Speaker 1: 0:19

Thank you. 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 With 20 years 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.

Speaker 2: 1:03

And welcome to the sales and marketing playbook unleashed. I'm craig andrews and here's my dang it. I still messed that up, evan and my partner in crime over here. I think we switched in the in the video podcast here. But anyway, if evan is that time of year, the leaves are changing, the weather's a little cooler, and you know what that means. What does that mean, evan? It is time for back to school, everybody's favorite time of year. The leaves are changing, the weather's a little cooler, and you know what that means. What does that mean, evan?

Speaker 3: 1:26

It is time for back to school, everybody's favorite time of year.

Speaker 2: 1:31

Back to school. I remember the old Staples commercial where it's the most wonderful time and the parents are skipping and the kids are dreadful. Walking through the Staples aisle Great ad, great ad. Back to school is certainly one of the most wonderful times of the year for Staples and all of your other school supply stores. That's right. And there's a lot of correlations between going back to school because, remember, we're the sales and marketing playbook, we're talking sales and marketing here. But there's a lot of correlations between going back to school and going back to work right and really getting ready for that next time in the season, this last bit of the race here. What type of things do you see as a correlation between the two of them?

Speaker 3: 2:12

So for what I see and I've been doing, what I'm doing for 20 plus years, and it always seems to be the same over the summertime, for the overwhelming majority of people, Focus starts to drift a little bit. People are going away on vacations. It's kind of time to play hooky. We're not really putting as much of our full attention as we need to be. But when that calendar ticks to the end of August, beginning of September, depending on what part of the country you're in, as kids are getting ready to get back to school, a lot of business owners, a lot of salespeople are going.

Speaker 3: 2:48

Oh crap, I've only really got you know four, really, maybe three and a half months left. Yeah, and I need to hit my goals and it's time to buckle down. You know, vacation time's over. It's time to really set and focus and kind of get re-energized towards hitting our goals for the rest of the year, towards really just trying to remember why we're working so hard and what we want to accomplish and re-put those plans back in place to make sure to finish out the year strong.

Speaker 2: 3:19

And if you guys were listening to past episodes not that this is an excuse, but we told you that the summers you should have been working anyway in the sales and marketing space, but for the majority of you that didn't. Here we are, we're in a position where we're going to give you an example of how you can retool yourself and get ready for this last stretch of the road.

Speaker 3: 3:38

It's funny I see that there's a pretty direct correlation between those people who stayed focused throughout the summer and they're not nearly as panicked now, not running around nearly as much as those people who really try to enjoy their summer and you know good for them to enjoy. But now it's okay. We really got to buckle down and really need to work smart and work hard.

Speaker 2: 4:00

That's right.

Speaker 2: 4:01

To achieve what we want to achieve. So, thinking of we both have children and thinking about the process of getting the kids back to school Right. So we all got that sheet of paper from the school that says teacher requires us to have said supplies Right. And so that's one of the first things we're going to do by setting the foundation of this podcast is that we're going to talk about the correlation of school supplies and sales and marketing. Can you believe that we're going to tie school supplies and how it works in sales and marketing? Because we're just that good. We're just that good at it.

Speaker 3: 4:36

Well, and a lot of people in sales and marketing would tell you that they've been going to the school of hard knocks for a very long time, so it's not that big of a leap.

Speaker 2: 4:44

That's right. That's right. So, just like our students are in a position where they need supplies to succeed in terms of sales and marketing teams, they have to do the same type of work for themselves.

Speaker 3: 5:05

Some of the essential tools that kids need, which is notebook, paper, folders, uh, things of that fashion craig, you're showing your age a little bit. These days it's ipad charger, those kinds of things, way more than it is, you know, pens and papers, notebooks. So I don't want our audience to think that we're out of touch.

Speaker 2: 5:17

Well, we are, we are but you're right, you're, you're 100 right. But I'm thinking younger ones, when we got the sheet of paper about the list of things that we have to do. But you're right, the iPads are a thing, so chargers and so forth, and that's a whole nother discussion, but the same thing as applies for us in sales and marketing, right? So you need things to make sure that we have our foundation in place. We've talked about it in many shows before. We're going to talk about it here again today in place. We've talked about it in many shows before and we're going to talk about it here again today the importance of having your sales system into place. System into place, not just making calls now all of a sudden If you haven't had a system into place with a CRM. It's important that you get that established yesterday. What's your take on it?

Speaker 3: 6:00

Absolutely. Again. We want our clients, both on the sales side and the marketing side, to be working smart, not just working hard. And working smart part of it is having the right supplies in place to make you successful is okay. Who is our target list? Who do we want to go after? And we shouldn't just be randomly starting to send out emails, make calls, but we should have a targeted approach. So who are our prospects? When you're starting to reach out, do you remember? Do you have your elevator pitch in place? Do you know what problems, what challenges clients are coming into? Is any of it seasonal?

Speaker 3: 6:47

Should you be changing up your messaging as we're moving into the fall, as we're starting to close in on year end? And do we have those tools in place so that we are able to do the right kind of outreach to the right people with the right messaging? Do we have the basics? Do we have our business cards together? If you're out there going door to door, if you're out there going to trade shows, if you're out there going to different chamber of commerce events, do you have your swag together? If you were to go out canvassing right now? Do you have everything you need? If not, what do we need to get refreshed, what do we need to get refocused, and what are some of those supplies that we need to have in place to make sure that we are successful? So, craig, from a marketing perspective, what are some of the supplies, what are some of the things that people should make sure that they have in place so that their marketing toolbox, their marketing toolkit, is in place to be successful?

Speaker 2: 7:53

as they go out there and really hit the ground running. Again, thanks for asking um and piggybacking on what you said. A lot of the stuff is data for us, right? So if you're going to a trade show, in your example, are you talking to the right people? Are Are you wasting a lot of time talking to people who happen to be walking by looking to take the chachi off the table and walk around? So you have to have data to know who you're talking to. If you're really smart, what you're doing is, way before you get involved with going to the trade show, you would have invited tons of people through your sales system to the trade show, got an idea who's coming and then targeted them when they show up at the booth.

Speaker 2: 8:27

There's one way of using your data in the process of getting ready for those shows. If you're in a position, you're going to a networking event, find your customer list of who's coming or the prospect list of who's coming and work your way through it and find out who you really want to target. We're the second half of the year. We're really talking about targeting directly and all of that plays into the data. Is this customer? Do I spend more time on the customer who might give me a little bit of jobs, or I spend more money or time on the customer who's going to give me more. So the data really works in the toolkit there. And a lot of times we're talking about where you're talking about shirts, hat swag, et cetera we might be talking about content that can help sow the seeds of setting a foundation for your clients to walk in the door, and a lot of times the content that you put out there they may not have been thinking about in those summer months, but they're probably thinking about them now.

Speaker 3: 9:21

Craig and I. You know we're talking about the school supplies. In a couple of minutes we're going to talk about your class schedule, your class calendar, but kind of tying the two together. Is it important for companies, for organizations, to have a marketing calendar and to have kind of a big picture overview of what they want to accomplish? And if so, do you want to kind of describe to our audience what a marketing calendar is and why it's so important for companies to have yeah, let me piggyback on that to give a better of a print analogy.

Speaker 2: 9:53

So when you're looking to do marketing in print I know we're not doing print, but at the end of the day, if you're looking to do, they have a marketing calendar to let you know what each month they're talking about in that magazine. That same thing applies in your case. If this is a hot month and we're in September, october, if this is a hot month for a product, you really want to make sure that for September, october, november, december, that you have a plan of what you're marketing and how it spans over those months. So, yes, a marketing calendar is very important because it sets the foundation of what the hot topics are in those appropriate months, depending on your industry. And in that process you'll create content that'll support that calendar information and then you'll send that out to them in an automation piece that'll allow them to kind of move forward with it.

Speaker 3: 10:46

And if you've got a larger company, this is even more important. I just got off the phone with a client to the coaching session financial advisory firm and they're really trying to pull everything together into a challenge of six different advisors wanting to post six different articles and not just post it on LinkedIn but blast it out to everybody in their database with no real rhyme or reason, and the firm is taking a step back and saying, okay, guys, look, we can't spam our clients, we can't spam our prospects. We also can't look like the left hand and the right hand don't know what each other is doing and part of if you've got multiple people involved in sales and marketing and getting the message out to your clients and your prospects and to your strategic partners. You need to be strategic, otherwise you're going to be working really hard, your firm is going to look like they're not on the same page, they don't know what they're talking about and you're going to create a lot of confusion in the marketplace.

Speaker 2: 11:47

And actually you're going to make some people upset right and because I you don't like getting 27 different spam emails.

Speaker 3: 11:54

That's not appealing to you.

Speaker 2: 11:56

Not at all. Not at all, in fact. I get them and I just delete them. I don't even look at them. If I don't even know who it's coming from, I just delete them.

Speaker 2: 12:04

So imagine that again, that time and effort put into sending those emails out in a non-correlated sense of fashion really leads to a lot of confusion, which is a waste of time. I usually get a lot of junk from you guys. I'm not even going to pay attention anymore. If I happen to see you at a trade show, don't even talk to me because at the end of the day you're going to give me some song and dance. I really don't want to hear right now. And I think that in a lot of cases, in that example that you used, it really comes down to that marketing calendar that you're talking about before. Get all of our advisors on the same page talking about the same thing, and then what'll happen is, if you talk to enough people, it'll target, it'll retarget itself to the right people it belongs to. So, in the process here, in terms of the class schedules, class schedules do you remember class schedules? The bell would ring. Oh my gosh, am I aging myself again?

Speaker 3: 13:01

So the bell would ring. And you know, with class schedules the bell would ring oh my gosh, am I aging myself again? So the bell would ring. And with class schedules these days it's more complicated, at least as your kids get older my son's in high school, where it's a different schedule every single day and they do this rotating block schedule. So it's really, really important when it comes to class schedule to be organized.

Speaker 3: 13:20

So what does that look like from a sales perspective? So for those of you who are out there and you belong to professional associations, you belong to Chamber of Commerce, you belong to networking events. I promise you every association has their calendar up from now through the end of the year. This is the time of year to make sure that you go into all of the calendars, look to see when all of the marquee events are, grow those events up into your own personal calendar register for events schedule things. But we really need to be organized, we really need to be well planned. We really need to look to see what everything that's out there, so that then we can hone in on OK, what's important, what's going to draw the audience that we're looking to get in front of, how much time. What is my bandwidth so that I can make sure that I can be at everything that's important? We also need to look at with that class calendar important we also need to look at with that class calendar how much time do you have to sell versus how much time do you have to service your clients and making sure that with your prospecting plan, when we're talking about the proactive sales side of things not necessarily as much the marketing, but the sales side of things how many hours do you have in your week to go out there and prospect?

Speaker 3: 14:38

And how much time are you going to spend if you're on the road, going to visit customers versus calling on new prospects? How much time do you want to spend in the field versus making calls versus sending emails, versus spending time on social media? Who do you want to target with that time? But if you are not organized, if you don't have a plan? But if you are not organized if you don't have a plan, you know famous saying if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. So really being able to look at everything that's out there, what's really important, and then scheduling all that in.

Speaker 2: 15:23

That's going to go a long way towards success or lack of success. And so here's that time in the show, evan, where I give a shameless plug. Ok, so if any of you guys haven't figured it out yet, evan, poland at Poland Performance Group actually works with you in reference to working on your time management. Evan, you've never seen, you've never seen salespeople waste time, have you?

Speaker 3: 15:46

Never, and it would never happen that an attorney or an accountant or an architect that really, really doesn't like business development can't fill up their day with a million other things. And oh geez, craig, I'm sorry, I just didn't get around to it, I was so busy. Maybe I'll get to it next week, maybe I'll get to it next month, maybe I'll get to it next quarter. Especially for those of you who don't love doing this stuff and about half of who I work with are people who wouldn't consider themselves in sales but know that they need to go out and get clients if they want to be successful If you don't put it in your calendar, you will always find something else to do.

Speaker 3: 16:32

And even for those of you in sales, I find that a lot of people who are doing sales 100% of the time are a lot more comfortable doing what I call milk runs, speaking of aging yourself, going out to those people who and, quite frankly, that's way before my time I don't even know why I have that thing, but going out to see the same customers on a regular basis. The people who you know will be happy to see you will talk to you, which then keeps you from calling on new prospects and growing your client base. Growing your customer base prospects and growing your client base, growing your customer base. So we really need to calendar in and schedule that time in to be successful. And, craig, I know that when it comes to marketing, things just don't happen by accident either. So do you want to share with people what they should be doing when it comes to time management and comes to planning? Yeah, when it comes to a marketing perspective, Sure.

Speaker 2: 17:25

So here's what I would say, and especially in the in the world that we live in today, when there's BAs and there is assistance and people who can, who can eat up a lot of time or take care of a lot of things for you so that you don't have to do it Our time is becoming very short. So one of the things that we help our clients with is we try to take on as much as the marketing load as possible, and the reason that we do that is because, at the end of the day, we have tricks and we have software and we have tactics that we use to make the process of marketing easier. So, when it comes to time management as a business owner, evan, would you want to be the guy who answers the phone and closes the sale, or would you like to be the guy marketing yourself out there in so many ways to try to get them in the door and fail and try and get the door and fail and try and get the door and fail. Which one would you prefer?

Speaker 3: 18:19

Absolutely spending the time on doing the things that are more profitable, which is closing the deal.

Speaker 3: 18:24

And, craig, I hope this doesn't offend you, I hope this doesn't offend your clients, but is it fair to say that a lot of who you work with is?

Speaker 3: 18:35

You work with a lot of liars, people who tell you, tell themselves oh, this marketing is important, oh, I'm going to get to it, oh, I think I can do the content creation, I just have to find the time.

Speaker 3: 18:48

And they tell themselves that over and over and over again and just never get the time because they're doing other things, quite frankly, things that they're better at and, hopefully, things that should make them more profitable than creating the content calendar, writing the article, figuring out how and when to post yes, so again, shameless plug number two if you want to stop being a liar and if you want to work with somebody who's going to help you to put this stuff together so that you can focus on the things that are going to make you more money and focus on the things that you really enjoy doing, then you should be reaching out to Craig at Beholder Agency, at Beholder Marketing, and see how they can help you do the things that you keep telling yourself you're going to do but never quite have the time to actually get done, and the problem with marketing.

Speaker 2: 19:37

Here's what I'll say. Marketing is very sexy, right? It's a system that allows you to sit there and beat your chest about how nice I am, how good I am at my job. But if you do all this and you're talking on the mountaintop and nobody can hear you, your marketing is not working. It only works for what you hear resonating back in your own head. So what we try to bring to the table is that we try to bring to the table of talk to the common person who would need your service or product, and make sure that you're in front of them when it's important. And that is the general part of marketing, which is get them in the door so that the business owners or salespersons can be in a position that they can close easier and better.

Speaker 3: 20:22

So, if you have good marketing, you don't have to worry about being the best kept secret, which doesn't do any of us any good in business, and more and more people will know about you, which will make your job, in terms of generating the revenue that you need to generate to hit your goals, a heck of a lot easier.

Speaker 2: 20:41

And both of us are in the business. Here I go again. Both of us are in the business of getting the lead in and selling it and being more profitable. The process of the playbook is to be successful by having the same consistent positive movement forward that leads to growing your business, same consistent positive movement forward that leads to growing your business. And without sales and without marketing, if you don't have them running together, you're really in a place of what's that called In the middle. You're just kind of wasting time, You're just flowing.

Speaker 3: 21:13

And going back to our back to school theme with study groups with collaboration, practical theme with study groups with collaboration.

Speaker 3: 21:20

If you don't have that collaboration, if your marketing is really good but your sales suck, you're going to have lots and lots of leads and you're going to be talking to lots and lots of people.

Speaker 3: 21:32

But in most businesses if you don't close the deal, the lead isn't worth all that much and you're not getting paid all that much for leads coming in.

Speaker 3: 21:42

And if you are great at sales and you close everything that comes in but you're not getting very many at bats, then you are not going to be in front of enough new opportunities to be able to hit your goal. And it's really when sales and marketing work together that you have enough of and not just leads, because lots of people get leads but if they're not the right kind of leads, that's right then you're not going to close the business. So it's getting enough of the right kinds of leads in the door and then having the ability to effectively qualify or disqualify those opportunities to close the deals for the people who are going to be good customers for you. And when those work in tandem, that's really when you can accelerate your business and if they're not working together, you're going to be spinning your wheels and working very hard without the payoff and just a lot of finger pointing back and forth. The blame game. The blame game without the payoff, and just a lot of finger pointing back and forth.

Speaker 2: 22:39

The blame game.

Speaker 3: 22:40

The blame game without the results.

Speaker 2: 22:43

And so this is why this podcast episode is so brilliant is because when we were putting this together, we came up with the concept of study groups. So remember, when you have a situation where Bobby, susie, robert whatever the case may be have to get together and they each have to contribute to a piece of the plan to get the grade, the final grade, together, but inevitably there's always one kid who didn't do their assignment right. So that's why this analogy works so great is because sometimes you'll have the sales and the marketing, but you won't have the commitment of the budget. Sometimes you'll have a situation of the sales is going and not the marketing, but the budget's there, and that kind of trifecta that doesn't work together. There's ways around it if the collaboration is tight.

Speaker 2: 23:29

So I like this analogy of the study groups and how they work seamlessly and hand off to each other. Really, you can really see at least from my perspective or the marketing perspective I can look at a website and know that their marketing is on point in a matter of minutes, only because I can see the architecture of the site and see exactly who's linking to what and where it's going, and I go, wow, they really got it together. Do you ever have any cues of when you can see that their sales are really operational smooth? Do you ever see that, or do you need cues for that? How does that work?

Speaker 3: 24:05

Absolutely. I know when things are going well and again, companies that make good use of their CRM can do this. When they can pinpoint, hey, these are the three or four industries or these are the three or four kinds of clients that I know that when we get in front of these clients, our services are ideal for them and we close a high amount of our business. When we are closing business and things start coming in organically, we're asking for and getting referrals, introductions, when my clients can go back and point to OK, this business came in from these marketing campaigns, this business came in because I was active in that chamber of commerce. This business came in because I was a part of provisors.

Speaker 3: 24:48

That's when you know what's working really well. When I go into a client and say, geez, you've got this good list of clients, where'd they come from? And I get I don't know, I'm not sure. Well, when I share with clients, hey, for the last 20 years, every single piece of business I've closed, I've gone back and tracked what activity or what groups of activities together we had to bring in. How are you doing with that? If they can't answer those questions, I know that things are broken, that they're working a lot harder than they need to work and we need to go back and work on process and work with system to get them to work smart and not just work really hard.

Speaker 2: 25:35

And here's what I'll tell the listeners of the podcast.

Speaker 2: 25:38

There are little cues that we can see from a sales and a marketing perspective to see if your business is working appropriately, and we haven't even gotten in and gotten in the details, we can see it automatically.

Speaker 2: 25:50

So if you're in a position as a business owner and you have salespeople who aren't quite hitting the mark, you need to call Evan. Aren't quite hitting the mark, you need to call Evan. If you're a business who needs to get more exposure and get more people in the door, you need to contact me at Beholder Marketing and, ultimately, evan and I work together on a lot of projects as well. If you feel like somehow that whole overall system is not moving in the right way, you need to talk to one of us because, at the end of the day, you're wasting a lot of valuable time for the rest of this year to try to get yourself moving and to then have a profitable next year. It can all happen from the end of this year, depending on your business. It can all happen from starting now into next year and you would already be moving and flowing, because Evan does a great job of talking to people who don't sell the non-selling professionals and being in the position where, if your time management's wrong, he has ways of helping you.

Speaker 3: 26:46

And Craig is able to help you to get more people noticed, to get more people coming to your site, coming through your door, because, again, if you're the best kept secret, you're working way too hard and we need to get more exposure.

Speaker 2: 26:59

Absolutely so. One more time, evan is at Poland, I'm sorry, poland, poland pgcom with the Poland performance group. That's a tongue twister right there. I didn't even realize that till now. And I'm with Beholder Marketing at Beholder Agency. If you guys have any type of the major podcasts out there, whether it be Apple, whether it be what's that one called Amazon, all of them, all those podcast systems, we're on them. Take a listen to our podcast today or the previous ones before. We're going to keep coming with some beautiful guests who are going to really meld together the sales and marketing parts of our business and how they fit in between.

Speaker 3: 27:38

And if you're really a glutton for punishment, you can go on YouTube and see our pretty faces as we're doing the podcast.

Speaker 2: 27:44

Yes, and listen, I take all compliments. I'm not going to lie, I take all compliments of it. So again, I'm Craig Andrews. There's Evan Poland. I got it this time and this is the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. Be sure to tune in next time, as we're going to do part two of this back to school series. Any other last words? Evan.

Speaker 3: 28:08

So it's time to buckle down. Fall is here and it's time to do what you need to do to hit your goals between now and the end of the year.

Speaker 2: 28:16

Awesome, we will talk to you guys next time the end of the year, awesome.

Speaker 1: 28:42

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