Voice Artist: 0:19

Thank you 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 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.

Craig Andrews: 1:12

And welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. I'm Craig Andrews and my partner in crime, evan Polin. The president of Polin Performance Group, is here with us again. Evan, it's 2025. Can you believe it?

Evan Polin: 1:25

It's 2025. Happy New Year, or is it Happy New Year's Good start to the year?

Craig Andrews: 1:33

Well, I'll tell you this we're from the Philly market, so we always put an S on everything. So New Year's is what I said. You know like use or we. So I'm going to say Happy New Year's just for everybody out there in the audience.

Evan Polin: 1:49

I hope you have a happy new years.

Craig Andrews: 1:51

Thank you, thank you very much. So, as we talk about the new year here, right, what's important? Before we start to talk about moving forward, we want to be able to look at what happened in the past. We have become one of the top sales and marketing podcasts in the country. We're in a position where something that we had a very few audience we're starting to slowly grow, and the importance of understanding about where you're going in 2025 is you have to take a slight little reflection back in 2024. So I know you have a lot of feelings of that, because you've been giving one of your great presentations about reflecting about what's worked and what hasn't worked. So why don't you tell everybody a little bit about that before we jump into 25?

Evan Polin: 2:30

Yeah, what I find is most successful for myself personally and my business, for my clients, is before you jump forward, it's always really important to take a look back, and exercises I do. As I'm wrapping up every year, as I'm getting ready for the new year, I go back and look at the clients that I brought in. Each year I want to see where did those clients come from, what activity groups of activities led to those clients coming in? Quite frankly, it's an exercise that I've done for the last 20 plus years. In Quite frankly, it's an exercise that I've done for the last 20 plus years. That way, I can go back and see if certain things are working. I can then look at okay, can I do more of that? Now, if a certain professional association I'm on part of, or a certain marketing campaign, if those led to good opportunities, if those led to good business, can I do more of that?

Evan Polin: 3:26

If I spent time, spent money on certain things that didn't lead to anything coming in, then I need to look at okay, did I work that as well as I could have? If so, maybe it doesn't make sense for me to continue that and maybe it makes sense for me to put my time, my money, my effort somewhere else. But I find that if you don't do that reflection, I think we've mentioned on the show before the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Let me take a look back at what I did. Let me build on the successes, let me learn from those things that didn't work. Yeah, and that's going to help to give you a really good head start as you put together your plan for the new year. How about you, craig? What are some of the things that you do that you suggest that your clients do, in kind of looking at that retrospective from the year before?

Craig Andrews: 4:22

So you're preaching to the choir, because you know me data, data, data Everything is about seeing it, making adjustments and continue to improve as the year goes on. The value that we have, or what we explain to our clients, is understanding that this year coming, this year coming and every year, everybody gets the new energy right. It's a brand new year. It's a brand new start At the beginning of a new season.

Evan Polin: 4:45

Everybody's got the chance to win the Super Bowl.

Craig Andrews: 4:49

Absolutely. And we can talk about fitness goals right, everybody feels like Rocky and running the steps in Philadelphia, but we have to make sure we maintain it all year. So what I'm going to give everybody as an advice from last year into this year is that this is what I'm going to call the year of content. Ok, the year of content is important. Your personal experiences in business going forward is going to be much more valuable than just the data, than just a brand new website. It's going to be what you can do, or what you can do video wise, about expressing yourself personally. That's one of the tips I have for people in the past. If they weren't doing it, you better be doing it now.

Craig Andrews: 5:26

The key separation in business is the content and the content that you're delivering. I'll use this as a quick example before we move on. When we, years ago, was selling a travel company, we said what's different than your beach, than the next beach? They said well, we have beautiful water, everybody has beautiful water. We have white sandy beaches. Everybody has sandy beaches. What makes you different? And that had to make them think about a little bit, and what we're saying now is your experiences, your content, your user content.

Craig Andrews: 5:58

All of that stuff becomes much more important, so that people can differentiate, and so the year 25 is differentiation important, so that people can differentiate, and so the year 25 is differentiation. So I know in that differentiation, when you were giving your new year talk, you were talking about goals, right. So we all have goals lose weight, personal financial, closing sales. Let's talk about some of those goals. I know you have smart goals, right. I've heard that a couple of times now as we finished out our year and you were teaching me about Craig. What's your future? You had a good year. What's next, always keeping me moving forward? Tell me about smart goals, evan.

Evan Polin: 6:32

Sure, let's talk a little bit about smart goals, and this is primarily a business podcast. But none of us are 100% in our business. We can't silo our lives. So let me talk about SMART goals and let me also give people something to think about in terms of seven different areas of your life where you should be setting goals. So first, when we set goals, when I have my clients set goals, I want them to set SMART goals. So the S in SMART stands for specific. So, if we're talking business dollars and cents, how much business do you want to generate? Or what do you want your profit margin to be? Or how many new clients do you want to bring in?

Evan Polin: 7:14

If you're talking about health, it might be how much weight do you want to lose? How many days a week do you want to get to the gym? What do you want your blood pressure to be? But have something really specific Along with that specific, it should be measurable. So we're talking dollars and cents. We're talking pounds. We're talking number of days in the week that you got to the gym. We may be talking about what you're running. A mile in the goals that you should set should be attainable. So we want you to stretch, as you're setting goals, but if you set a goal that is completely unrealistic. So if in 2024 you did a million dollars in sales and you set your goal at $10 million for 2025, unless something radical has changed in your business, you're probably not going to increase tenfold. And if you set a goal that you have absolutely no chance of hitting come Q4, you're not going to work extra hard if you know that, no matter what you do, there's no way you hit the goal.

Craig Andrews: 8:16

So we certainly what you're telling me is that I can't go from 1 million to 10 million in a few months.

Evan Polin: 8:24

Not unless you're acquiring a number of different companies or some game-changing technology or product or services entered in. As much as we'd love that to be the case, probably not happening Now. For those of you in startup businesses, you may be able to double and triple if your revenue was smaller, but if somebody is in a really established business doing millions of dollars a year, I'll get, unless something dramatically changes, you're opening up a dozen new markets. You're probably not going to increase tenfold. Yeah, that makes sense. Along those lines, goals need to be realistic. And then, finally, the T stands for timetable. I like to say that a goal without a deadline is a dream, and most of you out there in the audience probably either you personally or you know that person someday I want to do X, someday I want to do X, and that someday gets pushed out further and further and further and further. It never actually happens. So do we want to accomplish this by the end of March? Do we want to accomplish this by the end of June? Do we want to accomplish it by the end of the year? But what is that timeframe for setting those goals? And then make sure that you're setting short-term goals. What do you need to do on a daily, weekly basis to achieve that longer-term goal? And then long-term goals what do you want to do on a monthly basis, a quarterly basis, an annual basis? And then the other thing that we sometimes forget is we're not all work and no play. So there are seven different areas of your life where you should be setting goals. One is working, professional, and that's one of the areas that people focus on first. Next is financial. Might be how much in business you want to do or how much money you want to make. Next is financial. Might be how much in business you want to do or how much money you want to make. We've got family goals. So it may be how much time you want to spend with your family, family building that you may want to do. Next is health. If you make a million dollars, 10 million dollars, but you're really unhealthy and you're not going to be around to spend, that money Probably doesn't matter all that much. So making sure that we've got health goals.

Evan Polin: 10:45

Spirituals, again for some of you it may be formalized religion, for others it may be things like meditation, yoga, but what do we need to do to get centered? We've got social goals. How do we want to be involved in our community With family, with friends, maybe with charitable organizations, community organizations. How important is that to you and what do you want to do there? And then the last area that we're looking at setting goals is educational goals.

Evan Polin: 11:14

So, again, professionally, it may be certain certifications, maybe you want to learn more about how to utilize ai in your business or something, something along those lines, but it could also be personal. Again, if we're not learning, we're not growing that then we're dying, we're moving backwards. So maybe you want to learn a language, maybe you want to learn how to cook, learn how to garden, but what are some things that you want to learn? How to cook, learn how to garden, but what are some things that you want to do to improve yourself? And we really need to set goals in all of those areas. And if we don't and several episodes ago we had Rachel on who was a burnout expert but if we're only setting work goals, professional goals, we are at high risk for burning out.

Craig Andrews: 11:52

Yeah.

Evan Polin: 11:53

And that not being any good in any part of our lives. So when we talk about SMART goals, talk about different areas of our lives where we want to set goals. Those are some of the things that we're talking about.

Craig Andrews: 12:03

So I want to let everybody know, in terms of the viewers and the listeners, if you ever want a real in-depth program in which Evan goes into further detail about these SMART goals, evan, is there a way that they can get this information from you?

Evan Polin: 12:18

I appreciate the cheap plug. So if people go to wwwpolin, which is P-O-L-I-N, p-e-gcom, you'll be able to request to get a link to the annual goal setting program that I do. I see a couple articles on goal setting, so feel free to find me at my website or go to my LinkedIn page, which will give you ways that you can get in touch, and I'm happy to send out to anybody who's interested more information. An hour and 15 minute long goal setting and dream book session. Happy to send that out to anybody who's interested.

Craig Andrews: 12:57

And the importance of understanding about this being a dream book. It's meant to let you see long term, but I would suggest for the people listening and the watching, do not wait till July to start your dream book. It might be a little late to start your dream book.

Evan Polin: 13:13

Go ahead late to start your dream book. Go ahead. And the other suggestion don't spend the time to do the exercise and then save it into a file and go back and next December go. Oh yeah, geez, I kind of sort of remember setting these goals. This looks a little familiar. It should be a living, breathing document that you're looking at on a regular basis.

Craig Andrews: 13:32

And I would suggest have put in your book, put in your scheduler. However you guys do it, I do it electronically Schedule once a quarter, once a month, something fashion that you know that you can get back to it on a regular basis and review if you're actually moving in the right direction. One of the things that he brings up in his dream book is you're running out of time. Right Time is important and are you doing all these things Because you have seven different goals you're trying to attain. Make sure you're moving it forward. Now, a lot of this stuff that we're talking about, talks about, is really to kind of establish value, and the value proposition for a business owner is different than a value proposition for a personal person. Let's talk a little bit here about the value proposition in business. I have a take on it, but I'm interested to hear yours first, evan. In terms of the value proposition in business, how would you propose it to prospects or clients?

Evan Polin: 14:24

So this brings up a point that I love to talk about, Craig. Do you know the most listened to radio station in the entire world?

Craig Andrews: 14:35

Oh, I do not. Do people still listen to radio?

Evan Polin: 14:40

Radio satellite across platforms. It's WIIFM. It stands for what's In it For Me, Wiffle yes.

Evan Polin: 14:50

So, again, whether you're talking about value prop to a large enterprise organization or to one individual, what you need to think about is, from the client's perspective, what's the what's in it for them, whether your product or service is solving a problem for them, whether it's bringing them join a particular area, a particular area. If you can't figure out the what's in it for them, for your prospects and clients I promise they're not going to figure it out on their own and if you can't understand what that is and then be able to articulate that in your marketing message during your sales conversations, then you're not going to be very successful converting interactions with people into paying customers. So, craig, what's your take on that?

Craig Andrews: 15:40

You kind of parlayed right into it beautifully. It goes back to what I started with. In the frame of marketing, the value proposition is differentiation. So if you have a situation where company X and company Y is the same to the consumer demand, they're going to choose the one who explains the message better and simpler. Remember that it has to be simpler and then their interpretation will make it better.

Craig Andrews: 16:05

So the more simple messages you can put out about who you are, what your company values are, the services you offer because how many of us I know you have, because I have people go, I didn't know you did that service. Worst line impossible can be said to me from a marketing guy. Right, I didn't know you could do, I didn't know you did that right. And so the perfect example of when you can clearly articulate the level of service you can offer, the value increases tremendously, primarily because of the fact that to that end user, who's ideally to your target market, you are very clear in terms of the services you can offer for the with them that you just put in there. That wonderful radio station is a good angle you put in there very clearly on how you can help solve their pain, which is another one of your sales processes that you reference. Can I solve your pain and can I explain the simple possible? Can I get it done efficiently and quality?

Evan Polin: 17:02

Right and Craig, if you think I'm wrong, let me know. If you can't do that, you become a commodity. If you're not cheaper and I see you as exactly the same well, why would I spend more? Not cheaper and I see you as exactly the same Well, why would I spend more? I'll just go whoever is the cheapest. So if you find that people keep coming back to you about price, price, price, price price, you probably have not done a good enough job sharing the value that you're bringing to the table. So something that you really need to focus on is what is that with them? Do I, as the business owner, as the salesperson, as the partner in the firm, understand it, and am I able to successfully articulate that message to other people?

Craig Andrews: 17:46

Beautifully said. Beautifully said and that's how I see value proposition in terms of what people need to be thinking about in 2025. Let me kind of jump a little bit into what we talked about as well in terms of the data. So when I say data, data, data, data, data data is meant to be a guideline in terms of am I moving in the right direction? So we talk a lot about in terms of the accountability, which is going to come up a little bit later in our year going forward. But the accountability is making sure that the data meets the accountability. It's not just to say I have data for the sake of data. It's almost like saying I have the answer to the test, but I decided not to take the test. It doesn't make a lot of sense. So you want to make sure, going forward, that you articulate very clearly in their sales data See how I point in the right direction their sales data. They didn't point in the right direction. I guess that's the right direction. No, no, backwards Anyway. So their sales data and their marketing data and they should work hand in hand. If we've preached here many times, let me just say from the marketing data first, and then I'll have you jump in from the sales, from the marketing data.

Craig Andrews: 18:53

Something that you really want to be looking at is time spent on your website. It's going to become very important because Google uses that as an opportunity to see how valuable you are to the end user. If they own the site more which is why the authentic content is important and your experiences explained to clients are important They'll spend more time on your website, which will allow Google to see you as valuable. Very important On top of that is making sure you have things like this, this podcast that we're doing here, in which we're giving you valuable information. It will be translated to the client. That that's important, which means now they're coming in and they're filling out forms and they're doing things like that is very important real quick to run off traffic to your site. The number of inquiries is going to be important. Um, the content impressions. So if you, when you start to dabble into social media here, the impressions that that's happening is going to become incredibly, incredibly important, in addition to the likes and the shares.

Craig Andrews: 19:49

Now, if I find I find something valuable and I share it with you, evan, and then you find it valuable and you share it to other people, and then all of a sudden, they share it to the next person. That's all linked back to my original share. That's important, right? So you have to be giving up good information, not just say I'm the best marketer since creation. That's not good enough. Now I have to be giving you actual information that's going to help you move forward, and then people find it valuable. You know who has this done very well? Usually the younger generation does as well, because they grew up with it. I can admit that I'm getting old and that I struggle with that concept, not as much as my kids do. My kids just get it. They go dad, you're old. They remind me every day. But the importance of being able to have valuable information that people can share, similar to your dream book, is becoming very important going forward in 2025. From a sales perspective, evan, what data is important for you?

Evan Polin: 20:43

So what we want to look at in terms of from the sales perspective is how many, how many first conversations are turning into a qualified meeting, a qualified opportunity, what percentage of those qualified opportunities are turning into a final meeting, a final quote, a final proposal, and then what percentage of those are converting into paying clients. And then, looking at when you're bringing in a client, I also want to look at how long did it take so from first contact to conversion, how long is it taking for people to move through my pipeline? And then also, what is the value in terms of dollars and cents of what the client is? And from a sales perspective, and some of those things at the beginning are what we call leading indicators number of initial outreach, number of conversations, number of first meetings. That's the front end activity that then should be leading us to the results how many final meetings or meetings with qualified opportunities, what percentage of those converted and those are the lagging indicators that are going to give us our end results.

Craig Andrews: 21:55

Beautiful, beautiful. So you can imagine, if you combine the data from the marketing side of things and the data from the sales part of things, you have a complete picture of how well you're doing in your sales and marketing. Even though people confuse sales and marketing and, being the same, they are truly two different entities but you're supposed to combine the data from both of them to come out with a consistent outcome.

Evan Polin: 22:18

It should be a force multiplier One sales, one marketing should equal five. It shouldn't be one and one equals two. Quite frankly, if they're not working together, sometimes they'll cancel each other out.

Craig Andrews: 22:32

So, as we move into the next subject here, I want to talk about how multi-touch marketing, or multi-platform marketing, or integrated marketing is what we call it in-house is so important to that process. Most people do not operate by one venue or one platform alone. You and I both use LinkedIn. Do you use Facebook or Instagram? More LinkedIn, linkedin, okay. So do you use any other social platforms?

Evan Polin: 23:06

So for me personally in my business, outside of LinkedIn, I think I have a Facebook page that not used very often, what used to be Twitter X, but neither of those is used nearly as much yeah.

Craig Andrews: 23:26

And that's pretty common right. So the concept of, I would say, multi-touch or integrated marketing is we want to shut out a web that is going to allow us to touch as many people as possible. Youtube is another one. All of these are social platforms YouTube, linkedin, google Business, Google, my Business, facebook, instagram, tiktok big one to come up and coming Chat, gpt is going to become a big thing going forward, as more people are using AI and AI is being accepted on so many different levels.

Craig Andrews: 23:58

If you're not really doing things out to all of those venues, the multi-touch or the integrated marketing side of things becomes more and more important to make sure you're providing value on all of them. It is a lot of work, don't be confused. It is a lot of work, but there are systems in place that you can use to get them out to the right people. As we use this and talk about the value proposition going forward, I'm going to place a scenario here in front of you. If my target audience is in a position that they're looking at LinkedIn and I'm posting on Facebook all the time, does that make a lot of sense to you from a sales perspective?

Evan Polin: 24:34

Not at all.

Craig Andrews: 24:36

That's the importance of integrated marketing. You have to be able to and don't forget all of this, in our view, centralizes on the website, because now each one of those platforms are looking at your website and going, okay, how does this stuff tie together? And if it ties together and I can create more value, everything increases in terms of my value prop as we integrate out to other systems. Very, very important From an integrated perspective. How do you see it in terms of sales? End Evan.

Evan Polin: 25:05

From the sales end. The biggest mistake that I see the companies make is they will set up a marketing campaign and then not do any proactive sales outreach. So they're posting on the platform. They may have automated emails that go out, but then if you're not looking at who's opening those emails and following up with a phone call, if you're in especially a B2B kind of sale, are you trying to connect with people on LinkedIn after you notice that they've integrated with your content? So I find that to get the best value, you need to combine those marketing activities with those more proactive sales activities, and that's where you're going to see the best ROI from those multi-touch campaigns.

Craig Andrews: 25:56

And here's what I'll tell you people. Here's what I'll tell you through our audience. Here's the tip. Here's the tip to remember as we close out 2024 into 2025 and close out the show. There is no skeleton key that fixes all of the problems. It just doesn't exist. Sorry, I don't know who's telling you otherwise. It just doesn't exist.

Craig Andrews: 26:14

You have to do the work, whether it be phone calls, reach outs, networking, in addition to the marketing stuff that'll make your job a little easier. You have to be able to do all of it and it's an important. If you need help with that, you have two guys. Whichever way that is, you have two guys here who have the resources and the education, the knowledge, to help you move forward. If not, we're both great resources to find people to help your problem. So I would suggest, if you have any questions, if you're listening or watching this, reach out to us. It doesn't mean it's going to always work out, but we are always absolutely welcome to give you the information to help you out as best as we can. As we close out the show here, Evan, we have an exciting year planned. Tell us some of the people coming in.

Evan Polin: 27:01

We've got a very exciting year planned. Over the next couple of weeks, we're going to have a legal expert on talking to you about some of the pitfalls and some of the things that entrepreneurs should be looking out for when it comes to their sales and marketing, and ways to keep yourself out of trouble.

Craig Andrews: 27:19

Important.

Evan Polin: 27:20

Yeah, when it comes to a legal perspective, we're also going to have a founder of a company on created an accountability app. So, whether you're talking about sales accountability, marketing accountability, career coaches anybody who should be tracking what they're doing who's going to talk a little bit about that app, a little bit about the challenges that he's recognized that organizations run into when they are not holding their folks accountable for the things that they know they should be doing to be successful. So those are just a couple of the episodes to look forward to in the early part of 2025.

Craig Andrews: 27:55

Awesome, I love it. I love it. Well, here's to a happy 2025 in the processes that you put me into here to guarantee I have a happy 2025. And if anyone wants to listen further into past episodes of one of the top sales and marketing podcasts in the country, you can go to SM Playbook Unleashed dot com, which is our Web site that has all of our past episodes. You're welcome to go to YouTube at SM Playbook Unleashed.

Evan Polin: 28:26

Is that what the show in the at is with the ampersand.

Craig Andrews: 28:30

Yep, and we're on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Twitter, on all of that stuff that we just preached to you guys about. I'm Craig Andrews. That's my partner in crime. I still think it's that way. That's my partner in crime, evan Bolt. He always corrects me there and we'll talk to you guys next time.

Voice Artist: 28:59

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.