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Welcome to Episode 217 of the Success in Business Podcast, your host Tom Ryan is joined by co-producer Natalie Pyles. This episode is Part 2 of 2, where Tom and Natalie interview a dynamic, husband-and-wife entrepreneurial team, Tammy and Stewart Cook, founders of the App-Garden. App-Garden automates inefficient processes involved in school administration. They offer software that streamlines everything from training substitute teachers to managing permission slips for school field trips. There helpful tools are being used in 27 states and counting!

Today Tammy and Stewart talk about the importance of gathering data when scaling your sales department. When you are scaling your business and growing into a larger market your selling process will need to grow, too. It’s for this reason that budgeting becomes so important at this stage. You are going to need to be able to pay more for marketing and additional salesman because even if you have the greatest product in the world, if you can’t get the word out, it won’t sell.

If you have detailed data showing how many calls your salesman make for every appointment they book, for example, then you can start to make projections for the future. Stewart and Tammy use Excel to track many, many different aspects of their sales so that they can make improvements and so that they can know what to expect. This allows them to stay on budget and grow safely! Thanks for listening! Continue reading →