Speaker 1: 0:19

Thank you. 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.

Speaker 2: 1:11

And welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. I'm Craig Andrews, my partner in crime, Evan Poland. How are you doing today, Evan?

Speaker 3: 1:19

I'm doing great, Craig. How are you doing today?

Speaker 2: 1:21

I'm not doing too bad Today. In our episode we're going to be talking about accountability, something that I know that's dear near and dear to your heart and is a lot of times what, uh, we're put up against the wall to do from a marketing perspective yeah, we are also going to be talking a lot about one of your favorite topics, which is data, data, data, data and the importance of data.

Speaker 3: 1:44

Uh, in in terms, in terms of really seeing and getting effectiveness out of your marketing, absolutely so.

Speaker 2: 1:51

Today's guest, mike Strata, is coming to the stage right now. Hey, mike, hey, enjoy that drink. Thank you.

Speaker 4: 1:58

I appreciate it Good morning. Good morning how are you, mike?

Speaker 2: 2:02

I'm doing well. Thank you, Craig Good. So today we're going to be talking about accountability and, as Evan alluded, to data as well. But before we get started, why don't you give our audience an idea of who you are and what you do?

Speaker 4: 2:13

Sure, I'm the founder and CEO of ArcaLea. It's a Chicago-based performance marketing agency and we've been focused on changing marketing fundamentally from the ground up for the last 10 years.

Speaker 2: 2:27

Very good, very good. So we talked about accountability and I know in our pre-call we had a good, deep conversation in terms of how marketing agencies are with accountability and data and information. So why don't you give us an idea, in terms of traditional accountability metrics or KPIs, that marketing agencies would have done and how you guys are different?

Speaker 4: 2:49

Yeah, no, this goes back to kind of our origin story.

Speaker 4: 2:52

I was sitting at a major financial services institution about 10 years ago, 12 years ago, and we'd gotten done with this long creative review and campaign and at the end one of the members of the C-suite turned to the group and said great, what was the impact of the bottom line? And I proceeded to watch the rest of us, including myself, kind of hem and haw for the next few moments and I walked out of that meeting thinking, man, we have to solve this. As marketers, we have to be able to answer this question what is the return on invested capital? And so that is really for us what accountability means. We've been measuring and marketing top of funnel metrics, vanity metrics, click-through rates, conversions, impressions, right, and these have been the only thing we could report on for the last 25 years. But now there's new levels that are emerging. One of them is in attribution and modeling, and if you can understand what is happening and the economic value of what is happening, then you can predict the future, and that's what interests us most.

Speaker 3: 3:59

So companies really want to see that marketing is impacting the bottom line, and now they actually want proof along those lines.

Speaker 4: 4:08

Yes, I can't believe it, and sales does too. Evan, sales is just interested in that as well. And think of how much better we can work together if we take down the silos of, well, they were supposed to do this and I didn't get the good leads or whatever. And now we start having collaborative conversations about by how much and what was the impact and sharing in that collaboration, rather than kind of pointing and saying, well, they didn't do their job right. So I can't imagine, evan, that someone would be interested in that.

Speaker 2: 4:38

So you know we talk a lot about transforming businesses. Right In one of our previous episodes we talked about analytics from a Moneyball perspective from the movie Moneyball and how that can help businesses really thrive and grow. So tell me about how your software helps marketers like myself and actually salespeople and trainers, as Evan is. How could your software help us better?

Speaker 4: 5:02

Yeah. So Galileo was really created to incorporate every touchpoint along the digital process, from the journey, from the top of funnel, with the ads that we produce in traffic. Normally what happens today is we'll come up with a great idea, we'll say we think this insight will resonate with audiences, put it out in the market, and then we get traffic like these top of funnel metrics. Or we get traffic, we get sometimes leads, and then there's this kind of darkness or this obscured aspect of the journey, and then at the end we have sales, and then we say, well, it must have been the last thing that we did. Right, the human component of our biases start to creep in. We say, well, based on the available information and based on this is what was generating traffic. It must be what I have just done that created that success.

Speaker 4: 5:50

And oftentimes that's like watching a baseball game and after the first inning saying, well, I know who won right, and so we're trying to understand what happened in those innings. And then also having a baseball game that sometimes has nine innings, sometimes it's four innings, sometimes it's 30 innings, and then presuming what the outcome was based on early KPIs. And so what we decided to do was put in a platform that measured every stop along the way. Every inning is watched, every inning is measured, statistics are drawn and then inferences are made, not just based on beliefs of what happened, or our biases are made, not just based on beliefs of what happened or our biases, but we actually count everything and it gives you the full map and then you can make economic calculations, and then you can take those forward into predictive modeling and say well, we can get twice as much return on our invested capital if we just change X, y and Z. Does that?

Speaker 2: 6:39

resonate? That absolutely does, and I know from a measurement perspective. You know, evan, when you were talking from a sales perspective and understanding that this is how you get your return, how do you think salespeople people responsible, even if they're non-selling people? How would they be responsible in terms of bringing more business in with metrics like that?

Speaker 3: 7:01

Yeah, it just makes it way easier to know where to focus, where to concentrate. I think all of us like to work smart rather than just working really, really hard. So if we know that, you know X and Y is five times more effective than one and two, if there's any way to throw more into X and Y, why wouldn't we do that and have it be a win-win for everyone? And again, yeah, mike, you said it before and Craig and I talk about this all the time the more that sales and marketing and leadership of an organization can be reading out of the same book, can be on the same page, the more that's going to propel the organization to the kind of results they're looking for.

Speaker 2: 7:44

And I know. So part of that that you both mentioned, that's hard work, right? So part of the hard work is getting all the entities on the same page and, with Michael's software, what it allows us to do is basically hold the people's feet to the fire. So if you have a sales rep in a situation who isn't quite performing, but you know that this data allows them to come in the door, that's where the accountability comes in, from the software. If you have a marketing campaign that's out there that's not quite performing, one of the things that he was able to tell us was exactly what terms might have been the most effective. Can you go into a little bit more detail in terms of that, mike? In terms of, I know when we talked you said term X might be what everybody thinks and everybody's going at it, but technically Y and Z is doing better.

Speaker 4: 8:31

Yeah, we're seeing that, and there's two aspects of that and one I just want to ladder backwards to the first comment you made regarding accountability and feet to the fire. You know, it's a really interesting mindset shift that occurs when you start having conversations around, knowing what happened and being able to see it together. It's no longer like the feet to the fire metaphor is one that almost conjures up like sales folks aren't making enough cold calls or not. They're not doing the right things and and they're not because they're just, they're just applying volume of action towards a problem, not precision in action. And once you understand what actually is contributing to that, it's no longer a concept of like get out and work harder, it's a get, it's a concept, it's a collaborative discussion around what can be done, what levers you can push and pull in order to make them enable them really to be more successful, rather than using a stick or the concept of a stick, but saying you got to work harder. Like Evan said, it's about working smarter and having the intelligence to do so.

Speaker 4: 9:32

But to your second question one of the aspects that we love is the ability to track, for instance, paid search all the way through Paid search in certain industries. There are some keywords, for instance, in the surrogacy industry. One of them is surrogacy pay, and the concept is that if you can offer greater pay, you'll get the best surrogates in the industry. This is in family planning, and what we found as an example is those that generate the highest traffic and the highest amount of leads by a factor of 10, 10x are not the ones that actual keywords are generating revenue, and not only that, but what combinations of content along that journey. It's not just the keyword that does it. That would assume a single touch conversion. This is a six month process, it's a mixed matrix process, and what we wanna know is is what are all the aspects that combine for revenue, not just as a single dimension? It's fascinating, though, and you're right on Craig.

Speaker 3: 10:44

And Mike, I'm going to ask you a question. I have a pretty good idea of the answer, but I think it'll be good for our audience to hear what percentage of the time when you talk to an organization are there blind spots and do they not realize that certain things they're doing, that they think are working really well, actually aren't, and also the inverse of that?

Speaker 4: 11:02

I, so I'm gonna use this like information security. Information security is a continuum right. There is no Fully secure state. There is just a more secure and more than than we were yesterday. That is the same for this.

Speaker 4: 11:18

There are blind spots in organization. Every single organization has some aspect that they say. I wish we could just know this one thing. The question is how big is that blind spot? And in the majority, the vast majority of organizations that we speak with, especially, that blind spot is significantly bigger than you would believe.

Speaker 4: 11:36

Believe Google Analytics does not provide a very, very robust analytics. Think of it. It's free right and it's given to all of us and we all have used it since the beginning of time, and yet we're getting crumbs of the intelligence that could be provided to us, just enough that we spend a ton in the most successful business model that's ever been, that's ever graced the planet. So that gives you some sense of how inefficient the system is, given that Google has made so much money in the last 15 or 20 years. So that blind spot, to your point, evan is enormous and that what we're trying to do when I'm at the top, I said we want to fundamentally change marketing. We're trying to drive out that blind spots in the entire system as much as possible, so that we're no longer decisioning based on feel right or the loudest or the most the person in the room with the most influence but in order to enable a fact-based decision-making.

Speaker 2: 12:38

I love every bit of that and I think you touched on a couple of points there in reference to, from what we believe, marketing is holistic, so you mentioned the content is very important. The experience that happens through a marketing campaign is important in terms of the and we're talking sales with Evan we're really talking about, okay, through that experience, how is that data coming back to us in terms of how they experienced it? And then when you add your software on top of it now we're getting so refined in terms of our information that you can then experiment harder or experiment more on what you absolutely know is working very well. Evan, have you had any situations in terms of this type of software in your space or anything like that?

Speaker 3: 13:24

So in my space it's not as sophisticated, but oftentimes a CRM, a tool tracking people's activity and behavior, much like on the marketing side, on the sales side people assume well, we go to this trade show every year, so that must be the best way to generate business, or you know, I think we're doing really well in this industry. Mike, I think you said it before just because you're getting a large volume of clients doesn't mean that those are the best and most profitable clients by doing something. So one of the things I'll work with on my client, with my clients, from the their prospecting plan, is looking at okay, how much money is it costing, how much time is it taking, and then how many opportunities are coming from that and then how many of those are converting into business and then is that profitable business? And from a sales perspective, typically, before you put in the marketing, there are less factors to manage. But if you're not managing what those factors are might come back to what you said before.

Speaker 3: 14:33

Somebody is like Okay, well, you made 100 cold calls and you didn't get results, will make 200 cold calls. Well, if our you know if the closing percentage is a quarter of a percent or a half a percent, okay, we can have somebody going from working 35 or 40 hours to working 50 to 60 hours. If that's just closing one more deal, is that really worth the extra push? Or do we need to be looking at other things that we should be doing that could be more effective, that could be more productive to get us the results that we want to get? And again, if you're not tracking, it's very difficult to predict, to be able to plan if you don't have any data.

Speaker 2: 15:15

So from a sales perspective, Michael, tell us how your software can help in the evidence situation there. I know you focus a lot on marketing, but salespeople should benefit from that information that you provide as well. Do you have any input on that?

Speaker 4: 15:29

100%. I mean, look, the entire goal of marketing is to create a product that sells itself and in this regard, evan's right on that which is not measured is not improved, at least in the context of attribution. What we look at are a couple of things. One is imagine what changes in the ecosystem, what changes in your behavior when you have a revelation, like I described before, that in the surrogacy industry, those that are in it for pay don't tend to be great surrogates. Those surrogates who are in it for the intrinsic value of changing people's lives and so on, end up being the ones that prevail in the space and becoming surrogates. So imagine that one insight, how that changes content, how that changes email marketing, how that changes the conversations for intake, how that changes your outreach, how that changes who you're speaking to and the profiling. Like that, one insight that's held up against potentially hundreds of insights. That one insight fundamentally changes both marketing and sales and, theoretically, all of the activities that surround both marketing and sales. Does that resonate?

Speaker 2: 16:43

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 16:45

Go ahead, Craig.

Speaker 2: 16:49

No, no, go ahead, you got it.

Speaker 3: 16:51

I was going to say what kind of impact do you see when working with companies who start to really utilize your software, who start to look at the data when it comes to how they're running their organization?

Speaker 4: 17:03

We start with a baseline of 30%. I mean we know, walking in we can get 30% lift with no additional spend. What happens is we get hundreds of percent, we get 150 or 250%. We had one last week. That's a real case. That is exactly what I mentioned. They're spending 75 000 a month in Facebook. They're spending 15 000 a month in Google ads and Facebook is generating like 10x of the leads and the traffic and so they're thinking Facebook's are our money machine. Right, but when we look at the return on ad spend return on ad spend across a year and we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars across a year was a 0.6.

Speaker 4: 17:44

Now the return. Somebody on the other side said Mike, are you telling me that we're losing? We're making 60 cents on the dollar for every dollar we spend. We're losing 30 cents on the dollar, 35 cents. I said yeah, that's what. That's what it says. And they said well, what's the return has been for Google ads, which is 15 grand a month? The return for Google ads was was was four and a half. So they're getting a four, x, almost five return on one platform that they're super skinny on and underwater on the other platform. Imagine how shocked they were. That's the kind of revelations that we're talking about, of revelations that we're talking about, and once you apply that towards uh, future modeling, you're looking at a, you're looking at a three and four hundred percent return, uh, on invested capital, with no additional capital invested, right? So this is the magic of all of this is that and this is why you know it's so uh, it's such an efficiency game so to to that point, mike.

Speaker 2: 18:42

What would be the reason for that type of loss? Because we talked about it, but I want you to go a little deeper. What would be the reason for that loss and why would they not have seen that?

Speaker 4: 18:51

They won't have seen it because until we put in Galileo, they could only see what Google Analytics was telling them. And Google Analytics is showing them. Traffic is off the chart. Facebook you're spending in Facebook and don't get me wrong, when they increase spend, they increase spend on both channels and Facebook. And they did have increased conversions, but not for the reasons they believed. The answer to your question is they were blind on what's happening in the middle, what was actually contributing to revenue, and they could only use the available information, which was traffic. And they saw leads were going up, but didn't know why leads were going up and they assumed when you spend more in X, it's got to be the thing I'm paying the most for. Right and so otherwise it leads to another inevitable conclusion, which is you're so wrong that you're harming the organization, and it's hard to swallow unless you have data to share.

Speaker 2: 19:47

And I know one of the sore points when we had our discussion was this is a hard pill for some marketing agencies to swallow right when that type of data comes at it, and we're very big in transparency. If we're doing something that needs to be different, we want to know. Let's talk a little bit about that and, Evan, if you have anything to add to it, the importance of understanding that change is hard, and this is with the onslaught of technology and information. You have to be able to monitor that information a little differently than we used to do before. Why don't you give me your feedback on that?

Speaker 4: 20:24

It's such a thank you. So sorry for jumping in the. The astounding revelation is that every agent, first of all, there's a low, there's a there's a low barrier to entry in marketing. Right, we can all have access to the tools. That's google's master plan and they want you to spend. And as we spend more, the, the the dials go up, but we're not sure why. Um, marketers and agencies have been trained on increasing impressions and reporting on increasing click-through rates, and then they're like the sales are on. You guys, like I can only bring, I can only lead the horse to water. I can't make it drink. We're saying we can measure how much is being drank. It's a terrible analogy, but I'm gonna go with it. So what?

Speaker 3: 21:05

happens Just don't get drunk.

Speaker 4: 21:07

When you go to marketers they're like well, the market's not. You know, we like, we love this concept, but ultimately I don't want to be accountable. I don't want to be accountable for sales. I want to just report on my comfort zone, which is impressions and click-through rates, and I think marketers in the future and I will argue today and in the future need to embrace this concept of bottom line reporting, of performance-based marketing, Because without it, you really aren't offering a greater service than just generating awareness for a brand or an organization.

Speaker 4: 21:38

What we need to be accountable to is the bottom line, and even more so, Galileo allows us to layer in the cost of acquisition into planning and understand. Maybe there's some markets that aren't profitable for us. So we now become. We, as marketers, who are based in performance, are now part of the organizational leadership and trusted advisors rather than just vendors. And I think as marketers, we have to elevate above the vendor relationship and get into the C-suite and have cogent conversations around economics of what we're doing in sales, rather than just vanity metrics, and sales rather than just vanity metrics.

Speaker 2: 22:16

And I think Before you go on, Evan, before you go on I'm sorry, Mike begin to think about what those three points are that you want to leave with our audience before Evan delivers his answer, While he's doing that. Okay, Evan, you're up.

Speaker 3: 22:27

So first, mike, in terms of what you're talking about, I think this is one place with your software where marketing needs to catch up to sales is, you know? Because in sales it's very easy when somebody said, well, I've had all these calls, I've made these appointments, I've sent out all these proposals, and my favorite question to ask is Mike, that's crap. How much do you get paid for a proposal? How much do you get paid to give a quote? Yeah. And when they sheepishly say, well, I don't get paid anything, it's like, okay, well, does it make more sense to look at what's actually closing deals? And I think, with Galileo and with the software you're talking about, it allows marketing to get a lot closer.

Speaker 3: 23:16

Okay, well, it's great that you're getting click-throughs, impressions, all of those kinds of things, but if that's not converting into anything outside of increased awareness, why do we care? Why does that matter? And I would imagine for you, one of the biggest challenges when you're trying to disrupt an industry, change how people are looking at this is getting people to move out of their comfort zone, to look at things a different way. People who may be used to flying under the radar when it comes to accountability, and now incorporating. That may be a barrier and a reason why some folks aren't as excited because they haven't had to do this before, even if it's best for the bottom line, because they haven't had to do this before.

Speaker 4: 23:57

even if it's best for the bottom line, it's 100 percent Yep.

Speaker 2: 23:59

And so I'm going to tell you guys, as we promised Evan and I promised you before, we are the sales and marketing playbook. We are telling you the answers. There are answers out there to help grow your business.

Speaker 3: 24:19

And we want to thank Michael. Evan. Do you have any anything that you want to tell our audience in terms of future shows that we're doing or anything of that fashion? So stay tuned, we're bringing you some additional great guests like Mike. We're going to continue to, over the next couple of episodes, kind of go into our next Subway series in terms of bringing you the content that is really going to help to give you the answers to increase your sales, to help you grow your business. So make sure that you stay tuned. You're watching us on YouTube. You're going to Spotify, apple to be able to listen to this great content.

Speaker 2: 24:51

Okay, Mike, you have plenty of time now You're up the top three things that our audience should remember about your software and accountability.

Speaker 4: 24:59

Yeah, no, I think I'll start with challenging the status quo. The status quo has led us astray, and that which brought us here is not going to be what takes us into the future In this age of AI and increased data flow. Data is doubling now every six months. We have to have processes that can adapt to that and utilize it to our benefit, because you must assume competitors are doing so. So that's number one is challenge the status quo and ask for more. Two it's garbage in, garbage out.

Speaker 4: 25:32

Remember that you can only use the data that's captured and data in our ecosystems. Even if you have a CRM and it's doing some form of attribution, it's not capturing everything. It's going to be weighted towards its own walled garden, so to speak, and all the major CRMs have some version of this, and so don't assume that they're correct. Go for independent data and make sure you're leveraging it correctly and embrace it. Moving forward, I think the marketers of tomorrow are going to be those that are data first, open, leader, learning, mindset individuals that are constantly challenging that status quo and asking how do we know for sure and how can we improve the system. So I'll leave it at those three.

Speaker 2: 26:16

That's awesome. That's awesome. So, again, I'm Craig, this is Evan and our guest today, michael Strada. It was a pleasure talking to you guys and we will talk to you very soon, and you can again, as Evan referenced, you can see us on YouTube, apple Podcasts, amazon. We're actually growing and growing and growing and we're looking forward to coming and talking to you guys next time. Have a great day.

Speaker 1: 26:41

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.