Review: Hyper Sales Growth ~ Jack Daly

‘Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.’
– Harry S. Truman

book-hyper-sales-growth-jack-daly-300x300Jack Daly has been on a tour of Southeast Asia the last few weeks. EO Philippines brought Jack in to speak to the chapter a couple weeks ago, then Jack dropped into Singapore to speak to the EO Singapore chapter follow by Jack being on of the keynotes for EO Brisbane’s Rob Nixon for his wildly popular accountant conference in Bali, Indonesia.

I was given a copy of Jack’s new book Hyper Sales Growth and it is a great read. It covers lots of great tips for building and running a sales organization. Some of the learning I took away from reading the book;

  • If you don’t have an assistant, you are one
  • Never quote price until you establish value
  • People are different, sell accordingly
  • We are what we think we are, raise the bar
  • Hire slowly; fire quickly. You are never “fully staffed”
  • Goals not in writing are dreams
  • Professionalism requires a lifelong learning. Instil a program of books, audio/videos, and seminars
  • plus much more…

The book is packed with solid, actionable tactics to growing your business. It is worth the read and it is even better to hit one of Jack’s events/webinars/seminars.

Last time he was in Vancouver, we arranged to get some one on one personal time with Jack. You can to… check out how we did it.

What book should I read next? Any suggestions, drop them in the comments. I’m always interested in sales development books.

On that note, here is what some of the team was reading a few months ago. I will get an updated list for a new post.

We even suggest books that applicants looking to work with us should read. Check out the list over on our jobs page.

Continue reading

The 8th Annual Proactive Accountants Conference: 12 to 16 July in Bali!

We recently spoke to Rob Nixon about his software business: Panalitix. It is a software as a service that provides accounting data from small businesses to accountants around the world.

Panalitix has an exciting event coming up that accountants should definitely catch. They are hosting their 8th Annual Proactive Accountants Conference between 12th and 16th of July. The conference will be in Bali, Indonesia. Accountants will get a chance to meet their colleagues, hear some great speakers and attend networking events (and of course, spend time in BALI!).

Jack Daly, will be the keynote speaker. Among other speakers, the conference will feature Keith Abraham, creator of Living with Passion, Daniel Priestley from the program Key Person of Influence, Tamara Trentain, digital marketing expert and Karen Abramson – CEO Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting.

Make sure to catch the conference in Bali! 375 accountants have already signed up for the event here.

To know more about outsourcing in the Philippines, you can read our blogposts featuring BPOs like VKW Inc, the Outsourced Accountant and Wint & Kidd. You can check out our executive interview section for all our interviews. You can also read our blog post on doing business in the Philippines, if you are looking for more information about BPOs in the country.

Continue reading

Executive Interview: Nicholas Sinclair, President of the Outsourced Accountant

As part of a new series on this blog we will be profiling PayrollHero users to learn more about them, their business, where they go to learn and best practices.

Nick-Sinclair-photoNick Sinclair is the President of the Outsourced Accountant. The company is a BPO in the Philippines that helps accounting firms in Australia and New Zealand improve their client value added services. We spoke to Nick about his experience in the Philippines.

  1. Tell us about your company.

The Outsourced Accountant is dedicated in helping Australian and New Zealand Accounting firms identify their current workflow blockages and employ the right team on a full-time basis to help them become proactive in client value added services. We are a BPO focused solely on this niche and our offering is unique and not like traditional BPO offerings.

  1. How and when did you realise the need for Australian businesses to outsource accounting?

I visited Manila for an Entrepreneurs Organization board conference approximately 3.5 years ago and I went and spent the day with Mike O’Hagan and saw his operation there, as well as a range of other businesses. This then got my mind racing and I then thought how I could flip my accounting and financial planning business to become more efficient and allow my Australian team to actually add value to clients. This then grew into a business when others in my industry saw what we were doing and didn’t want to reinvent the wheel so we started an outsourcing business based on what frustrated us most with the providers we used in Manila. I understand that most accounting firms are buried in paperwork and process-driven tasks, causing them to lose focus on adding value to clients. We want to help these firms get back to client facing work by having an offshore team who can take care of all the compliance and administration work.

  1. Where are you headquartered?

Our office in the Philippines is situated in Clark Freeport Zone, while our headquarters in Australia is located in Queensland.

  1. How many locations do you have in the Philippines? Why did you choose this location versus other locations that are perceived more conventional (i.e: why Clark over Manila)?

Just one inside Philexcel Business Park in Clark.

I prefer Clark over Manila because it’s a lot quieter and less congested environment. A lot of our team members who live within the region have already worked in Manila, since it’s obviously one of the biggest work environments in the Philippines, but they wanted to come home and live with their families. Here in Clark, it’s easier to get to work as people will not be sitting in traffic for hours. We’re very much about work-life balance with our team over here so we want them to spend more time with their families.

Moreover, Clark is accessible to expressways, has its own international airport, and enjoys a variety of amenities and government incentives. We also have a talent pool of close to 8 million people with very little competition (compared to Manilla and other regions).

  1. What was the biggest roadblock to establishing yourself in the Philippines?

The biggest roadblock was the time that I had to spend being in the Philippines, being away from the family and missing out on school events of the kids as I was constantly away.

The biggest roadblock to setting up in the Philippines is the legislation and getting the right advice as it isn’t straight forward and you need to register with multiple departments and each department needs the others approval. There are lots of experts who charge anywhere from $1500 to $10,000 AUD to provide this advice but a lot of the time they dont know what they are talking about. We struggled until we found a local lawyer, who is well connected and has a wealth of experience and endless connections. The other challenge is no one tells you all the things you need to have to even operate, things like Workplace health and safety approval, fire approval, a company nurse when you hit certain levels of staff. There is a lot more involved then get an office, hire some staff and your off.

6.  Was there an unexpected outcome (positive or not) from moving into the Philippines?

The business we now have was an unexpected outcome. We originally did this to service our own firm’s needs, but we have since grown to 180 team members in less than 18 months and I have now sold my accounting and financial planning business to focus on our outsourcing business.
Outsourced Accountant BPO

  1. How do you see this industry changing over the next few years?

I believe the industry is going to go through continued growth, but more BPO’s will start to niche in specific industries rather than be generalist BPO’s as this market is starting to become flooded with new BPO’s.

  1. What were your evaluation criteria before you chose the Philippines? Were there any other countries you were considering?

We had tried outsourcing in India, Vietnam and in Australia (and failed in all). The Philippines wins hands down.

The Philippines has a strong english culture, a strong accounting workforce and an even better number of accounting graduates coming out each year (its one of the main degrees Filipinos complete). The time zone suits perfectly as its only two hours behind for all Eastern states of Australia and the same time zone for Perth.

  1. What do you read to keep yourself up to date with your industry and the clients you are serving?

I don’t get too caught up in the BPO industry information, I focus on what is happening in the accounting industries in Australia and New Zealand. We focus on knowing our client, and talking to them regularly so we can continue to tailor our offering to meet there needs. We aren’t a traditional BPO. We also read a lot of industry information, specifically from industry thought leaders like Rob Nixon.

  1. What advice would you give a businessman moving into the Philippines, that you wish you knew before moving to the country?

It isn’t as easy as some people make it out to be (or it looks to be). I have had so many people say that we have had massive growth and made it look easy, but they don’t see all the work that goes on behind the scenes to deliver what we do. The Philippines isn’t a straight forward place to operate, its very paper based and not technology based which makes it hard. I also would say don’t employ an expat that hasn’t had experience managing a business the size you want to grow to. I have seen many expats that couldn’t manage 50 people in Australia but are managing more than this in the Philippines and failed due to lack of experience. There is plenty of local talent that have significant experience, so look locally (we just hired a gun Country Manager that has over 20 years’ experience managing large operations and he is a gun).

  1. What results that you delivered to your clients are you most proud of? 

The growth of our business is testament that we are on the right track. 60% of our current growth is from existing clients putting more people on. We have plenty of case studies on it working for our clients. The comment we get regularly is our team are world class and pick it up quicker than our clients expect them to.

  1. How has PayrollHero helped streamline your business? 

First of all, it made timekeeping more convenient. It has let us process calculations accurately, and kept us compliant with tax regulations. It also made it easy to manage and generate reports for government statutory benefits since the required forms are already provided and automatically filled.

The big benefit is our leadership team can login to the system, anywhere in the world to see the stats at a quick glance. The system has allowed us to focus on time and attendance and manage this as one of our business’s key strategic goals, and with tardiness being less than 1% late per day and attendance at 98% average for the year to date it is working (compared to the industry average).

  1. How did you run payroll before you found out about PayrollHero?

Before, we used biometrics door access control system for timekeeping, and we did payroll processing with excel spreadsheets. PayrollHero has certainly sped the process up and made it significantly more trackable and accurate.

14. What convinced you to choose PayrollHero over other payroll software     vendors?

The unique TAS (Time, Attendance and Schedule) feature wherein team members have to take selfie photos to clock-in and out plus the good client experience (contact persons are accommodating; quick response time on queries raised) from inquiry to sign-up stage made us decide to go for PayrollHero.

Continue reading

Executive Interview: Rob Nixon, CEO & Founder of PANALITIX

Rob NixonRob Nixon is the CEO and Founder of PANALITIX, a software as a service (SaaS) platform that provides analytical accounting data from small businesses to accountants around the world. Rob does a lot of education work in Australia and New Zealand with accountants and showing them how/why to outsource to the Philippines. We did a question and answer with Rob about his experience with the Philippines.

1. Can you tell me a bit more about yourself and your business? 
  • PANALITIX is a software as a service (SaaS) that provides analytical accounting data from small businesses to Accountants around the world
  • I have been working with Accountants for 21 years yet I m not one – I left school when I was 16
  • This is my 8th company and by far the most exciting
  • I educate Accountants on how to run a better business and how they can help their clients run better businesses
  • I constantly tell accountants they need to outsource repetitive tasks to lower cost labour in developing countries
  • I have been outsourcing to India for 4 years and the Philippines for 2 years.
2. Why do Aussie’s outsource to the Philippines?
  • We love the time zone difference – 2 hours
  • We love the English speaking abilities
  • We love the abundance of labour
  • We love the cost benefit – Australia is 5 times more expensive for the same task when all costs are added
3. What are the benefits? 
  • Definitely cost – 5 times difference
  • Eagerness to work – the Philippine team member wants to work and they work hard
  • easy to get along with
  • The service culture means they want to serve and please their customers
4. What are some of the downsides you have seen with outsourcing?
  • if you don’t train the new team or give them clear instructions if will not work
  • you have to initially travel to get the team up and running*

(*Note: Check out our other post about Mike O’Hagan’s Manila tours)

5. What are some of the best practices others should follow?
  • create good systems so the worker knows what to do
  • have good quality IT so solid communication can take place quickly
  • have 100% of systems cloud based – no transfer of files.
6. Do you suggest your clients start outsourcing to a company? or setup their own Philippine company?
  • Not initially. Go through a BPO and get the hang of working with a remote team.
  • Then when the team is 20+ think about incorporating.
  • If you’re going to have a team over 10 people there needs to be management in place to keep them working
7. You talk about “future proofing” – how can more people learn about future proofing their businesses?  
  • My latest seminar tour is in Australia and New Zealand in July & August. Covering 12 cities.
  • It is designed for Accounting firms and their team members
  • Full day workshop on how to to future proof the accounting firm and remain relevant.

Continue reading

BUY Crocodile in the Yangtze – The Alibaba Story

seat-giveawayWe had the honour of presenting the Asia Premier of the film Crocodile in the Yangtze – The Alibaba Story in the Philippines just over a year ago. We flew in the director, Porter Erisman so that we could watch the film as well as do a question and answer with Porter after.

It was an amazing video and a fantastic night. We had tech entrepreneurs from all over Southeast Asia fly in to join the event and take in one of the most entertaining movies on entrepreneurship. Of course a big thanks to EO Philippines and Amazon for stepping up and sponsoring the event so that it could all be possible.

Did you miss the event? Want to own the movie? We now you can. Crocodile in the Yangtze – The Alibaba Story is now available for pre-order on Vimeo on Demand.

Here is the trailer:

PipelineDeals Is Coming To Southeast Asia

Screen Shot 2014-04-01 at 7.49.45 PMWe moved our sales CRM needs over to PipelineDeals a few months ago after we were introduced to the founder JP Werlin. We began using their platform to see how it compared to Highrise (which we were currently using) or Salesforce (which we were considering). We ended up moving to PipelineDeals as it is a smooth setup process, had all of the features we were looking for and was a cost effective option.

PayrollHero is a business to business software as a service platform focused on restaurants, retails and the BPO industry (outsourcing / office environments). We end up dealing with the CEO, COO, Head of HR, Head of Payroll, store managers and district managers as part of the sales process. PipelineDeals lets us manage these relationships, the potential deal amount, all of the correspondence plus much more.

Are you interested in checking out PipelineDeals for your business… signup here and use our referral code for 30 days free. Let us know what you think?
*Referral Code: PayrollHeroPipeline

As part of writing this post, I reached out to JP Werlin and asked him for 5 tips to get the most out of PipelineDeals, here is what he answered with:

Five tips to get the most out of PipelineDeals

1 – Use Page Tips

Page Tips are helpful hints that are available on every page in PipelineDeals. Click on the “?” icon at the top of the screen on any page in the app and click Page Tips to receive tips, support articles, and videos related to the page. This is a great way to learn about the features in PipelineDeals

2 – Save a Filter

It’s easy to filter and save lists in PipelineDeals to view custom reports of your data. To save a filter, click on the Advanced filter button on the Deals, People, or Companies tab and click to Save Filter. Saved filters are helpful for creating custom reports, contact or leads lists, and deal pipeline summaries. For more info, check out this helpful video.

3 – Download the iPhone or Android App

PipelineDeals has a dedicated iPhone and Android App that syncs seamlessly with your PipelineDeals account. These free mobile apps are great for accessing your data while you’re away from your laptop or desktop. Download these apps directly from the App Store or Google Play Store.

4 – Track Emails

PipelineDeals also makes it easy to track all of your communication in one place. With PipelineDeals email tracking features, you can track emails as activities using our simple BCC tracking feature. Add cc@pipelinedeals.com in the BCC field to any email and automatically track your emails as activities. Click this helpful article for more details.

5 – Create a Task Template

Task templates are a great way to automate custom workflows in the app. Use a task template to automate a series of todo’s like lead qualification, solutions development, or preparation for a presentation. With task templates, PipelineDeals makes it easy to develop custom workflows that will make your sales team more efficient.

Manila Founders Dinner; Champetre

founders dinnerEvery few weeks we organize “founders dinners” in different cities around the world. The idea is to bring together entrepreneurs who are working on interesting projects to learn from each other, share stories and enjoy a meal. We have organized these dinner in Vancouver, Whistler, Seattle, San Francisco, Manila and Singapore.

Last nights dinner was at Champetre, one of the oldest restaurants in Fort Bonifacio, Philippines and a fantastic choice. Marc the French owner/chef has a solid menu with lots of options for all tastes.

In attendance were Bryce Maddock CEO of Taskus.com, Adam Keogh GM of Employers Mutual, Rafael Romualdez, JP Werlin CEO of Pipeline Deals, Nick Franklin MD of Asia for Zendesk, Mark Yu CFO of SeaOil and myself.

How To Hack An Event To Get The Most Out of a Speaker

booth

Some of our team members including Mike Stephenson, Adam Baechler, Ron Maravilla and myself attended the Vancouver Chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) event today which was led by Jack Daly, world renown sales expert and coach. We had the honour of being able to showcase our product and meet with other business professionals from diverse industries. As a fun and exciting way to surprise everyone, we set up our iOS TeamClock app to have almost everyone that RSVP’d for the event in a PayrollHero account setup as an employee and ready to clock in. Seeing the surprised look on peoples face to see their own photo was quite entertaining!

The focus of Jack’s presentation was around smart selling in regards to creating leveraged growth with systems & processes. Through his 50 years of sales experience, Jack has more knowledge and passion for the subject that anyone you have ever met. He kept everyone engaged, inspired and laughing with his charisma and insightful techniques in the sales management arena.

How To Hack An Event To Get The Most Out of a Speaker;
Knowing Jack to be extremely sought after for events with a very busy schedule, we worked hard to arrange in advance that we could provide him with a ride to the airport on us to both thank him for his time in Vancouver and pick his brain on subjects of importance to our team. Always being the true professional, we learned more about his background and personal experiences while still finding time to give us direct feedback on our companies objectives, systems and requirements. As a group we can all agree Jack is a magnificent speaker and coach on sales and we highly recommend him for your next conference. Check out his site for more information!

This is not the first time we have used this technique to get more face time with someone. PayrollHero co-founder Steve Jagger once offered to drive a member of the media to work after she mentioned on Twitter that buses were not running due to snow. Steve jumped at the opportunity to meet with her, learn more about what she was writing and talk more about our company. He offered to drive her to work as he was “on his way downtown”. Which of course he was not, but took the opportunity to meet up with her.

Another time, Lean Startup visionary Eric Ries was in Whistler, Canada with his wife for work and tweeted that he had some downtime. This was long before we had an office in Whistler, Steve responded on Twitter that he and Mike would love to meet up for a beer. Eric responded that he could do that, thinking that we were in Whistler as well. They hopped into their car in Vancouver and drove an hour to Whistler to meet up with him.

Moral of the story, we keep our eyes open for opportunity and are not afraid to hustle!


Here are some more photos from the EO Vancouver event with Jack Daly

booth2 Jean Loic Jason Lindstrom jack dalyteamclock

Inaugural “Better Business Brunch” in Manila

I was invited to speak at the inaugural “Better Business Brunch” that New Leaf Ventures was holding at the new Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Fort Bonifacio, Philippines.  The New Leaf Ventures team expected about 40 attendees but that number was far exceeded when over 80 people packed into CBTL to take part.

The idea for the Better Business Brunch is to bring in a speaker a month to share details about new technologies and how you can run a better business.  I was pleased to be asked to speak at the first event.

My talk was a similar one that I have done for many EO Chapters around the world, except it was condensed to fit the time slot for this event.  In my presentation I ran through many of the tools that we use within PayrollHero as well as how PayrollHero itself works for the Philippines.  I talked about SlimTimer.com, 15Five, Wikis, Google Docs, Zendesk, Google Hangouts, Facebook, Twitter, Adroll and much more.  Overall it was a fantastic event.  I think next time they will have to book out the whole place!

417965_10152853728165243_1285284035_n 420307_10152853728615243_2011148723_n 486645_607864692559937_690795795_n 941916_374747519313278_1295351702_n 943082_10152853727875243_1782022805_n

Entrepreneurs’ Organization Global Leadership Conference Manila

photo 3I had the honor of speaking at the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) Global Leadership Conference (GLC) in Manila this past week.  The GLC is a 3 day event that takes place twice a year.  It is an event that brings together the leaders of every chapter of EO from all over the world, this year, Panama City and Manila were the chosen locations.

The topic I spoke on was “Online Tools To Cut Costs And Grow Your Business“.  The 90 minute presentation is a quick run through of many tools that we use within our business to not only operate the company but grow the business.  My business partner and PayrollHero’s CEO Michael Stephenson is the driving force behind many of these tools we use to operate the business.  His constant focus on kaizen (read: improvement) drives our team to continue moving forward.  The second portion of the presentation is about promotion and includes parts from my book Sociable! as well as some of the tools that we use within the company to grow the business.  Many of these tools we have been using for quite some time and some we are testing in Southeast Asia.

photo 1-1I have spoken to quite a few EO Chapters all over the world as well as the 2009 GLCs in Hong Kong and New Orleans and EO always does it right.  The events are top notch, designed to “wow” the EO members and show them the local area. This one in Manila was no exception.

The first night there was an opening cocktail party in the Makati Shangri-la Hotel followed by the choice of 3 dinners put on by EO Philippine members.  I choose the “Taste of Bordeaux”  dinner.  It was a fantastic dinner put on by EO Philippine member Edouard Miailhe who splits his time between Manila and Bordeaux where his family owns Chateau Siran Margaux winery.  The dinner was at the ‘Old Manila’ restaurant in The Peninsula Hotel which was kindly opened up for the event.  Edouard had paired 6 of his wineries wines with a fantastic dinner and explained how they came to be.  It was a truly once in a life time event.
photo 2-1

photo 3-1

The next day, after the sessions for the leaders of each chapter were complete, EO organized a dinner at the Shangri-la Hotel. It was quite a spectacle   They presented dinner in a way I had never seen before.  About 6 roasted pigs were dressed in clothes and carried into the ballroom with quite a fanfare, followed by a talk from the creator of the very successful “Its More Fun In The Philippines” worldwide marketing campaign.

photo 5

photo 2

photo 4The last night was a big surprise as no one knew what was in store.  Everyone (over 400 people) was told to be in the lobby of the Shangri-la to meet our transportation to dinner.  EO had organized a whole bunch of air-conditioned jeepneys to take us to the National Museum of the Philippines.  It was a great ride as all of the jeepneys had karaoke in them.  Upon arrival to the museum, waiting to welcome us outside was a great band, multiple spot lights shooting into the air and the whole outside of the building lit up.  One foot in the door and there were many servers standing by with wine.  It was a great way to arrive at dinner.  After dinner we were transported by bus to a new nightclub called Hyve that has not officially opened yet.  Overall it was another amazing EO event and the EO Philippine team as well as EO Global should be very proud.
photo 5