Success Stories with Marshall Atkinson

Success Stories Ep 39 - "You Can't Manage What You Don't Measure"

February 23, 2022 Marshall Atkinson Season 2 Episode 39
Success Stories with Marshall Atkinson
Success Stories Ep 39 - "You Can't Manage What You Don't Measure"
Show Notes Transcript

Have you ever wondered how the top sales professionals in our industry actually build their success?  Where do they start?  How do they identify the right opportunities?  What helps them sustain the growth with the most profitable clients?

On today’s Success Stories podcast, we’ll be discussing all of that and more with one of the top sales minds in the business, Justin McKibben with Melmarc and also the McKibben Group.  He has a unique strategy and perspective on this that just might be the right tool for you to use in your business.

So, get your pens and notebooks ready, this episode is going to be one that could potentially make a huge impact on your business this year.


Marshall Atkinson 
Welcome to Success Stories brought to you by S&S activewear. I'm your host, Marshall Atkinson. And this is the podcast that focuses on what's working so you can have success too. Have you ever wondered how the top sales professionals in our industry actually build their success? Where do they start? How do they identify the right opportunities? What helps them sustain the growth with the most profitable clients? On today's Success Stories podcast, we'll be discussing all that and more with one of the top sales minds in the business. Justin Mckibben with the McKibben Group. He has a unique strategy and perspective on this, that just might be the right tool for you to use in your business. So get your pens and notebooks ready. This episode is going to be one that you could potentially make a huge impact on your business this year. So Justin, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Justin McKibben 
Thanks, Marshall. I appreciate it.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, and you've been in this industry for a long time. Your dad had a screen printing company, I mean, it's like it's in your blood.

Justin McKibben 
I did grow up on a factory floor. The family was in the business for 35 years. You know, I didn't appreciate it as much at the time when I was a youngster. But I've done just about everything there is to do and a screen printing plant t-shirt factory.

Marshall Atkinson 
So what color ink always winds up on your clothes, it's always green. For me. I don't know why I walk by a press Don't touch anything. I got green eco my shoe or my pants or something.

Justin McKibben 
I will tell you all of it. All of it. True story. One time I was working in the ink department. I was doing that for the summer. And I'd come out with time to leave my dad's ready to take us home. And I come out of the ink department. And I literally have ink all over my pants like just where I've been wiping my hands. So I've got like the streaks on my pants. And my dad's in the car. And he's waiting for me to get in and he sees me start walking towards toward me and he goes, you're not getting in here. He'll get the keys to the van, you drive that home. So I get all the economy man, I get all the economy,

Marshall Atkinson 
Right. And so we're gonna talk about sales today. And so before we kind of get into some questions, why don't you just let everybody know kind of what you do and your background and just the origin story thing, just so they have a frame of reference?

Justin McKibben 
Yeah, for sure. So I cut my teeth, obviously, my family's factory for 35 years, they were in the t-shirt and graphics printing. So they did point of purchase displays, decals, banners, and then they had a t-shirt side of the business where they were doing all the screen printing for a lot of the action sports brands of the time, kind of the heyday of action sports, when it was kind of on its ramp-up in 2000, my dad decided to dissolve the business. So I was a part of that process of not filing bankruptcy, but liquidating the business, which was a lesson all on its own that was skills that you can only develop those ones. So it was really exciting to do. And for a while I work in the retail side of things, I own several retail stores of my own for about five years and did that which was a learning experience and merchandising, marketing, and really to see how consumers shop and when manufacturers ship late, incomplete and how that impacts a retailer and what that does to your floor. It is very detrimental when say I'm buying a t-shirt and I'm buying a bottom and that's supposed to be sold together. But the tee shows up later than the bottoms and you sell more bottom, then the tee shows up and you don't sell it in its proper way. That is a big deal, man. And I didn't realize how big of a deal it was when you know the product is not shipping on time and so forth. Also to really that taught me in that particular world really taught me about probably SKU optimization, right? Really kind of looking at the assortments that are on the floor and what's really driving your business. You know, what are those particular items that if you're not paying attention to the sell-through, you're not paying attention to the inventory on hand, you know, what's the 20% of products driving 80% of your business? You can't be out of that. Right? And so, really understanding that. So I did that for you know a while and then for the last 10 years, I have been representing Melmarc, a private label manufacturer out of Southern California. They've been in business for 40 years started as a contract screen printer in that world of action sports and have transitioned and transformed that business from a contract screen printing business into a true private label manufacturer that designs develops and produces its logo were in t-shirts and fleece for a lot of manufacturers and brands that are not in the apparel business. So it's not promotional products, it's people who have amazing brand equity or just trying to leverage that brand equity through a gateway product, helping them the product, manage it and supply chain management in a way without them having to hire a huge team to do so. They already have the distribution. So licensing doesn't necessarily appeal to them.

Marshall Atkinson  
It's a gigantic shop, I've been there. It's amazing.

Justin McKibben 
It's very impressive. I mean, Brian Hirth, the owner, and his wife, Laurie started 40 years ago and have built one heck of a company with a lot of amazing people there. So kind of moving from there this last 24 months with COVID really has been a huge pivoting point for all of us, right? We've all experienced some self-reflection and reflection on our businesses and seeing where the pain points are, where the blind spots are, and how do we need to position ourselves for a better foundation for the business. And for myself, it really kicked off at Shirt Lab in Atlanta just before, I guess it was just not long before COVID, you know, and he invited me out, I had an opportunity to meet some amazing, amazing factory owners from around the country, and just really talking to them about the business and the different perspectives that everybody had. And that was really a kick-off for me starting TMG or The McKibben Group, which is where a consulting agency that helps manufacturers and brands kind of understand what they do better than anyone else, who their target audience is, what kind of customer experience they need to deliver, and how to use their unique strengths to kind of disrupt the market. Well, those things really are pivotal when it comes to going through everybody's first pandemic, right? Because everybody's in shock and really trying to understand what do we do now? If these valves are turned off, how do we still sustain? And so that's where I launched really my consulting business, it's really business strategy and helping people on the front end of their business, create the right business development systems.

Marshall Atkinson 
I'll tell you what, COVID, was a gut check for everybody. And I think the really successful people that are coming out of this right now took that time to innovate, to ideate to really just look at what they're doing, to have some really frank conversations with people that matter to them. And I know you were telling me before we got going here about a conversation, how to be your dad. And I would love for you to kind of like tell that real quick. And then eventually we'll get to some questions for you. But so talk about that real quick, don't ya crazy detail, but just talk about that real quick, because I think it really matters for people to hear this.

Justin McKibben 
Well, I mean, sitting in the middle of Covid, you know, when your hypothetical kind of firehose has been shut off for where you live in, generate income and interact with people and like your world. And I have two teenage kids, there were home doing school online, I have a wife who is in the real estate business, and she's home. And we're all at the kitchen table trying to do what we do. And I was kind of at a loss of with you're not able to generate an order, so to speak, how do we keep going. And so I was talking to my dad, who, you know, he is we talked about he was in the apparel business and screen printing business. And I was kind of giving you my woes. I was having a down moment at that time. And he said to me, something that really was a left an impression on me and really put the wind in myself. And it was Justin, and the time in his life where he made the most income and had the most control of his business was during a recession and Desert Storm. Things were going nuts. And he said the one thing about during that time about consumers is consumers still want to consume. They just don't have all the dough to do so. So what do they buy, they buy t-shirts, because it makes them feel good. It makes it in the t-shirt business typically goes crazy during that time, much like we're experiencing right now. Supply is super low and demand is super high. And so you know, he went on and explain this to me. And I said, Dad, so what do you say? And he said put your head down and get back to work. And I was like, wow. And I went back to you know my set of kind of goals that I had every day have X amount of outreach calls X amount of meetings, X amount of text messages, phone calls, and I never let it The difference was, I stopped trying to pitch the product I was representing, I was just trying to be useful. What do you need? Do you need a graphic designer? Do you need this? Do you need that transportation, blank suppliers this, that and the other? And the network over almost 20, almost 30 years now that I've built is amazing people, you know, just really fantastic people that I, in some cases did hadn't talked to in years. And during this time, it was reaching out saying, You know what, I appreciate you. And thank you for helping me and being a part of my world and helping me Hold the vision that they knew I wanted to achieve over my career and so forth. And so, as we come out, the other side of this business is booming. As dad said, you know, people buy t-shirts, and now we've got shortages and raw materials. And then you've got the challenges of obviously, freight and materials costs are going through the roof. But it's a challenge in and of itself. But it could have been the other challenge, which was we were all shut down and couldn't even turn the machines on unless you had a product that was a must, you know, masks and things like that. And, you know, this business, as we all know, is very entrepreneurial. So when things get tough like that people pull up their sleeves and get to work and figure out ways to do things.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, that's such a great story. Thank you for sharing that. And so now it's time to get ready for our first question, you know, like forever into the show. So, so you use in practice, a unique selling strategy that you referred to as the whole field model. So what exactly is that? And how does it work? And what are you doing? Right? Just look, let's just uncover that?

Justin McKibben 
Yes, let's unpack it a little and talk a little bit about it. So the whole field model is a business system of three interrelating, dynamics, style, structure, and strategy. So let's focus on style first, style basically is saying, What do I offer? But as you peel that back, who's the target audience? What are the products that you must offer to that target audience? What are the service requirements for that particular target audience? What's the brand identity that you need to embody in order to align with that particular type of audience? And what's the marketing message, the one message that is the through point to tie it all together? That's what the style of the offering is. Right? That kind of pulls it all together? Now, the structure, which is the second part of this is how you make your money. What's your sales performance model? What's the profit margin associated with that? And when you start putting that all together, it's really, again, boiling it down to what's that revenue pipeline? How does your sales system work? How does your operational system work that ties it all together? And when I say operational systems, I'm not specifically talking about all the steps and components needed to get a shirt to the press printed properly in out the back door, I'm talking about the front office, pure business development, how does a customer experience a salesperson go out, discover a lead, transform that into a presentation, pitch your products, picture offer, assess the needs, move it into a proposal of some sort, in through the steps of an active deal? So that's, that's what we talked about when we talk about structure. So that's the second part of the whole field model. The third part is the strategy. How do we continue to grow and sustain ourselves? So the vision of the overall company and align that with action? What KPIs are needed to make that happen? And across the board from all the different elements that go into that? And many business owners, they're looking for a graceful exit. So what is that step that gets us there? Right. So the strategy is, at some point, I want to sell the business for a profit. Okay, well, what's the vision that's going to allow that to happen? How do you align that with the right KPIs, which includes from a creative perspective, from where the revenue comes from, operationally, from the financial side, like what are all these key areas that tie it all together in order to deliver the whole field business model, right style, structure, and strategy.

Marshall Atkinson 
So it's really about on purpose, charting out where you want to go? Building the assets, which could be, you know, a website or a brand or the intellectual property or the contracts with your clients. And then also At the same time simultaneously building your team of people or the shop way of doing something your shop culture, putting it all together to achieve the desired result, right?

Justin McKibben 
Yes.

Marshall Atkinson 
I think, so many shops have the ready fire aim approach, of doing business where and mixed metaphor is a little bit, I call it the "Field of Dreams"-thing where they go, You know what, we'll get our press, we'll get a website, and we're open for business. And we'll just print some shirts, and they just sit there and wait for the phone to ring or the website order to come in. And they think to fly in the web, where everybody's gonna, you know, jump in, right, don't realize that you've got to on purpose go out and hunt.

Justin McKibben 
Right. And I think when you're hitting a lot of key points on that, and we're on the same thread here, I think the thing is, though, is when you're starting a business, there are life cycles of businesses, right? When you're starting a business and to your point on buying a press and setting up a website, you kind of just got to get out there and get your feet wet, right? You got to try it got to figure out what do you want to do, and you don't write and really start go. But most of the people that I work within my consulting business are mature companies, they've been around for 10 years, they've been around for 30 years, and they've been doing something very well for a very long time. And the business is good. It's not great. It's not phenomenal. But it's it grows in spite of itself. And so when you kill a pandemic, and you start realizing how fragile the business actually is, that's when you start looking at man haven't built a wall around this business, to make it be sustainable, and still scale. Right. And I'm not talking about cutting your labor or, you know, working with your vendors to control costs. That's just everyday business, you should be doing paying attention to that in a smart way. Right? I'm talking about fundamentally the right strategy to scale and mature and grow and just continue to keep going so that you're here for decades.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. Right. So it's about charting out what you want to happen. What is the Be really clear with clarity? What are the results that we want? And we need to build that? I agree? Yep, that's great. So let's go back to the beginning. So how are you identifying the best audience or the best customers that you're wanting to serve? Right? So everybody listening, they serve different markets, right? So right, so they're not gonna do your customers? aren't their customers and vice versa? Right, but Right, what parameters are you looking at? That allows you to go you know, this, this, this, and this? Oh, that's a good fit for me, I'm gonna give them a call. What do you look at?

Justin McKibben 
So I think let's start talking, as you said, backtrack to the beginning, right? So when I look at a manufacturer, specifically, and the first thing I do is I look for, it's all about the data. So the devils in the details, and you start looking at these common threads, if there's specific customers that have been with them for, however, a long period of time, three years, five years, 10 years, whatever the length of time is, there's success leaves clues. So why are these customers staying with you and continuing to give you a business? And it could be three customers, it could be five customers, whatever the number is, but there's some commonality amongst this, what are the patterns within these customers? And not what, what you think you start with the sales and the unit volume, and so forth? But then you go out to those customers, and you literally asked them, you've been a loyal customer to me, what do you like about us? Beyond price? I'm talking about value and impact, right? What's the value that they bring? What's the impact that they make in their business, right that manufacturers making in their business on why they continue to work with you. So you start there and start to build from those aspects. And you start to look at, okay, there's this thread of three, four, or five things that this manufacturer does better than anyone else. They just do it better than anyone else. Now, we need to find more of those types of customers. Okay, well, now you're building a profile of that. Now, there are markets out there that, you know, I don't know about you, but I don't like driving on a bumper-to-bumper freeway, I'd rather take the side streets, if possible because I can keep it going. Hence why Waze is cool. You know, you start using that kind of way of backtracking things. And when you start to look around and you start to look at these threads of business, everybody wants to be in promotional products, and everybody wants to be in fashion. Well, yeah, it's sexy. It's cool. That's rad. It's you know, it's all this, but you know what it is crowded, super crowded, there's a lot of people on there and you're going to be on the freeway. And when the person in front of you stops, you're stopping to know what? Right? So if you can start to look on those side roads, like, Where is that thing that you do better than anybody else that is needed for this market, or this unique niche, at the long tail, there's a lot of businesses, there's a lot of companies at the bottom of this, you know, at the apex of this curve that we have out there have big customers and that kind of idea. There are a lot of people down the line that actually needs your experience, your capabilities, your unique qualities that they need it were their businesses. And if you can come in there and provide them a level of service, that is unique adds value makes an impact, you all get to grow together. And guess what, you're never going to be short customers and our production because you're not filling the need of putting ink on a shirt or filling the need of designing for this person. You're filling the need of what they really had the problem with.

Marshall Atkinson 
Wow, that's great. And I don't know how many people would even be comfortable asking, "Hey, Mr. Customer, why do you do business with us?" That to me, seems like a really scary question for lots of people because maybe they don't want to hear "Whoa, I don't know why I do this." Right? And which is a very interesting thing. I don't know if people even ask that question, right? You know you got to have the courage to ask what occurs to talk to your customers, and not send an email, right? Just get in. That's right.

Justin McKibben 

That's right, you have to get in front of them. And, you know, the pandemic taught us anything with Zoom, and, you know, teams and Google meet and all this kind of stuff that you're able to do and you're able to get in front of someone, I realized that it's not the same of sitting across the table from somebody and being able to look him in the eye and shake their hand and all these kind of good stuff. But it's better than the alternative, which is an email, right? No one needs another email to communicate information. It's great for documentation, but to build relationships rapport, and really hear people out and be a good listener. Right? Ask quality questions and being a good listener isn't going to get it done through an email.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right, right.

Marshall Atkinson
What techniques or strategies are you using to build stronger relationships? Justin, right. So after all, we want to be less transactional, and more looking at the long-term view. So people stick around for years and decades to come. Right? So what are you doing to ensure that?

Justin McKibben 
There are actually three things. So prior to the pandemic, I was traveling, like many people in the business development world where a lot, right. And that was our way of being able to get in front of people and say, hi, and touch base, and, you know, build rapport, and so forth. And it was awesome for building relationships, not great for home life because you're not home a lot. But it's great for that. And what I realized prior to the pandemic was, I want to be able to do this at scale. And the only way I'm going to be able to do this as it scales is by not being on an airplane and consuming so much of my time doing that it's awesome. I'd love to be in on an airplane and be able to work on the plane and knock things out and that kind of thing. But it's not very efficient. And so I started using Zoom prior. And many, many customers, many people were very resistant to it. I don't have a camera, I don't have headphones, you know, all these different things. And I would say no problem just falling on that number. And I started recording the calls so that I can improve the things in me. It's like watching the film, right? It's like if you're in sports, and you're watching film and learning, those zoom opportunities that I was having with the people who got on, I was able to connect with people, man, if I was in your neighborhood, I was going to come by your office and shake your hand and sit down and go through things. This gives us the ability to do that. Well then, obviously the pandemic helped that quite a bit because everybody went to No, now you're trying to have some be mindful of is it doesn't zoom needed? Or is it actually a phone call, right, and we can have a 10-minute phone call, we don't need to have a zoom. So that is one way the zoom thing brought the connection together in a more personalized way. The other thing was, which again, as a result of the pandemic, was really just reaching out to people to just say, hi, like, how the heck are you doing? Not? How the heck are you are your business? How are you? Because when you're working with people every single day, and all you're doing is trying to get the order out in the elements that are involved in that, I got to get this approval on this is late and I got to get you the packing slip and on and on and on. Right? When do you actually like just be like, Hey, what's going on in your world? Do you have kids? Are they going to college? Are they starting preschool, or they do have a life event recently that was impactful on what you're doing in has you looking through a new lens, and it's about human connection, right. And so having those, you know, ways of connecting with those people and like actually caring, I don't want hundreds of customers. I want a tight group of customers that I'm super connected with. And you got to get to the volume before you can like get it into the right, you know, the scope of people. But that was another part of it that I think really helped a lot.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right. Lead with empathy.

Justin McKibben 
Yeah. Love that. Love that. Yeah, even company, the pandemic really like drove that home. Right? Here's a person I contact every single day we talk about all kinds of business stuff, yet. We haven't like to talk about anything personal. But during the pandemic, it's all you're doing. Because, yeah, people are changing their patterns. And they're freaked out because they're sitting at a kitchen table and their bandwidth on their internet. And you're seeing people come to a zoom call and a mom's got a baby on their lap and the dogs come in. Yeah, it's all these real lives. Human thinks.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. And I don't know about you, but nobody does business with their enemies. Agreed. Right? So and I think if you want better relationships, you got to invest in the people's time, right? And really understanding things of what matters to them. And I think that comes across if you do it, right, right, it's your super genuine, your authentic, you know, and it gets to the point where pricing doesn't matter so much, because people just like working with each other, and everybody's got kind of the same pricing anyway. So that doesn't really matter as much anymore. Because we're friends, and we're gonna it's all about the relationship and understanding. I'm here for you, I'm here for your growth, I can help you in ways that are beyond whatever is on the order form.

Justin McKibben 
I think the conversation of pricing is pricing a story. At the end of the day, pricing is just a story. So what kind of story are you building around why you charge what you charge? It's affordable, it's political, at the end of the day, you may not be pointing your business at the right target audience that then aligns with what you do better than anybody else. So is that customer going to pay for that? I mean, that's a big part of at scale, working with Melmarc. For example, at some point, the contract screenprinting approach to things for the larger audience just didn't make sense anymore. It just didn't make sense. Labor was increasing material costs were increasing. And it was one to two items that went into building the whole t-shirt. Right? Like, there was a design component. There was a development component. There was printing, there was packing, there was Trent there all the details. At the end of the day, we needed to provide more value, we needed to make a bigger impact in the business. And in order to do that, it couldn't be about capacity and ink. It needed to be about something bigger than that a different story than we were told previously.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right, right. And we've said it before quit selling ink on cotton.

Justin McKibben  
Yeah, 100%.

Marshall Atkinson 
Bria Problem Solver problem-solvers own the world, right solver problem, man, everybody's lining up to talk to you. Right, exactly. All right, so let's wind up with the last question here about data. And we talked about it, you know, at the beginning of the session here, so it really would stick to sales. Right. So what KPIs are you tracking? And how are you separating signal from noise, right? So how do we know that? You know, here's a giant page of numbers, okay, what do they mean, right? What are you looking at here?

Justin McKibben 
Right, right. So if I can frame up the idea of sales and I get pushback from this quite a bit. And in my opinion, this is where my consulting agency is really taken off is in the apparel manufacturing world. When someone says I'm looking for a salesperson, really what they're saying is they're looking for someone to generate leads, present the products, and continue to follow up and negotiate the deal, follow the deal through the organization, and then account manage it. Well, that's not sales, that's running a business, right. And at the end of the day, true sales is prospecting, presenting, and following up. And if you run it, a selling system efficiently, a salesperson's real job is just presenting. It is shaking hands, kissing babies, building rapport, and pitching products all day long. Right?

Marshall Atkinson 
In the Account Management part, I guess you're handing off to somebody that does that, well, that's got the skill.

Justin McKibben
 
That has the skill to be extremely detail-oriented, follow up on things that are critical to delivery dates, approvals, and so forth and kind of going through that. So framing not up to just the selling process of the key data that's I look at. So I look at a couple of different things. And that starts with the lead generation side of things. So specifically, how many introduction meetings for brand new customers do I meet with per week? Right, so I'm tracking Hey, I had two introduction meetings on Tuesday, two on Wednesday, two on Thursday. Right? So I'm tracking how many introduction meetings are in my habit.

Marshall Atkinson 

And that's just in a spreadsheet? You got a little notepad, next to your desk and pipeline do you do?

Justin McKibben 
I'm using Pipedrive CRM. So I've built a system of tracking that process to move a particular lead or prospect through a funnel of some sort.

Marshall Atkinson  
And that keeps you on track? Because you can look, because it's really at the end of the day, it's almost math, right? So if you want more closing, right, how many more opportunities this you know, so I was just talking about this earlier today with somebody it's like, if you want to hit more home runs, you got to have more opportunities at the play.

Justin McKibben 

100%. You got to be at play.

Marshall Atkinson 

You can't be doing anything from the dugout. Yeah, not at all. It's all about the action that you're taking. And so the guy I was talking to, he was talking about, he wanted more sales and everything. So I go Alright, so yesterday, just take yesterday, right? Who's the salesperson in your shop? He's like me, okay. Okay. So, you know, yesterday, how many minutes? Did you actually spend doing outbound sales activity? And he told me, he goes, 20 minutes, I go, Okay, well, 20 minutes ago, do you think that's enough? To hit your goals? Do you think he needs to spend more than 20 minutes on that? He goes, yes. I'm like, why didn't you write but here's the thing. He's not tracking that. So that was kind of what I was alluding to?

Justin McKibben 

When I speak to manufacturers. And we start to talk about the sales process, right? In this, like, what is the sales performance model that you have? What is your lead gen look like? What is your sales lead, and that qualifying process? And what is a prospect like really being clear about identifying those phases, and within there, each organization has their own point of view on things and this, but there are some basic principles, you know, when you start to look at, you know, the most successful sales organizations around the world, all of them run off of a system. It's interesting on the manufacturer side is we have amazing operational systems that run the back of the factory. It's the same thing on the front end of the business leads in conversion, X amount of meetings, conversion, X amount of closures, new deals, and like if you don't have that flow, so in my case, I have a person who just does lead gen. They hit 1000 contacts per week, which converts into 12 introduction meetings per week, which converts into six deals a month, brand new customers, and it just keeps stacking right now to your questions on the KPIs. The first thing is the introduction meetings, just you got to know how many you're doing right. And the second is qualified buyers. I've met with someone they've said one of two things. Hey, I got this resource for this right now. I love what you're doing but I'm not ready to move. Okay, so that goes into your tickler file of follow-up. The other guys might be completely qualified. The pricing looks good volume looks good. Relationships are right timing looks right. That's like what I would call A qualified buyer. Now you got to negotiate that. So you're tracking intro meeting the qualified buyers. And then the next thing is active deals. Now what's an active deal, being clear about an active deal is really important. I'm a firm believer and creating some type of sales order or proposal that outlines what they're buying from you, not just the price, the whole thing, right, they're buying for graphics at this volume at this, you know, they want you to design it, they want you to develop, they want to produce it, each organization has their own thing with that, right. But they're authorizing that contract, that sales order for you to move into an active deal. And then of course, the active deal has its phases that it's going through from, you know, whatever. So tracking intro meeting qualified buyer active deals, right, then you have that active deal that might turn into development or production, right, like it's moving into that where you actually get the bulk order, or, you know, there are variations of this within each manufacturer. But so I track the active deals and then open orders where I've designed the product. And now I have the bulk POS for right the actual volume that you're going to go to market with. And I'm tracking open orders, and then invoice sales dollars. And that's it. That's the flow from top to bottom. And surely I'm giving a very dialed-down version of the KPIs that I measure. But at the most basic level, it is a mathematical formula, right in converts to appointments, converts to X amount of deals. And you know, when you're inexperienced in what it is that you're selling, you need to make up in numbers, what you lack in skill, once you get the skill to do things. Now you can back off on the numbers, right? You don't need as many people in the top end of your funnel because it's accruing, right, you're building a network. And while that never should stop it, it gets tighter in the qualifications that you start measuring. And the type of customer that you're looking to serve is different.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right? And it goes to the phrase that I've used. I don't know how many years, Justin, you can't manage what you don't measure. Great. I agree. And so if you're not measuring Peter Drucker, Peter Drucker not measuring this stuff, how do you know what is going on? Right? We need a speedometer. Right. That's what we need. And so if you're listening right now, and you're shaking your head, yes, I need all at once you're not doing anything, you know, you need to put some of this stuff to action. Right. And maybe you don't want to spend the money and get Pipedrive, you know, a simple spreadsheet, or a whiteboard, or a legal pad where you're just taking notes, right, but you have to do something, otherwise, you don't know where you are and what's going on. And, and I think one of the things you know, is gonna come to no shock to you, Justin, I'm a big goal setter, right. And the goals don't actually have to be a monetary goal, they could just be the actions that I want to take, I want to do try these things or whatever, right? But you got to like, write them down. And you got to be looking at it. And if it's a sales goal, I like having a dashboard. If it's a production goal, I like having a dashboard, because it tells you where you are. Right? Either you're improving, or you're staying the same, or it's getting worse. Either way that tells you the actions you need to take. Because if it's getting better, you certainly want to keep doing whatever you're doing.

Justin McKibben 
Right? Well, if you're not measuring it, and you don't know what those things drive the business together. I mean, there's lots of information out there, and podcasts like this kind of narrow down to your, you know, understanding the noise that's potentially out there and bringing it full circle. Right.

Marshall Atkinson 
Great. All right. So thanks for sharing your story as successful as today, Justin. So thank you, Marshall. Somebody wants to learn more about what you do, or maybe how you can help them what's the best way to get ahold of you?

Justin McKibben 
The best way to areas Instagram and LinkedIn. You can reach me there. I'm very active on both of those. So you can reach me there at any time. Instagram handle is @justin_mckibben and LinkedIn, it's just Justin McKibben.

Marshall Atkinson 
Great. Alright. Well, thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate you.

Justin McKibben 
Thank you.