing so many times before you're just fed up with it. But throw it up there, bring the conversation out and continue to, to, to move forward on it. So that's the, that's the way I would approach it. It's probably a simplistic view, but, um, you know, leadership's teams are built to solve problems like that.

Tara Kinney 38:25

Yep. And I do think that this is one of the areas where an integrator or a COO is really, really valuable to be able to work with each of the different leaders and really bring together a collective cohesive recommendation from everybody to the visionary.

Matt Haney 38:47

Right. Yeah. That's our job. We get to be the ping pong ball that bounces from department to department, gathering information and bringing information back to the leadership team or back to the visionary CEO that says, Hey. I know you think you're hearing something, but the reality is, is you're not listening. Um, because we've said it three different ways, and here I am doing my best to politely surface this thing to you in a way that's not confrontational or hopefully not disrespectful, but you're not listening, you're not hearing us. We're saying we need to make a change to this model. And the reality is, is that you are just telling us to go to the other room and do something else. Don't focus on that problem. And that's disheartening and, um, not motivating. So I think, yeah, that's, that's one of the things a fractional integrator we get to do is have those sticky conversations and, um, come to leadership teams and say, I don't think we're looking at it this way. We're really not. And I, I will tell my clients often like, Hey, you, you brought us in to help us. Help you make hard decisions, please listen to us because I'm just another person saying the same thing that your entire team's been saying to you. I'm just hoping you're gonna hear me'cause I'm the outsider. But the reality is, is they've all been saying this to you, so why don't you take some of our advice and more importantly, here's a solution.'cause I think a lot of times people just get to the point where they're like, it's easier to deal with the dysfunction than to come up with the change. and that's a beauty that when you bring a fractional in is that we also get to surface the problem, but, but come up with a solution as well.

Tara Kinney 40:19

Yeah, and bring a very objective perspective in. And those visionaries, they're so charming and compelling that when you're in a conversation with them, it makes perfect sense why it is the way that it is. And you're like, yes, I'm gonna follow you off the

Matt Haney 40:33

I. That's a great

Tara Kinney 40:34

Cliff analogy

Matt Haney 40:35

the, yeah, going down in flames with you. Well, Tara, I wanna pause and, and give a shout out to my time working with you and your team at Atomic Revenue. Um, you know, we ended up getting referred into you, years ago with one of our clients who didn't really have a revenue model. I mean, they had. It was a construction based business founder led founder, drove the leads, founder, handled all the relationships, and there was an obvious need that we needed to get outside of, of the founder driven sales scenario. And we were able to bring in atomic revenue, you and your team, to help us do a lot of different things. and it was great because your team served as our fractional revenue department. We hadn't built one before. We didn't want to go backwards and try to figure out all of the things. We really wanted to focus first, build the structure, find the roles, build the legion system, be build the CRM system. All that stuff didn't exist, and it was great to come in and work with you and your team because I had a, a turnkey solution and I could have figured out some of it. I wouldn't have been a subject matter expert, but I, I could have figured out some of it, but the time in which it would've taken me to figure that out and the brain damage and the lack of trust that, that you, you know, lose by taking so long. It was nice to come in and do a turnkey with you guys. And I do know for a fact that, oh, Tara, this is probably three years ago or more, that some of the systems, a lot of the systems that your team built are still in place with that company today. So shout out to you and the Atomic Revenue team for, uh, for delivering good service to a service-based business that we were working with.

Tara Kinney 42:11

We love to hear that it's a lot of hard work when we're in it together, and it's great to work with good clients and they're great other fractional leaders or in-house leaders to get big projects done, and we're always glad to hear when they continue to use them long after we've handed over the reins.

Matt Haney 42:31

Yeah. And the c uh, real, one more quick thing that I think a lot of people don't take or probably take for granted is the, the system creation around A CRM and someone, your, your teams outside. Experience to operating A CRM and setting things up structurally, building a flow, identifying lead cycles, figuring out what triggers dictate going from what lead to the other. Like there are things out there that, an outsider's perspective, particularly around setting up a new revenue generating technology tool, email sequences and these and things and all this stuff that, like if you're not a subject matter expert, you just don't know about. And it was great to have you guys set all those systems up because you know what? I didn't have to think about it. I'm the fractional COO, I don't wanna be thinking about revenue generation down to the weed level. That's what we should have a, a revenue team to do. So that was really special to have, um, and trust you guys to go run it and check in and have deliverables and, and keep it going. So.

Tara Kinney 43:32

That's our favorite type of work, especially when we get to participate with the leadership team and be equally grateful that we didn't have to do any of the things that you were accountable for.

Matt Haney 43:44

Touche. Touche. Well, I have that, I think I have plenty of, uh, plenty of stuff on my end. Um, would you give me one little blip about what it was like working with a fractional COO and sort of how that our fractional integrator, how it was impactful for you to get your work done?

Tara Kinney 44:04

Yes. Well, I am no stranger to fractional integrators and. Matt, when we first met and you were the fractional integrator on a te on a client team, it was nice to go in and work with someone who was accountable and collaborative and taking on all of these hard projects that, let's say visionaries are not great at and a lot of different departments are involved in and they're complex, and without someone in place to be the COO or the integrator, it's. Really difficult for anyone on the team to succeed. Those are all critical functions of the business that allow us to do our jobs. And without that person in place, we wouldn't be able to. and I myself, at my own company am on my fourth. Fractional integrator. However, I have the same one that I had when I met you. and so I think it, it takes a little while to find the right fit between a visionary and an integrator. And it's difficult as a visionary to hand over, you know, control. But it's so great to work with an integrator like you, Matt, who can take the control. We trust you with it. We don't. Need to be involved because we know it's in good hands. And as a visionary, that's really, really what we need in order to grow our business, is to know that the person who's in that fractional integrator seat or fractional COO is able to take what our, what we don't wanna do and handle it,

Matt Haney 45:49

That's, yeah. So well said. And I think that's one of the things that, you know, you've gotta have reps to have wisdom and you've gotta have, uh, experience in seeing things. And I think that's one of the beauties of hiring a fractional is that you're, you should be hiring someone who has a little bit of gray hair and who's seen some of the nonsense that happens. And has that ability to communicate directly with the visionary in o kind of no bullshit way. It's like, Hey, I've seen this, we've done this. I need to speak to you in a candid but respectful way, and I'm asking you to hear, me in that way too. So I love that you say that because being direct and also. Giving trust, uh, is hard and earning trust is hard. but you, you gotta kind of lean in and we as fractionals have to continue to deliver. You know, we lose immediate credibility when we don't do what we say we're gonna do. We don't roll up the information the way that we are. So it puts us in a spot where we're, you know, forcing ourselves to be accountable because we don't wanna be hypocritical for not holding others accountable. So, Tara, thank you so much for your time today. It's been awesome to chat with you, and I look forward to catching up with you soon.

Tara Kinney 47:01

That sounds great, Matt. Thank you so much.

47:03

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