The Part-Time Service Bureau Strategy That’s Working | SBA Podcast EP 31

Baldeep (00:01) All right, welcome to another episode of the SBA interview series. I don’t even know if that’s what it’s called. I just made that up on the fly. How’s everyone doing today? Just made it up.

Ross (00:10) Yeah, I was like, oh, that was a unique intro. I haven’t heard that one before. We usually just kicked off like, all right, what’s up? So we got Nicole here with us. But yeah, I mean, why don’t we want to kick that off? So, Nicole, thanks for it. Thanks for jumping in again. Hang out with us. Do a little little interview if you want to start. Just kind of tell us a little bit about like your experience, your your journey in the tax industry and kind of like, you know, how long ago you got started.

Nicole (00:12) Very.

Ross (00:38) When you ended up joining Service Bureau Accelerator and kind of where you’re at today if you want to give us a little snapshot of everything.

Nicole (00:44) Yeah. So I started in the tax industry, I want to say in 2008. I started off working with Liberty Tax, just to get that experience in the tax industry. And then from there, I kind of brushed off on myself and did a little bit of taxes just for like family and friends. I wasn’t real into like the tax industry, just filing per se. I took a break, transitioned back into IT and then from IT, I started working for a local software company here in Houston. And from there I transitioned all the way up to sales. So April of 2020, I left the company and, you know, synced up with Sean and he told me good things about your company. So I gave it a shot and I’ve been with you guys, I think what 2021 I want to say when I finally was like, okay, let me go ahead and do it. Cause I went with Sigma at first and then it like, you know, their Service Bureau packages. I wasn’t getting like the full support coaching, training or mentorship that you guys provide so I canceled with Sigma and came over to you guys as a Service Bureau. Currently you know selling software I have about you know eight nine ten years in the industry selling tax software. Yeah just been doing it ever since.

Baldeep (02:03) This is you selling software now for yourself. Because before I remember you were a sales rep with another company. Then you said you went off and kind of worked with another Service Bureau. And then you came over to us because of Sean, right? Sean’s on our support team. He’s known you for a while. I think one thing, from what I know about you, Nicole, one of the interesting things that I could point out is that you’ve grown significantly. I think between last year and this year, you’ve seen a big jump. And one thing I do make a note of for you is that you’re, you still have a full-time job. Like you’re still working full-time. So the numbers that you’re putting on the board now, compared to what other people who are doing this full-time, like you’re, you’re up there with, with, with hitting numbers while still working full-time. So if you could speak to a little bit about how you balance your time, cause we see that a lot where people have jobs and they’re struggling with that work. So their work hustle balance, right? They pay the bills and building the business. So how do you manage your day to day?

Nicole (02:37) Yeah.

Nicole (03:00) Mm.

Nicole (03:08) Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s all about time management. When I get off work at six, I kind of like, you know, work on my business from about six to 10. I do a little bit of administration. I got a lot of ads running also. I did hire some Philippines. So I am working full time. You know, they’re here from like eight to four to kind of cover the shift and bring in those sales and do what they need to do. You know, the bringing bringing revenue for the business. I spend most of my day on Saturdays as I’m off on a weekend. That’s my day where I’m actually call cold calling out in the field passing out business cards to generate more leads. So it’s just really just working around my full time schedule to do what I have to do. Honestly, getting to Philippines, it’s really affordable. $6 an hour, I mean you can’t beat that.

Baldeep (03:58) Yeah, ahead, Ross.

Ross (03:58) Yeah, yeah, most definitely. No, I was just going to say, yeah, so like that’s your, so that’s basically your main strategies as well for, for, you know, growing the Service Bureau and generating sales. You’ve been, you’ve been running ads. And then you said you mentioned you’re doing like some extra like prospecting and cold calling on the weekends as well. Okay, cool.

Nicole (04:15) Yeah, cold calling, passing out business cards here locally to tax offices, just going in and giving like a 30 second elevator’s pitch about what I do and how I can help them. I get their business card, put it in the CRM and then I’m reaching out to them like on Monday. Like, hey, I met with you, you know, Saturday and here I am, you know, let’s schedule a demo.

Ross (04:35) Awesome. And then on the ad side of things, you running ads with the Tax Nitro ad system or are you creating all your own ads, your own ad copy and content marketing and stuff?

Nicole (04:49) I actually have a marketing company that I’m working with, it’s Suka. It’s what Lembassi’s doing all of my marketing for Integrity Techs offer right now.

Ross (04:57) Got it nice. How’s that working out? Like good lead generation? Pretty steady.

Nicole (05:00) Yeah, I’m getting roughly around about 150 plus leads a month.

Baldeep (05:07) Okay.

Ross (05:07) Nice, awesome, good stuff. So I want to ask you a little bit about, you’re in the unique scenario, whether it’s like, I mean, there’s actually quite a few that are in Elite that have been with us from the very beginning. There’s quite a few actually, because everyone’s just been steadily growing over last few years. Do you want to talk a little bit about, I know you mentioned earlier, one of the reasons you joined SBA was because of the additional training, the mentorship, all the extra components that we have in addition to obviously being a Service Bureau. What’s been your experience going through that training, especially through like the evolution from like year one where it was kind of like, hey, modules are coming like two weeks from now to now where we have like the foundations about the new like seven day launch program and everything. Do you want to share a little bit like what’s been, what has that been like seeing the progression of the program changing over time?

Nicole (06:00) I mean, honestly, I love it. When I first joined some of the modules and courses, I knew some of it, so I couldn’t skip through it. And now I can skip through it and be able to complete a course. But yeah, at first I was like, man, I got to sit here and watch this just to get to the next chapter. But now just you guys laid it out, and it’s really straightforward. I mean, I love it. Love the material. I mean, only tip I wish that you you guys can provide it to ourselves, teams. Right?

Ross (06:36) Train the train the team as well. Yeah, I mean there’s I mean there’s there is there is there is something on that.

Baldeep (06:45) The challenge with that is that when you want to train your sales team, you want to train them specifically on what your offer is and what you’re selling. For them to take a concept and turn it into what you want it to be, that’s not their skill set. Their skill set is to do what you tell them to do and to, hey, follow these steps. This is my system. This is my process. This is what I’m selling. This is what I’m selling it for. Here’s all how I handle all the rebuttals. Here are common questions.

Nicole (07:00) Mm-hmm.

Nicole (07:04) Mm-hmm.

Baldeep (07:11) There’s things that in our training, like you have to develop for your business because your package is unique, what you’re offering is unique. Those things, we can’t train somebody for you on that without knowing what it is. So that’s why it sounds like we do have things that are in some of our packages, like stuff we can simply train is like, well, how do you have a VA in the Philippines run appointments and get them on the next step calendar? Like that’s simple stuff, because that’s generic enough.

Nicole (07:15) Yeah.

Ross (07:26) Yeah.

Nicole (07:36) Mm-hmm.

Ross (07:37) Yeah.

Nicole (07:40) Got.

Baldeep (07:41) But when it comes to actual sales team training, and I think you’re coming to the convention this year. So like, we’re gonna show some of the stuff that we have for our team behind the scenes on the elite day. And you’ll see how we structure our sales team training for our sales staff here at SBA as well.

Nicole (07:51) Okay.

Ross (07:57) Yeah. The biggest thing too, if I can give a little insight as well, that like the sales team training is probably one of the more challenging things to train. Not that it’s like it’s impossible. It’s very doable, but kind of what Baldie said, like, it’s not just like, Hey, here’s a bunch of videos. Then they can go out and do it. I have weekly calls with the sales team, right? I literally do a weekly meeting on Mondays where we kind of set up the week and then Tuesdays I do an hour of like call review. So we’ll pull calls and we’ll review it. Cause it’s something that you always need to stay on top of, right? You always kind of need to have your pulse. Cause and it’s the most important, one of the most important things if your marketing is bringing in the, bringing in the leads, now the sales team needs to convert into revenue. Right? So it’s like, it’s good to always really keep your

Nicole (08:30) Yeah.

Ross (08:42) Keep your thumb on the pulse there. Even while you’re maybe not the one doing the calls anymore. But you know how to sell. You know what they should be saying. So that’s something where it’s like, again, the videos can only go so much, but with a sales team, like you constantly have to be working with them. And so do you do any kind of like weekly meetings right now with your sales team? Or like do any like ongoing training with them?

Nicole (09:02) Yeah, we’re doing something. So I purchased a Jeremy Minder sales course. So we do that every Friday for about an hour or so.

Baldeep (09:09) Well, nice. Perfect, yep.

Ross (09:09) Yeah. Perfect. Yeah, that’s awesome. So that’s so, so yeah, so you understand it’s a, you got to, you got to train your, got to train the people for sure. Yeah.

Nicole (09:12) And

Baldeep (09:14) Those things are a lot more important than just like a couple of video modules for a sales rep. Like the video modules for a sales rep, like we have quite a few. That’s just to get them acclimated to the industry terminology, to certain things that they would need to know because of the business model. It’s really the ongoing reviews and the ongoing training that

Nicole (09:36) Mm-hmm.

Baldeep (09:42) that turns them into effective salespeople.

Nicole (09:45) Gotcha.

Ross (09:45) Yeah. Product knowledge too is, is another pretty important one too. I’m not sure how much you go into that, but, product knowledge is always good to work with the sales team where like, you can kind of ask them like, Hey, what’s our offer and like, see what like off the top of their head, how do they explain what the offer is? Right. Are they like stumbling and fumbling or, or do they have like bang, bang, bang? They’ve got that thing like just memorized. Cause it’s all about like, were you on our, were you on our call?

Nicole (10:04) Mm.

Ross (10:10) Like the first series of coaching calls that we did last month. We did like, I think like two weeks ago we had a sales call.

Baldeep (10:14) She works during that time,

Nicole (10:16) I wasn’t.

Ross (10:16) Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right. Well, on the sales one, I was like, I was talking a lot about like at the end of the day, the fundamental of sales is, you know, it’s like, this is the person’s current scenario. Here’s where they want to go. How do we connect the dots and show them that what we have to sell them is going to get them there. Right. And so product knowledge is really important because it’s like, those are points where your sales team can leverage like, they told me they’re struggling with this. Well, I know that there’s this part of the program that is going to provide them value for

Nicole (10:31) Mm-hmm.

Ross (10:46) that and then being able to find those little areas that they can connect those dots for the prospect on the phone to show them, Hey, you told me you have this problem. This is how our, our product is going to solve that problem, whatever it may be. Right. And so like working on drilling, like little things like that, and just checking how their product knowledge is. I’ve found, I’ve found that to have been like a really good one where you just hear their conversation be so much clearer and simpler when they’re kind of explaining to the prospect where the prospect, then they, then their light bulb goes on. They’re like, Oh, I get it. Like that’s exactly what I need. It’s ultimately what we want the prospect to tell us without them actually saying it. And we do that, but just doing all that. So that would be another really, really great one. Just like make sure your teams dialed in on the product knowledge. It’s good. A good sales training one.

Nicole (11:27) Awesome.

Ross (11:27) Um, but let’s, let’s dive into you a little bit on, on the support side of things as well. I don’t know, Baldeep, if you want to, uh, dive into this just yet, but, um, on it, tell us a little bit, because like, you know one, a big thing that comes up with a lot of the EROs that we’re, that we’re talking to or looking at becoming a Service Bureau is, is a big challenge they have is the support or a pain point, you know, that they’ve had in the past with their software providers is support. And so our goal with the Service Bureau accelerator was to give you guys like the best support possible for you with your Service Bureau, whether it’s any technical things that come up, bank enrollment stuff, or even like business training. I know you’ve had tickets with me back and forth on your offer and everything like that. Do you want to just share a little bit about like how has that been using our support, like the support ticketing portal that we’ve got set up? How has your experience been with that, you know, the timeliness on the responses? Share a little bit about that and like working with our team as well.

Nicole (12:04) Thank

Nicole (12:21) Yeah, I mean, support is great. I love the fact that, you know, when I put in a ticket, you guys are on it. Like, I don’t even have to wait, you know, the same day. And even if you guys don’t know the answer, you know, you’re like, hey, give me, you know, a few hours so we can reach out to whoever you guys got to reach out to. And I really like that. I mean, it’s a straightforward process. Just going into the portal, logging in and put it in that ticket is awesome. You guys are always there. I feel like that’s like the best support I’ve ever got with any company, like honestly.

Ross (12:49) Awesome.

Baldeep (12:52) You know, I remember even like on the marketing support side, I remember it was at last season. Ross was auditing your presentations and doing all this stuff, giving you like, what was it? Two, three page notes and videos and shit. It seems like it worked out.

Nicole (13:02) Yeah.

Nicole (13:07) Mm-hmm. Yeah, you don’t get that with any other Service Bureaus.

Ross (13:09) Yeah.

Ross (13:14) Yeah, what’s that been like as well on the business side of things, right? Like learning, like you mentioned, you said before going through that there’s a lot of training there that some of the stuff you’re familiar with, some of you weren’t, but maybe can you share a little bit on that, like your experience with the mentorship, the coaching calls or some of that stuff, the extra stuff that we kind of try to provide for our members to help you guys scale, like Baldie was saying, the presentation review there.

Nicole (13:40) Yeah, the presentation, I mean. I was not good with doing presentations at all. Honestly, at all. I really love the fact that you guys really take your time out of your day to help us put it together, package it, and get it to where it’s like a sales copy in a sense. When we’re doing webinars, it really just pushes, drops the sales easily. It’s really organized also. I like the tips in there and then put in the notes that you guys are displaying when we’re doing the presentations, making sure to we got that in the notes to read off the slide. Also, like the fast action prospecting strategy, like that was real dope. I tried it and I was able to get some good results. So there’s some good tips in the courses that I’ve did so far that I didn’t know.

Baldeep (14:31) Awesome. Yeah, that fast action strategy, like you could probably like, you may have done it maybe like two years ago or something, whenever it was a while ago that you did it. But since then your list has grown, your, your reach has grown. So you could actually redo it, reword it, redo it, and you still would get results with it. Right? So one thing you could do, for example, is take a concept of that fast action strategy. And now that you have all these leads, send out a blast with the quick.

Ross (14:31) Right on.

Nicole (14:47) Mm-hmm.

Baldeep (15:01) A fast action strategy response, email or text, right? And then obviously since then you’ve, you’ve been more, I’ve seen you more engaged in socials. You got more, more friends, more followers doing a fast action strategy now versus two years ago. You’ll probably see a big difference as well.

Nicole (15:05) Mm-hmm.

Nicole (15:18) Most definitely.

Ross (15:18) Yeah. Cool. So so Nicole. Like last last question here for I think unless anything else unless anything else comes to mind but one of the last questions for you is What would you say like like what would you say to someone if they’re kind of in the industry right now? And they’re and they’re looking to become a Service Bureau And there’s now there’s kind of like self-inflicted wound. There’s a lot of options out there right for joining Service Bureaus What would you say to someone who’s looking at joining our program? What kind of feedback or or comments would you would you share with them to help them kind of make a decision?

Nicole (15:52) Honestly, do it. The coaching, the mentorship that you guys have in your program, I know for me, it holds me accountable. I would tell them to do it. Don’t really scale their business versus going to any other software companies and getting a Service Bureau package. I think just in the industry, since I’ve been in the industry, you guys are the only software company that offers the things that you guys offer the coaching the trainings that hand-holding, you know to make sure that we’re growing, you know our Service Bureau and we’re being successful. There’s a lot that I’ve seen, you know, they’ll just sell you a software Service Bureau package and you’re on your own. You’re having to figure it out on YouTube doing research. I’m okay. I grow this crap, you know. You guys make it like really really easy.

Baldeep (16:38) Right.

Baldeep (16:42) I appreciate that. They could go watch our YouTube videos and learn more. We’ll get more free content for those people and then they’ll end up coming over. Come over to the dark side here. Awesome.

Ross (16:43) Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say you to like we gotta go. We gotta get more training videos on YouTube. Got some free content on there. Yeah. Yeah.

Nicole (16:51) Right?

Nicole (16:58) Mm.

Ross (17:01) Cool. What’s your, what are some of your, I remember a couple other things I wanted to ask you as well. Like ultimately like what’s your goal in next like three to five years? Like where do you see your Service Bureau business in those next like maybe like next year or three years from now, five years from now even, like what are you really looking to do at least like this upcoming season with your Service Bureau?

Nicole (17:20) For one I you know retiring from my nine to five, that that’s why and so I want to be able to generate more revenue. My goal is to get at least like 375,000 just so that way it makes sense to where I could pay myself a decent salary to be able to retire from corporate America. Once I do that, I want to create more opportunities and quit hiring in the Philippines. I want to start hiring like in the US and getting reps all over and have their little territories. I’m looking and you know get my own office spot and really really just scale it to at least like a half a mil, even a million, maybe a billion, sell it to another company you know and start over.

Ross (17:58) Awesome. Yep.

Ross (17:58) Yeah, no, that’s awesome. I’m really excited for you to hit that too, because I feel like, you know, with you working like an existing, like a full-time job and doing this with the numbers that you’ve been able, like Baldie said, right, like the numbers that you’ve been able to put up this year, it’s like, there’s some solid growth. Now it’s just like, if you can get full-time on the Service Bureau, like, shit, that’s game over.

Baldeep (18:28) Yeah, I don’t think the number you mentioned on like what you I don’t I mean I haven’t run the cross link numbers yet, but I don’t think you’re too far off from making what you want to make to leave the job. I don’t I don’t think so. I don’t know. I don’t I don’t know what the I know in volume incentives you’ll make a decent chunk of change. So I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t I don’t think you’re too far off.

Nicole (18:52) Yeah, I wasn’t last year. I was just like, I just need that extra hundred K. But.

Baldeep (18:55) I just want the cushion. I just want the cushion, yeah. No, I get it. Yeah, we’re going into sale season. Yeah, if you don’t, if you don’t look, if you look at your funds this year, payouts coming soon, right? If you look at it you’re like, it’s almost there, one more season, don’t spend it all, bank it, that’s your cushion. And then one more season, then you go. Cause you could literally.

Nicole (19:15) Yeah.

Ross (19:16) Yeah.

Baldeep (19:18) Especially with your sales mentality, just like I’ve known you for obviously a few years now and just kind of seeing how you move and what you do just with your sales mentality, you already got a leg up. So it’s really just tripling down on that. And you have the skillset to develop the infrastructure for support and hiring and training and building a team. So really the only thing that’s stopping you is time is your time in a day.

Nicole (19:44) Yeah, most definitely.

Ross (19:46) Yeah. Yeah.

Baldeep (19:48) Cool. Well, I’m excited to see where you go after this season and into next season. And yeah, that’s all I got for you. We look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks here at the convention.

Ross (19:59) Yeah, it’s gonna be a fun time. Awesome, cool. Yeah, thanks again, Nicole, for jumping in. Appreciate it. We’ll go ahead and wrap up the recording here. And yeah, that’s it.

Nicole (20:03) Great.

Baldeep (20:10) Awesome.

Nicole (20:10) Awesome.