2459 - Mastering Client Attraction and Sales Team Building for Six and Seven-Figure Founders with Stairway to Leadership's Maggie Perotin

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, Maggie Peratin. Maggie, you are the founder of Stairway to Leadership. Your website is stairwaytoleadership.com. You're a business and leadership coach. You are also a fellow podcaster. You are the host of the Diamond Effect podcast, which our friend can find right now in their podcast app. Maggie, it's great to have you. Great to be here, Josh. Thank you for having me. You are based in Toronto. I understand you have a couple of graduations. You got family coming in from all over the globe to kind of celebrate.

1:29And you and I were just talking and you were doing the tourist thing there in Toronto. So what are kind of like the top, you know, like three, four things that like when family comes into town, you're like, yeah, you know, we should probably do this. What do we do? Okay. What do we do? Well, definitely you can't miss CN Tower, right? Toronto, that's a landmark of Toronto. You want to go up there. If you're super adventurous, you can even hang from it. I'm not going to do that. But CN Tower is a great one. We will be visiting Toronto Island. So there is a little island out on the lake that has a beautiful view on the city line.

2:11So you can do that. And if you're going to Toronto, you want to see Niagara Falls. It's just an hour and a half away. It's not that far. And it's such a beautiful wonder of nature that you really can't miss that. It truly is. You know, if you haven't been to Niagara Falls, it really is kind of a once a lifetime experience just to see that much power. You know, if you haven't been and seen falls of that magnitude, it really is amazing. My family and I did that a number of years ago and, you know, got the maid of the mist and, you know, got the, you know, got everything on. Yeah, good times, good times.

2:50Well, congratulations on your graduations, Maggie. I am so excited to talk about how you help service-based business owners build and scale a business without burning out to get there. I work with a lot of folks probably in that are concerned about this topic. I'm concerned about this topic. I don't want to get burnt out. And I do from time to time because there's a lot to do as a business owner. Do you mind maybe just sharing a little bit about your main superpowers? Yes, my main superpower. So I call it sustainable scale system. And it has, let's just say, three main pillars. One pillar is the client acquisition engine.

3:31And then the second pillar is the delivery of that, right? Because as you scale and you get more and more people, you want to keep delivering at the highest level so the clients are not disappointed. And the third part of that is really you as a CEO and then the people helping you to operate at the highest level. Because it is, I really look at my clients and my businesses very holistically. It is a combination of people, processes and systems. And all of them have to be optimized working at the highest level so that you can build a business that could be sold and you're not burning out in the process.

4:13Well, so, you know, especially if you're talking about working with service-based businesses, because, again, service-based businesses are typically very people-intensive. Like, you need, like, there's you, obviously, as the, you know, consultant or the coach, you know, the founder who starts, and then they probably bring other people in. You know, they may still be stuck. And again, one topic that I've been particularly curious about lately is helping founders who are having to do all of the sales calls, which I'm sure I know happens a lot in my world. Can we talk about that specifically? Let's say that the client attraction is pretty good, right?

5:02But the founder has not been able to get a sales team in there. And they've got, you know, maybe they give away some stuff for free, but then they've got their services and their services are, you know, multiples of thousands of dollars. And that's kind of a big step. Can you, I've just painted a scenario. What questions would you ask or what do you generally advise in that sort of a situation? So the questions I would ask is to really understand the process, because sometimes the sales process is not optimized for the highest conversion, right? Like I was just talking to a potential client of mine who is trying to sell thousands of dollars of services in a 15-minute conversation.

5:43Well, that might not be optimal for that price point. Then I would ask about their conversion to understand also their sales skills in converting, Because, you know, you could be talking to 20 potential clients. And if you only close to that a lot of time for some money, but probably not optimal. But if you're talking to potential 20 and you're closing, let's just say 10, that's you're making way more money with the same amount of time. So first understanding that and then fixing the process, maybe fixing or helping them up level their sales is step number one. The second step would be then thinking, okay, if I have that nailed down, it's pretty streamlined, it converts well, how can we now remove you from that process?

6:33And it's either by hiring sales team or sales professionals who then you can train on that optimized effective process. Or depending on the type of the business, if you're an online business, then there is, you have to be really good at it. But you could convert even high ticket clients via email marketing and sales pages and so on. Right. But that's that's another level. but I would say that's what we would look at first. Because, you know, if your process is not optimized and how you use or how you sell is not converting, hiring salespeople and training them on that, it's just a waste of money.

7:14Yeah, yeah. What do you think about, what's your opinion on kind of Ascension models with service-based companies? And some people, like, they might kind of turn their nose up at it. I would. Like I would have that tendency to do that. And I don't know why. I think maybe it's because I associate some of that with, you know, kind of marketing bro kind of stuff. And again, that's my own bias. It's getting in the way. It probably sounds really silly as I say this out loud. What's your take on that? Is that appropriate in some cases? And by ascension models. Yeah, like offering a lower ticket, you know, that doesn't require a sales call to at least get people engaging with you transactionally.

8:02I would say, you know what, I'm always into kind of like a lawyer. It depends. It depends on A, what you're offering, who is your client, are you able to solve a real problem to your ideal client in that lower ticket, man, when they would get value, get to know you, and then still be willing to buy your higher ticket offer. Well, offer, if that makes sense and you're willing to try it, try it. Because there is definitely, you know, there is research that shows that the time to make a decision increases based on the pricing, right? So it's definitely easier for a client to make a decision on a$200 offer, even$2 ,000 offer, than a$10 ,000 or$20 ,000 offer, right?

8:53So if you can give them a ton of value and help them in a very condensed, niche-down way in a low-ticket offer, and then they will love you for that, and that will make their decision, okay, this is the person I want to work with, then converting them into a higher-priced offer, even via email, is much better, for sure. It's just you need to understand that that might also extend your sales cycle, right? Because they need to buy an offer, use it, implement it, and then buy the next one, right? See value in it, obviously, right? Yeah. Yeah. Maggie, how is your world or the work that you're doing with your clients, how is it impacted with AI right now?

9:45I would say it helps my clients. I teach my clients how to use AI in a way that really increase their effectiveness, reduces maybe the administrative manual tasks that they were doing or their team are doing. So my clients, you know, a lot of services that they deliver, they can't be replaced by AI, right? Like if you're going to, let's say, a hairstylist, AI can't do it. A car mechanic, neither, right? If you're even consultants, I have a client who is a consultant in Excel, and she is a guru in Excel, and she's testing cloud and so on, and clouds can still cannot do what she's doing for her clients, larger businesses, right?

10:30So there is AI can help you if you know how to use it. And, you know, I even had a conversation on my podcast with a CEO of ANF Care. It's a European like health and wellness product-based company actually, who, you know, her team has been empowered by using AI and they're able to work through projects and things that they didn't have time for, right? They didn't have capacity for. So AI can expand your capacity and can help you scale, but you need to be strategic about it and you need to have a plan and help your team if you have a team to use it in a way that moves your business forward. Maggie, your website is stairwaytoleadership.com.

11:20Tell me about how you actually, like, are you coaching your clients? You're working directly one-on-one with the founder or what does it usually look like? Yeah. If you're a business at about six, seven figures and beyond, I do work one-on-one. It's a private coaching engagement with my clients. We meet weekly for a minimum six months. So that's the minimum engagement. A lot of clients stay with me much longer as we progress, grow the business. They see the benefit of that. And then, you know, what we work on, we determine during a free consultation sales call that I have in the beginning where I really diagnose as to what's going on in your business.

12:02You know, what are your goals, the challenges? how do we need to bridge the cab that stands between where you are now and where you want to be and then from that we create a plan for coaching and if the client engages we work on that for six months and then if they want to continue we continue yeah and then um what types of outcomes are you looking to create with them um like how would how would they see indication well like what indications would they see, oh my gosh, I did what Maggie told me to do and now it's working. What outcomes are you co-creating? So the first and foremost is of course growth, right?

12:43So it's revenue growth. Outside of that, it's also, you know, growing a team, streamlining the operations, the processes. So it would be easier to run the business. Another thing is removing the CEO, the founder from the day-to-day operations of the business gradually, right? So they would see themselves being more of a strategic CEO rather than the service provider delivering the service and being involved in every minutia of the day-to-day operations. I help my clients, the clients that come to me usually are very stressed and overwhelmed. So they will see a lot of that go away. They'll be much calmer, much more resilient.

13:29They will feel like they have a handle on their business rather than like business kind of running their life and them. So those are the key ones. It's a lot of others. Yeah. You know, I feel like, you know, we need to just maybe share a bit of empathy to our fellow business owners and leaders out there. It's tough. It doesn't have to be, but it often is. There's just because there are just so many, there's an infinite number of things to think about and worry about and stay on top of. And, you know, hopefully you get great leaders in there and you delegate and, you know, take things off of your plate.

14:04But a lot of times, you know, and I think a lot of it, Maggie, has to do with the personality of someone who has the gumption to be, you know, to do that work to begin with. they likely have very high standards for themselves and they, they keep pushing and they keep going. But the downside of that is, you know, they might never be satisfied. They might, you know, like me, I do the, I move goalposts a lot and that's so not fair. I wish I didn't do that. You know, it's like, I take the time to celebrate a win, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. But I think it's normal, you know, when we're ambitious and high achieving and both of us are, and all my clients are moving the goalposts, it's a normal behavior.

14:44so you'll never be fully satisfied in a sense where you're like oh I arrived and now but because then it's like now what what am I going to do now so you always have that but I think learning how to appreciate that journey and not get stressed out all the time and how to also appreciate what you've accomplished and be proud of it so that growth or that like hunger from growth comes from that place. I'm proud and I'm excited to see what else can I accomplish rather than from the place. Oh, it's never enough. I'm not good enough. If I don't achieve that, then that means I'm not worthy. And so on.

15:25Those are two very different places to be. I prefer the first one. So I teach my clients to be in the first one and just keep going for, you know, whatever they want to achieve. I think that's amazing. Maggie, your podcast is called Diamond Effect. What do you talk about on your show? I talk a lot about what I coach on. So I talk about strategy. I talk about sales. I talk about marketing, but I also talk about people leadership, operation systems. But I also talk about self-development. I'm a big self-development geek. I think I really believe that your business cannot outgrow you. So you as a leader need to grow yourself.

16:08So talking about the mindset of being a CEO, the good habit and so on. And then I bring guests occasionally as well, whether they're my clients or other guests that, you know, I find will bring value to the podcast. So there's a lot of things we talk about. Well, Maggie, your website is stairwaytoleadership.com. I know you give away free resources, which I always love. So when somebody goes to your website, what would you recommend they do? Click on, what are their next steps? So if they want free resources, there's a form that pops up. You put your name, your email, and you will get two resources.

16:50One is more for maybe beginning business owners, 49 plus ways to get visible and get in front of your ideal clients. But the second one might be maybe for somebody who's struggling and is overwhelmed. And this is how to create 10 hours in your week just by looking at what may be inefficient things or habits you have in your day to day. And if you don't want these, just go to my podcast. And there's a lot of free resources there. I love it. Maggie Perranton. Again, your website, stairwaytoleadership.com. and your podcast is called Diamond Effect. Maggie, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us.

17:35Thank you, Josh, for having me and thank you everybody for listening. Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. If your goal is to grow your business, increase revenue and build authority without gimmicks, this show is designed for you. Each episode gives you practical insight from leaders who have turned trust and credibility into real business results. If you value short, thoughtful conversations that respect your time, make sure you're subscribed. We publish daily 15-minute episodes focused on growth that actually compounds. And if you're interested in being a guest or you want to turn podcast appearances into measurable business growth, visit podverified.com.

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