Speaker 1: 0:19

Thank you. Meet Evan Poland, the president of Poland 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 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: 1:11

And welcome back to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. I'm Craig Andrews and there's my partner in crime, evan Poland.

Speaker 3: 1:17

You got it right this time.

Speaker 2: 1:19

I did. I was practicing too, before we got on.

Speaker 1: 1:21

I don't know if you can see that, but I was like anyway.

Speaker 2: 1:27

So we're picking up on what we talked about in the last episode, which is the back to school analogy that we were using and how businesses and business growth is associated with back to school and a lot of ways. You know, we talked about how going back to school and now we're in that fall time of year where it's nice and cool kind of reminds us it's time to go. It's time to go. It's getting towards the end of the year. We got the last few quarters left seeking what we can do Before we get too deep into it. Evan, why don't you give everybody a recap of what we talked about in the last episode?

Speaker 3: 1:58

Sure, and again, today's sales marketing playbook is back to school, part two, the sequel. But just to reminder for those of you who may not have been able to catch part one, some of what we had talked about is again this season, as we get into fall. For a lot of companies, it's that kind of last push towards the end of the year goals. So some of the things that we focused on last time was, first, lesson one building the foundation, making sure that we've got the right supplies to have success when it comes to sales and marketing. So we talked about some of the tools that all of you should be having to make sure that you're successful. So this is making sure that you've got a really good CRM and you're tracking what you're doing, that you've got sales enablement software, that you've got customer data, you've got Zoom info, you've got lists, you've got things so that you've got the supplies that you need to be prepared. Also, do you have email automation? Are you doing analytics? What are you doing for content creation? But you really need to be well-equipped going into these campaigns. You shouldn't be doing it off the cuff. You should have a really good strategy. These campaigns. You shouldn't be doing it off the cuff. You should have a really good strategy, maybe a marketing calendar, maybe a strategy of events, but you need to do that Once you've got the tools in place.

Speaker 3: 3:14

Lesson two was on the class schedule and really looking at time management for both sales and marketing. So are we going and looking at the calendars of all the professional associations that we belong to, calendaring in the events that we want to attend, the trade shows that we want to hit? Are we making sure that we're setting aside time for prospecting, that we're doing our nurture campaigns, that we're doing our outreach, that we're spending some time after these campaigns going back, analyzing the data, looking at what's working, what's not working, to make sure that we are doing the right things to give us the results that we are looking for, and making sure that, for those of you who are seller doers and are doing the delivery, that you've got time both to do the sales and the marketing, as well as actually fulfill and do what your clients are paying you to do. Next, what we talked about was the power of study groups, the power of collaboration.

Speaker 3: 4:07

So, looking at who your strategic partners are, when's the last time you reached out? Are there ways that you can have joint offerings? Are there ways that you can be more proactively referring business back and forth? Are other people doing research that you might be able to utilize to help you as you're out there trying to grow your business? So it's really important to make sure that we've got this age set, that we've got the right materials, that we're planning things out, because one of my favorite sayings, if you fail to plan, then you're planning to fail, but if you've got these tools in place, you're going to give yourself a much better chance to succeed. So, craig, now that we did a recap of part one, now we can move forward with the sequel. Do you want to share with folks what the next lesson is when it comes to the back-to-school edition of the Sales Marketing Playbook?

Speaker 2: 5:01

Absolutely. So we move on to lesson four, which we labeled as homework. So I take the approach and you can tell me how you feel differently, evan. But I take the approach of after we've done all that stuff that we mentioned in part one. After you've kind of done that process, there's still more research to be done, hence the homework. Once you get home and you get these leads and you get these contacts, there's still, from a marketing perspective, more research to do. I had a perceived vision prior to coming into the conversation and now that I have the information, I have homework after the fact. So I might be in a position where I go back and research the prospects. I'll research the prospects, competition, to get a good idea in terms of is my vision correct and how can I have a plan to move forward to make my clients different? Evan, tell me how the homework applies to you in terms of the sales perspective.

Speaker 3: 5:51

It's one thing. If you've got a great list and if you have the list of all of the ideal target prospects but you're not saying the right stuff when you're talking to them Again, whether you're physically talking to them, sending out a marketing campaign, sending out emails, you are going to have to do 10 times as much outreach to get the results that you want to get. So are you looking at what's going on with your current clients, your former clients? Are you looking to see what's going on in the industry? What are the biggest challenges of the people that you're targeting? What problems are they having, and can your product or service help to solve those issues?

Speaker 3: 6:38

And are you doing a good job articulating that message for the prospects so that when you reach out to all of those right people on the list, that message is resonating with them and they're going oh, my God, you know, do they have bugs in my office? That's exactly. You know that. That's exactly what I'm going through. How did they know? You know what I'm going through. They must be able to help me with. Insert the issue here. But if you don't do that research, you could blow a really great list that was put together for you. If you're not talking about the things that people care about. So, from a sales perspective, it's a matter of looking at what those things are and then figuring out how you're going to articulate that message when you're reaching out to those ideal prospects.

Speaker 2: 7:19

And, I think, to piggyback. On top of that, you know there's also a lot of research and trends that you can follow as well. So, from a marketing perspective, a lot of the trends that might happen tend to happen around the same type of year, Rephrase, that Happen the same depending on the time of year. So it's easy to sit back and say the holiday rush the fall. It's easy to sit back and say you know, this is around Halloween, so now I should have a Halloween sale. However, statistically, your data will tell you if you're really successful during that time of year and if you weren't piggyback on what you're saying. Your research needs to be a little deeper that way to make sure that you're hitting the mark better and you're communicating better.

Speaker 3: 8:01

And that's where the homework will really help you. Craig, do you think we have any overachievers in the audience, because I do have an extra credit assignment when it comes to doing the homework I like that segue right there.

Speaker 3: 8:13

So not only do you need to really think through what's going on in the marketplace and you know in terms of what problems you're solving, but the really sophisticated, really successful people also know what their competitors are doing and when they are putting their message out there, they're identifying who's their high end competition, who's their low end competition, what competition do they consider to be on the same level? And then, when we're talking through the messaging, not only thinking about, okay, what are my clients looking for? But also how can I differentiate myself from the competition, from that first contact as I start to have those conversations. And if you do that, I promise it's going to give you a major edge over the competition.

Speaker 3: 9:00

Because most people just have blinders on it's just OK, let me focus on me, let me focus on myself. Because most people just have blinders on it's just OK, let me focus on me, let me focus on myself. But these days, with the Internet, with the ease of doing research, with how many of our customers know about us and have done the research about us before they ever talk to us, so if you are not looking at what the competition is and not looking at how you're positioning yourself against the competition, you're going to put yourself at a major disadvantage.

Speaker 2: 9:26

Yep. And so to transition into the next lesson here, which you adequately called it extra credit, lesson five is our extra credit, the personalization part of it. So it does tie into what you just referenced. Because people have access to the internet, because they have access to networks, because they have access to social media, they already have an idea and can kind of glaze over the data that's in front of them, whatever it might be, whether it be an email, whether it be a database like Hoover's or whatever the case may be. But the personalization part of things is now where I go wake up. Oh, you must have really heard me, you must have really seen me, you understand me.

Speaker 2: 10:05

Just through the automation of personalization From a marketing perspective, before we jump to sales, we might be in a position where we log into our software exactly what type of things, like the number of children you might have. Hey, joe, I'm glad to hear that Bobby Sue was in a position, that she did great on her soccer game. Why don't we have dinner? And da, da, da, da. Right, just that little bit of personalization from a marketing perspective can show how much I care about you. To go to that depth of understanding, that's how we might do it from a marketing perspective, from a sales perspective how much you get the extra credit and personalize your sales message. Sales perspective how much you get the extra credit and personalize your sales message.

Speaker 3: 10:45

There's a lot of things that you can be doing to personalize and to do that extra credit. These days, again with the internet, a lot of this is easy, no-transcript. Look them up on LinkedIn. If they're a company in B2B, are you following them on LinkedIn? Or again, are you following their company on Facebook? Did you just do a Google search to see if they've made any acquisitions, open new locations, close locations, what's going on, hire new people, done all of those kinds of things. So that's part of the personalization. Because? So that's part of the personalization? Because, craig, I don't know about you I probably get 10 to 15 to 20 bot emails every single day, bot LinkedIn messages every single day.

Speaker 3: 11:34

There's no personalization whatsoever. There's no customization. You know that the same exact message went out to 5,000 people a day. Exact message went out to 5,000 people a day. So the more that you can customize the messaging and really do that with the outreach, the more that you're going to break through all of the noise and have success. I would also say, for those of you who are doing a B2B kind of sales sell and about 30 to 35% of my clients are doing large enterprise sales, selling to large organizations.

Speaker 3: 12:07

You also need to modify your message based on who it is you're talking to.

Speaker 3: 12:12

The president of the company cares about different things than the CFO. The CFO cares about different things than the end user who may actually be utilizing your product, utilizing your service. You may be calling on the same prospect, but you may have three different types of customers within that prospect. And if you're talking about the pains or the problems of the end user to the CEO, the CEO is probably not going to care all that much. That's the problem of their people, who should be this should be their job and they should be doing it day to day. And who cares if it's a little bit more difficult? The end users aren't going to care about the same things that the CEO are going to care about in terms of increasing the business, doing all kinds of other things. So you also really need to think about, okay, not only what do I need to do to customize for the organization, but what messaging is going to be more impactful for each different person within the organization and making sure that you're doing that level of customization as well.

Speaker 2: 13:14

And I'll say you know, and I think I'm sure we've said it many times before the more you can target and niche down, the more successful your campaigns will be. And from a marketing and a sales perspective, I can say, the more you can target and niche down, the more successful your campaigns will be. And from a marketing and a sales perspective, I can say, if you're out there and you're sending out. So I have just a little case study here. I have a client who's mass emailing a bunch of people because he's just looking for something to come through. He's trying to play the numbers game.

Speaker 2: 13:40

The numbers game is very dangerous if you're not talking to the right people. You can have more success hitting a small number of people. That's absolutely correct for you versus mass mailing people to get some sort of bite and a nibble onto your business. So that's where the extra credit really comes in Personalize, talk to the right people, have the right conversations, have the right referrals and you will have tremendous success. Because if I have, let's say, my average lifetime value of my client is $10,000, and I can target literally 20 people and possibly get five, is that a good percentage? Absolutely, that's $50,000 right there and that's the difference of virtually mailing 300 people hoping to get five. It's a big difference and it's only because we did the extra credit early, did the extra research, which was a number four less than four in the homework, just to make sure we target appropriately and personalize appropriately.

Speaker 3: 14:38

And Craig talking about the homework and the extra credit. Do you ever do anything with personas with your clients? And, if so, do you ever do anything with personas with your clients? And, if so, do you want to share with the audience what a persona is and why it might be important for a client to think about?

Speaker 2: 14:53

Great question. So a persona is kind of a visual from a marketing perspective. It's kind of a visual of what my ideal client looks like, so what they might read, what they might speak like, where might they go, the age of the person actually, to be perfectly honest with you, any way that I can profile it personally. So think about this on our date episode that we had, when I'm looking for the perfect ideal client person and person I'm trying to, ideal person I'm trying to talk to, or profile I'm trying to talk to. That's the persona.

Speaker 2: 15:28

And every time we go out and we market to somebody, we visualize that person. And we do that for each one of our clients because, to your point, the CEO has a different profile that they're looking at compared to a regular salesperson who just came in, an entry-level salesperson, compared to a regular salesperson who just came in an entry-level salesperson. And if the salesperson is talking at a level of the CEO and not really saying the right things instantly, they know Click, hang up, end of conversation. We're not on the same level. How many sales calls do you get generally from somebody trying to sell you on something?

Speaker 3: 16:01

I get a lot of them and so many of them are so far off base. And the question I want to ask is I want to say hey, are you commission based? Because if you are, you're really wasting a lot of time calling the wrong people who just are, are are in no position. I actually just had somebody come knock on my door a couple weeks ago and you know, he told me what I was selling. I shared, I wasn't interested. He kept going and going and going and going and I said look yo, I you know respectfully, you know not not interested. I appreciate it. Um, and he kept going. I said, dude, are you paid on commission or are you just? I don't know? I'm on commission, I said so. How much of your day do you want to waste on someone who's not a prospect for you?

Speaker 2: 16:55

That's right.

Speaker 3: 16:57

I think that the dim light bulb started going off above the head.

Speaker 2: 17:05

You should have given your card.

Speaker 2: 17:11

You could have given some sales lessons right there, craig, one of my sayings is not everybody's trainable. Oh, touche, touche. So, yes, that's, that tells me the point. You're nicer than I. Am Not interested. Take me off your list. Blank, gone. End of story.

Speaker 2: 17:21

And those and I even go through those moments, right, because again I didn't warm them up enough to have a deeper conversation. And now, because we're so tuned, I get X number of spam emails, x number of spam texts To kind of piggyback on what we talked about earlier, what I just recently discovered because a client put me onto it, they have ai callers, now ai callers. What are we going to do with that? If I got a call from a robot, it's an instant hangout for me. And again, that might evolve over time and might get better. But the reality is, is that you're now impeding upon my time where I might have three or four or five meetings in the day, and now you're calling me and I'm mad If I, if you're lucky, I didn't stay around long enough to know the name of the company.

Speaker 3: 18:08

So so, and Craig, I think you're doing a good segue to, kind of our next point, which is the final exam. Yeah, when we go to school, you know it's really easy, you know how'd you do in the class. Well, it's really easy to ask somebody okay, well, what grade did you get at the end? Yeah, did you get an A, b, c, d or F? Did you get a 97, an 86, a 67? But what is the grade From a marketing perspective? Yeah. So how do companies, how do your clients? How are they able to know how they did at the end of the school year, at the end of the quarter, at the end of the calendar year? How are your folks tracking what success or failure looks like?

Speaker 2: 18:55

So I'll go back to my favorite term data, data, data, data data and a little bit more data. So everybody's KPIs are different depending on who you are, and so a lot of times it might be where did I start? And the progress over a certain amount of time, whatever that grading cycle is, and get an idea where we are. Are we seeing progress moving forward? If it wasn't moving forward, why and how long are we measuring? So now, from the process of the data and the success, there's also the simple value of the phone rings, the emails. Good emails come in. I have my clients come back and tell me the grade of the particular lead, because somebody will get a lead and go. Well, we really don't do that, but it turned out to be something that I do. Like that was a weird one for me. But okay, Grade it for me, Give me a grade for it. Oh, that turned out to be a B. Okay, how do I get it to an A? What was the difference in the A? And then we adjust the campaign to improve it.

Speaker 2: 19:56

Let me put a little notice out there to everybody listening Marketing is not a one-way street period. Let me repeat it Marketing is not a one-way street period. Let me repeat it Marketing is not a one-way street. If I happen to hit a success does not mean that success will continue that way. I have to optimize it to continue that success going forward, and that's important to remember. You're also dealing with barriers of time Right now, at the time of season we are, right now everybody's trying to get everything in before the end of the year or get budgets ready for next year. So now they're spending more time, more money, more research to find particular products that they need for next year, which means it may not be allocated until next year's budget, which means the marketing cycle might extend a little bit, Right? So I would imagine the same type of concept happens in the sales perspective, Right?

Speaker 3: 20:50

Yeah, and in the sales perspective, much like you, my clients are different in terms of what they're looking at. But we are looking at what we can track and measure. You know, at the end of the day, you know closed business, so number of sales, what the average sale is worth, how much in overall sales is coming in. And again, maybe measuring the year, maybe measuring it to the same period the previous year, to see if Q4 is getting better, getting worse over time. Yes, also over time, companies are more sophisticated, looking at things like how long was something in the funnel for and what is our percentage of first calls turning into qualified opportunities, what's our percentage of qualified opportunities going and turning into quotes or proposals, and then what percentage of those are actually turning into closed business. And then also looking at things like okay, can I track where my business is coming from?

Speaker 3: 21:44

Did it come from a campaign? If so, which campaigns were more successful than others? Did it come from networking? If so, what networking event, what association, what trade show did I go to that that came from? But the more that we can keep score, the more that we can go back and replicate success, and oftentimes I don't know if you're running into this. Sometimes I have clients who have a fear of failure. They don't want to try something new because, oh my God, what if it doesn't work?

Speaker 3: 22:12

Yeah, but in your business, in my business, failure isn't fatal. So again, a lot of times we may try something out and then get what I like to call lessons learned.

Speaker 2: 22:22

Yes.

Speaker 3: 22:22

Okay, what worked and what can we do more of what didn't work? Can we figure out why it didn't work? Can we maybe learn something from why it didn't work and then, as you said you know, go and make the appropriate tweaks so it works that much better the next time out. So it may not work perfect the first time, but if we can start to track and then make iterations, make changes over time, that may be a place where you can really develop a lot of good business.

Speaker 2: 22:51

Here's what I'll add on top of that. It's not always what doesn't work. I had a client just yesterday who I was speaking with. He said man, when things were going well, I figured I could cut my marketing and just keep flowing with what I had. That is wrong. That is absolutely wrong, Just like us talking about going to Vegas and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, Right.

Speaker 2: 23:11

So if you're in a situation you're on a win, unfortunately you have to double down on the marketing because you don't know when that drop off is going to happen. So you double down on the marketing, which will increase the growth of business, primarily because now we can experiment while you're feeling good, Because it takes us time to get the data to show how I can be consistent with it you might have increased or added a new product that you were considering during that time. You might be in a position where you target new type of profiles that we just referenced. That might open up your business a different way. And because we're a growth marketing agency, we're always looking at OK, what is our pricing structure look like right now? While we're winning, Is there a way that we can increase the prices now and take that thing on a different trajectory while we're winning. That's the time you experiment. You don't experiment when you're losing.

Speaker 3: 24:01

Craig. The other thing I'll tell you and this happens with a lot of seller doers, whether it's attorneys, whether it's consultants, whether it's contractors and people in the construction business the other, the biggest mistake, and I just want to kind of, you know, hit somebody over the head is they'll go. Okay, well, I'm really busy now, so I don't have time to do sales anymore, I don't have any time to do marketing anymore. And then what happens is they finish the project, so they finish the work, and then, because they've done nothing, they take a huge dip and it's like oh, my god, what happened? Things are going so well, yeah, and then it feels like pushing a boulder uphill. To go from no leads to getting traction again.

Speaker 3: 24:45

And unfortunately I find that definition of insanity people doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. People see the results dip up and down, and up and down, and up and down. And if they can put a process in place where maybe we're not spending as much time on the sales and marketing, but if we can do little things to keep it going when we're really busy, then we're not going to be starting from scratch when those projects wrap up. So that's the other thing you need to think about if you're a seller doer is do I have a plan in place when I get busy to continue doing a little bit of selling, a little bit of marketing, so I don't fall off that cliff once that really busy project ends Absolutely?

Speaker 2: 25:26

Absolutely. And so we're at our final spot here of closing the closing bell Ding ding, ding, ding ding. Do they have bells like that anymore? No, they don't. It's more electronic. All the kids are sitting there looking at the clock, waiting until two, two, thirty or whatever the time is. That's back in my recollection. They're waiting and waiting, and waiting, with the book backs on their shoulder, and they're going. Can I go now? Can I go now? Right, that's where we are. Anyway, key takeaways and wrap up, why don't you go ahead and start, evan?

Speaker 3: 25:54

So I think, for everybody listening right now, the key takeaway is to have a takeaway is to say, okay, let me look at the last three, four months of the year and what two or three actions am I going to take in terms of doing the homework and prepping to get back out there, in terms of making sure I'm doing good planning and maybe going over the weekend to the websites of all the different groups I look at, looking at what events are coming up, booking them into the calendar.

Speaker 3: 26:28

Maybe it's determining for yourself and your business what metrics you should be tracking and figuring out what and how you're going to track and then when you're going to track, after what period of time, so that you can see what's working, what's not working. But I promise, if you do nothing, then nothing is going to change. So if you want better results, figure out that you don't need to do all 22 different things that we suggested. Pick two or three or four things that you'll take action on, and that's a really good start and a good way to get to the head of the class and get an A for the rest of the year.

Speaker 2: 27:05

And I think a takeaway from my end is a lot of similarities to what you were referencing, but I would piggyback and say it's always the small steps in marketing that makes the most improvement, if you're doing a little bit different than you've always done and you find the consistency all of a sudden that consistency builds. So the takeaway here, when we're making our class references here, is the personalization, the doing, the research, planning ahead, being in a position where you talk to your sales team and you get an idea of what they can do to make their lives better, because if I can get them churning at a high level, it makes my job easy From this way, it makes my job easy. And trying to keep the train moving. You know, I used an analogy the other day with another client and I'm seeing if you ever heard have you ever heard about the moving train analogy?

Speaker 3: 27:56

No, go ahead, Hit me.

Speaker 2: 27:57

OK. So a train can, if it's moving in full motion, can blow through anything a wall, a building or whatever the case may be but if it's standing still and it has a brick right under the wheel, it will not move. Something as strong and powerful as a train cannot move with a simple brick sitting right under the wheel. It can't even start. So you really want to make sure that you have that train and you keep it moving, because the moment it stops it's hard to get going. And then all of a sudden you're looking for consultants like him and me.

Speaker 2: 28:34

You're looking for consultants like us to create magic. That is really difficult to create, not that we couldn't do it, but it's a lot of work to build it back up, to keep moving. That's the key takeaway from it. So we're coming to the end of our show here. I want to remind everybody we're on the biggest latest platforms Apple Podcast, advocate, amazon, spotify, youtube, go there, review. Follow us. Our website is smplaybookunleashedcom if you want to hear our latest podcast and we're going to have a lot of guests, right, evan? Why don't you talk about some of the guests? What type of guests we're going to have?

Speaker 3: 29:10

So over the next couple of weeks we are going to have a number of different guests. We are going to have somebody who does CEO roundtables in peer-to-peer and will give you an idea of what he's hearing from all of the CEOs that he's working with. We're going to have somebody who's a guru in the technology space. We're going to have a couple of folks who are kind of fractional COOs talking about what they see in different professional service firms. So stay tuned so that you not only get the insight from Craig and myself, but the insight from a number of industry experts that we'll be bringing to this podcast over the next couple of episodes.

Speaker 2: 29:45

And it's our mission. His mission and my mission is to make sure that we bring together people to you that's going to help you grow your business. It's the playbook, it's the plays. Unlike our favorite Eagles, they follow plays. We follow plays.

Speaker 3: 30:00

Our coaching is much better than his coaching.

Speaker 2: 30:03

Touche, touche. So'm craig andrews. This is evan poland. It was great to talk to you and look forward to seeing you next time.

Speaker 1: 30:10

Have a good day 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.