Mark Wainwright 0:00

As your firm heads into the fourth quarter and starts looking forward to next year, it's important to start to think about sales planning and revenue planning, for your firm in the coming year. Some firms do this. All too many, though, just cross their fingers and pray that next year is gonna work out just fine.

John Tyreman 0:41

All right. Welcome to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. I'm John, he's Mark. And Mark, We are entering Q4 it is planning season, as we like to say in the agency world. you have some perspective on some best practices and some traps that firms might fall into. And I'm excited to, to do this one with you today, Mark, because, you've got some cool visuals to share and, uh, I like the way that you've approached this.

Mark Wainwright 1:09

Yeah. the concept of, planning, strategic planning, God, that, that word just, just drives me crazy,

John Tyreman 1:14

know.

Mark Wainwright 1:14

tis the season, right? As we, as, summer's in the, just about in the rear view mirror and we start, start looking forward for sure. and I think we've actually talked a little bit about revenue planning, sales planning and, in many different ways. this is a specific framework. and it's actually a widely adopted sort of way to look at, planning for revenue and sales, in the coming year. And it, brings together, stuff you've already got on a contract, stuff that is, pie in the sky, and pipeline and all that. So it brings it together in a more orderly sort of structure and framework in here.

John Tyreman 1:51

But Mark,

Mark Wainwright 1:52

yeah.

John Tyreman 1:52

aren't, aren't they the same thing, revenue planning and sales planning?

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 1:56

No, they're not. They're not. And, and and honestly, This gets me tripped up a, a lot with some of my clients because most of my clients and rightfully so, are, very focused on revenue, right? And revenue is the work you work and then you bill it and then you, get paid and there's your, there's your revenue. all makes sense, right? I kind of introduce and lean heavily on sales planning, and sales planning just, pushes us, pushes our eyeballs further out into the, into the future. So revenue planning's obviously important, right? It's usually built around sort of a monthly cadence. A lot of firms that I work with develop sort of a, a target number, right? So What do we need to bill every single month in order to, hit our target throughout the course of our 12 months ahead, right? So this, this drives, how many employees you have, their salaries, other operating expenses, discretionary spending, all different kinds of things, right? This is, this is, this, this funds the machine, right? So sales planning pushes our, our eyes a little bit further out onto the horizon. Sales planning is more about growth and intention and areas of focus, right? Where, where is the market moving? How do we need to change and grow our, our business in a particular area? if you're an organization who has different types of services, maybe there are certain services that are opportunities for growth and others may be less so. So sales planning starts to take in all of this and actually, instead of just running the machine, it starts to, steer the ship potentially in slightly different directions. So it's different. It's further out. and this exercise that we're gonna talk through today kind of marries those two things, I think, well, so that we're talking both sort of the real nuts and bolts of revenue, but also the, the, future sort of contract values and sales that you're hoping to close.

Track 1 3:54

that's a really great way to, to think about it, Mark. the sales planning is really the desired outcomes of the activities that you're going to put into place to steer the firm in the direction that you wanna go. And I, I'm curious, like those conversations that you have with clients, how far along into, into that, that like strategy conversation are they? Or is it, is this happening at the same time as strategies are being developed? Or is this something to where like a strategy is defined and then it's how does that translate into dollars?

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 4:28

Well, I think we've talked about this a little bit in the past in, in that I, I think this informs better strategy because it's, it's, it's focused on real dollars and cents, Right. It's focused on revenue dollars and cents and also sales, you know, contract values, So it's, it grounds all of that, and frankly, it builds a stronger foundation, underneath any type of strategy or, future ideas of, of growth and change that you, that you want to pursue in the future. this grounds everything, this exercise, and this is, this should not be your only exercise that you do in the course of all of your planning.

Track 1 5:05

Right.

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 5:06

you should have, a group of individuals come into a room with, empty whiteboards, You should run through what-ifs. You should, shoot for the stars, or change things or, acquire a- another firm All of that should be happening as well, but this, is an important component of that that informs other things. And you can do this a couple different ways. A lot of times planning when it comes to dollars and cents is done two ways fundamentally. One is from the top down, and the other is from the bottom up. This favors a bottom-up approach, because the top-down approach just says, "All right, we have X number of mouths to feed. We have..." and in professional services, a lot of times this means, "We have X amount of time to work." when I do my, division and my multiplication and everything else, what's the big number I get at the bottom? Understanding all my people and what we're gonna charge for their expertise, all that stuff. So that's a top-down approach, and this what we'll talk through today is kind of bottom up for sure.

Track 1 6:06

So what tools do clients have in place to be able to get started with this process?

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 6:12

some financial tools will have, this framework built into them. sometimes CRM systems will have this tool built into them. CRM systems will lean a little bit more towards the future sales, planning, and your financial tools probably will lean a little bit more towards, kinda on the revenue end of things. some CRM systems may actually have this in place. So go look at that and see what framework you currently have to work with. And other, other financial platforms, will likely have some component in them that lets you start to plan what the future looks like, you know, whether it's a, a, a, resource management tool or a, sales and revenue tool or whatever else it is. So, so some of those tools exist already. Without that, I mean, heck, I've just done this with an Excel spreadsheet, with some of my clients. It's like, all right, so we're gonna, we're gonna just do our, do our rows and columns, and our, our columns start to look like, different chunks of time, and our, our, our rows are different projects, right? And then we're gonna start to sort those projects relative to, our three buckets here, and we can dig into those buckets now.

Track 1 7:16

Let's do it. Great segue, Mark. So you've got these three buckets that you use to, define the, the, the new sales revenue. I guess we can call it that,

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 7:27

Yeah, it's both. It's both actually. It's both. It's, it's, it's, um, it's, revenue to be bill worked and billed, and it's also this more speculative sort of sales end of stuff. the first one is... committed. There's a bucket called committed/backlog, The second one is called probable, and the third is called possible. And not to confuse, 'cause we'll stick with these three for our conversation today, but sometimes I've even seen people put in four, And the fourth one would be sort of pie in the sky. but the three that we talked about here, committed, probable, and possible are both inclusive of, stuff that's already under contract, revenue that you are expecting to, to bill and bring in the door, all the way to the, big sort of maybes, the speculative stuff. So, for sure. Let's...

Track 1 8:21

Cool.

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 8:21

But let's take them one at a time, John.

Track 1 8:23

yeah, that, that's great. So the, those three buckets, committed, probable, and possible, let's start with the committed bucket. And Mark, you have these, I think they're fantastic visuals, and I'm a visual learner myself, so when you shared these with me, I, it kinda clicked it into a new level of understanding. And so I think let's, if, let's put these up on the screen for our audience, and they can follow along with us as we break it down

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 8:49

John, is this a shameless plug for our YouTube channel?

Track 1 8:52

well, and not a shameless plug. I mean, I, I think it's, I think it's fascinating. but yeah, I guess maybe it is a shameless plug. So let's, uh, follow along on YouTube and check out these awesome visuals.

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 9:03

Who knows? Who knows? So if you've only experienced John and I, you know, kind of whispering in your ears when you take your dog walk, head on back to your, desktop and take a look at us on YouTube as well. So on occasion, we have some episodes that are, um, kind of a little bit better, uh, to be viewed visually, and I think at least this part is, is a good one. So sure, so committed, right? So the graph and, and, and for, for people who, don't have access or whatever else, aren't gonna, aren't gonna spend the time pulling it up on YouTube, John, we're looking at a graph, right? X-axis, Y-axis, and so we've got a, an X-axis, which is kind of the horizontal axis over time. This could be months, could be weeks, whatever the heck it is, right? It's just over time. And then our Y-axis, our, our, our vertical axis is some percentage of revenue or capacity or w- w-whatever else, right? So, that's our graph.

Track 1 10:04

Monthly recurring

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 10:05

Monthly recurring revenue. clients or, whatever else. their, their, their slope looks a little bit different. But needless to say, people who are focused on monthly recurring relationships, retainers, whatever else it might be, see churn, right. They will lose clients over time. So if you take all, everything you have under contract right now and map it out over time, it's hopefully looking great today, but as time goes on, it starts to, starts to diminish, right? There's a slope, right? Some folks say there's a cliff or, whatever. There's a slope, right? At some point in the future, John, if you're a professional services firm and you do nothing, if you sign no more contracts, at some point you will hit zero, right? So we're at

Track 1 10:52

All the projects will come to an end, all of the client work eventually will sunset, and then in this graph, we've got it over six, let's call it months. By, month six, you're gonna be at 15% of the revenue that you're at right now.

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 11:08

Let's just call this all these projects together, we'll call that committed, right? And that's your, that's your backlog, right? So, and hopefully you will capture 100% of that. You will not, so when we are planning with all this and you're looking at the backlog, everything you have, under contract, don't take for granted that you're gonna close 100% of those dollars, right? Sometimes that, those dollars might increase a little bit with little changes or adjustments or... But sometimes there'll be others that, lo and behold, you don't get paid, or, whatever. They're, they're de- you're being delayed in, in payments and whatever else. so that's, that's your backlog. Now, to be clear, if you have certain, projects, clients in there that, have Maybe there's a project you're working on now with- within an, an, an initial, some initial work, and then there's some future, some future thing, like a phase two or a, a, a, a bigger, a bigger chunk of work some- somewhere down the road. This is, this is not in there, right? We're only talking about stuff that has literally been, inked, right? John closed, contracted, right? So that is, that is your committed backlog work. We got that mapped out. Good. Okay. So that's that's important. When we take your probable, which is

Track 1 12:28

So that's what we're layering on here, right?

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 12:30

yeah, we layer on this additional, these additional projects, And so this stuff is probable. Now, probable and pipeline are not the exact same thing, but all of your probable, work, all of your probable contracts will come from your pipeline

Track 1 12:52

And so in terms of like a percent, if we were looking at like our sales process, right? And if we assign, percent likelihood, like would you say that probable is over 50%, over 75? Is that irrelevant?

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 13:05

it's super relevant. So I think what a lot of people will do is they'll immediately just take 100% of their pipeline and layer it on top of their backlog and say, Okay we're good." But with this exercise, we're looking at something slightly different. So we've got our, our committed backlog work. We take a percentage of our pipeline work and layer it on top of that. And to your question, John, it depends. It depends on your business, it depends on how successful you are sort of overall, with your new business pursuits. If you have an extremely high sort of win rate or close rate, then you can be, you know, a little more optimistic with this. conversely, if your win rate is, is lower, you should be conservative with this. So again, we're not gonna take the entire pipeline and just layer it on here and put that under probable, because probable, carries a, significant amount of weight with it, right? It's, it's, this is something that we're going to be-- that we're gonna start planning around as soon as six months from now, right? we don't wanna sneak random speculative stuff in here. We don't want to be planning in the fairly near term, three, six months out, whatever it might be. We don't wanna be creating plans around stuff that's super speculative, so we need to weight that appropriately. So, and, and ideally, this stuff's gonna contract pretty soon. Pretty soon is, it could be in the next two months or three months, or heck, maybe six months or whatever else it is. But pretty soon. Six months is a little bit long. I would prefer, something in that, like you mentioned earlier, right? It's, it's, you know, something that's closing in the next 90 days or 120 days or whatever your sort of close rate, typical close rate is for your pipeline. so this, again, layers on top, but just like your contracted work, that committed work, it fades over time, right? So now we've got these, that big sort of pipeline, and now we've got this sort of probable, which is part of your pipeline, stuff that's hopefully more likely. you know, just to use a ballpark, folks, let's go 60% possible. 60% likely, maybe. This needs to change with time. so there we go. We've got our two layers there on our graph

Track 1 15:20

Yeah. So we've got our committed revenue, our backlog in blue. We've got our probable revenue. These are deals in the pipeline that are a high likelihood of closing.

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 15:34

Yeah.

Track 1 15:35

So the next bucket that you have is possible

Mark Wainwright 15:39

You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman 15:41

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright 15:55

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman 16:05

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright 16:11

and now back to the show.

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 16:13

Yeah, this is possible. Possible is the part of your pipeline that didn't quite make it into probable, and then sometimes we can sneak in some other stuff, Because we want our pipeline to be active sales opportunities that we are working now, that we have some level of confidence that they're gonna close in the next four, three to six, whatever, whatever months, right? We don't want our pipeline to be, and I've used this in the past, John, our pipeline is not a storage tank, right? Our pipeline is a pipeline, so it needs to flow, right? So we want opportunities to enter the pipeline and to move along at, at an appropriate pace, and then contract or not. We don't, we don't want them sitting there. So a lot of these possible sort of pie in the sky things can be something if you're sitting here, what, September, October, and you're, wanting to put something in, in, probable that's not gonna close for a year, no. No. That needs to be, that needs to be possible. And the exercise that I will undertake with a lot of individuals that I work with are, are just sales projections, and I call them projections because they don't-- they're not things that, that are in the pipeline. They could be related to things that are in the pipeline. maybe they have like a phase one, they're a bit of work in the pipeline now, and then there's the second phase that's gonna come along in, eight months. So we do that. And again, simple spreadsheets are easy tools. a lot of times we'll look at these quarterly. So we'll say first quarter, what do you think? There's these clients, this, this work, second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter, and some of it can get pretty, pretty speculative. Some of it can be, I'm not even sure there's a there there yet. I'm not even sure there's a, there's some work. the great thing about possible is that it starts to help how you plan, right? So I've got, got our backlog. We're working that work Right now. Some clients are great, others are a pain in the neck, whatever. you've got your pipeline that is, is hopefully filtered in a way that, the great clients are rising to the top. The clients that you would prefer not to work with are not in your pipeline or getting filtered out. and this possible layer should contain great ideal clients, folks that we are going to chase after,

Track 1 18:42

and I think that's such an important point for this exercise is this is where you can stretch, right? This is where you can influence the direction of the firm overall with this possible category because it, it-- I asked about it earlier about when, you know, w- where does this happen, and it's all happening simultaneously. This is a great kind of bridge or pin to put in this and then have conversations with your marketing department, with your operations team, and then kind of understand, is this the direction that we want to go? What if we were able to land this kind of an ideal client? And then that opens up a whole new conversation around resource planning, and then all of a sudden the firm's getting closer and closer to a strategy that everyone can get behind.

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 19:27

yeah, yeah. Because you've built this great foundation of sort of reality, right? Sure, there's some speculative stuff that we've put into this possible category, but the probable stuff is highly likely, and the possible stuff is made up of a bunch of ideal clients, that we either know or we don't know. But, it's a direction that we went ahead as a firm and, you know, here's some real dollars, or at least the best that we can do. You know, here's an educated guess at some reasonable dollars that we could capture, from these particular clients down in possible there. So, and this stuff from a time perspective, we've talked, backlog is, committed backlog is now, probable is sooner rather than later in the next few months or so. Possible, this can stretch out a ways, right? This is gonna stretch out all the way to your end of your coming, fiscal year. this can be stuff that, yeah, I don't think that's gonna happen for another 11 months. You're like, "Okay, cool. Let's get it in possible there." And we're gonna, we're gonna, weight it, very low. You know, we're not gonna give it a high probability. we're not gonna stake the entire future of our firm. for the folks that are either picturing this along or looking on the screen here, we are building these layers on this graph, and we are, step after step, we are seeing the white space, on this graph disappear, right? Be obscured by, what we've got now, what we'll have soon, and what we hope to have longer term. And that fleshes out the picture of a firm, an individual, a profit center, a group, a practice area, whatever else it is, right? So this, this now has built their picture of revenue and sales for the coming months. And yes, folks, the hard part is just simply executing on this plan, right? Of course, particularly in this example, you know, that we've got here, that I have built here, is that there is still white space, right? There's still some graph showing, and that's a question mark, right? That's what we need to go get. we could have that speculative area really start to cover more and more of that But, is not a hyper-rigid plan. This is, we've got our eyes on these dollars, and then there's that other area that we need to kind of make up as we go

Track 1 21:51

I think these visuals are fascinating and here's everything all kinda laid out so folks can see. I'm a visual learner and just seeing all of this, kinda stack on itself, it's a good motivating tool, for people that are in a business development or a marketing seat to be able to see this and really contextualize the urgency, I guess? Maybe that's the right word of, of building out the pipeline, right?

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 22:18

from day one, John, this has been a mantra of ours, is, is that, look, sales and marketing are not this sort of ambiguous, mysterious world of everything. these are, practices that happen inside organizations, professional services firms that need to have organization and discipline, and frameworks, and, you know, clear goals and, you know, all of that stuff. So, and this is a visualization of, the committed work is, That's your delivery. Those are your folks that are actually doing the work and delivering on that work. But the next part that probable stuff is tied very closely to sales, for sure. And then when we wander off into possible, and even into that white space, we're definitely talking about sales and marketing, right? So this is, these are these three components, and there is a flow here. There is an ideal flow of all of this, We want the possible work to transition to probable in your pipeline. We want the probable work in your pipeline to transition to committed work, right? And then we want that committed work to translate to revenue, right? So that is the flow, and these graphs sort of show how that whole thing happens. And, to highlight another point on this is that this shows, particularly our friends who are the doer-sellers, who are responsible for dollars in every single layer that we've kind of built here, that they need to be spending equal time on all of these things, over time, right? So we want the doer-sellers thinking, "What am I doing today to deliver great work at a great margin for our firm that drives, future clients or, future contracts that I can, start to flesh this, this graph out further?" We want them to think, "What am I doing tomorrow to advance pipeline opportunities to a successful close?" we also want them to, to be thinking, "What am I doing after that to move these maybes, these possible new business opportunities into my pipeline with well-planned and well-executed marketing and sales, strategies and tactics?" And, Yeah, it's a hard job, but once you start organizing it- It gets a little clearer and easier for sure

Track 1 24:54

Well, one thing that just got a little bit clearer for me as we're talking about this is how you tied each of these layers to a business function, right? So the committed revenue is all about delivery. The, probable revenue is all about sales management, and then the possible revenue is all about marketing and lead generation.

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 25:15

yeah. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Track 1 25:17

up.

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 25:18

a little on the tactics end of thing is that definitely this should be done on, in the, in the fourth quarter for sure. It is important to, to do this exercise both with individuals and as a group, so everybody can kinda come, come back together. But I do this with individuals, and I talk to them about, "All right, tell, let's, let's figure out what you've got under contract Right. now. Let's look at your pipeline, see what we're going to put into possible, probable and then possible." We talk about some pie in the sky stuff, right? That finds its way into possible as well. whether they're known clients, or maybe just folks you wanna introduce yourself to. So I build these with individuals that all roll up into, into, kinda one big, one big plan. So this is that bottom-up, right, process.

Track 1 26:03

I like this approach because we're addressing the, the priority of concerns in sequence, and when you address the committed revenue planning and you address the probable revenue planning, and I'm speaking from a marketer's point of view, then the, the people in the room when you are talk- talking about the possibilities are in the right head space because we've already covered the, the dollars and cents that are today and tomorrow,

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 26:32

Good.

Track 1 26:33

so

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 26:33

a c- a couple little other little, little tidbits here, not so small and sometimes, right? People need to make an honest assessment, They need to bring a a heavy dose of reality to this process, Right We cannot have endless pie in the sky stuff, like f- like 100, 100 what-ifs, Right It's just not gonna... That doesn't show any focus, that doesn't show any discipline, and, it, it can disrupt things, I mean, even though we are taking these long-term really speculative opportunities and, you know, weighting them y- pretty minimally, you know, you put enough speculative stuff in there, it's gonna start to, put, put a thumb on a scale a- little bit. So, you need to bring a level of reality to this, working through this exercise. and here's the note on that, is that it's never gonna be right the first time, and heck, the second time you do it, it's probably not gonna be great either. it takes iterations. The painful part is that this takes, some years to actually get pretty good at this, Because, over time you learn, what am I gonna include in my, possible stuff at the beginning, at this fourth quarter now? And then how am I going to execute on that throughout the course of the year, right? And am I actually seeing the flow that Mark talked about, right? Am I actually seeing the, flow between the possible to the probable, and from the probable to the, committed backlog? am I seeing that? Am I seeing those, those things happen?

Track 1 27:57

and are you gathering enough data to be able to, project out conversion rates, right? And I think that's like the big piece of the, the possible revenue, and that's a big unknown in a lot of firms that I, at least I talk to, is they don't really understand or know what the conversion rate is from lead to opportunity to under contract to close

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 28:20

And those conversion rates are important because that determines our weighting,

Track 1 28:23

Exactly,

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 28:23

are you weighting your, your, your probable stuff at 60% or is it, you know, less than that? Or, you know, how are you, how are you dealing with that? this should be done sort of in parallel with some top-down exercises that the firm is doing. the financial end of things is happening with all the other, costs, that you, that you have. So these things need to be done in, in parallel. And more than likely, you're gonna end up with a gap, right? You're gonna have some top-down exercise that has some big number. You're gonna do a bottom-up exercise, then you're not quite gonna get there.

Track 1 28:54

And

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 28:54

So you're gonna have a

Track 1 28:55

introduces new edge cri- criterion conditions to where, okay, what needs to be adjust- adjusted? Do we need more leads? Do we need to,

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 29:01

Yeah.

Track 1 29:02

close rate? Exactly.

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 29:04

And I will tell you, I mean, not to overemphasize this, but man, when individuals in a firm go through this exercise, doing a, an honest, realistic bottom-up exercise like this and come up with a number, that number is way more reliable than any top-down number that you're gonna be given,

Track 1 29:22

That's true

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 29:23

And people are bought into it. People believe it. People said, "Okay, I made my own plan. I know I'm gonna go execute on my own plan." Right? So it's, it's a really, really good exercise. Top-down stuff, sure, you need to do that as well, but this is, this is a much stronger motivator for ind- individuals who are in these doer/seller seats, who need to balance their time and prioritize certain opportunities and not others. sure, this is a good one. this should be revisited at least quarterly, and revisited quarterly in a number of different ways, i.e., we need to remind people, "Hey, you had these four different things that were in there as possible. What activities have you done now

Track 1 30:02

yeah

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 30:04

in order to, move those into the pipeline in the third quarter?" Like you said, right? "So what, what's happening now in order to make that happen?" Revisiting is also, you can make sometimes, you can make adjustments to it. It's not critical, because I think that it takes a year to sometimes execute on these bigger plans. So I don't think at the six-month point you're gonna be radically making big changes. "Oh, this big sort of speculative chunk of work here that we thought was... It's not happening, so we're just gonna erase it." Like, I don't, You have to have something, next time around to look at and say, "I don't th- that's in the plan. We didn't execute on that properly. Are we gonna keep it there? If so, we need to change how we're gonna, market and, and, and sell to kind of close that work." So I don't think people should make wholesale changes to this, every quarter, but I think you need to kind of come back to it and revisit it for sure. and you know, this, this, the, like I said before, the possible stuff is just fantastic fuel, fantastic content for future planning, being able to chart the course of the, of the firm. so there you go, John. That's committed/backlog, probable, and possible. Those are our three buckets that brings together revenue planning and sales planning, and heck, even, starts to drag in, marketing planning to this whole process as well. So it stitches those things all together in a, in a, a picture that I think makes some sense.

Track 1 31:28

Totally. Well, revenue is oxygen to any business, so it makes sense that it would be all interconnected. And I like the way that you articulated the bottom up approach, and it's because everyone's involved in the

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 31:39

Yep.

Track 1 31:40

the key ingredient to it all.

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 31:42

Yeah, yeah. There's good buy-in for this, for sure.

Track 1 31:44

Well, Mark, I think this was fantastic. I love the visuals that you shared. I learned something new in this conversation, and I'm sure that our viewers and listeners did as well. So, if you made it this far, please, subscribe to the show, follow us on YouTube, LinkedIn, wherever you get your podcasts. And, uh, Mark, until next time

riverside_mark_raw-video-cfr_breaking_bizdev_0213 32:03

Thanks, John. Until next time