Dave Cain: Welcome to unsuitable on Rea Radio, the award winning financial services and business advisory podcast that challenges your old school business practices and the traditional business suit culture. Our guest are industry professionals and experts who will challenge you to think beyond the suit and tie while offering you meaningful modern solutions to help enhance your company’s growth. I’m your host Dave Cain.
Relationships are critical in business regardless of your industry or what you offer your customers. Today’s guest for example, plays primarily in the dental industry, however you’ll find the relationship strategies he’s used over the course of his career can be used to drive success in all businesses. Matt Scherer, president of PMA Practice Transition, a dental practice sales and transition company serving clients in Ohio and Pennsylvania, spent nearly 17 years with Bank of America before embarking on his current role. And while these two careers appear to be completely separate, you’ll learn why they have more in common than you think.
On this episode of unsuitable, Matt’s going to give us some networking business development and referral relationship tips that can help you drive results in your own company. Welcome to Unsuitable Matt.
Matt Scherer: Thank you, glad to be here.
Dave: Good to see you. Before we begin, I did notice in your bio that you retired from the United States Navy Reserve in 2008 after serving 20 and a half years of service.
Matt: That is correct.
Dave: And certainly on behalf of our listeners and the employees at Rea and Associates, we want to thank you.
Matt: Thank you.
Dave: Well done. We mentioned that you’re the president of PMA Practice Transitions even though we’re not talking about that entity today, why don’t you fill us in? Give us a little elevator speech of what you guys do.
Matt: Sure. PMA Practice Transitions is a dental sales organization where we help sell dental practices for the doctor who wants to exit. I work with buyers and sellers, sellers obviously are my main source of income, but I work with the buyers as well to transition the practice smoothly.
Dave: We mentioned Ohio and Pennsylvania but actually you go all over the country to do this deal.
Matt: We’re starting out in Ohio and Pennsylvania but the goal is to obviously grow this and spread our wings, so to speak and venture out into other markets. Try to stay within a three hour radius right now of the Cleveland area.
Dave: Cleveland area.
Matt: Covers pretty much the Cincinnati through western PA up through Erie.
Dave: So you’re a Cleveland guy.
Matt: Cleveland guy. Born and raised.
Dave: How the Browns going to do this year.
Matt: Hopefully, we’ll see.
Dave: We’ll see. You’re not going out on a limb?
Matt: I’m a true blue Browns fans and I just get disappointed every year, hopefully this year will be different.
Dave: I think the over under’s four and a half wins. You see four?
Matt: I take the under.
Dave: Take the under.
Matt: Right now take the under, we’ll see after tonight, how about that?
Dave: Good, good. I want to go back before we start to PMA again, just statistics that you gave us, make sure that we have this correct. But I did see that over the course of your career you’ve been involved with 550 dental transactions in excess of 226 million bucks.
Matt: That is correct.
Dave: Let me read that again. That’s pretty impressive. 550 dental transactions in excess of 226 million.
Matt: Yes.
Dave: You don’t do that, you don’t get to that place with doing a lot of networking.
Matt: That is very true.
Dave: And that is what we’re going to talk about a little bit. Talk to us a little bit about the quality and the quantity of building a network. What’s your secret?
Matt: I take you back a little bit to when I started with the group called Practice Solutions. It’s a healthcare lending division for Bank of America. I primarily was dental, although when I started I was doing dental, vet and medical financing. I would say probably 90% of my business was in the dental space. When I took over my market, my market was five states. I had Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, West Virginia and Indiana. The gentleman who I took over for had a larger territory, he had those states plus D.C., New York, New Jersey. Lived in New Jersey, so you can imagine he didn’t get that over this way too much. When I took over the position, I had a small network of centers of influences. People who would send me business. My job was, as they called a business development officer is to go out there and find more business.
When I took it over, I think the territory was doing $3 million a year and that was just low hanging fruit. The stuff that he was picking off the ground. My job was to grow my universe list, is what we called it. Your universe list is your centers of influence. People who can provide you business. I hit the streets running and it’s turning over every rock and looking under every little crevice to find out who is an influence in the dental community. That’s talking to buyers, that’s talking to brokers who they use, who’s the CPA that you use doc? Who’s the attorney on the deal? And then getting their name and getting their information and then contacting them and building that network from there.
Dave: Your universal list, and that applies whether you’re pursuing dental business, CPA business, your marketing business, architect, legal, it’s all the same blueprint and I think you’ll attest, that’s not an eight to five job.
Matt: It is not.
Dave: In fact you might argue most of that networking is after five o’clock.
Matt: Correct.
Dave: Or before eight o’clock.
Matt: Right.
Dave: I suppose you had to find out, we’ll stick with dental for a second, you pretty much had to find out where do the dental contacts, where the dentists hang out.
Matt: Yes. Correct.
Dave: And they’re working eight to five so you gotta find them.
Matt: Exactly. And a lot of that, as you stated, is after hours. Or after the five o’clock hour, if you will.
Dave: Did you adjust your day accordingly? Or did you just work tremendously long days?
Matt: Little bit of both. I would say the average week was probably 65 plus hours. Especially in the beginning because I had to build, I had a very small network when I started so I had to build this network and I built it from maybe 20 contacts to probably over 70 when I put in my two week notice.
Dave: So it was meet people, meet people and meet more people.
Matt: Meet people, meet people and find out who they meet and who they meet and who they meet. And build in that network and then going to meet those people and finding out if they’re a player in the market. The way I built my territory was you had A, B, C players and one, two, three players. An A players was somebody who had a lot of business for you. The one, two, three was, one, they were on my page 100% or close to 100%. Two they were 50/50 and then three they weren’t on my page as far as giving me business. Obviously the Bs, they have some business and the Cs really don’t have a lot of business. I would rank them, A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3. So I set up my universe like that and then obviously your A1s are your players, people who can give you the most amount of business and who are in your page and support you all the time. The A2s and A3s are the ones that you work that quite a bit. Same with the Bs. The B1 or the B2s, the B3s.
Dave: I would assume, and you can attest to this is that over the course of your career, you learned to, how to target and look at the quality leads versus the quantity and I would guess you probably spent a lot of time going down the wrong street with the wrong referral and we all laugh at that but we know what that means.
Matt: You’re right, part of the process is meeting somebody for the first time. Even if they end up being a C3, you want to meet with them, you want to talk to them, you want to see what they are and what they’re all about and if you can give them business and they can give you business. I’ll tell you, you may not meet with the C3s all the time or the A3s but you certainly keep them in your list and you certainly keep in contact with them ’cause you just never know when they can be, turn to an A2 or an A1 or from C to an A. Things of that nature.
Dave: Over the course of my career, I spent a lot of time with a lot of business development folks, as I get to them, they just know, they, after they get the experience, they know where to go. They know what to do. They don’t necessarily need a very sophisticated piece of software to keep track of the leads but as we all get older we forget that stuff and forget those leads. You have any advice or software or lead software? How do you track this thing? Other than in between your ears? It’s all going to be between the ears.
Matt: It is going to be between the ears. If possible at Bank of America we used a CRM product that kept track of everything. We’re in the process of implementing through PMA a CRM product so that we can better keep of track of things. But right now I do it the old school way, I use an Excel spreadsheet. Which is a little daunting and tasking at times but I think once we have a CRM in place, that’ll help tremendously.
Dave: You mentioned early on, networking has changed. There’s social media, are you using social media to network? LinkedIn, Twitter, are you using a lot of that?
Matt: Absolutely. All the dental practices that I list today go onto LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
Dave: And when did you start using that? In the last several years?
Matt: When I was at Bank of America, they’re very, Bank of America’s very protective of it’s brand, it wasn’t really in the social media game as much as they should have been. Starting to turn that corner but I was absolutely, from day one, when I started at PMA, I told Rebecca, we have to get on social media and get this out because that’s where the dentists are, especially on Facebook, all the younger people are out on Facebook.
Dave: And you found that out by out networking and asking questions and visiting. That’s how you found that piece out.
Matt: Absolutely.
Dave: You’re not going to find that sitting at your desk.
Matt: No.
Dave: You’ve got to just meet and talk.
Matt: That’s it.
Dave: Piece of advice for a, let’s start with, a young business developer. Are there two or three pieces of advice you can give that individual? And again, it doesn’t matter what industry they’re in, it’s just, this is business development, meeting people. Give us some advice, you’re very experienced in this area. Even though you need some gray hair.
Matt: That’ll come in time.
Dave: That’ll come in time. Silver, it’s silver hair, not gray.
Matt: Silver haired, that’s right. I would say if you’re starting out as a young person, first of all, figure out your niche, where you want to go. And then look everywhere. Turn over every rock, look under every crevice. You just never know where that person might be that could provide you business. And talk to everybody and find out, I think one of the keys is to find out who’s in the network. Hey Dave, who do you speak to? Who’s your center of influences? And then you go to them and continue and grow that way. I think that’s the best way and don’t be afraid to call somebody and have a conversation.
Dave: Ask for leads?
Matt: Ask for leads, absolutely. Ask who they know. Ask, ask, ask.
Dave: What kind of entertainment dollars do you spend in a week or a month in the networking? Maybe a loaded question but obviously you gotta spend a fair amount of time, dinners, other social events. That has to be in the budget.
Matt: It is. Really don’t have a, I shouldn’t say we don’t have an entertainment budget, Alan might hear this and not be happy with it.
Dave: You have an unlimited budget.
Matt: That’s right.
Dave: All right, love it.
Matt: I can speak at …
Dave: Sales guys never love a budget.
Matt: You can’t put a number on it.
Dave: No it doesn’t, that’s right.
Matt: You do what you can and you spend what you can but you’re reasonable. Lunches, dinners, light entertainment. When I started at Bank of America we had pretty much no budget, carte blanche. It’s take people out to ballgames and get to know people and wine and dine them and things like that. Obviously I have my network built, I didn’t have to do that at PMA. Not suggesting that you go out and spend a lot of money but you don’t need to. A lunch here and there with somebody goes a long way.
Dave: With a network and creating your universe list, how often would you stay in touch with the members of your universe list.
Matt: All the time. I’d go through it and call who I hadn’t called in, depending on if they’re an A, B, C, one, two, three, obviously you’re A1s you’re going to be calling probably weekly just having conversation, bringing up if there’s something new out there or something that you heard in the industry, things like that just so that you’re not calling them to just call them.
I say there’s three types of meetings that you have with somebody. I’ll back up a little bit. You have a business meeting, you have a business meeting/personal meeting and then you have a personal meeting. So you gotta mix those three together. It can’t always be about business when you’re calling people. Hey how’s the kids? I heard this, I heard you were interested and I knew you’d like car racing. Or there’s a big race this weekend, are you going? Things like that.
Dave: Is the tribe going to go on a run? Stuff like that.
Matt: Right, exactly. You have to do those types of things so it’s not all about just entertaining and things like that. Going through the list, obviously like I said, your A1s you’re going to call all the time. At least once a week. The A2s, the A3s, obviously you’re going to call A3s quite a bit too believe it or not. It’s probably as much as your A1s ’cause they’re not on your page yet so you’ve got to get them on your page. The Bs and the Cs, you’re going to determine, you’re going to know how often you have to call those people. It might be once a quarter that you call them. But you always want to stay in touch with everybody on your universe list ’cause you never know if you can get, let’s say a C1, somebody who has some business but not a lot of business. If you can get 10 C1s, that’s 10 deals that you didn’t get if you never called that person.
Dave: Right. So you have a grading, internal grading system of your universal list so I think, I hear you recommendation would be, no matter what your grading list is whether it’s A, B, C, red, white, blue, green, yellow, you have to have some kind of grading list to support your efforts and help you with your efforts, it’s just a organizational piece.
Matt: Correct. And I also use it to track how much business I got from each source.
Dave: And you use an Excel spreadsheet to do that?
Matt: I used an Excel spreadsheet to do that.
Dave: You pretty good in Excel?
Matt: No not really.
Dave: You have one of those tables that turns or whatever that’s called? What is that?
Matt: I have no idea how to do that. I’m not an Excel guy. I can make a column, that’s about it. I can put a number in it.
Dave: Does your Excel sheet have colors on it and stuff?
Matt: No. No colors. But I head it by state.
Dave: Head it by state.
Matt: I head it by state.
Dave: That’s a start. Can you sort it? You sort it?
Matt: Yeah, I can sort it. I can do that.
Dave: You know they have Excel classes.
Matt: I know.
Dave: At the universities up. It costs you like 99 bucks. You can probably do one online.
Matt: Right.
Dave: Put that in your budget since you don’t have a budget.
Matt: I should. I didn’t say I didn’t have a budget.
Dave: You said you didn’t know what the budget is. You have a budget.
Matt: I have a budget.
Dave: You just choose to ignore that. Again, it’s maybe repetitive of what we talked about before, but your top three things that you do with your universal list? I think it’s worth repeating, we said it a couple times but what are your three top things that go through your mind as you’re going through your list, your Excel list? Obviously you go through a cadence in your head. Can you share that? Can you identify that?
Matt: I can. I think I touched on it already, first thing is go through that list constantly. One of the things I didn’t mention is whether you’re one year in the industry or 10 plus years in the industry, you can always grow your universe list because people enter it and they leave it. You never want to get comfortable with just, okay I’ve got these great 10 sources, I’m going to stick with them and move on ’cause, I tell you, people leave the market and then, like I said, you never know when a C player becomes an A player. I would say, continue to grow whether you’ve been the market for a long time or not, continue to grow that list, or try to continue to grow.
Dave: Don’t get comfortable.
Matt: Don’t get comfortable.
Dave: Persevere.
Matt: That’s it. If you could add a person a year. That was my goal, was to add a new source a year. Now this was 10 years after being in the industry and I pretty much knew everybody who was a player in the market. But you’d be surprised, there were new players that pop up.
Dave: Now this is kind of a give and take game where in your universe list you’re going to ask for a lead.
Matt: Yes.
Dave: Are you going to give them a lead?
Matt: Absolutely.
Dave: And you track that on your Excel spreadsheet. Give and get.
Matt: Give and get. You gotta give a little to get a little.
Dave: Obviously something’s been working for you. If I go back to the statistics where over the course of your career you’ve dealt with a excess of $226 million in transactions so whatever you’re doing it’s got to be working long term. I think there’s a lot going on there. Just before we, we just have a few minutes left, let’s just wrap up in my mind what I’ve heard you say is number one, quality versus quantity with regard to building a network.
Matt: Yes.
Dave: Quality of your network. Doesn’t do any good if we have a 100 D players.
Matt: That’s right.
Dave: We need major league players on there. Second thing is just, it helps you who to target on that list. Continue to target and work and really hard to continue to build those referrals, give and take, look at that list time and time again.
Matt: Absolutely.
Dave: That kind of wrap it up?
Matt: Absolutely.
Dave: Our guest today’s been Matt Scherer, president of PMA Practice Transition. Thanks again for joining us today on unsuitable, great insight.
Matt: Wasn’t as painful as somebody told me it was going to be.
Dave: Well see you’re a good guest and I think what we’d like to do is you’d be great one on one resource for in training or a lot of people who want to get into the business development, I think you’d have a great to offer and in exchange maybe they can show you how to use Excel.
Matt: There you go.
Dave: A little bit.
Matt: Works for me.
Dave: Have you wanted to see a podcast in action? Now you can. Check out the Rea and Associates channel on YouTube to watch episodes of this podcast and other great videos from Rea. You can also check out our website at reacpa.com podcast for additional articles and insight. As always, don’t forget to subscribe to Unsuitable on iTunes. Until next time, I’m Dave Cain encouraging you to loosen up your tie and think outside the box.