Speaker 1: 0:19

Thank you, 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 to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. Craig Andrews, evan Polin Masters of the Sales and Marketing Realm. If I can say that, I'm going to start making up stuff every show, evan, just so you make you laugh. So, anyway, I appreciate that, sure. So we are continuing our series in which we're talking about personas, and the last time we spoke about marketing in the perspective of personas and if you haven't had a chance to listen to it, it's called Master your Customer Personas. You can go back to our podcast in the past and listen to it if you want to catch up on the marketing spot. But today, today, we're going to talk about the sales perspective of those personas and why they're so important. So, evan, why don't you start us off and let us know? Why are personas important for sales representatives?

Speaker 3: 2:02

Personas are only important for salespeople and companies that want to close sales. If you don't want to close any business, if you're doing too much, then you don't need to listen to the rest of the episode.

Speaker 2: 2:14

Just stop now.

Speaker 3: 2:17

But if you really are interested in closing business, in spending time with the right prospects, in delivering the right kind of message, understanding personas is really really important.

Speaker 3: 2:34

For a lot of folks who are really successful in sales, they understand the importance of doing a deeper dive.

Speaker 3: 2:43

I may be selling to a certain industry, but if I don't really have clarity around personas, if I'm selling into a larger organization, the end user probably cares about different things than the financial person or the CFO, who may care about different things in procurement, who may care about different things in the business owner.

Speaker 3: 3:06

If I'm not thinking through the personas of who my buyers are, who the influencers are and what messages I should be delivering based on who I'm speaking with, I'm going to have to do a lot of activity to close business because my closing ratio is going to be really, really low and I'm going to spend a lot of time spinning my wheels with either the people that I shouldn't be spending time with or talking to them about things that they don't care about. Along those lines, many of the folks in our audience are also selling to a number of different industries and not all of your prospects have the same problems, have the same issues care about the same things. So if I'm going into a law firm talking about the same issues that a manufacturing company has probably not going to get very far, they're going to be like who is this guy? Why is he wasting our time?

Speaker 2: 4:07

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 4:08

But the more that you kind of hone in on what there's, what those personas are, what your audiences care about, yeah, and then as the salesperson, I apologize up front. You need to do a little research. You need to spend some time doing prep. You need to think through OK, how does what you bring to the table, how can that help the people that you're talking to? And then do a deeper dive to think through what questions should I be asking, what kinds of things are important, so I can bring that to light, to the prospect that I'm in front of.

Speaker 2: 4:47

So I know we're going to, we're going to jump a little bit into the sales training that you have coming up here soon. But I know, in being through the experience myself, you know one of the things that you have in your course is in terms of identifying your, your prospect. You know, can you give us a couple of tips in terms of how to identify them? Because we're the playbook. So we're going to give you a little bit. We're not going to give it all to you, we're going to give you a little bit, just a taste of it. How can somebody identify what their ideal prospect is? Because there's a lot of illusions in terms of how to go about that and I want to lay it to them very flat and very straight steps that they can do to identify that prospect.

Speaker 3: 5:29

So there's a couple of things that you can do and that you should be doing. For folks who have been in business for a while and I just had this conversation with one of my clients yesterday you should go back and look at the past. What kinds of clients have been good clients for us before? Not only have they signed a contract, but which clients were your profitable clients, which clients got the best result using your product or service? And then the first thing that we want to do is look at okay, is there a way to go back and duplicate? Okay, if I've had a lot of success in this specific industry, well, how much have we dived into that industry? And are there more and more and more companies like the client that you've been successful working with? That you can go out and target, look at what's coming up, look at technology. If you've done a really good job solving certain problems for clients, what industries, what are the types of companies coming up, have similar issues, so that you may not have a case study in that specific issue, but you might say, hey, look, yeah, we're nowhere to working in this industry, but we've worked with all of these other industries and they are running into similar problems that you're sharing with us. We know that our solution can help solve that problem and that's going to give you a much better chance of having success, rather than thinking that everybody in the world is a prospect and trying to boil the ocean Again.

Speaker 3: 7:00

You spent many episodes talking about SEO, target marketing, doing those kinds of things. If you don't know what you're looking for, it's really difficult to target. We did another Subway series on trade shows. If you don't know who your ideal client is, what industry they are, who within the industry you need to talk to, how are you ever going to be able to find the right trade shows, the right professional associations, the right networking events if you have no idea what you're looking for?

Speaker 3: 7:34

And you could be and this is where it's important for sales and marketing to work well together. Marketing could sign up for a trade show or conference. You could be the best salesperson in the world. If you're at the wrong conference where none of your prospects are there or nobody who can make a decision on your product or service is there. You could talk to 500 people. If the 500 are the wrong people, you're going to be wasting a lot of time, wasting a lot of money, a lot of effort, getting really frustrated If you're at the right show. There could be 10 people at the show. If four of them are qualified prospects and you close two of them, that was a great use of time and effort.

Speaker 2: 8:17

And I can almost meet your year, depending on who it is.

Speaker 3: 8:21

Right so, but if you don't have that persona in mind, if you don't know what you're looking for, it's going to be really difficult to find it.

Speaker 2: 8:31

So give me some ideas in terms of the personas, in terms of you mentioned, in reference to the right target market and so forth. Are there other measurements that people can use to say these are the type of people I'm trying to get into? So, for instance, we might be in a position where we said employee size right, what would be some characteristics and a persona from the sales perspective?

Speaker 3: 8:54

So I would be looking at industry, I would be looking at employee size, I would also be looking at you know. Again, go back and look at the past. Who has been your buyer at different organizations in the past? Has it been the owner? Has it been a user who has the authority to make a decision? Is it an operations person? But you really need to look at again, not only the companies you're targeting but, based on what you're selling, who within the organization do you need to be speaking with? And then, if you want to go to kind of 2.0, 3.0 and be really efficient, you may also want to look at, okay, what referral sources, what strategic partners are regularly in front of the kinds of people that could be my customer. Which of those kinds of folks have the cachet where, if they refer you in, it's going to short circuit the process? And not only should you be looking at personas for end user customers, but you may also want to look at personas for referral sources user customers. But you may also want to look at personas for referral sources and, again, what types of professionals in what types of industries, in what types of roles, have been the kinds of people that have been able to most successfully refer you into business in the past. And it's one thing to go out and individually find customers, but if I can develop relationships with three or four people and they each bring me into three or four opportunities over the course of the year, that makes my job a heck of a lot easier in terms of hitting my goals. And guess what? It's going to be way more fun than banging your head up against the wall doing some of that colder outreach. But I'll give you an example head up against the wall doing some of that colder outreach. But I'll give you an example. One of my good referral partners is a former client made a referral to me on Friday. That person scheduled a meeting with me on Monday. They're getting a proposal today. We have a time on the calendar to review the proposal next Tuesday and they are looking to start within the next 30 days. That typically doesn't happen with a cold outreach, unless you're selling a product where if the product breaks for somebody, they need something immediately. So again, if you can develop some of those relationships, it's going to make your life much, much easier and, quite frankly, it's going to make your life much, much easier and, quite frankly, it's going to make things a lot more fun. So keep that in mind. Again, level one is just okay who's the client, who am I going after? But level two is okay what people can put me in front of several of those opportunities and what does that look like? And then the other thing I'll say in terms of you know, you talk about data, data, data, you talk about metrics. One of my clients right now it's a software company. They're doing a ton of outreach Now, sitting down with their internal BDR to look at, okay, all of the outreach that you've done.

Speaker 3: 11:58

Where are we getting the responses? Who's agreeing to a meeting? Again, are there particular industries that we're having better luck in than others? Where are we getting the responses? Who's agreeing to a meeting? Again, are there particular industries that we're having better luck in than others? Are there particular titles? Because they're reaching out to people in R&D, in product development, in operations, in finance which of those people tend to have the highest response rate? And then we'll also do a deeper dive to then look at, okay, of the people that responded, which industries are having a better conversion rate, because there are thousands of different companies that they could target If we can be a little bit more pinpointed. They're going to have better results more quickly.

Speaker 2: 12:40

And you can drown in data. So that's the one little warning I want to give people. We're very big advocates for data, but don't drown in it. You know, a prospect that I talked to years ago, who eventually became a client, said that you know, paralysis by analysis is a real thing, and so the key behind this is to get a better pinpoint in terms of who you're focusing with and then, as you're working with it, you can refine it a little bit in terms of that persona. Now, one of the things that I want to touch upon here and all that good data good information, not data good information that Evan gave you. Evan, why don't you tell them a little bit about your sales training that you have coming up and why, if they liked what they heard, first you should subscribe. Second, you should reach out to Evan and join his training. But go ahead, evan, explain to them your sales training that you have coming up here.

Speaker 3: 13:31

Sure Craig, I appreciate the opportunity for the cheap plug. I'll take it anytime I can get it.

Speaker 2: 13:35

There you go.

Speaker 3: 13:37

So we have a sales training program coming up. It is a 12-week sales training program once a week for an hour over Zoom, and we're really looking at the three major components to make you successful with sales Making sure that you have the right mindset and that you have the mindset to try new things. Spending a lot of time on prospecting Some of the things that we cover in the Playbook podcast here how do we get in front of the right folks, how, how do we track, how do we measure, how do we make sure that we're doing the right things? And then the third piece of the program is really working on a process to more effectively qualify or disqualify opportunities, to shorten that time from the first contact through getting a yes or no, and then helping folks who do good business, have happy clients, be able to leverage their relationships, to get more referrals, get more introductions.

Speaker 3: 14:32

There are additional components of the program. For folks who want, there'll be some group coaching sessions. There'll be some one-on-one coaching for folks who are interested in that. But it's a 12-week session starts on June 4th and if you go to our podcast you'll see some information on it. You can go to my LinkedIn page. You can go to the Poland Performance Group LinkedIn page or you can go to my website, which is polandpgcom, and you'll see information. You'll see all of the 12 modules and I hope to see you in the program.

Speaker 2: 15:06

And so now, as we as we kind of transition back into what we were referencing here, and so now as we, as we kind of transition back into what we were referencing here, one of the things that I have is a note that I was taking as you were speaking here is listening for pain points. So I know I'm going to plug you here a little bit. So a lot of things that Evan was teaching in his training was very simple rule Shut up, shut up and listen. You shouldn't be talking, they should be talking, so you can listen for pain points. As we transition this into the pain points in the personas and understanding who you're talking to, why don't you enlighten us a little bit about the 70-30 rule and staying quiet so you can hear what those pain points, which will help you refine your persona discovery?

Speaker 3: 15:48

Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 15:48

So a rule of thumb, something I share with a lot of my clients if you are talking, you are not learning anything about what your prospects issues are, what their challenges are and whether or not they're willing to do anything to fix those problems. So in the 70-30 rule says the prospect should be talking 70% of the time, we should be talking 30% of the time. So, as you're talking to your client, again, if you know your persona as well, you should also know what their potential issues are, what their challenges are, what their hot buttons are and what's going to either make them act and have them be qualified prospects, or, if they say, nope, not an issue. Nope, not an issue, nope, not an issue, that may be your cue that we're not talking to the right person, or it's the right person, they just don't have problems that we can help them with, or they don't recognize those problems and then we're going to disqualify. So you should know, okay, if I am talking with the financial person, these are probably their two or three biggest issues.

Speaker 3: 16:51

So I'm going to use my background and expertise and ask one or two questions to identify if they have an issue. If they do, that's when I need to get them to talk about the issue. So I'd say, you know, craig, can you tell me a little bit more about that? You know? Can you give me an example or two? Going to get him talking, I'm going to get him talking. I'm going to start to learn more. I may start to ask him what kinds of things he's done to try to fix that problem, how all of those things worked. The answer is they probably haven't worked very well or he wouldn't be talking to me. Then I'll start to ask about whether or not he's willing to do something to fix the problem, what the commitment level is. You know, if I had a solution, would there be any kind of budget? But if I'm doing all of the talking, I can't learn about what his issues are from his perspective, whether or not he's willing to fix those problems, whether or not my product, my service, is a good fit.

Speaker 3: 17:50

So when we're asking questions we don't want you to go in totally blind. You should have expertise. You should know before you walk in. Okay, if I hear X, y and Z person's going to be a qualified prospect and there may be a real opportunity If they say no to X, y and Z and their issues are really one, two and three. Okay, may not be a good prospect for me. Let me just try to figure that out as early as possible in the process, because I don't get paid by the appointment, I don't get paid by the proposal. If someone's not a good fit right now, it's my job to disqualify that as early on as possible. Yeah, you should have more expertise than your prospect. So oftentimes if somebody is not a good prospect, you should see that earlier than they will see that and it's okay to tell them that.

Speaker 3: 18:44

And I've had a number of people come to me or I've talked to them. The problems they had were not problems I could help them with to me, or I've talked to them. The problems they had were not problems I could help them with. And then they remembered the questions that I asked, that I pointed them in the right direction and they came back six months, a year, three years later saying, okay, now I think I've got issues that you can help me with and I had all of the credibility in the world because I didn't try to jam a solution down their throat that wasn't a fit for their problem.

Speaker 2: 19:12

And you know what I'll say is the kind of before I tie into the next question. Here I want to make a call out to everybody who's listening all of our audience members and understand we're getting back to the age of authenticity. Okay, and getting it's not just a hard sell anymore. The crazy eddies and things like that are going away primarily because of the fact that we go and we work with people we like and people like us, and so a lot of times, if we're not being authentic in our marketing, we're not being authentic in our sales, we're going to lose them, and in Evan's example, we're going to only just lose them now.

Speaker 2: 19:45

We might lose them down the line like they may never consider us again. We're not even worth talking to. We get ignored in events and things of that fashion only because nobody wants to feel like they're being ripped off. Nobody wants to feel like they're being used or treated in a misused way. So it's very important to get back to the authenticity of the way things used to be and be authentic in terms of what you have to offer. If you can't help them, let them know.

Speaker 3: 20:09

I can't help you right now, and I think that's a very important point that Evan's making here and part of the reason again that we've created the playbook in the first place. If marketing is messaging one thing and sales is saying something completely different, you are going to lose all credibility from the beginning. You are going to confuse your customer. They're not going to be quite sure what you do, how you do it. They may feel like it's a bait and switch. So really important if you want to have that credibility, that authenticity, that sales and marketing are on the same page from the beginning, and if you have a confusing product or service.

Speaker 3: 20:50

I was on the phone with somebody from a company yesterday and there were three or four people out there doing business development and I was getting confused in terms of what this person was saying. I said, hey, if I line the three or four of you up that were in business development, would I get the same story about what you do and the problems you solve development? Would I get the same story about what you do and the problems you solve? And this person was quite confident that no, I would not get the same story from all three or four people. That's tough to have credibility and authenticity if you can't do that. So again. Just another reason why it's so important for sales and marketing to be on the same page, so that you have credibility in the marketplace, especially these days with everything happening online. You don't just screw up in one small little instance and circumstance, but the message spreads through email, through posting on LinkedIn, through social media. So if you're not credible, that's going to come back to bite you.

Speaker 2: 21:49

And actually, as another example, just because we're trying to give you real world examples I had a call with somebody over in Florida down in Florida, I should say and she was talking about she needs, she needed a marketing assessment. So I gave her a brief marketing assessment and discovered that, on one hand, she was doing commercials, real estate. On the other hand, she was doing leadership development, and I said, which one? Which one do you do? Was doing commercials, real estate. On the other hand, she was doing leadership development and I said, uh, which one? Which one do you do? She said, well, I do both. I said, okay, it doesn't look like. Okay, that's confusing, that's very confusing.

Speaker 2: 22:20

People have very simple minds, not not in a bad way, but they, they catch on to something and they that's where they are. So if you come in and you do commercial real estate by the way, I also do this do this I may use the analogy of gas station sushi Right, the stuff you want to be taken seriously. And so remember that everyone, as you're, as you're listening to this message, part of the personas is it's got to get into the baseline understanding of who you're talking to, how you're talking, to making sure that it's as authentic as possible. And there's a last point before we close out here. Talk, evan, a little bit about making sure that you're keeping that persona fresh right, because that persona can change on you from a sales perspective. What would you do in terms of keeping that persona fresh? How would you recheck yourself to make sure that persona is real?

Speaker 3: 23:09

Sure, and that's a really good question, and I like the fact that you bring that up, because at this point, if you're, if you're not, refreshing on a regular basis, how many of us are still using fax machines? Yeah, exactly. For those of you younger in the audience, you probably have never even seen a fax machine before, but things are constantly evolving. If you are selling your products and services like it was five years ago, I promise you're behind the times. So you need to be continuing to talk to your clients. What issues are they seeing? How are their businesses changing?

Speaker 3: 23:50

You should be involved in industry associations. You should be in a position where you're talking to peers. I don't care if you're a younger salesperson and you go to places where you're networking with other younger salespeople, just sharing your experiences. You're a CEO, part of a Vistage or part of an EOS or part of any of those associations. But things are moving faster now than they ever have before and if you are not keeping up, if you are not starting to look at how do you integrate AI into what you're doing, how do you get better and faster customer feedback you are going to fall behind the times and have a very difficult time.

Speaker 2: 24:33

And falling behind very quickly. So, Evan, I want you to do like we do with all our guests, as I kind of give our little outro think of three tips when it comes to personas in the sales process that you want to leave people, and as he's thinking about that, we have a lot of great guests coming up. A, we're going to finish out our series here of the personas. That's one thing coming. Part two we have an administrator in a hospital, we have a HR consultant and we also have a gentleman who's talking to us in terms of using marketing software in a better way. Right? So, as marketing people, it's hard for us to quantify how our ROI is working. He has a software that will absolutely show us ways to make that better. Again, giving you guys the playbook so you can understand that we're trying to give you information that's going to make your businesses better and grow. So here you go, Evan. You're up Top three things you want them to walk home with.

Speaker 3: 25:28

Top three things. One you need to have a persona. So you really need to spend the time to do the research, to think through what industries, what people within the organization, who are you looking to target. Two, do your homework. So, once you understand what those are, make sure that you're doing a deeper dive, you're understanding what challenges they're having, how your product, how your service may be able to help them. And then make sure that you're not just walking into a meeting cold, but you're doing your homework beforehand, you're prepping, you have a good sense of some of the questions that you're going to ask to start off, so that you can identify does this person I'm talking to?

Speaker 3: 26:14

Yes, demographically they may have the right persona, but if they've already got a strong relationship that they're not willing to cut, if they don't recognize that they have the issues, it is your job as a very good salesperson to disqualify early on in the process if you're not hearing what you need to hear from a prospect, to let them know that they could be a good client. So and then the third and again the whole theme of this podcast sales and marketing needs to be on the same page. Yeah, what marketing is putting out? Who they're marketing out to should fit the right persona of what the salesperson thinks a good prospect looks like, and the messaging should be consistent. If you do those three things, you're going to put yourself well ahead of most of your competitors.

Speaker 2: 27:05

And so everyone you heard it right there from the expert Evan Poland, and listen, that's the end of our episode. Now I want you to understand we're giving you the playbook why? Because we want you guys to win in business. That's the ultimate point behind the playbook is to give you guys tips and information that allow you to win. Anything else you want to end with Evan before we take off.

Speaker 3: 27:25

Like, subscribe comment. You can find us on YouTube, spotify, apple. Look for some of our clips on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2: 27:32

That's right, and we will talk to you guys next time. Be good now, keep winning.

Speaker 1: 27:39

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 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.