Marketing as a Value Driver (#285)

On this week’s episode of the Maximize Business Value Podcast, "Marketing as a Value Driver" host Kim Bentson is joined by Mastery Partners certified partner, Terry Chevalier, to discuss “How does marketing affect valuation?”

Listen to our podcast weekly to hear more from Mastery Partners and to receive relevant key content on your journey to maximizing your business value!

 #MasteryPartners #MaximizeBusinessValuePodcast #BusinessOwnerHotline #TRA #TransitionReadiness #ValueCreation #Leadership

GET THE BOOKS
Start with Maximizing Business Value by Tom Bronson

Learn More about Kim Bentson
Kim Bentson is an accomplished Strategic Manager with a proven track record of delivering results. Kim is a natural problem-solver who is passionate about helping businesses achieve their full potential and is committed to delivering her clients the highest level of service.

Learn More about Terry Chevalier
Terry Chevalier, owner and Managing Director of Sunstone Associates, offers over 25 years of telecommunications expertise, guiding companies through vast opportunities and challenges, including federal programs and high-value exits.

Mastery Partners

Elevating Businesses to Achieve The Business Owner’s Dream Exit 
The unfortunate reality is that for every business that comes on the market (for whatever reason), only 17% of them achieve a successful exit. You read that right. 83% of attempted business transitions never reach the closing table. Mastery Partners is on a mission to change that. We ELEVATE businesses to achieve maximum value and reach that dream exit.

Our objectives are simple - understand where the business is today, identify opportunities for dramatic improvement, and offer solutions to enhance the business, making it more marketable and valuable. And that all starts with understanding the business owner’s definition of his or her dream exit.  
Mastery has developed a 4-Step Process to help business owners achieve their dreams.

STEP 1: Transition Readiness Assessment
STEP 2: Roadmap for Value Acceleration
STEP 3: Relentless Execution
STEP 4: Decision: Now that desired results are achieved, the business is ready for the next step in the journey!

CONNECT WITH MASTERY PARTNERS TO LEARN MORE
LinkedIn
Website

© 2025 Mastery Partners, LLC.

Transcript

Tom Bronson (0s):

By listening to this podcast, you are already taking steps on the path of improving your business readiness. Nice work. Got a question? Well, we'd love to hear from you. Submit your questions at MasteryPartners.com and look for the red Business Owner Hotline button. And as you think about today's episode, remember the decisions you make every day as a business owner are either building value in your company or quietly eroding it. So here's a question to take with you.

What decision will you make tomorrow that builds value in your business? Now go get it done. At MasteryPartners, we're the people that make companies more valuable and more transferable. Our guides help business owners build companies that's ready for whatever comes next. And if you want to see where your business stands, visit MasteryPartners dot com to learn more about the TransitionReadiness assessment. So until next time, keep maximizing business value.

Kim Bentson (1m 12s):

Welcome to the Maximize Business Value Podcast. I'm Kim Bentson, a business owner and operator. And hon, honestly, figuring a lot of this out right, a lot alongside you. And a big question I have is all the time is how do I actually know what's creating value and what's just taking up my time? Because as business owners, we're busy, things are moving, we're making decisions every day, but it's not always clear if those decisions are what's really moving the needle.

So today I'm bringing in some help. We have MasteryPartners certified partner, Terry Chevalier, and Terry works with business owners and specializes in exit and transition planning. But also he's a great strategist, succession planner. He is good at all those things, but he has been in the trenches with business owners navigating those decisions that help bring value to their companies.

So welcome, Terry.

Terry Chevalier (2m 18s):

Well thank you Kim. It's great to be here. Great to see you.

Kim Bentson (2m 21s):

Good. So this year on the podcast, we are bringing real questions from real, real business owners. And honestly, these are questions that I've asked myself and we're taking those questions and putting 'em in front of our certified partners at MasteryPartners to help us all get clear answers. And today we're tackling a topic business owners hear about constantly, which is marketing. But we're not really going into marketing trends or chasing follower followers. We're talking about something much bigger, how marketing impacts business value growth, predictability, and TransitionReadiness.

Like why should we even be think of thinking about marketing and impacting my value? A lot of businesses are growing, but not necessarily growing in a way that's scalable, transferable or attractive to a buyer. And so this question actually was asked us last week at the Business Transition Summit in Westlake, how does marketing affect my valuation? So Terry, I think many business owners hear marketing, they immediately think of social logos branding.

But from a business value perspective, what, what is marketing really?

Terry Chevalier (3m 40s):

Well, it's a great question. And you know, when you think about marketing, what you just described, I I put that in the category of creative, right? That's the creative element of marketing. And that's where I think a lot of people just gravitate to. 'cause it's, it's flashy. You know, I've got, you know, it's really kind of fun to look at these, these parts. But what's funny is, is that marketing is one of the most fundamentally important elements for business because this is where you generate revenue. If I don't have good marketing, then I have not, I don't have, we call a funnel that is bringing in leads that I'm converting in a sales process into revenue.

I'm serving them with operations, and then I'm, I'm charging them for that fee. And we get at the end of the day, and, you know, just I, if I can on inside, you know, when I was back in business school, many, many, many, many moons ago, I remember a lot of people would go into the marketing side of the house because they're attracted to that brand side. They were utterly shocked to find it is heavy quant. It is a very quantitative science. And it is about really understanding customer behavior.

It's about understanding what they want, finding out how you differentiate yourself relative to them. And the better you understand that, the more scientific you can be about that, the more predictable you can be in finding, you know, more customers and more revenue. And that's that predictability, that's the critical thing. That's what the, the investors are really looking for. A buyer is really looking for is how do I know that you have a predictable way that, that you can create revenue as a result of that.

And when, when I talk to owners and we're talking about TransitionReadiness, I candidly, I I never look at the the marketing, I don't, I may look at your website, but I'm not looking at your logo, I'm not looking at your collateral. I'm just asking a fundamental question is, if you're not here, does this business continue to generate revenue? 'cause that is your system that is actually doing it, that's your marketing. If that answer is no, that this business can't generate, well that's gonna be a gap.

And that gap is gonna cost in the value that most business owners see.

Kim Bentson (6m 0s):

Yeah. It goes way beyond, I like how you said the creative side. It, it goes way beyond the branding and the logo and the catchy tagline. There's some real depth in into answering those questions that you post.

Terry Chevalier (6m 15s):

Absolutely. And, and you know, every business, when you think about when you're doing that first business plan, you're defining like, who is my market? And, you know, who am I serving that's marketing. What am I selling to them that's marketing. How much am I gonna charge? That's marketing. How am I gonna make them aware of it? That's marketing. That's the part people think about, but it's those other pieces. And then there's the last one, which is, and why me, what's makes me stand apart relative to everybody else?

That's marketing as well. And a lot of people don't think about those things. So, you know, the brand absolutely matters. Brand is a, a manifestation of those questions. But they're going back to the hard numbers. Do I see revenue? Is it predictable? Are you generating that? Do you have a system that actually creates that so that when I go off and I purchase your, your business, I have an assurance that's kind of continued to generate revenue without you there. And you know, I think that, you know, I've worked with operators who had strong brands, people like them in their communities, they love them.

I mean, the, their net promoter scores are through the roof. Like we've, we talk about on, on other podcasts. But If you go through and you say, if you're not here, it, it just falls apart. And, and if that falls apart, apart, your business just doesn't have the value that you think it does.

Kim Bentson (7m 45s):

And that's such a different lens than I think most owners use. I I think it's kind of interesting because I feel like the posting, the networking, the activity on social is kind of the baseline that's like infancy marketing. And but what you're talking about is kind of a mature, what I'd call mature marketing, like grownup marketing where you're actually looking at numbers or is driving people to us. But I'll let you elaborate on that.

Terry Chevalier (8m 16s):

No, I think that's very fair. You know, 'cause one of the things is like when you're, you're doing marketing, what are you measuring? What are you counting? And a lot of times when you know, I'll talk to an owner, they'll talk about, well, I've got social media. Okay, well you've got posts. That's great. Well, and then the marketing agency is saying, well, this is how many followers you have. Well that's great. Get, show me the numbers and the math of how many posts convert to followers, to leads to customers.

If you can show me that math, then you have something. But otherwise you're just kind of cherry picking things you're measuring because you can not because you should, you know, when, when you, you, you think about this a lot of times when, you know, we're working with owners and any business, you know, I look at what I call the funnel. I mentioned this before. And so the funnel is, you know, I take the market and I want to get as many potential leads from that market into my funnel, right?

My funnel is, I'm through my advertising for my social ads, conversations, referrals. I get 'em into the funnel. And then I have a defined process, how I move people through the funnel, what that experience should feel like, what it should be like. And then over time, just the law of big numbers, if you get enough of these through, you start to figure out, well, you know, what, about 25% convert from here to here about another 50% convert from here to here. We know if we don't ask these three questions, we don't convert, you know, our, our conversion falls.

And so you turn something that was guesswork into science, right? And it's predictable. You've got a playbook. So this idea of what we call value driven marketing is again, you know, can the business consistently create opportunities in a measurable, repeatable way? That's a very fundamental different question than how good is your brand? How good is your logo? What's your social,

Kim Bentson (10m 17s):

Yeah. How many followers do you have?

Terry Chevalier (10m 20s):

Yes, exactly. You know,

Terry Chevalier (10m 23s):

So when a, when a buyer, so let's say I am getting ready to sell when a buyer evaluates my business, are there specific marketing related things that they're actually paying attention to that I can, you know, start implementing now? So when that comes, I'm ready.

Terry Chevalier (10m 41s):

Right? Right. I think, you know, the, what I just described in terms of just that kind of a pipeline that is consistency. I wanna be, as a buyer, I wanna see a consistent lead flow. So if I come into you in January and I see a certain lead flow, I would expect when I come back again in February or March, based upon what you've done, I can know about where you should be. And if you are, that's good, that's really good if you're off. But you can explain it because you've got a process and you, you figure it out.

You know, market's been up and down, here's the specific things, here's the taxes we're doing. You've taken this out of guesswork into something very predictable. So that consistency is very important. And, and what I was kind of alluding to, the second element of that is just the pipeline visibility. And, and that is that you have a pipeline. Yeah, I know what the steps in the pipeline are. I know what the conversion is between one step to another. I can define them very clearly and I know exactly where all of my leads are at every one moment.

And from that, I actually, now I got that back to that predictability. I can probably predict what kind of of revenue that you're going to get out of that. So it's all about reducing uncertainty, because I think a lot of times when we go back to this idea of marketing, we think creative. We can't make this connection between, you know, a Facebook post over here and how that converts to a dollar, that we're creating that linkage for the buyer.

So they see it and they understand, ah, that's how that works. 'cause I understand how you build your widgets or how you provide your service. Now I need to see how you generate customers in the same way.

Kim Bentson (12m 24s):

Yeah. And that, you know, I know from being around MasteryPartners and, and all of you certified partners, that one thing buyers hate is uncertainty. They'll run, run, run for that. Yeah, of course. I don't like it very much either, right? But right. Yeah, so

Terry Chevalier (12m 47s): Exactly. No, yeah, yeah. I, I think that's very fair. I mean, I think everybody, everybody in business hates uncertainty. Even if, if the certainty is not in your favor, you can plan for it. The worst thing is, is you get in this uncertainty. And so you don't know, do I need to put more assets here? Do I need to put more resources on this issue or not? And, and so that is a critical element. But I, but I wanna hit another point that I think buyers look at. And that is this concept of positioning. And go back to those questions I said earlier about, you know, who you serve and what the problem is you serve and how this benefits them and why you're better.

That, that boils down to that fundamental thing of, of positioning. Sometimes people call 'em an ideal client profile. Sometimes you call it your value proposition, but it is, you know, and what's your unique selling proposition? They're all elements of the same thing. I understand my customer base, I can, I can, I can point 'em out. I know what they are, their, how they think, how they walk, how they buy. I know what their problems are. Here's how much that problem costs them. How here's how much it hurts, and here's the solution.

This is why my solution is so much better. And by the way, why my solution is so much better than everybody else. And ideally, you wanna be able to say that in, in a simple positioning statement. Something of like, you know, we help customer A do X by doing these things that leads to, you know, this result. And we do it better because of these factors. And if I can actually articulate that and everybody in my company can articulate that, well then I actually have a pretty strong position.

Obviously you want to have it backed up with data. You know, there's that data thing. Again, you can't just wish this into, into reality. And, and just as a side note, you know, and in one of my prior lives, I was one of these, you know, consultants in one of these big firms we would work with, you know, fortune 50, fortune 100 firms. They spend a lot of time doing that science thing to understand that customer and understand exactly all of those pieces. And then how they craft that value proposition for them.

So the, there's that piece. And the, the other thing I did wanna talk about is just the cost, right? Because one of the complaints that I hear a lot from business owners, like, I'm spending all this money, spending all this money, and you know, what we're looking at is how much are you spending on marketing? Which could include also your sales promotions, maybe you've got discounts to draw off and credits, things like that. And then how many new customers are you getting? You want to be able to get as many customers as possible for the lowest cost possible.

This, this is not, it's like you're creating a little profitability center for yourself. Most, you know, a lot of owners don't track this information. They need to track it. You know, they need to say, well, how much am I spending on marketing? How much, if I'm paying to an agency, how much am I paying if I'm doing sales promotions, if I'm, I'm paying commissions, you know, all of these things go into the cost to acquire a customer. And then the, the next thing is, if you know that number, the next question is figuring out how good is your number relative to other people that provide similar services.

If yours is really high, you probably aren't as efficient and you need to do some things to get better at it. And, and there's, there's tricks. Once you know this information, then you could start to optimize individual pieces. Whether I'm looking at channels, you know, and the channel basically means that, am I, do I have feet on the street and I basically have salespeople? That's a channel. Do I do it through social media? That's a channel. Do I do it through web? That's a channel. Do I do it through webinars and speaking? That's a channel. And I start to measure how much leads I get for the level of investment.

One of the things that we really talk about at MasteryPartners is this idea of return on investment. As an owner, you have to be questioning the return on investment of everything that you're doing. Well, if you now measure your cost and you can break it down to this level, now I can begin to actually re measure return on investment for every single one of my marketing activities. But again, a lot of people don't do it. So once you do it, then you're starting to get to a level of maturity. But, you know, the, the, the point that kind of undergirds all this, that that wasn't really articulated.

Everything I'm saying should be written down. If, if I'm the owner and I'm waving my hands up here and I'm, I'm saying all this stuff sounds great, but you know, I'm from Missouri, show me. Sure. You know, you've gotta put it on, you've gotta put it on paper and show me, show me the data, show me the information, and I'll believe you. But it's gotta be documented. It's gotta be repeatable. And going back to the first thing we talked about, if it's repeatable, you've got a process. Well, you no longer as the owner are critical to that. You are selling that process, not yourself.

Kim Bentson (17m 52s):

Well, and, and this is kind of jumping ahead, but, but I was thinking about when you were talking about the data and just even the cost or the ROI of the marketing for, you know, acquiring a customer, you sometimes can't, as a business owner make an informed decision without that data. You're throwing money at things. And if you don't even know what, if it's even attracting a client or a, a prospect even, we just need a prospect, right?

And you're, you're impacting your value, you're impacting your profit, right? You're impacting, absolutely impacting all of those things where If you know, Hey, I know that my membership to this networking group and attending that $3,000 conference gets me 10 leads, that, or whatever. That's something that you can definitely measure. But most business owners are just moving on to the next thing and never really evaluating that.

Right? If it's, that's a big one. That's such a big one.

Terry Chevalier (19m 2s):

It is. And you know what I think is, it can seem overwhelming if you're an owner. Like, and you haven't done it before. So what I tell people is, just take out a piece of paper and let's just look at, you know, if you're more of a, a business to business kind of company, then you probably wanna look at maybe your last 10 to 20 clients say, where'd you get 'em from? And that's gonna start to give you a sense of like, okay, we get that. And then now you're, now you're tracking it.

Now you're keeping your eye on it. If you're a business to consumer company, then you have to do it a little differently. You're gonna have to pull some data. 'cause the volumes are gonna just be a lot higher. But that's, that's generally it, it, it, I always believe, you know, start simple, start small, start with something that you can do and then build on it over time. Because no one walks into a complex design on the first cut. Actually, the simpler it is, the more likely it is to actually stick with them.

Kim Bentson (20m 4s):

Well, and just that repetition can help you flush out if this is really something you need to keep moving forward with measuring and Yeah. Helps, right. Decisions. What are some other common marketing mistakes you see business owners make?

Terry Chevalier (20m 21s):

 Well, and, and this probably again, is, is probably more on the B2B front is one of the key issues that we see at MasteryPartners is this concept of owner dependency. And owner dependency shows up in a lot of different ways. Meaning I'm the only person who can make that decision. I'm the only person who can do this. Well, another one is I'm the only person who has the relationships with the customers. So effectively your marketing is through that owner oftentimes shows up through referrals, right? Because, well, my buddy Hank has got another buddy, and that's how I'm gonna get more.

That's great. We love referrals. Referrals are fantastic. They're actually going back to that cost piece. They're generally a low cost acquisition, but they're not predictable and they're not repeatable. And so that's the first one is that you rely too much onto referrals. You know, you want to work on those, but they can lead to sort of that boom or bust cycle, you know, feast or famine cycle that a lot of people experience. Another mistake is just execution. It's kind of goes back to this boomer bus cycle.

And, and you see this a lot, especially in smaller companies because you get that big, big piece of work in, you haven't had work in a while, so you focus all your attention now on, I'm gonna focus on that. You forget to keep working on that funnel, on that pipeline. You get done and then you're looking around and you're like, holy cow, I've got nothing left. And one of the things that the science is going to teach you is there's something called lead time. So the moment I have somebody in a specific stage, how long does it typically take me to move them from here to here?

When I look at my total funnel that I know that maybe I've got a three to six month sales cycle. If I'm not starting the beginning of that sales cycle till I'm done with work, well, I'm not getting paid for six months.

Kim Bentson (22m 11s): 

Yeah.

Terry Chevalier (22m 12s):

You know, and, and it's normally longer because then the client actually wants to pay you in arrears and you know, and you know, under some sort of additional timeline. So you're probably seven months before that actually happens.

Kim Bentson (22m 25s):

Yeah, yeah. Always right? Always be marketing,

Terry Chevalier (22m 29s):

Always keep, yep. Always be marketing. Al always hashtag always be selling, always be marketing. That's right. You never stop. You never stop.

Kim Bentson (22m 37s):

Yeah. So can you tell me, you know, I have a pretty good picture, but what does mature marketing actually look like in the business?

Terry Chevalier (22m 50s):

Well, let's start off the, the first piece is, is you've answered that, that positioning question. I know who I serve, I know what I serve them with. I know why I serve them. I know what I'm giving them. I understand the benefits of it. I know why I'm better than anybody else. If I can articulate that, that's, that's my baseline. The second thing then is I've got a sales process. It's this pipeline we keep talking about, and, and just there, there's a term sometimes we talk about, we'll say top of funnel versus bottom of funnel. So top of funnel tends to be more marketing, what we'd call traditional marketing.

Like, I'm gonna go open the funnel as big as I can, filter in as many leads as I possibly can from as many different places. The bottom is more my sales cycle of like, how do I convert those leads into sales? So I wanna have a document process, I wanna be clear about what those steps are, who's involved, what things I need to do. Do I have templates? Do I have template emails? Then what starts to help you in that? Managing that if, if you have that, well, you probably have a customer relationship management system because the customer relationship management system, guess what, it basically just takes that, that pipeline, that sales process that we articulated and wraps it in data and automation to make it easy.

So you're actually tracking those things. Once you have the CRM, you've got a couple things. Well, now I know how many leads I have. I'm actually tracking where they are in my pipeline. I have reminders for my salespeople to make sure that they are talking to people. And here's the other benefit. When I have a CRM system like that, and I'm using it properly, every interaction is documented. If something happens, lord forbid to that salesperson, well another salesperson can certainly walk in and take over that relationship.

Obviously there's, there's still a, you know, an emotional element there. However, all the background, all the context, all the information, what needs to happen next where they are, all of that should already be in there. And, and as you're doing this, you go back to one of the things we, we talked about at the beginning is now I've got data and I'm turning this into science, and I'm starting to measure now I've actually, I'm measuring how, what my conversions are, I'm measuring what my conversions are between A and B. So I can start to do what we call a b testing, right?

So I try something here, call it approach A, I try, I change one variable, I do approach B and I measure the difference. This is scientific method. That's how you get better at those things. The other thing is that over time, you're actually starting to find leads from a lot of different places. So you're not sort of a one trick pony. You're finding them in different ways that diversifies your, your lead source risks.

And then ideally you have, you know, whether you are using something like EOS and you have accountability systems or something like that, but you have clear roles and responsibilities when it comes to the marketing. And those are followed and they're measured, people are held accountable to those. So if you have all those things in place, which is by the way is a system, it's a marketing system that is really a mature business. And then if you're doing that, right, that whole thing we talked about, repeatable, consistent, predictable growth that's happening on the other side.

Terry Chevalier (26m 16s):

I, I know that you and I worked on actually helping a company and we walked through the sales process and with them and was helping them try to kinda get that documented. It was in the, it was in the owner's head. And one of the things that came up is we didn't wanna lose the passion or the personality of that owner and how they felt about the process. And I remember us building that in to how we talked about certain aspects of the product and certain aspects of how to even reply to, you know, objections or Right.

You know, our ideal client. And I think that's sometimes scary. It just made me think about that time that we did that, and now we can have five or six people executing that sales process instead of just the, the poor owner who is, you know, doing all the things. So I just think that's a, sometimes a, a scary proposition to think, well, they aren't gonna do it like I do it.

Kim Bentson (27m 27s):

Yeah. Better. It is better. Well, you know, and you're, what you're hitting on is this, this concept of scalability. Yeah. Right. Owner dependency limits your ability to grow fundamentally, because I am limited, the, the growth of the company is limited to how many hours and how much, how productive the owner is. That's it. If I take the owner out, and now I've unleashed with the process that the owner has developed, well, now I've got scalability, and now I have a transferable asset.

If I have a transferable asset, if I'm scalable, my value goes up. The buyer's, you know, risk for, for the buyer seems to go down and everybody benefits. So it, it's a, it's a virtuous cycle. And, and yeah, it is, it is. And and what I, yeah, we do find a lot of times, so we do work with a lot of companies, especially, you know, as we're working with them early on, one of the things I do see is, because this is a mantra we're always bringing up in our meetings, is where, you know, so they're starting to think about where I'm investing, and they start questioning everything.

And that's when you know you've got it. Because if you're starting to question, then you're receptive to the answers that, and the answers may tell you, maybe this is not the right way. Maybe this is not the right salesperson. I've had that that come up before too. Maybe they're, they're in the wrong place, maybe they're in the wrong seat, maybe they're not in the right fit for the company, but given what you want to do, maybe that's not the right person. So it, it, it's really about once you systematize and as an owner, you can step back away.

Now you can start to figure out, whoa, why are we doing it that way? I never thought of that before. Didn't have time to think of it.

Kim Bentson (29m 19s):

So as a business owner, I'm listening, I've taken lots of notes and I'm like, oh yeah, I see the gaps. I'm not doing that. I could be doing that better. So with all this information, you know, at MasteryPartners we always talk about what's the one thing I can take away and, and start improving, you know, my marketing maturity today. Like what, what, what are some things that you would suggest?

Terry Chevalier (29m 45s):

Well, I think it goes back to, you know, some of the things we just talked about. Like, you know, what, what makes you a mature system? Start with those first couple pieces, let's just go there. The first one is that positioning, and I've mentioned this multiple times through here, and I, you know, we have resources on our website. If you, If you like ai, have it interview you to create a, you know, positioning statement, whatever it is, or take out a piece of paper. But make sure you can articulate who the customer is you serve, what problems they specifically have, how you reach them, how you solve it for them, what the benefits are and why it's better than anybody else.

And if you could start there over time, refine that and get more data. But the second thing is start building that pipeline process. You know, take a few of the recent sales that you've had and start breaking those down and say, how did, how did we first find out about this person? How did they come to us? What happened next? What happened next? And do this for two or three of those. And after a time, you're gonna start to see some commonalities. That's the beginning of your process. Start there and then start measuring.

So once you've got that process, then you can start to measuring, you do those first few things, you're on your way.

Kim Bentson (30m 60s):

Yeah. And I'm just thinking like, you just need to get started because it takes time to figure out. And as you're figuring out that's the value you're creating because you're taking that uncertainty or that guesswork away from some, the person who's eventually gonna, you know, take your business, buy your business, get inherit your business, whatever that is, you're, you're really creating that value that's so powerful, Terry. 'cause ultimately, right, this isn't just about marketing.

We could, we could have a similar conversation about Oh yeah, any, any aspect HR hiring people. It needs to be documented if you need to have a system. But ultimately it's about building a business with more options. And that's, that's a shift that business owners need to take.

Terry Chevalier (31m 52s):

It. It is. And just one thing, if I can Articul note is a lot of people are, when it's in their business, if I say start working on it, what do they do? They go start working on, they tinker with their ops process, like how I deliver service, how I do these things. Yeah. That in and of itself does not generate revenue. The marketing and sales process generates revenue. Why wouldn't I want to go tinker on that piece of the process if I've got a problem?

Obviously I wanna work on the ops, but I'm just saying that most people gravitate and they don't work on this. And yet it's the same thing as, as improving an operational process. It is an operational process. It's just a revenue generating process.

Kim Bentson (32m 41s):

Yeah. It's like, it's like working out. It's not fun. So I'm gonna put it off and do it until

Terry Chevalier (32m 48s):

That's right.

Kim Bentson (32m 49s): 

But, so if you're listening out there, thank you. But if you're realizing as you're listening to this that you may not have that full picture of where you are in your business, you don't have a, you don't have the clarity that you need to be able to make these kinds of decisions, then that's exactly what the Transition Readiness assessment is designed to do. It helps you identify where you're building value in your business and where you're losing it. You know, tinkering with that little op side is maybe not costing you value, right?

So all of it is enabled to help you make better decisions moving forward. And the better the decision, the the more value you're gonna create. You can learn more at MasteryPartners dot com. You can reach out to Terry. He is one of the most helpful people you'll ever meet, because the sooner you see those gaps, the more options you'll have. You can fix them and move forward. Terry, what have you seen with the owners who've taken, you've taken through the TRA? What are some of the light bulbs?

Terry Chevalier (33m 54s):

Well, firstly, I think it's obviously with the transition branding assessment, you know, we have north of 300 questions that we go through with, with business owners. And the first thing is, is you start to get clarity. Now the clarity is a little bit like deer in the headlights of, oh my gosh, I did not even realize this. Because when you start saying, well, do you have a marketing plan? Do you have brand guidelines? Do you have a marketing budget? What is your ideal profile? You know, and as we start going through these, you start to understand the, the scope of this.

And I think that that's the first piece. The second piece is that when we go through that, and if we've been working with owners who are, maybe they're, they're stuck. They haven't been growing, we can point directly to this is why this stuff's important. And now as an owner, you're beginning to make the connection, ah, okay, now I get it. Now I understand what this stuff is for and why I need to focus on that. So I think that's kind of the, the other piece. And then obviously, you know, we sometimes diagnose issues right away as part of that. And we've, we've had those and owners have made some changes as a result of that.

Man, it unleashes the revenue growth as a result just because you, you know, you, you know what you're looking for. You find it. And then as an owner, as, as long as you're willing to make some of the hard choices that that results in, you will get the benefits.

Kim Bentson (35m 16s):

It really makes me think of, there's a video out recently about just making that If you, if you go off course just one degree, you're gonna end up in a very different place. And that compounds over time. It's kind of going around right now, but that, it makes me think of that, like, just shifting that one degree in, in these little areas can really change where you end.

And

Terry Chevalier (35m 47s):

Absolutely. Well, I, I think it was maybe James Clear in, you know, his book on, on habits. I, I wanna say it was there, but I mean, it's a very common thing is they say, look, if you just get 1% better every day, 1%, everybody can get 1% better. But compounding effects of 1% better every single day is transformative change over time. It's,

Kim Bentson (36m 10s):

 It is. And I love the, the tool, the TRA it just, it really help, it, it's a, it's a put structure around the change.

Terry Chevalier (36m 19s):

Yeah. Yeah. And what

Kim Bentson (36m 20s): It tells you what needs to change,

Terry Chevalier (36m 22s):

Right? And in what order. So I hope

Kim Bentson (36m 24s):

And in what order, right. I hope today's conversation gave you something to think about. I know I did. For me, I have a lot of notes I took. And Terry, thank you. You're, I always enjoy talking with you. I always learn something and brilliant as usual. So thank you for sharing your perspective today. And to the business owner who submitted that question or actually asked that question at the Business Transition Summit, thank you. That one helped, helped more than, than you probably realized.

If you're listening and thinking, yeah, I've had that same question, you're not alone. And to you, the business owner listening, thanks for being part of this. If you're asking these questions, you're already ahead of most business owners. If you found this helpful, please click that subscribe button so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you've got a question on your mind, you can submit it at MasteryPartners dot com. It might be featured in a future episode. So we would, we would love that.

It helps us tremendously. But until next time, keep maximizing business value. And thanks again, Terry,

Tom Bronson (37m 36s): By listening to this podcast, you are already taking steps on the path of improving your business readiness. Nice work. Got a question, but we'd love to hear from you. Submit your questions at MasteryPartners dot com and look for the red BusinessOwnerHotline button. And as you think about today's episode, remember the decisions you make every day as a business owner are either building value in your company or quietly eroding it. So here's a question to take with you.

What decision will you make tomorrow that builds value in your business? Now go get it done. At MasteryPartners, we're the people that make companies more valuable and more transferable. Our guides help business owners build companies that's ready for whatever comes next. And if you want to see where your business stands, visit MasteryPartners dot com to learn more about the TransitionReadiness assessment. So until next time, keep maximizing business value.