📢 Announcement

Updated Expectations for 2024

Matt Steen
Matt Steen
In 2022 we laid the foundation to scale things up at Chemistry. This saw us adding a number of new faces to the team, rolling out new training, and introducing new systems and processes throughout the team. In 2023 we established some fantastic parameters and clarified some expectations to move forward as a team. Part of these expectations are to help me manage us as we continue to grow. Part of these expectations are to help you land more contracts by formalizing best practices!

I'm going after two goals with this: signing more contracts and fewer refunds. To that end, I'll split what I am asking for into sales work and search work. So, let's get started.

Sales Work
  • Please ensure that all communication is tracked in HubSpot. Emails, texts, phone calls, smoke signals, etc., must be tracked and logged. If you need help making sure that emails are automatically logged and tracked, please reach out. Anything not auto-tracked needs to be tracked through a note. 
  • Please begin to use the task functionality in HubSpot. On each lead that you are working on, I would like to be able to look at the file and have a clear understanding of the last communication that you have had with someone and also know when the next activity is scheduled to happen. I have noticed that we tend to lose sight of where churches are in the sales cycle, and that is costing us deals. 
  • Building on the above, let's talk about the timing between touches:
    • The goal is to get our contract out on the same day as the consult call.
    • There needs to be a follow-up "what can I clarify?" email the next day.
    • Generally, I would like for us to have no more than a 14-day gap between touches and tasks. There are always times when there should be a longer gap. In these cases, please put a note in HubSpot about why it is a long gap. 
  • Notes are super helpful, both to serve as a reminder of the conversations that you have had, and to help me know where things stand with the search. Please get into the rhythm of using these on a more regular basis. Here are a couple of times when notes are mandatory:
    • Initial call. Please give a quick download of the call, including the link to the recorded call.
    • Referrals. If there is a specific entry on the "How did you hear about us?" part of the consult submission, please put that as a note and pin it to the top of the file. That is super helpful for me to track our marketing and Christmas card list. 
    • Non-auto-tracked communication. 
    • Reasons why a task is more than 14 days from the last communication.
    • Any significant changes to the search or the church's situation.
The bottom line on all this is that I would like to better leverage HubSpot as a team, and the pacing and tools mentioned above will help us land more contracts and lose fewer contracts to other firms. That said, I know that if we are setting new expectations, we need to talk about accountability as well. I don't want to be punitive, legalistic, or a jerk about this, so here is what I am thinking: 
  • As I track your leads, anything that has not been communicated with in over 14 days with no notes or tasks will be at risk of being taken over by me. 
  • Tasks that are 7+ days overdue are at risk of having me take them over. 
  • Repeated takeovers (3+) will result in removing a Church Coach from the Round Robin on HubSpot.

Search Work
A good bit of the behind-the-scenes work that Todd and I have done in the past has been focused on decreasing refunds and failed searches. Holli has been a huge part of this, the search dashboards are part of that, and beefing up our sourcing processes has been working towards that. I am more confident in our ability to successfully complete a search now than at any time in the life of Chemistry. 

That said, you, as a church coach, are the biggest part of our loss prevention strategy (no pressure, you're welcome). To that end, we have been really loose about expectations on search side communications. So... here's what I am hoping to see going forward:
  • All communication with the church needs to be logged, tracked, and noted in HubSpot. Same as above. This helps me know what is going on in the search in case someone reaches out to me directly... which has happened a few times over the last year or so. 
  • I would like you guys to get into the same 14-day rhythm with churches that we are in the search process with as you do on the sales side. One of the things we are working on is producing content to share as the search proceeds to make this a little easier. Todd and Holli are going to start spooling up short videos to share along the way and some playbooks to help you get teams prepped.
  • Once candidates are presented, I would like our Church Coaches to lead in communicating with them. Your main job here is to make sure that there are no surprises. Check in with the candidate every 14 days, get a sense of how they are feeling, and use that information to shape what you need to communicate to the church (speed up or slow down, don't ask that question, you are creeping the candidate out, etc). 
  • Also, as candidates are presented, please keep the team updated in Basecamp so that we know whether we can back off on scheduling interviews or prepare to screen more. Again, we want to make sure that the team is not surprised by anything that goes on here. Communication is key here. This communication also helps us keep the progress board updated when candidates are no longer being considered. 
The bottom line here is that regular communication on our end helps prevent churches from walking and prevents clawback. Honestly, it also prevents the biggest criticism we hear about other firms: "they took our money and never reached out to us."