Video Transcription
Right. I think we are good to get started.
Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. We will dive right in. But before we do, I just want to make you aware of some housekeeping items. First is the live q and a.
You're probably gonna have a lot of questions throughout this webinar, and so we've we've reserved some time at the end, about ten minutes, to answer all of your questions. So feel free to pop them into the q and a throughout the webinar, and we'll be sure to get to them at the end. And next is the recording and slides. Since you signed up for this webinar, you will receive the full recording and the slides in an email following the webinar along with links to all of the resources that we're gonna share at the end.
So without further ado, I will introduce our speakers. First is Jim Boulas, head of solution consulting here at Cube. He's a seasoned business and data analytics leader with ex expertise in enterprise performance management and cloud performance management, with experience across Fortune five hundred companies, privately held corporations, and public center entities.
Jim specializes in FP and A, operational planning, and advanced reporting across diverse industries. So he's got quite a bit of experience, and we're really excited and lucky to have him on the call today.
And next, we have Chris Ortega, fractional CFO and CEO at Fresh FP and A.
It is a fractional CFO and advisory company that he founded in twenty twenty two after twenty years of finance expertise in a bunch of different industries and rules. And as a CFO expert, he helps small to medium sized businesses navigate financial complexities, improve financial predictability, and achieve strategic growth. And, also, he's a former amateur boxer and knows how to handle chaos. So that'll surely prove useful today. And so without further ado, I will hand it over to you, Chris, to get us started.
Hey. Thank you so much. Welcome, everybody. Thank you so much for this awesome looking forward to this conversation. Before we jump in, kinda wanna set the agenda we're gonna walk through. As was mentioned, if you do have any questions, there's a q and a button down there. Hit that, but we're gonna start through with the introduction.
What's in it for you? We're gonna talk about some top tips. We're gonna leave you with some practical strategies and insights and key takeaways that you can take away directly from this conversation to go be a better collaborator, be a better communicator in your business.
We'll also look at, like, trust versus competency and what that means for, you as a finance professional.
And then as we mentioned at the end, we'll have a live q and a that we'll be able to answer some of your questions. So like I said, feel free to drop those in the q and a. And then lastly, we'll close this off with some great resources, some great things that you can go look at and go capture and take away from this conversation.
So yeah. Next slide.
Okay. So one of the first things, right, is effective communication.
Right? When you think about the finance organization, you think about FP and A. Right? I love this conversation with Jim on here because we get to talk about the two different sides of FP and a.
Jim's gonna cover the financial planning analysis, and this one's talking about the financial partner and advising. So we got you on both sides of FP and a cover. We got we got you covered. But one of the most important things is, like, when I look back over my twenty years in accounting finance, FP and A, and financial leadership, When I look at the balance between knowing the best Excel formulas or calculations or looking at customer lifetime value or calculating CAC or all the different SaaS and financial metric that you looked at, one of the most important aspects of being able to translate that to the business is specifically around communication.
I remember being at a SaaS company and walking my sales team through ASC six zero six. Right? You talk about, an accounting pronouncement that's changed in industry. It's around revenue recognition.
And the most important aspect of that for me was communicating that to my sales team. Right? Letting them know what that was gonna change around our contracts. And it wasn't necessarily about the calculation.
Right? Like, one of the cool things that I had away from that was having the opportunity of the sales organization to understand how we look at revenue recognition. Like, I was super excited to be able to communicate this to nonfinancial professionals, a very complex changing accounting pronouncement, and they understood it. And they also understood how that information translated to calculation, which is the revenue recognition that we had.
Right? So I think effective communication as you think about building relationships, hugely, hugely important in, next slide.
Alright. So, Jim, before we start about this, one thing I wanna keep you keyed in on this one. Business communication, collaboration, and connection. How have you seen in your fourteen years and all the experience that you've had, how have you seen finance professionals leverage this to be a triple threat inside the organization?
Yeah. Absolutely. I think it all comes down to, you know, what's driving the lack of it that allows you to, you know, find those gaps and plug them. Right?
And what we hear from prospects who are looking at Qube, our customers I mean, it's a buzzword, but silos comes up all the time. Right? Whether it's people in their departments not collaborating, data in different systems not collaborating across those. Right?
Or another thing might be technology. Right? We have tons of software out there, and maybe we're inputting all the right notes and things like that into a Salesforce application, but the other team's not going and reviewing that. Right?
So they poor training and enablement around those processes, and sometimes it just helps bring in humans into the fold. And then as finance people, you know, best business tool we have, spreadsheets, always a big factor when it comes to collaboration. Like, what version are there are you on? Is it updated?
So on and so forth. So when we think about, like, the foundation of CUBE and why it was built, it's to address a lot of those that can be addressed with technology. Right? Eliminating silos, bringing central sources of truth together, having that central repository, you know, enhancing your spreadsheet so you're not dealing with versions, things like that.
So those true leaders are and the teams that collaborate really well are aligning on those things. Right? They're building up foundational you know, base that they can operate off of as a team. And that's that was a big part when we were building cube that we wanted to focus on.
Yeah. And I love how you mentioned, like, the silo and connection aspect of it. Right? Like, so many times.
Right? And and maybe you're struggling with this. Drop it in the chat if you're struggling with this. Right?
You had sales that keep their own versions of documents. They're keeping their own version of pipeline. You got marketing that's looking at their own lead gen kind of stuff. And one thing that I always found very helpful with technology is being able to have that way where you can have that central version of the truth and that connection point for everybody.
Right? I remember leading you know, still working with clients that we work on today. Like, that's really important that anytime they wanna get a number, anytime they wanna have an insight that they wanna gather or data that they wanna analyze or information that they wanna take some knowledge and make a business decision off of, having that central place. Right?
And it not necessarily finance always has to own it. Right? But having that input to say, hey. If I wanna look at the pipeline, the health of our pipeline, I know this is the central place to go to.
It's not gonna be some access database that's living on somebody's computer inside of a closet, inside of, you know, inside of a room somewhere, right, that Yeah. People have kept a long time. Right? So that central place and this is where technology, specifically, Q becomes really important to drive that communication and that connection.
Right? And that becomes such a important part for finance and the business because now you take that friction off. Right? And I tell you what, one of the worst things when you don't have that is sitting in front and you're doing a presentation.
Maybe it's a monthly financial review or you're doing a board presentation and you have that pain. When you go put that number, that revenue number on the slide, right, and the salesperson's like, yeah. That's not the right revenue number. I was looking at a different one.
Then you spend, like, the next forty five minutes talking about which is the right number? This is where technology becomes centralized. I would add another c to that. Centralized communication, collaboration, and connection for you.
That's the that's the four c's. Jim, you added that, centralization aspect of it too. So I love it, man. And that's super important as you think about becoming that finance value partner.
Next slide.
Alright. So one of the most important things is when you're in this role, right, one of the things that I love about being in finance is that everything stops and starts with us. Right? We see all the different transactions from the sales organization.
We see it coming from marketing. We see it coming from operations. We see it coming from HR. So one of the most important aspects that you need to focus on is how do you go know the pain of the business and turn that into productivity?
I'll give everybody a simple and easy framework for you to understand this that creates value for you as a finance professional. I call it the value the value, function. Right? Is once you intimately know business pain, business pain, business frustration, business opportunity, and you're able to translate that to your business partners, let's use sales as an example.
Right?
Say one of the overall business, one of the overall business goals that you have is you wanna increase revenue thirty percent year over year. That's a business goal. Right? We're coming outside.
We're already two thirds way through q two. So you're looking at the first half of the year, and you're like, man, there's some there's some opportunity or there's some pain that we're seeing on the sales side of the business. Maybe we're behind our plan, and we need to understand, like, intimately what is driving that. Right?
And now you turn that business pain that you see in the sales organization to business productivity. Right? You turn that into either productivity, you turn that into products, or you turn it in solutions that you can help solve that business pain. When you've made that translation of business pain to business productivity, you thereby have created value.
That's value creation. Right? And And the value creation isn't just the number of police coming around saying, hey, sales. You need to give me a plan to say how we're gonna get back to our budgeted, how we're gonna grow thirty percent year over year.
Right? You're taking a different step. You're get into that business. When I say intimately, no, that gets to that second point.
In working in high growth companies and software technology and retail and professional services company, which has been most of my background, I learned this great phrase from sales professionals. It's called WIFM. What's in it for me? Right?
Or what's in it for them? You can take it to me or a team. Right?
And I would always go inside and say, like, what's in it for the sales organization and for me to partner with them? Them? Right? Too many times as finance professionals and listen.
I struggle with this. I'm not saying I'm, like, a hundred percent accuracy on this one. Right? We are so used to commanding the business.
Right? Going back to that sales example, that business goal, year over year revenue growth, most of the time, we go command the business and say, hey. We're not gonna be hitting this plan in the first half of the year. We're fifty percent behind the plan we need to be.
Go give me a plan and give this to me by next week of where we want our sales to be. I need to see that. Right? Versus going in and saying, hey.
Why why is sales this way? I'm gonna go understand and get with our sales leader, get with our team, and try to diagnose and try to seek clarity on what is driving this underperformance that we're seeing in the plan. I wanna intimately know this. I wanna get in that sales process.
A lot of times, what I would do in finance teams and even with clients that we work at Fresh FP and A, I wanna incorporate incorporate myself in the meeting and say, hey. When you guys are going through your pipeline review, I would love to be a part of that. And it it may sound challenging. It may be uncomfortable.
You're gonna the salespeople are gonna look at you and be like, yo. Why is finance here? Like, is something wrong? Like, is something's gotta be wrong that finance is here.
You wanna break down those stereotypes. Get in and learn the business. So for me, those are some practical frameworks in that value, framework, that value proposition I mentioned to you. Intimately know those business pains, frustrations, or opportunities, and then turn that into productivity through products, solutions, or services that you can provide to them.
Once you do that, you've created value in the business. And notice, everything I said in that value creation was like, don't go send them a spreadsheet for them to go fill out by next week, and they get it back to you and you create value. That's a different kind of value. That's a different kind of value proposition that finance professionals need to make.
Next slide.
Alright. So we're gonna start a quick poll on this one. I think you should see it pop up on your webinar screen.
What do you struggle with most in communication?
Is it gonna be a, turn your financial data into business understanding, effective sharing of bad news with the business, consistency in connecting with business partners, change communication styles with different audiences, or other.
We wanna take some time to go through this, and me and Jim are gonna be looking at the results and giving some feedback. I kinda Jim, I don't know about you, man. I got one in my mind that I'm, like, laser focused on, man.
Well, I'll actually give an example of other because it's been, like, top of mind recently, which is, I've worked with organizations that are actually pretty good at collaborating or communicating the first time, but they where they fail is the follow-up or the refresher. Right? I forget the name of the researcher, but it's like this remembrance curve they've discovered. Like, within a day, you forget thirty percent of the contents.
And within a month, you forget ninety percent of the content that was delivered. So, you know, you teach somebody a new process, and they come back in two months, and they don't remember it. And you're like, I just told you this two months ago. Like, it's not their fault.
It's just human nature that if you're not getting refreshed on these topics, that you just naturally forget some of these processes, some of the enablement that's been done. So that's a big one that's been top of mind recently for me is, like, the follow-up and refresher of your processes and the why and things like that is just as important as the initial communication you're putting out there. But love to hear, Chris, what what was your laser focused on here?
Yeah. My laser focus, woman, is actually on the results where we see the the change of communication style with different audiences. Right? Like, I think for me, this was one of the biggest areas that I had to learn and improve on as a finance leader.
And I guess I still work on this and still develop this as a skill set because it's a different conversation and style that you need to take when you're talking to salespeople, when you're talking to IT, when you're talking to HR, when you're talking to legal, when you're talking to operations, when you're talking to, like, bankers. Right? Like, it's just not only inside the business that it becomes complex and, like, that pivoting. And let's be honest.
Right? When you're in a high growth business and you're leading a high growth finance team, you're wearing a lot of different hats. There's been times, Jim, where I've been the legal person. I've been the HR person.
I've been the operations person. I've I've, you know, scheduled lunches for client meetings. So I've been on the sales side of it. Right?
So being able to be adaptable with that and I'll share an example. Like, I remember being at a, at a a software company leading the finance organization, and this is an example where I made a mistake. So this is a lesson learned for everybody. So don't walk in the same pit hole that I did and make the same mistake I did on this one.
But I was at a town hall meeting, and we're giving monthly updates around the organization. And we got to the sales part of the of your writing. I've always had great relationship with the sales team and sales leadership that we have there. And we were talking about sales, and I was sitting there mentioning, I was like, yeah.
Like, you know, our America's group, we're behind. But when I look at the rest of the world, like, they're always a, hey. We need to find a way to get better. Right?
And that communication, this was in front of the entire, like, company. Right? And I was I was passionate about what I was saying, but it was like it it it did come across well. It's like, Chris, we got a great relationship with you.
Why would you throw us under the bus inside of that meeting? And I remember taking away from it was like, hey.
I understood that that was not the right thing to do. Here's what my intentions were behind it. I was trying to understand and drive a sense of urgency inside the organization.
And the biggest takeaway that I had away from that that you don't ever do, don't ever say those in, like, big company meetings, obviously. Right? Sit down and have that individual conversation with that leader. Right?
It gets back to what I talked about earlier, attorney that pain into productivity, intimately getting in that conversation. So for me, the on the quick poll, d, those change of communication styles with different audiences, because it's it's a different and you when you're having a sales, marketing, operations, IT, HR, legal, business partners, all these people on the call, you've gotta be able to be fluid in that conversation and be able to know and read the audience, read, you know, what's important to them, what do they value, how much information do you need to give, and how much you don't.
There's also been plenty of times where it's like, I gave out way too much information. I should've just stopped, like, five seconds ago. Right? So that's my point specifically around that one.
And it's curious to see that was, on the polls as well too.
We can go to the next slide.
Alright. So this next section, we talked a little bit about collaboration. We gave that quick poll around communication.
Now we're gonna sell some top tips, around communication financial insights to non finance stakeholders. And the reason why this section is gonna be really important.
Let's take a step back. Right? Let's look at the era of finance that we're in right now. And I don't know about you, Jim, but it's a great time to be in finance right now.
It's like the best time to be in finance. But it's changing a lot. Right? You've got the adoption of technology.
Right? You've got artificial intelligence and machine learning. You've got this increased value proposition that the business is expecting from finance, accounting, FP and A, and CFO professionals. Right? You've got this broader shift in terms of talent. So there's a lot of these macro factors that are affecting the value proposition that finance needs to have with, non non finance stakeholders inside the business. So let's jump into that first one.
Alright. So this is really, really important.
Simplify the language. Right? If you're going in to have that conversation with HR or with sales or with marketing, and the first thing that comes out your mouth is, hey. I was looking at our budget, and I looked at our spin over the last six months, and we're down thirty percent compared to what the budget is.
Can you help me understand that? Like, that business partner is gonna be like, I don't know what you just said. Like, what did you just say? So when I say don't, meow meow meow meow.
You know, you sometimes you get that conversation. It's just like, I don't have any context of what you're talking about. So one of the first things to do when you're having that conversation with non finance, keep it as simple as possible. Take out the jargon.
Take out the one of the one of the jargon words, I still don't know what it means, Jim, is, like, anytime I heard the word anecdotally or anecdotal Okay. I was like, I don't know what that means. Like, well, anecdotally, we're moving in this direction. I'm like, what does that mean?
Like, I don't I don't know. Right? So avoid, like, business jargon. Avoid a lot of those technical terms.
Right? Like, getting into ASA six zero six and talking about, you know, revenue recognition or, revenue basis that you have. Finance, non finance people are not gonna understand that. And the most limiting way that you can limit your credibility around that is starting with these terms.
Right? Because, like, if you start with terms that they don't understand, they're gonna automatically be like, I don't know what you're talking about. Right? So keep it very simple.
Keep it to terms that the business can understand. Walk through very simple frameworks.
And to me, when you're able to keep it simple for non finance people to understand, that's like a great highlight. The reason why that's a great highlight is because that re that's like mastery level. If you can explain a very complex financial term, our financial metric, our financial process, and you can keep it simple enough that a nontechnical finance person can understand, pat yourself on the back. That is mastery level understanding of. Right? That's mastery level to be able to understand it to till you can pick something as complex as, customer lifetime value or cap ratio or burn rates, and you can make that simple that a non finance person can understand. So that's one of the first pieces.
Simplify the language.
Keep it simple. Keep it short. Use words that the business can understand. You're gonna talk about revenue to a salesperson.
Right? Talk about maybe opportunities. Right? If that's the basis of what they're compensated on is opportunities.
Change the language. Make sure you change that language to the audience that you're talking with. Let's move on to the second point.
The second one. Jim, I know storytelling for you and all your experience in in working with a lot of different companies. I know you've seen finance professionals do really well at storytelling, and you probably seen some some not so well stories in it. So curious to know from you, Jim. What's your thoughts around storytelling and how that interacts with technology and and this value proposition of the soft skills for finance professionals?
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, the key here like, people throw around the term storytelling, but you're trying to communicate a message. Right?
And to your point, Chris, like, simplifying things is huge. And and some techniques I've seen finance leaders or just any leader do really well is, like, every still use PowerPoint decks, like, g slides. Right? That's the number one presentation tool for a reason.
But collaborate with your team.
And and the story you told before where you came in, guns blazing around, like, the performance in one, you know, business unit, Like, ideally, you're collaborating with that person upfront to help gather that narrative that might be supporting that data, and that team member doesn't feel blindsided in the meeting. So you're crafting that narrative with the background from that team member. They feel good when they come into that meeting because they have a common understanding of what you're doing, but you have more of that narrative. And then bringing in other team members that maybe aren't as familiar to your point.
So, hey. Do you understand what I'm trying to present? Do I have a cohesive narrative? Like, sometimes when you're in the numbers all the time, it's really easy just to present present numbers.
But having an outside perspective come in and be like, I don't know what's going on in this deck. So helping to craft that narrative.
The other thing that I see that can, like, derail us, like, storytelling the data is overwhelming people with details. Right? Everybody's seen it. I've done it before.
Right? You have a slide that has you're trying to pack in as much info as you can, but then the audience is sitting there like, should I be listening to him? Should I be trying to dissect what's going on in this upper quadrant of the slide with this chart and, like, keep it simple. Like, what's the message you're trying to communicate?
What's that story you're trying to tell? And craft everything around that. And if you wanna put supporting details in, that's great. Throw it in an appendix or something, but keep everything kinda pure to the message you're trying to get across.
And the folks who I've seen be really effective, you know, adhere to that. They keep things simple. They don't overwhelm, so on and so forth.
Yeah. And I'll I'll just add to what you said about the metric side of it. And, like, I struggle with this. Right?
Like, I've done this in my career where it's like, I've got this really nice PowerPoint slide. And I'm looking at it, and I'm just like, you know, when I look at this, I got, like, fifteen different places in there. And a lot of times, again, getting back to non finance people. These are people non finance.
Right? They don't look at this stuff all the time. So you throw a slide up there that has all these different numbers and this compared to that and bar charts, they're not gonna take any way the message. A practical framework that I always use.
I use it now. Everything that I do, I call it the rule of three. And what that means is, like, if I've got ten different insights that I wanna provide, maybe let's look at, let's take an example. Let's take an example around cash burn or cash runway.
Those are two important key metrics that I've always looked at in the high growth businesses, and two key metrics that we look at at FreshNet P and A working with our clients. Right? When I wanna deliver that message around how cash burn is going, what the trend is looking like, I like to tie that alongside a movie. Right?
So a movie, you have a cliffhanger. It builds. It has action in it, and you leave that like, you're leaving wanting to know more. Right?
That's effective storytelling. And when I get that with the rule of three, I like to give three key insights around it. Narrow it down to the most important three aspects of it. The reason why three.
If you look at people have a good baseline of really looking at three. I think it's like a psychological thing. I don't know the exact source of it. I probably found it somewhere and just didn't think about the quote of it, but people like to see things in three.
When they can see first, second, third, gold, bronze, silver, gold, silver, bronze. Right? Three is very easy to take away for people. Right?
Sometimes I see things where it's like, fifteen tips for you to be a great finance leader, and it's like, how how am I gonna improve fifteen different things? Like, how am I gonna, like, keep track of fifteen different things to improve? Right? Versus talking about that cash burn.
We get three different insights.
Now that's three different ways to go improve it or ways they were doing well at it. And they leave with knowing, okay. Here are the three things I'm doing well. Here are the you know, out of those three insights, two of them I'm doing great.
One of them I need to improve. So that practical framework of being able to condense down that inform and then it gets back down to simplifying too. Right? Like, you got eighty different things you wanna talk about.
Yes. You're gonna have to simplify it. Simplify it to the most three impactful, and here's the most important, actionable. Right?
Don't give those insights or tell that story where it drives no action. Right? A great example of that. Hey.
You're looking at Cash Burn. It was like, Cash Burn is thirty looking at her last three months, Cash Burn is trending at thirty thousand dollars.
Okay? Like Okay.
Should I should I go? Should I not go? Is that good, bad, ugly? Like, how what what is that?
You wanna make those three Right? You wanna leave them with an insider. Tell that story where it drives action. Right?
Too many times in finance, we'd like to pro just present information. Here's information on a slide. Right? But to non finance professionals, they're gonna look at that information and say, what what am I supposed to take away from this?
Right? Am I supposed to increase the gas? Should I get limit the gas, or should I get off on this exit? Like, is it gonna drive people to continue to go forward, to stop, to pause?
What is that action you wanna tell them around that? And some of the best movies that, you know, Titanic, Avatar, some of the best movies when you look at it, they tell a great story, and it drives action. It drives emotion inside of it. So that'd be another insight I will provide around that. Make your insights. Get it down to those top three. Make it clear and concise, and make those insights actionable to where it leaves somebody feeling that I need to do something to I need to do something with this insight.
Third let's move to the third one.
Alright. So another another rule of three is regular connection touch points. Right?
I think to me, like, one of the even in building Fresh at PNA with our clients, we have biweekly tech touch points with all of our clients. Right? Like, I wanna make sure that my team, all my fractional CFOs across the globe, that we're having constant touch points with people. And here's the number one thing.
If you schedule that touch point, make it time to consistently keep that time. Right? I anytime we have a touch point with our client, there there could be not even things we talk about financially around the business. Right?
I always wanna keep those meetings even if it is talking about opportunities or posting what's going on in the business, or we can use it for brainstorming.
The worst thing that you can do around this frequency is saying, oh, yeah. I know we had this meeting, our weekly touch in point. I don't have anything to talk about, so let's just move it to next week.
Don't do that. Keep that time. Don't just make it a reoccurring point for you to give them information. Make it as an opportunity.
It's like, hey. I don't have any key insights, but I love to get your ideas about what's going right in the business, or what are some things that you think are improvement areas that you can have in the business. Or here's my number one question I like to ask. How can I help?
That question right there, if there's one takeaway that you take away from this connecting in this regular briefing slide, that is a game changer. If you can go to the business and say, hey. I don't have anything bad to say. You're not over budget.
I'm not I'm not telling you you're doing bad. Right? I'm not I'm not being the number of police. I'm just curious on how I can help you.
That question has opened up to so many, like, learning opportunities and built such a great partnership. Because, again, most non finance professionals are not used to finance helping them. They're used to finance saying, stop what you're doing. You're overspending.
Why is this this way? They're used to commanding. They're not used to finance being proactive to collaborators in helping them understand their pain and turn it into productivity.
That's a whole unique that's a whole fresh perspective in terms of looking at that value. So keep those regular touch points. One of the best questions that you can ask from a and I I challenge people today. Everybody looking at this live are gonna go back and look at this recording.
My challenge and takeaway for you, go get with that sales. Go get with that marketing. Go get with that HR person. We're getting inside of q two, coming into q three.
Ask that question. How can I help you? What are some pains? What are some opportunities?
What are some frustrations or challenges that you're seeing in the business? And how can I help you? That is a game changing opportunity. And it all starts with keeping that constant collaboration, keeping those connection points, keeping that opportunity to connect with that non finance business partner outside of finance and even talking about the business.
There's also been times I'll I'll share it, Jim.
There's been times where I've been on a call, and I'm like, hey. I don't know how to fix your son and why he's being bad at school. Like, I I I can't fix that, but I'm glad you got an opportunity to share it. I don't have any insights around that.
I don't know how to do it, but I'm glad you feel better about sharing it. So you will. And I share that as an example because that just shows, like, the comfort level that you reach with some of your business partners. Right?
They're willing to share. I've had clients on calls and CEOs and founders of companies talk to me about, you know, their kid being bad at school or they're thinking about, you know, picking up boxing. Right? Like, that reaches that level of camaraderie and that comfortability that they're willing to share those different things.
So you may get those times where you keep that collaboration a little bit outside of finance. Absolutely. Let's move on to the next one.
Alright. So we talked about communication. We talked about the importance of collaboration.
We shared some of those practical tips. Jim mentioned, you know, talking a little bit about how we can make that partnership and that relationship less about the numbers and more about moving the business forward. Now let's go into another key area. And this is where a lot this is where I struggled.
This is where a lot of finance professionals when you get down to building that relationship, you're faced with this first toll gate. This is typically like the first toll gate in building a great strong relationship outside of finance and with non finance professionals, and it's two key pillars. To me, I think relationships any relationship, whether it's personal, whether it's professional, whether it's business, any relationship, these are the two core pillars of that relationship. And we're gonna dive into which one is important.
Let's go to the next slide.
Alright. So this is the finance fallacy a lot of finance professionals find themselves in when they go build that relationship.
So you're this way through the webinar live. Maybe you're going through the recording, and you're saying you are ready to run through a wall and build business relationships. Like, you're so excited. Jim has provided some great insights, and you've taken away. You had your notepad out, and you're faced with this spark in the road. You say, Chris, do I wanna be the smartest finance person, or do I wanna be the trusted finance partner?
The common fallacy a lot of finance professionals may. And early in my career, I made the same fallacy. I wanted to be the smartest finance person. I wanted to know that I knew revenue recognition.
I wanted to know that I can look at CAC by cohorts. I wanted to I wanted the business to know that I knew the technologies like Q backwards and forward. Right? I I wanted the people to know that I I knew all the accounting pronouncements in.
I was a former auditor and CPA track. Like, I wanted to be the smartest finance professional when I was building that relationship with the business. So when you focus on that pillar, that's competency.
You wanna know that you want the person sitting across from you that's non finance to know you're the smartest finance person. Right? You wanna be they you wanna be confident. He knows his AC is six zero six. He knows all these different things. Right? That is the fallacy.
Do not focus on competency. I made plenty of mistakes in business and building relationships with non finance professionals because that's the first pillar I focused on. The first place you wanna start and this is a little bit uncomfortable. Right? Because we want we we're comfortable in our calculations.
We're comfortable in in knowing CAC backwards and forward. We're comfortable in maybe our accounting pronouncements.
Competency for finance is a common comfortable area that we that's why we go there first, where someone's comfortable.
Trust is like, hold on, Chris. You're asking me to go build trust first?
Exactly.
Here's that first way, and I gave it to you earlier. Here's that golden nugget key takeaway. Maybe later on, there'd be a fire emoji that pops up here. Here's that first fire moment for you. Go build trust. The best way that you can build trust outside of finance with non finance professionals is go understand their business.
First place. Take a step back. I do a I I I meet with CFOs all across the globe, all different industries, all different verticals, you name it.
One common question I ask all CFOs.
Hey. Tell me about your business. Tell me about your customers. Tell me about your market. Tell me about your business.
Sit across from them and they're like, Chris, what? Like, you don't wanna talk about, like, our. You don't wanna talk about our revenue performance. You wanna talk about this.
I'm like, no. Tell me about your business. Tell me about your customers. What keeps them up at night?
What's the pain? Tell me about your sales organization. How's it working inside the business? And they're just like, Chris, man, I do the rolling forecast every month, and we make sure we close a month.
Like, I don't I don't know what you're talking about.
The reason why I asked that question is because you haven't built that relation. You haven't seek that understanding inside the business.
Go learn the business. And that first way to go learn the bit here's my here's my call to action for everybody looking at this. If you wanna go build first step in a trusting relationship and you say, Chris, yeah, you're right. I focus too much on the competency side. I need to look at more around the trust side of the business.
Ask the business, what are some pains, frustrations, opportunities, and ways that I can help you? That is a first step in building a trust relationship. So that's just me breaking down a little bit more about this this, finance fallacy, and don't make those mistakes.
Let's go forward.
Alright. So we're jumping into our next quick poll.
What is the biggest challenge when communicating finance information to non finance departments? You're gonna see this pop up on your screen.
Jim, love to get your thoughts on this one too. Any other insights you wanna provide on the sections that we just talked about?
Yeah. I I've I'm gonna throw another other option out here just because it's top of mind. I've seen collaborating across departments, you know, particularly with finance is just having common definitions for your metrics that you're working off of. Right? Like, I'll give an example is win rate.
We're talking about win rate in a meeting, and it's okay. Well, what does win rate mean? Is it win rate versus competitors? Is it win rate for all of our opportunities?
Is it win rate for our sales qualified opportunities? Right? So one thing our team did recently is we put together a data dictionary that everybody can reference during meetings. Right?
So now we have that common foundation and understanding. And I think you mentioned this before, you know, Chris. Like, you're not spending forty five minutes hashing over the numbers when you're trying to collaborate as a team. Right?
You have that reference that you can go talk about or maybe a different department's discussing something going on in customer success. Right? I know what metrics they care about and how it's calculated because I can just go pull up that data dictionary that we've created. So that's always a big foundational piece in terms of communicating, especially across departments is, like, what's the actual metric?
What's it mean? How's it calculated? Where it's coming from? So establishing that foundation has been supremely helpful internally here at Qube.
Jim, that is that's another golden nugget. I recommend everybody to take that. Like, doing a day great example. You talk about is win rate.
Right? Like, as a salesperson, that's completely different. That's like, oh, my win rate is my opportunities to my pipeline. That's my win rate.
And you're like, no. No. No. We're talking about total opportunities at this particular stage that, excluded from here, data dictionaries and common foundation understanding of, like, wording, because opportunities, any word may sound different to when you're talking to a non finance person.
Right? So highly recommend to all those finance professionals in, like, building that data dictionary. And it's great that Q can help you, in in in building that common framework. Right?
Yeah.
Alright. So the biggest answer we got is simplifying concept terms, financial concept without losing important details. Yep. That's not surprising. Right? You're trying to keep it simple, but you're. But this is where this is my my insight around this one to be.
When you can simplify those financial concepts and you have the business understanding of, like, sales, like, you're trying to understand why CAC has increased. Right? But you understand the business because you've understand the business and you you know it, you're involved in it, you have those regular meetings and those touch points with the sales leadership, because you have that baseline foundation understanding of the business, that's gonna make it a lot easier to simplify this financial term. Right?
Now if you don't, if you don't have those regular meetings, the only time you check-in with sales is when they're doing something bad or you're working through the forecast or you're working through the budget. That's the only time you you connect with the salesperson, you're not gonna have that foundation understanding. You're not gonna have that intimate understanding of the business. So the best way to help solve that one, go learn the business.
Right? If there's two areas of the business, if you're at a high growth company and there's two business partners that you wanna have great relationships with, sales marketing.
Have a great relationship with those people. Those are people driving the revenue of the business. Those are people that intimately know the customers. Right? That's the top of the funnel. Right? That's the top of the funnel for SaaS businesses.
Marketing's leading marketing's driving leads. Leads go to opportunities in the sales process. Opportunities go to close one. Close one go to projects.
Projects go to projects completed. Projects completed go to cash. Cash goes to revenue. Revenue goes to revenue retention rate.
Sale marketing, sales, operations, client success, finance.
All those different areas. Go learn the top of the business. And, you know, sales and marketing people are fun. There there there's some great people I love working with.
Very intricate, interesting people. So that's my quick insight around that one. So thanks everybody for the poll on that. Let's move on to the next one.
Alright. So in this section, we're gonna talk talk to the top three of engaging with non finance professionals.
Let's jump right to the first one, and I'm I know me and Jim are gonna have some insights around this one.
Jim, what are your thoughts around this one? Practice active listening. Don't just don't just respond to give an answer, but actually listen. What's your thoughts around this?
Yeah. I mean, I this is especially tough nowadays with kinda hybrid virtual world. Right? You have your second screen up.
People are Slack, and you have Teams in your messages. Right? Like, being engaged in that conversation is huge. So, like, even some pro tips, like, I disconnect my second screen sometimes when I'm on calls.
I, actually will take notes, and my daughter's put a sticker on here, in a notebook. Right? Because it tells that person, hey. I'm I'm in this conversation with you.
I'm not, like, responding to an email. I suppose I could be doodling picture of a doughnut or something if I'm fasting or whatever it might be, but I'm actively engaged in this conversation. And then the other piece of it is, you know, the follow-up. I've mentioned this before, but, like, good leaders are are folks who are not only actively engaged in listening, but they're documenting those concerns.
They're confirming at the end of the meeting, hey. Here's those three things I heard. Do I have this right?
Is there anything else I'm missing?
Then you follow-up. And then where needed, you build a plan and you execute against it. Because, otherwise, I'm just talking to an empty room if there's no follow-up on that discussion we had. Right? So it's not just the active listening. It's the engagement confirmation, like, documentation and everything else that goes along with it.
Nice. Nice. If I would just add to what Jim mentioned, I'm at a failure point. So this is a lesson learned.
Right? When I was a a manager of FP and A at an associate management software company, Highgrove, just got into managing people. And I'm in I failed in this. I failed in that translation.
And the reason why I failed was specifically on this one. So I had three direct reports. I had a controller. I had a financial analyst.
I had a business manager. Right? And my business manager, every time she would come talk to me, she would, like, share with me, and I didn't actively listen. Right?
Every time she would share, I thought she always wanted to share things with me, and and I would just give her solutions. Like, I wasn't listening to what she was saying. I was listening as she's talking. I'm like, okay.
Yep. Hey. Hey. Here's the solution what you need to do. Like, then you go do this, this, this, and this, and this.
Here's here like, I was always in solutiony mode to when she was talking to me. And I remember, like, we didn't have a great relationship earlier on because I was always every time she would talk to me, I'm just like, here's a solution. I got other things to do. Go do this.
It'll solve it. Come back to me. Right?
And I failed in that, Jim. I failed everybody looking at this. I failed in that. And I remember having a conversation with me, the the CFO at the time, and her. And she said something to me. And this is a great I don't I don't know if it's a book. And she said, Chris, it's not always about the nail.
And I was like, what? What what does that even mean? She says, Chris, well, when I talk to you, I'm just talking with you, not looking for solutions, not looking for you to give me the answer. I'm just talking to you just to express what's going on.
Like, I'm not looking for that. And I remember her sitting there telling me that. She's like, Chris, you're not listening to me. You're listening to me to me respond.
You're not listening to me to engage.
And I I took that back as a leader and was like, man, I gotta stop that. So one way when she would come talk to me, Lori was her name, and she'll give me things. I'm like, what else, Lori?
She would talk more about it. And she's like, what how else? Anything else? And it was a way for her, and our relationship blossomed because of it.
And now I said to her, I said, hey, Lori. To make sure, like, if you do wanna help me solution through things, like, if you do wanna talk through that, like, just let me know. Right? But most of the time, I'm just gonna be listening to you and making sure you get everything out that you feel like you had a voice and express it to me.
Right? And, like, what it wasn't about to nail changed me as a leader. Like, I was like, Chris. And here's the thing.
You're running a little amount of minute. Right? You're you're looking at me. You're like, Chris, man, I got eighty different things on my responsibility list.
I don't have time to do all that.
You have to actively listen. Because a lot of time, people are coming to you as a team. Your non finance person isn't coming to you for a solution. They just wanna talk about it.
They just wanna actively have somebody that's sitting back there listening and asking engaging questions and having follow-up. And, also, while that's important, that's a great way of building rapport. Right? If you have a building a relationship imagine if you go to somebody and you're build trying to build a relationship with them, and everybody has and that that person you're talking with has a solution to every problem that you have.
That would scare me. That's not a person in the world that has a solution to everything. Right? And the biggest superpower you can have around that too is say, hey.
I don't know the answer to that. That's a great question. That's a great insight. Let's take some time.
Or how can we work together to figure that out? Right? Do not fake it till you make it. Actively listen, and take that engagement side of it.
Let's go to the next one.
Be transparent. I'm trying to talk about this. I literally just said this one. Right? Like, don't fake it till you make it.
One of the key fallacies a lot of finance professionals will have. Right? And I had to get over this as a leader. Maybe you're a CFO, maybe you're a VP of finance, maybe you're VP of FP and A looking at this.
And the common fallacy that I think in leadership that needs to be broken is people think if I come to the leader, they're gonna always have problem. They're always gonna have a solution to my problem. Right?
I was like, look. I don't I don't have the answer to that. That is a great this is a complex problem. Who can we bring in, or how can we figure this out together, or what resources do we need?
The worst thing that you can do is try to know something and talk about something that you have no insights around. Listen. I have struggled in this one. Right?
Because I think I know a a area, and I'm pretty I'm pretty knowledgeable in it, But I could've just easily been like, hey. Here's here's where my knowledge point is. Right? If if we wanna talk about it, happy to talk about it, but this isn't really a great, like, area for me.
Right? And, like, as a leader, even still building Fresh FP and A, I my team comes to me with stuff, and I'm like, I don't know the answers to that. But I'm gonna do some research. I'm gonna try to figure it out.
I'm gonna take some time and go understand and come back to you with some insights. The worst thing you can do with a non finance professional in in building that relationship is act like you know something and you don't. That is a fun, like, that is a fundamental way of breaking down that reputation and breaking down that relationship. Jim, where have you seen this is successful in q where you're able to be and have that area of transparency for finance professionals?
Yeah. I think one thing that I've seen, you know, especially finance leaders do is it's natural for finance folks to be, like, protective of their models and the data. But the tools are out there where you should be able to share that.
Right?
It makes every conversation easier.
Share that rosters, things like that. But you can't share. Right? Payroll, rosters, things like that.
But the the majority of the modeling data analysis you're doing, that should be shared and easily accessible by your stakeholders, by the other folks in the business. And it's gonna expose those areas where there's not alignment, right, where there's that metric calculates it their way. But exposing those data points, that analysis, your thought process behind the modeling and the data makes everything so much modeling and the data makes everything so much easier because they can go access that g sheet. If you're not using Excel online and use Excel, use that.
That's a really easy way to collaborate. So you take that versioning aspect out of it. But building that transparency and that trust, like, half of that is just providing that detail to those team members so they can work off of it with you.
Love it. Love it. And it gets back to the what the one of the topics that you we mentioned earlier. The other c is around centralization.
Right? Yeah. And technologies like cube where you can centralize that communication to say, here's the place and the single place that we're gonna go to. Here's where you have access to the data that you need.
Right? And here's how, as a finance partner, I can help you make sense of this data. Right? Huge, huge, huge opportunity.
Thanks for sharing that, Jim. Let's go to number three.
Alright. This is this is this is one close to my heart.
And I think one of the one of the roles that a c a I call them fresh CFOs of the future. Right? These are the the people that are driving the CFO office of the CFO of the future.
One of the hats that we have to wear is not only the chief financial officer, we gotta be the chief feelings officer. We gotta get that pulse of the business. Right? And to me, I think emotional intelligence is a skill set and a value that is it is it it it's transferable across every not only just in finance and in business, but across your life.
I would when I'm building teams or bringing on teammates at FreshFP and A or high performance finance teams that I've built over twenty years in high growth companies, I have always looked at two different things, EQ versus IQ. Right? IQ, learning SAS, learning, you know, pharma companies, learning the finance and methodology, I can teach that. Right?
High levels of emotional intelligence and people that have empathy, people that can communicate, people that have emotional intelligence. I don't know about you, Jim, but you can't go to the store and buy and buy emotional intelligence off the rack. Right? You can go to the store and buy a book to say, a hundred and one tips on how to improve your cat.
Right? You can go find that. Right? But emotional intelligence and using this as an opportunity in building relationships, every relationship, you're gonna go you know, I've had I've I've had hard conversations with sales leaders.
I've had to have hard conversations with HR professionals. Right? There's no way in finance that you're not gonna be able to have those hard and difficult and challenging conversations. So they're going to happen.
And those are opportunities to leverage and improve your emotional intelligence. Right? Putting on that chief feelings officer hat, another CFO hat, and understanding the business, understanding the pains, understanding the opportune living a life. And what does it mean to be a sales professional at our organization when we're behind on sales?
What does it mean to be a sales professional in our organization when we're crushing sales? What does it mean to be and how does it feel when a HR person is having to go through and do reduction modeling? Right? Like, there's so much there's a there's so many times that in finance professionals, we get to see so much of the business, and we're like the first people to see it.
Right? We're the ones modeling things, and there's so much emotions tied to that. I remember in leading companies and we were going through a tough time, and we had to make some reductions.
And, Jim, I remember having lunch with and this is this is a real life story. I remember having lunch with somebody, and I knew in three days, their entire life was about to change. I knew they were on the reduction list. I knew that this was gonna happen.
I knew this was a package. And, Jim, I remember having lunch with that person, and they shared to me, yeah. I'm super excited. Like, me and my wife and, you know, we're about to go we're putting a down payment on the house, and we're going through this whole housing and I was just like, the the toll that that took on me emotionally knowing, like, I have information and knowledge and did this work that's gonna impact this person, and I needed to keep a high level of emotional intelligence for the business, but know that in three days, it's gonna affect somebody.
Right? So I think making sure that everything that we do, at the end of it is not gonna just be a financial model. Right? It's gonna be a person behind that.
Every bit any decision, any journal entry, any transaction, there's a human element behind that that has a financial element to it. And it is our task as finance, accounting, FP and A, CFO professionals to make sure that we show that empathy side of it and be able to do that. Jim, what are some other things you wanna add on finance professionals showing empathy?
Yeah. I think nobody wants to be viewed by the organization as the CF no, right, where you just come and the answer is no.
So one thing I've seen, finance leaders in particular be, like, really effective is using that empathy, but also using it to teach your stakeholders how to come interact and ask for you.
Right?
Because somebody comes to you like, my team's drowning.
We need more head count. Like, you need more than that, and you know it. Right? You can sympathize in the moment and help dig into more details.
But if you teach that that team member how to go back and build that business case, that makes everything throughout the like, when you go to the board or the executive team to request that, you have all the background information. So, like, empathize with them, hearing them out. Like, they're not coming to you for no reason. Right?
So coming from that, hey. I want to your point before. How can I help you? Part of that is teaching them how to ask you for help, right, and the proper business cases and things like that around it because you're gonna ultimately need that information.
So when you come at it from that perspective, I've seen really, you know, effective finance finance teams because they're more collaborative in nature there.
I love it. I love it, Jim. And, like, I think that's another you you man, you dropping you dropping nuggets and gold golden items on here, man. And, like, to me, like, I just wanna highlight that teaching moment. Right? So many times with non finance people, it listen.
It's gonna probably take you more time. Here's the thing about it. Like, you're like, Chris, man, everything you're saying just sounds like but relationships are all about investment of time.
That's the whole purpose of a relationship.
Right? If you're not investing the time that you need and when you're establishing a relationship, it's a lot of time on the front end. Right? But to your point that you mentioned, if you can work with a salesperson and say, hey.
Maybe it's their first time working with a collaborative finance person. So they're like, I don't know. Like, I'm just so used to working with finance people that are just telling me no like you said. Like, it's crazy that I actually have a have a finance partner that tells me how they can help support me.
I don't know how to do this. Right? And you take those moments to, like you said, build that business case or tell the story around it through numbers or have a way of how they can influence a decision. Right?
All all things that I had to learn and most finance professionals have to learn through practice. You gotta put yourself in these opportunities to leverage some of these skills. And, Jim, you knocked it right out the park about helping and teaching those moments and taking the time to teach. And, yes, it's gonna be more time.
But in the longer run, that's a better investment and more ROI, not only for you, but also in building that relationship. Great point, Jim.
Absolutely.
Alright. Let's go to the next one.
Alright. So bringing it all together, I know we're right at time. We'll probably save some time over. So bringing it all together.
We talked about the triple c's, communication, collaboration, connection. Jim dropped that golden nugget around centralizing and leverage technology like cube to centralize the communication, collaboration, connection, and calculations. Boom. That's all of it in there.
Right? We also talked about, you know, how do you practice some of these things. Right? And how do you put these things in motion?
How do you develop a great business relationship? How do you succinctly simplify the language in that poll question that we talked about? What are some tips and strategies that you can take away to actually start down that road of being a trusted value finance partner and not being the smartest finance person? And we closed it down with some real stories around it.
One thing I wanna leave with as a final key point. If you take away anything from this conversation, this is the one thing that is gonna propel your career. Right? There's the ABCs of sales, which is always be closing.
I think the ABC of finance and the ABC for your career and continue to improve yourself and continue to sharpen your skill set, always be curious.
The why question opens up so well, why is this this way? Why is this like that? That is a question, and curiosity as a skill set is a superpower.
And I'm saying it right now. Genitive AI is not gonna be as curious as a person. It's not it's not gonna be that. That is a skill set that we're not gonna be, having to compete with generative AI on.
So that's all the things to bring together. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Jim, thank you so much for your time, man. Thank you so much for your insights and, everything.
And I think now well, I know we're a little bit over on time, but we'll I I'm I'm happy to stay over, answer some questions.
Yeah. Thank you both. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Jim. This has been awesome. We do have quite a few questions in the q and a, but just wanna remind everybody that if you do need to jump, don't worry about it.
You're going to receive the full recording and slides after this webinar is over. So you can always come back and, you know, hear the answer to your question if you don't get to right now. But without further ado, one of the first questions we have, how do you drive collaboration specifically around budgeting and planning cycles?
Whichever one of you would like to take this.
Jim, you wanna tackle that one first?
Yeah. I think from collaborating around planning cycles in particular, a big thing is is the why. Why are we going through this activity? Right?
And as long as people know that, it helps them, like, jump in and plan more actively. Hey. To your point before, Chris, what's in it for me? What is it for what's in it for them?
Explain to them why this is important process. You want that new software this year? We we have to budget for it. Right?
So let's make sure that we're incorporating everything in. And using technology to facilitate that, like, what really helps too is if you can increase the frequency of your planning, it's not as burdensome. Like, your team members are doing it more often. Like, it's not like you have to do this big refresher on how we're planning this year in September.
Right? If you get them more active, do more of that rolling forecast as well. They're more engaged. They're doing it every month.
You foster more of that collaboration. It just makes everything easier. So those are some of the big ways I see, teams collaborate there.
Yeah. If I would just add one piece to that. I know Qube has a great resource. Just Google Qube budget, cadence, and calendar. I know that there's a great template and format that you can have that just gives you a real start guide to getting and implementing that budgeting and forecasting process.
Definitely.
Alright. Another question. Version control is a huge pain in my organization. Definitely a painful silo. Any insights into designating owners of data across not just the finance team, but other departments?
Yeah. It's a good question. I think in terms of designating owners of data, like, somebody's gotta own each database. Right? So you got you know, ideally, as you grow larger, you have a, you know, finance systems type resource in your finance team that can help serve that role.
But I think it comes down to Chris's earlier point, which is if as a finance person you understand that team, that business unit, right, you don't have to be the administrator of that application to have a solid understanding of that data source and what it's trying to do. And finance kinda naturally sits across all these data sources regardless of the if they're the true owners anyway. So seeking to truly understand, I think, is the biggest benefit, like, where finance can jump in to, like, understand those metrics, how their data that's coming out, so on and so forth. But, yeah, Chris, if you have anything you wanna add, jump in.
Yeah. I would just add. So, like, in working with sales and marketing teams, right, kinda talking through those KPI that I mentioned earlier. Right?
Like, sales and marketing are gonna measure a lot of different things. Right? But at the end of the day, marketing's key role to the business, it gets back to, like, take a functional area and tie it back to a business. Right?
Marketing's number one opportunity is to drive leads or opportunities in the sales process. Right? They're the tip of the spear. So that's what we will measure and say, leads leads converted to opportunities.
That's the core metric. Now sales now marketing leader, you can go manage however data you wanna have inside it. But the key one that we're gonna focus on that drives to that next point are gonna be leads to opportunities. Right?
That was a major KPI that we aligned on. Right? So I didn't have to know when my team was like, hey. You can look at all these different ones.
But at the end of the day, the conversation I wanna have with you is how's all this output driving leads to opportunity. Same thing with the sales process. Right? Sales, you can manage pipeline throughput, territory, lead cycle, aging, all the different, slippage, all the different metrics that go along with that.
But in the sales conversation, sales to close one. That's what we care about. Right? How many opportunities we have and how many we think we're gonna close in a quarter.
Right? So it's all about you can have these core metrics, but then also have all these supplementary metrics that the business should own. Right? Like, I shouldn't own the pipeline generation for sales reps.
Right? Like, I can help you be part of that, but at the end of the day, what I wanna drive back to is how's this going to opportunities to close one? So I think it's like, measure what matters, right, to the business and be able to connect those dots down and still enable the business to measure the business on how they wanna measure output and still be a supportive function in helping them measure, manage those different I'll call it, like, second layer of metrics.
Nice. Alright. Next question. How do we ensure alignment and collaborations with the c suite when budgeting?
Chris, I'll let you take a stab at that one.
Yeah. So I think one of the first places to start is very and you could do there's different budgeting approach. Approach. Right?
There's some people that do, bottoms up, which means you look at everything a lot. You just look at every single line item. You go the way up. There's top down where you start at the leadership, go down.
I like to do both versions of that. Right? I like to do a bottoms up that finance owns, and we just take all that information. We're working inside the business.
We're also working on the top down and looking at the with with the c suite. But the most important thing that the c suite should be driving is the core KPI of the business. Revenue, expenses, cash, you know, those core pieces of the area. You gotta have alignment on that.
Right? So as you're working through that budgeting process, right, like, the first place I start with a lot of our clients, and I've always started with c suite and working through that, it's not looking at, like, metrics. It's not looking at, like, calculations and plans and vendor build up. It's like, where do we want the business to go?
Like, where are we at?
What what what do we look where are we looking at the business in the next twelve months? Like, where are the wins that we wanna have? Where are the opportunities that we see in the business? So making it less about providing, like, here's our first model of what we think the plan is gonna be, but really getting into that strategic level conversation. Because that sweet seed is gonna be driving that. Right? You got the CEO in there, and you got maybe a COO, and you got the CFO, or you're in that conversation.
Look broadly across the business. Right? And then now I like doing the top down, which is that that visionary strategic level to breaking it down and a bottoms up. I always look at budgeting and forecasting and ranges.
Right? Here's my budget. Here's my forecast. Typically, you're gonna fall somewhere within the middle of both of them.
Right? At least you know a range that you wanna go. So for me, that's kinda some of the best practices that we have in getting the c suite aligned is thinking strategically about the business and less about getting the c suite to say, hey. Here's our Excel model that we did for next year.
How does this look to you? No.
Start strategic. Work your way down with that c suite. Stop start at the top. What are the key areas you wanna focus on around revenue, expenses, cash, headcount? How does that look for the business? And then you can translate that information to more of a top down approach. But you're also working on a bottoms up inside the business.
Awesome. I will toss one more to both of you, and then we can address the rest of them following the webinar.
Final question for the day. Any tips for helping to communicate changes to plans to your team? For example, cutting the budget for one department by five percent.
Yeah. I'll start with the key is you have to have the data to begin with. Like, the worst thing is you have a a stakeholder who goes and fills out a budget, and then they get something a month later that's drastically different. Right? So making sure you have those scenarios, those versions, those passes, the justification behind it. Like, if you don't have that, that makes it really tough to have those discussions.
Shameless plug desk for, like, a tool like CUBE can help you maintain those scenarios and things like that. But having that that foundation around keeping that data, is gonna be key to having those discussions. And then empathizing, like Chris had mentioned before, but, you know, driving your justification for some of those cuts and changes. Right?
It's not like budget cuts or, or changes to budgets, I should say, before finalization is, like, super rare or anything like that. It happens every business. But, you know, having that kind of key foundation of data to actually, like, show those changes, maybe show, you know, changes for other departments, not that you'd get into the details, to show that it may be not just them that's being impacted by those changes. But, Chris, curious to your thoughts as well.
Listen.
Nobody likes surprises.
Right. No. No. Nobody likes it. So if you know that, communicate it. One thing that I have I have always had as a state is there is no such thing as finance people being overcommunicated.
Like, that's not possible. Now in some organizations, it's like, hey, man. I don't need to get pings all the time that you just updated this opportunity in the sales process. Right?
Like, that may be a little too much. But in finance and in building great relationships, getting back to, like, how trust is built. Right? Imagine if you're building a trust and relationship with somebody and, like, you know, you're building a trust relationship with them and you figure out, like, you know, they're putting fifty percent of their headcount.
You'd be like, hey, man. You couldn't give me the heads up on that. Like Yeah. I thought we were I thought we were building trust.
I thought we were partners. Right?
Proactive when you know it. Right? I always like to say, like, I I if I got it out there, I always like to post it out. I was like, hey.
It's not finalized, but this isn't particularly what we doing. Once the decision is finalized, I'm happy to have a conversation. But as a partner, I wanted to give you a proactive heads up that this may be coming down the line. Right?
The worst thing that you can have in building a relationship with somebody is somebody finds out that information and it's not through you. That is a horrible way of and think about your personal life. Right? Like, if you build a great relationship with somebody and, like, you find out something through somebody else, you're gonna be like, hey, man.
I thought we were boys or girls. I thought we were I thought we were friends. Like, how how'd you not let me know this? You will feel blindsided by that.
Pulse the communication.
Set the context.
Give the clarity. There is no realm of reality where finance can be overcommunic definitely in the environment we're in now where there's a lot of changes. There's a lot of uncertainty, things are happening fast, communication is so proactive communication is vital. That would be my insight around that.
Yeah.
I can't think of a better way to end it. Thank you both so much for answering these questions and for doing a great job with this webinar. And before we let everyone go, I just wanna go over a couple of resources for you if you're looking to dig into some more information or keep the conversation going.
First, you've heard from Chris' entire presentation. If you'd like to hear more from him, learn how FreshUp P and A can help you at your business, feel free to connect with him on LinkedIn.
Next, you can request a custom cube demo if you're interested in learning more about how cube can help you communicate better and connect better with people throughout your business.
Third, we have our biweekly newsletter, the finance fix. This is written by our founder and CEO, Christina Ross. She shares lots of different finance tips and strategies every other week. So this is definitely useful if you wanna stay in the know of what's going on in finance.
And lastly, our strategic finance pros Slack community is an exclusive Slack community specific to finance pros who wanna communicate with each other and hear from each other and, again, stay in the know. You can get access to different webinars like this one, and other types of content, job recommendations, events, all types of stuff. So highly recommend signing up for that if that sounds interesting to you. And with that, thank you everyone so much.
I hope you all have an excellent rest of your day, and please keep an eye on your inbox for all of the resources that were mentioned.
Okay.
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