Episode 2: Defining Sales and Marketing: The Art of Sales and Marketing Synergy Through a Dating App Lens

Craig Andrews: 0:04

Welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook, and today we're going to find out how sales and marketing is like a dating app.

Voice Over: 0:23

Welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed, the premier podcast for innovative growth strategies hosted by two seasoned experts. Meet Evan Polin, the president of Polin Performance Group, a master in sales coaching with over two decades of experience. Evan is not just a consultant. He's a force in sales, focusing on mindset planning and skill development. He's also the co-author of Selling Professional Services, the Sandler Way. Joining him is Craig Andrews, partner and CEO of Beholder Agency, an expert in growth marketing he shares under his belt. Craig blends marketing creativity with strategy to propel businesses forward, making Beholder Agency a leader in effective marketing solutions. Together, evan and Craig are here to share their wisdom on winning strategies, best practices and transformative insights that will fuel your growth. Get ready to revolutionize your sales and marketing approach right here on the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed.

Craig Andrews: 1:24

Welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. I'm your host, craig Andrews, and this is my co-host, evan Polin, and today we're going. Episode two is going to be defining sales and marketing Beholder Agency. We like to help clients with their marketing and make sure that they understand how their marketing is helping and benefiting them so they can grow year after year. Evan, why don't you explain to the audience in terms of what Polin Performance Group is?

Evan Polin: 1:47

Sure, I'll explain what Polin Performance Group does, and I hope that we get through this episode talking about dating apps without either you or I getting divorced, so this would be interesting, so.

Craig Andrews: 1:57

I am.

Evan Polin: 1:57

Evan Polin, president of Polin Performance Group. I have a sales coaching and consulting firm and I help organizations that are frustrated because their sales just aren't growing to the level that they'd like. They're looking to get in front of more of their ideal kinds of prospects, looking to shorten the sales cycle between first contact to closing a deal, and a lot of the folks that I help have been in business for a long time, have a great reputation and need to make sure that they're leveraging those assets to get more referrals and introductions so they can grow their business. So, craig, today we're talking about defining sales and marketing and helping our audience, as we move through these episodes, make sure they understand where we stand From my perspective. Let me give you my definition of sales.

Evan Polin: 2:44

Sales is the process of exchanging a product or service for money or other compensation. It involves directly engaging with customers to understand their needs and persuading them to purchase what is being offered. The focus of sales is on the transaction and closing deals, often using negotiating, relationship building and problem solving skills. And the other thing. I'd like to add that sales is also a process of qualifying or disqualifying, and we're going to get into that a little bit as we talk about our dating analogy later today, but the misconception from a lot of people is we want to close every deal. Unfortunately, for most of my clients, every customer is not the ideal customer for them and we'll talk a little bit about that. As we go through today, craig, you want to share with everybody a little bit from your perspective, your definition of marketing.

Craig Andrews: 3:30

Sure. So, from a marketing perspective, marketing is the activity and the process of creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, partners and society as a whole. It involves understanding the need and the want of a target audience, which is pretty, you know, pretty broad, based on the listing we said before, and effectively communicating how a product or service can meet those needs, often using strategies like advertising, public relations marketing, et cetera. And so, with that being the case, evan, when we're talking about defining sales and marketing, some of the other episodes we talked about is that a lot of people confuse sales and marketing, and I think that we use the dating app analogy as a way of saying that they're technically two separate processes. And so, in the process of marketing, it's about relationship building, getting to know people, developing and understanding what their needs are. From a pain perspective, talk about how it feels from a sales perspective in terms of the definition between the two.

Evan Polin: 4:32

Sure, and let me try to break this down without having us come across as old, out-of-touch fogies because we've both been married for a very long time and also not getting ourselves in trouble. So the way that Craig and I have kind of discussed in Banner back and forth with sales and marketing as it applies to a dating app. So with dating apps, the marketing piece is the profile you're putting out there, your picture, what you say you're looking for, your likes, your dislikes, what you want to do, what you're interested in. Are you looking for a long-term relationship or a one-night stand? But the marketing piece when it comes to dating app is that frontward, outward profile that you're putting out to try to attract as many, hopefully, of the right kind of fit and the right kind of people that you'd like to date as possible so that you can have lots of options.

Evan Polin: 5:22

The sales side when it comes to dating and dating apps is when you actually go out on the date. Now, somebody's been identified through marketing, through the profile, you've connected with somebody. You're going out. Now, through going out with them, you're going to go through the process of qualifying or disqualifying. Do I like this person? Do I not like this person?

Evan Polin: 5:42

The profile that I wrote. Did it attract the right kind of person? Did it attract the kind of person who's interested in the same kind of things that I am? Or my five or 10 minutes into the date going, what the heck did I do? How did what I put down in my profile attract who I'm out with right now and what might we need to tweak moving forward to make sure I don't have another date like this?

Evan Polin: 6:06

So that profile, what you're putting up there, that is the marketing piece that is going to attract Maybe good candidates, maybe not so good candidates. And the sales piece is when you're on the date actively talking to somebody qualifying or disqualifying, and, based on the information that you get from that date, that'll allow you to know, hey, I've got this dialed in in the right direction and that was great, and maybe I'm going to take my profile down because that was the ideal prospect for me and I'm not interested in talking to any kind of prospects. Or maybe it was a good prospect but you want to meet others and you like to you met. So you're going to keep the profile the same, or you're going oh my God, I can never have another date like this and now we need to go back and change up that marketing. Make sure that we're attracting something different, so that maybe that next date's a little bit better.

Craig Andrews: 6:55

And I would add to that, evan, to sit back and say, when we talked in another episode about why sales blames marketing and marketing blames sales, the reality of it is is that it's a two-sided conversation, right? And then, if you're talking about the profiles and the that you're putting up there, you know a lot of times people falsely put up bad information, whether they mean to or not. They put up bad information that leads to the wrong customer coming in the door. And that's where a marketing perspective it's important to understand what you're telling people, what you're putting out there, how you look whether it be your branding, whether it be your style, your website the information that's being read is coming across clear and concise, to make sure that the actual conversion of that to your end comes through nice and clear. We talked before in another episode about how, when, when you're actually talking to the sales and the sales gives you feedback. Right, we're talking about giving you feedback of how that transaction worked in terms of the relationship building. That's important for us because imagine a scenario, evan, when, when you were first met your wife and you came and you brought flowers. That's almost a transaction, a communication of how my relationship with you can potentially be Right, and it obviously worked.

Craig Andrews: 8:08

You've been married for a long time, just like I have. Hopefully we're still married at the end of this, but I think that in the courting relationship piece, the same thing exists in business. A lot of people make the mistake thinking sales and marketing are the same, that the same way I market to you, the same day I expect you to close a deal and make a decision, is not real. There's several steps that would have happened prior to that for them to make the closing decision, and that's the stuff that, from a marketing perspective, we try to focus on. When you bring technology into the mix, which makes it faster, that's where things get to trouble, because the same relationship has to happen just faster and a little bit more efficient. What's your thoughts on that?

Evan Polin: 8:48

So I agree completely and it's part of why sales and marketing needs to talk together and sometimes what's in your head and what you think you're looking for may not be what you're really looking for. I've talked to friends who have been on those dating apps and they're going out and they're complaining oh my God, I hate the last one even more than the one before that and I'm just not in front of the right person. And then they show that profile to a friend and the friend goes. No wonder why you're finding all of the wrong people. This is what you may have thought in your head, but this is what you're putting out there and this is why you're attracting what you're looking to attract.

Evan Polin: 9:28

Think about yourself and your own organization. Are you ever getting calls? You're doing Google AdWords, you're doing SEO, you're doing marketing and the phone's ringing off the hook, but none of the prospects are the right kinds of prospects and none of them are your ideal kind of customers. Yeah, I was on the phone with a client earlier this week. I was an immigration attorney and he, you know, just started using Google ads and was getting really frustrated Because the first three phone calls that he got was people asking whether or not they could get. He could get them a job when they get the states. Not at all what he was looking for in terms of who was ideal customer. So again, someone like that needs to go back, talk to other people, talk to clients, get that real-world feedback Yep, find out why that message that he initially had in his head Isn't leading him to what he wants to do, and go back and make tweaks Again when sales and marketing aren't communicating.

Evan Polin: 10:27

Marketing's going. There's all of these leads coming in. Wow, why aren't you happy? Why aren't you closing more and Sales is gone. You're wasting my time. All of these leads are horrible leads and none of them would ever be our customers. That's why we need to have the communication back and forth to take care of that disconnect, yeah, and you ensure that everybody's on the same page. Otherwise, we're gonna be wasting lots of money going on lots of bad dates.

Craig Andrews: 10:53

Yeah with.

Craig Andrews: 10:57

A lot of dinners and I think that when we talk about some of the Misconceptions in that business mindset, those are the things that comes out of it, because we're only seeing things from one vision and I think from a sales perspective. What can happen on the converse side of it is is that I sit back and I think that every call that comes in is a good call, right, and I think that if it's a good call, then I should actively be selling it and getting it in the door, even though it's not the right fit from the start. And sometimes that can get Bogey glasses and we're seeing the wrong vision of what we really want. To your point, and I think that the the things that we're gonna talk about in future episodes is gonna really talk about what is a good client, prospect, vendor, person for my business to drive the business forward? And I think that's a Viable question that people ask.

Craig Andrews: 11:49

I know they ask of me all the time. Hey, I got, I got 400 leads the other day and I go how many converted? And they go crickets, crickets. I haven't ever cricket sound effect here. I was about ready to use, but I figure I'll wait till next time, right? And then all of a sudden, it's not really, it's not really clicking right, and so now I'm spending and some of our clients have big budgets in terms of PPC and Google ads and so forth that don't really work out the way it should be. We try to come in and find ways to make it a little bit more efficient.

Evan Polin: 12:18

So, I'm sorry, go ahead and I was gonna say a big misconception on the sales side Is that you're supposed to try to close every opportunity. You get in front of Huge misconception. The goal of sales is to qualify or disqualify as quickly as possible. I bet if we were to pull our listening audience right now, which I think is in the thousands to tens of thousands, yeah, that if we were to ask everybody what percentage of your current clients or your ideal clients, and if you could write down on paper the products you're selling or the services You're providing, the fee that you're getting for those services, too many folks listening to this podcast right now would be unhappy with what that percentage would be. Yeah, they may be bringing in revenue, but only 50 or 60 or maybe even 30 or 40 percent of their current clients are their ideal clients and clients are energized about working, working within the ideal, right clients.

Evan Polin: 13:16

Part of that mix is marketing, fine tuning to get the right message out to the right audience so that when sales gets in front of those right prospects, they're gonna be clients who we're gonna love to work with us. We're not gonna get any fee pushback, we're not gonna get any pushback on our services because they're gonna realize that we are the ideal fit for what they're looking for. Yeah, but again too often, and so I need to close everything. I need to close everything. I don't want to get anything out of the pipeline when, in actuality, when the marketing gets just in front of the opportunities, the sales needs to then determine whether or not that's a really good opportunity and not be afraid to say, no, this isn't the right fit, yep, and then go back to marketing to talk a little bit about why somebody or something may not have been the right fit, so, again, that we can make those tweaks to get in front of more of that ideal.

Craig Andrews: 14:06

And I know, from our perspective, one of the things that we that's a hard thing to do I just talked to a client this week is sometimes going slow is fast and we have a saying fast as slow and slow as fast. You know, if we sit back and we try to charge out and get a thousand leads in a month, right, and we don't know who our ideal client is, we don't know what they like, we don't know what their pains are. More specifically, and if I go back to the definition, it talks about that, what offerings that have value for customers, and value is a very broad definition. If we're talking value for our customers, that could be anything. And I'll give you a story as an anecdote.

Craig Andrews: 14:45

One of the friends of mine for many years ago who is in sales was selling ads to people for pizza, pizza shops and they were saying hey, I have a problem here, I need to, I need to get more sales in. And the salesperson actually had a very smart answer and they said what is your biggest problem in your business? And ironically, it wasn't I need more people, I need more staff. It was the cost of cheese is killing me Totally. Threw me off. I was like what he said if I can get the cost of cheese down Now I can do XYZ.

Craig Andrews: 15:21

So part of the campaign was talking to the vendors which is still marketing, by the way, is Part of the talking to the vendors on how I can get the cost of my cheese down, which will allow me to have the funding to pay for advertising. That's truly understanding your customer well enough. So in that case, we talked to them about how, what vendors you can go to. That's going to change it. Marketing is not just marketing and sales, but it's also helping the business save and get a better ROI overall, and I think that that's another misconception that comes out of it. It's an overall holistic approach, not just a single effort of put out a TV ad, get a response, and I think that some of the businesses that we deal with don't take the whole picture into account. What do you think about that, evan?

Evan Polin: 16:06

I would agree completely and, if I could say over the last 20 plus years, the biggest mistake that salespeople make is they think it's all about themselves. They think it's all about their product, their service. Let me tell you all about us, why we're great, why we're cheaper, better, smarter, why you should be working with us. Guess what, If you talk to your customers, they don't care what you got, they don't care what it is you're selling it's. Can you solve a problem for me? So back to the example you just gave Can you save me money? Because guess what, If I get more customers in but I'm losing money on every customer because my cost of goods is too high? That's just going to put me out of business quicker. So again, it's really getting people to think about okay, not me, me, me from my perspective, but looking at things through my client's perspective and what drives value for them, yeah. And then how can you ask them the right kinds of questions? To have them go? Oh my God, Craig, you guys, it sounds like you're the greatest thing since SlySpread. If you can do this for me, I will be a client of yours forever. Yeah. Or having somebody go you know what, Craig? That stuff's really not all that important to me. That's not really what I thought. Okay, great, it was really nice meeting you.

Evan Polin: 17:25

If things change, we're always happy to take your call. Yeah, we're not trying to force a square peg into a round hole Back, and too often when sales and marketing aren't on the same page, that's what happens. Marketing goes well, you're in front of all these people. Just try to close them anyway. Yeah, Even if they're the right fit and sales goes back and ask marketing to do things that's not in the company's best interest. Again, the more that we're aligned and, quite frankly, that brings us to, I think the next thing that we wanted to talk about is, Craig, as you're working with businesses when it comes to marketing, what are some of the things that companies should be looking for up front? What are some of the things that companies should be looking for down the road to let them know whether or not what they're doing is successful?

Craig Andrews: 18:11

Great, question so a lot of times again, when, whenever we come in or someone comes in, they should be looking at the overall picture. They should be looking at what's working. Now. What data do you have to prove that it's working? And we're gonna talk about it in other episodes in terms of KPIs that fall into place and you know it's working when people call you back and tell you first off, they tell you how great it's going. If they're not telling you how great it's going, they may be just letting it fall and file into a case drawer.

Craig Andrews: 18:41

That does not really mean anything, but a lot of the indications are gonna be right there, face front, and it hits you automatically. You've done a great job for me. Reviews, big one. We're gonna talk about some other point as well.

Craig Andrews: 18:52

Reviews are very important because not only is it important for you for an information perspective, but it's also information passed out to other people to see visibly on the internet.

Craig Andrews: 19:01

So now that's a great indicator that you have a great product, because remember I think you told me this people do business with the ones they like right.

Craig Andrews: 19:10

So now if you're in a situation that people like you, they're gonna be your biggest evangelist, telling other people how great you are right, and a lot of times it's more perception than it is actually the effort that you're doing, because a lot of times you solve my problem, you solve my pain, you made me feel good, you got my boss off my back all those feel good things which really touch to the relationship part of things. If you trust me, then I can trust you with other people in my network, which is where the social media stuff comes into play, and that's very, very important. Another indicator is and this is one thing that's always missed out when you market well, you sell well and then all of a sudden you forget to go back and ask them for more referrals in the future. You forget to ask them about what did I do? Well, because a lot of times we make assumptions, especially in marketing, and assumptions are dangerous.

Evan Polin: 20:03

And I forget what happens when you make assumptions you make a ASS out of you and me.

Craig Andrews: 20:08

I just talked to my daughter about that. So, anyway, you make a lot of assumptions. You can make a bad assumptions, just much like you can make assumptions on the dating app. I could so to assume this guy has all these things that he's doing well, but you don't really know them well enough yet. And the more you get to know your customer base, the more You're going to be able to get information that lets you do your job even better and actually easier and more efficient.

Evan Polin: 20:33

Right, craig, something I know that you're gonna touch on on future episodes is marketing to your current customers. One of the challenges that happens if we're not checking in, if we're not providing value, is People who should have long-term customers Lose customers year over year. If you're, you'll have a SAS model, your software company, you're providing a service and clients should be renewing year over year. Yeah, if we're not checking in, if we're just talking about how great, we are not asking, if we're solving the problems, then we start to lose the revenue that we already had and it's hard enough to grow a business 30, 40, 50 percent, yep. If you're losing 20, 30, 40 percent of your clients year over year and continue to have to have that churn, you have to sell twice as much. Justice day even. Yeah, we're the really, really difficult thing to do.

Craig Andrews: 21:23

That's right. And then that's when the blame game starts again. This is gonna be a common thing. It's gonna be a common thing. I'm gonna say we just gave you a bunch of people and you're gonna say, yeah, but they're all gone already. I got to start over, right? That's not an easy conversation to have, but I agree with you. You know, unfortunately it comes to the.

Craig Andrews: 21:38

The concept of what did we miss Allows us to not only keep them to your point, but allows us to find like-minded people as well. Absolutely, and those like-minded people are going to have the same generally. They're the same industry or the same style type business. They're gonna have generally the same problems, generally, no assumptions. They're gonna general same problems, which thus makes it easy.

Craig Andrews: 22:02

Again, case study a had this problem, this problem, this problem. Case study B may have one more or one less problem, but it allows me to understand them better and think about the level of understanding. Evan, and you know this. Obviously it doesn't take much to understand that a certain problem exists and how to fix it. That's not really the issue. That's why a lot of people go with the same marketing age, the same sales agency who works with said businesses before, because they Understand, but you've seen it, I know you have. I've seen it in terms of when the new sales agency comes in and they go. By the way, did you call your customers, did you ask them if they were happy with you? And they go? Oh, I never thought about that before, or I never saw from that perspective.

Evan Polin: 22:49

Or geez, I never heard anything bad, so I'm assuming that everything's going well.

Craig Andrews: 22:55

Not the truth and a lot of times they'll tell you. I mean, we've all been there where people tell you that they don't like you. If they're gonna tell you, they'll probably be pretty honest if you ask right.

Evan Polin: 23:06

The problem a lot of people have Is when they don't ask and those customers slowly drift away and they didn't realize that that customer was gone until it's too late. And then good luck getting that person back on the phone who felt like you didn't provide them a good product, didn't provide them a good service. We need to be asking those questions while somebody's still a client. Yes, so if they're not completely satisfied, we can make tweaks and changes and make things right. Yes, it's trying to win back a customer that we lost, which is really, really difficult and don't forget, they tell people, they tell others what?

Evan Polin: 23:43

what is it? Some somebody who's really happy with a product or service will tell one person. Somebody who's really unhappy, I'll tell ten people that's a fact.

Craig Andrews: 23:51

That's a fact, and marketing is it's again. That's where the PR and marketing comes into play as well, and I think that that's an important point to sell home again, which is keep everybody happy. Only because you're gonna do one thing simple you're gonna ask questions. So here's our tip for this, for the episode you're gonna ask questions, you're going to answer the questions honestly and if you made the mistake, you're going to fix the mistake. It's, it's as pressure as you feel of doing that the reality of it is. It'll relieve the pressure and the pain that Happens between sales and marketing and the lack of conversation between the two of them, and I think that's important.

Evan Polin: 24:27

And these sales and marketing plans are not written in concrete. They're meant to be fluid. Again, in future episodes we're gonna talk about tracking, we're gonna talk about KPIs, but it's in really important for that sales and marketing document to be a living, breathing document. So if you're not achieving your goals, you can take a step back, look at why that is, make tweaks and make changes and move forward. And if you are hitting your goals, or maybe you're exceeding your goals, you can take a step back, say, hey, what are we doing? What's working really well and can we put some accelerant on that to maybe even grow faster and more profitably than we have been?

Craig Andrews: 25:04

So before we check out here, evan, can you give me an example that you can think of of how sales and marketing work Well together, and maybe in a real-life example of where sales and marketing worked well together and help the business grow?

Evan Polin: 25:17

Sure. So there's one client that I have. It's an IT managed services firm and they one of the things they pride themselves on is quick response time, customer satisfaction and Constantly pulling their clients about how they're doing. And what happens is they get all of these positive reviews and then the 97 plus percent satisfaction rate. So the marketing is doing internal marketing with the current customers, which then they're able to put that data out, talking about how happy all of their customers are and how great their services, so that then when sales talks to a new prospect, talks to an elite, they've got a good sense of the kinds of things and the kinds of reasons why people change managed services companies, why people like working with them. And when they have that sales conversation it makes it way easier to know the right questions to ask, to know what to listen for, to make sure that they're bringing in more of the ideal kinds of clients.

Craig Andrews: 26:17

And I'll piggyback on top of that from a data collecting perspective. So we work with a lot of service companies and there's actually major pest control companies who actually collect data for the number of cities that they work in, and not only do they resell the list not, I'm sorry, they don't resell the list what they do is they collect that data and they say here are the most popular cities in which pest control is a problem for those cities. So, whether it be road and control or whatever the case may be, that's another example of again of saying we've collected so much data from our happy clients who could tell us that this is the service that we needed in these particular cities. So think about how they had to span across the US to get that data. Yep, right.

Craig Andrews: 27:01

So now, if I'm in the agency, I'm going wow, you have that data. Now we can service them better, we can offer new services, we can offer other ways to make them feel comfortable, because they already trust us. Yep, they already trust us and that's a big part of the relationship piece here. So now, when we introduce a new service, if we introduce a new service, the sale is easy because I'm a trusted brand and I think that's a major part of, from a marketing perspective and a sales perspective, which will allow them to be able to grow their business easily by just adding new services. Well, I want to explain to them in terms of future episodes.

Evan Polin: 27:39

So let's share with everybody some of the episodes that we're going to have coming up, some of what we're going to be talking about in future episodes creating, executing and tracking your sales and marketing plan, those sales and marketing metrics and KPIs that we should be looking for. The importance of targeting your ideal prospect goes back to something that we just recently talked about earlier in this episode. Understanding how and why your prospects make their buying your decisions, differentiating yourself from the competition. The importance of accountability. Developing a killer elevator pitch that's really going to focus on the problems that you saw for your clients. Developing that value proposition statement. So that's just some of the episodes that we have coming up and, craig, do you want to take us out?

Craig Andrews: 28:25

Yes, sir, everyone, thank you for joining the sales and marketing playbook on leashed. We are basically launching this thing out on YouTube and Facebook and all the other ones. Keep an eye on us, subscribe, ask questions. We're willing to answer any questions that you have. Reach out to us and let us know. I'm Craig Andrews, that's Evan Poland and we'll talk to you guys next time.

Evan Polin: 28:47

Bye, thanks everyone.

Voice Over: 28:51

Thank you for joining us on this exhilarating journey through the world of sales and marketing. Remember, the playbook is in your hands and the possibilities are limitless. Keep exploring, experimenting and innovating, and watch as your business reaches unprecedented levels of success. Don't forget to subscribe to the sales and marketing playbook unleashed on all major podcast platforms and follow us on YouTube, facebook and LinkedIn for even more exclusive content. Until next time, keep hustling and keep winning.