My company, 911 I.T., is a managed services company. We specialize in taking care of accounting firms, health care, and basically anything with a little bit of compliance that needs some help.
We started off with CPAs because we had some CPA clients and we really liked working with them. We found that there was a big need in the industry for IT and they had a lot of requirements that weren’t being fulfilled. We started doing some things to specialize, for example, we leased equipment out to them during the tax season so that they could get it for those couple of months when it was a little bit busier and then we would take it back. That seemed to really help us excel in that vertical filling that need.
Our Targeted Approach: We Did The Work And Got The Results
Many people struggle with finding the time to do the marketing and the implementation in their IT business. When we started with Technology Marketing Toolkit, we were at a point of pretty much desperation. We needed this to work, so we jumped in with both feet. I was still a technician and the only time we had to do marketing was after work. I joked that I had a second job and so I’d go to my first job, do all the tech work, and then after I get done with that, I’d go do the marketing work and would sometimes stay up until 3:00 a.m. to get stuff done.
We’ve definitely progressed from there. I knew staying up until 3:00 am wouldn’t last forever, and we decided it HAD to work. We built it up and added more revenue. It opened the doors for us to be able to hire more people and we now have six people on our marketing team.
It gave us more work-life balance. On an average day, we get done by 5:00 pm and I’m home and I’m no longer a technician. I go to the office, I work on the sales, I work on marketing, and I check the metrics and make sure that we’re sending out what needs to be out and that we’re getting the results we need.
We started off in 2008, right when the economy took a downturn and we had to move the office back into our basement because we couldn’t afford rent anymore. I was down to one, just me. We hired our first employee and they had to come to my house and work. Then we started to grow again and as we grew; we would actually set up cubicles in the basement. and it was our office from 2008 until we joined Technology Marketing Toolkit at the end of 2018. For ten years we worked out of the basement.
Planning By The Numbers
We had amazing results. We were able to add over $78,000 of monthly recurring revenue in 12 months. As you look at our revenue that came in with new sales each month, it just kept growing and growing. We started to figure out things and we found ourselves implementing more and more. We got to the point where we could run the business by numbers and could track our results.
We could see everything that was happening. We now know that if we send out 100 Aspirin campaign letters we know how many appointments we’re going to get. If we get those appointments, we know how many people are actually going to sit down with us. If they sit down with us, we know how many of those will turn into sales and we know our average client size.
This year, we’re taking it to a whole new level and we’re saying we want to double what we did last year. We’re going to take everything that we did and we’re cranking up those numbers to double our results. And it’s exciting to see that you can actually do this because the numbers don’t lie. It’s a numbers game. You just have to do the work.
It started at an event, and Robin was talking about running by the numbers. I built an Excel sheet and uploaded it to the TMT Dashboard for everybody to see. I put in how much I want to grow, and it showed me what to put in to get that result. If you don’t know your numbers, use the industry average for how many appointments you want and how many leads it takes to get those appointments. As you fill in those blanks, it’ll say, here’s how many appointments you’re going to need to hit your goal, and then you can put in how big your contact list is and it’ll tell you how many you need to send out each week. It really helps plan it out. At first, it was kind of daunting to see. If you want to grow by $1 million, seeing what it actually takes to do that can be a little bit overwhelming, but it is worth it, and our numbers don’t lie.
I am so passionate about this program. I tell people all the time, this has changed my life and it literally has from where we started the program to where we are now is such a different place. You wouldn’t even recognize me. The positive benefits are all around in every aspect of my life. I feel like it’s been a huge blessing, and I am a huge advocate for it. I tell everybody I know about it. I don’t look at this community as competition, I look at them as another resource to help us and we can help them.
I feel like the big change that happened this year, that sets us apart from where we were a year ago, is that click that happened when I was in Robin’s session with the numbers. In that one moment where it all just clicked when she asked, Hey, you want to grow? What do you want to grow by? Here’s what you need to do – and we did it and we got the results. I love it.
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