Speaker 2: 0:19

Thank you and 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.

Speaker 3: 1:11

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

Speaker 1: 1:19

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

Speaker 3: 1:22

Listen, I'm excited we have a guest on today who is going to finally kind of put things into place for us. I know a lot of times when you and I are dealing with clients, we're usually working with the executive level, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the overall executive level has a vision that's being passed down to the other people, that we have to kind of get engaged to fulfill that vision, and so our guest today is going to help us kind of put that into perspective. Do you have anything to say before I bring them on?

Speaker 1: 1:49

Yeah, I think this is a really good compliment. The last several episodes of the podcast, we've done a deep dive into the tactics, but I think we need to keep in mind that there needs to be an overall approach, an overall strategy, and I think our guest today is going to talk about the importance of that strategy and the importance of that strategy being communicated to everybody in the organization.

Speaker 3: 2:11

And last but not least, James Wisdom hey, James, how are you today?

Speaker 4: 2:17

Hey Craig, hey Evan, how are you doing today?

Speaker 3: 2:19

Doing great, doing great. So, james, why don't you give everybody an overview of kind of who you are, what you do and why which EOS is? As an EOS implementer, I'll get that years both in the Fortune 100 leading powerful nationally recognized marketing teams and running my own agency.

Speaker 4: 2:51

I bring that insight, that marketing insight, to the leadership teams that I help today. And what I really help them with is with EOS, which is a complete, proven system of simple tools to help them accomplish three things we call vision, traction and healthy. Getting clear on the where the business is going and how it's going to get there that's the vision. Establishing the accountability so they're constantly working toward that vision and achieving their goals that's traction. And helping them be a more healthy, functional, open, honest and cohesive team, which is what we call healthy. I love doing this with leadership teams. I get everybody in a room. We work through their challenges together. We have co-ownership. The sales teams and the marketing teams and the ops teams all start to understand and have a piece of the pie and own parts of the business and we see magic come out. We grow profits and sales.

Speaker 3: 3:42

That is awesome. So, evan, we finally have somebody who can get between the two of us and bring it all together.

Speaker 1: 3:49

That's right, and I'm sure that by the end of the episode, james will be on my side, concluding that sales is way more important than marketing in terms of accomplishing those goals.

Speaker 3: 3:58

Okay, so, james, you can tell already, we need your help.

Speaker 4: 4:01

I didn't know this was going to be a competition, but I'm here for it can tell already. We need your help.

Speaker 1: 4:04

I didn't know this was going to be a competition, but I'm here for it, james. The competition's really been over for a while. It's not much of a competition anymore, but I think it may be important to start by taking a step back. I'm going to make an assumption. Have you ever walked into a situation where you have a first meeting with a potential client where the leadership sales marketing, are very much not on the same page? And if you've seen organizations like that before, what are some of the symptoms? What are some of the things that let you know that the organization needs to be helped, because not everybody's on the same page?

Speaker 4: 4:48

I think you're describing a conflict as old as time itself, or at least as old as sales and marketing. I have been in many situations throughout the span of my career but definitely with my clients today where you have a sales and marketing misalignment. Right, that happens a lot, and the cues that I hear and these are super consistent is from the sales team. I hear marketing is sending us garbage leads. Right, these leads don't understand like they're getting in here. We can't close them because marketing is projecting a product offering into the marketplace that isn't consistent with what we actually do. That's a really common thing. The other thing I hear from the marketing people is sales can't close the leads that we're putting out there, so sales are down, they're not doing their job, right?

Speaker 4: 5:38

So I come from a background and I worked with the CMO a long time ago and he said something to me from a book in that was written in 1910. And the essence of the quote was sales. Excuse me, marketing is sales at scale, and I've become a real, true believer in that. So I think that the two things really need to be tightly bound. But yeah, what you described is sort of this conflict is. I see this in many, many, many organizations and bringing that into alignment is going to be essential for success in my opinion?

Speaker 1: 6:10

And on top of that, have you also met with companies where the owner, the CEO, their vision is very clear in their head, but they may be the only one in the organization who's clear on what that vision is.

Speaker 4: 6:31

Again, super, super common and honestly, that's one of the biggest things that I do is extract that out of their head and get it down on paper. So there's really a clear, common understanding of that vision and I actually you know I talked about that in my introduction right, so we get everyone on the same page of where the business is going and how it's going to get there. If the visionary or the CEO or the leader can't communicate clearly what's in their head, what the team often what it feels like to be on that team is that it's consistent. But if it's not actually written down and it's external, it's something that people can talk about, understand, ask questions about then it tends to be viewed by everybody in the organization as sort of this fluid thing that nobody really knows what it is. It's just in Bob's head. Doing this with clients is pulling that out of their head. So it's really clear and everybody in the leadership team and ultimately everybody in the organization understands exactly what the vision for the organization is.

Speaker 3: 7:31

So let's, we're the playbook, if you haven't figured that part out. We want to give everybody the actual miniature version of what the actions they should take. So give us a, give us an example. You have this dispute between you know the better one, the marketing and the sales. You know not as good. So why don't you give us an example of actual techniques that they could slightly put into place to help your job a little bit?

Speaker 4: 7:55

Yeah, for sure I we have. There's a module or a framework within EOS, within what we call the VTO, or the eight questions that our clients have to answer and get to agreement on in order to have a clear vision. It's called the marketing strategy. Now, it's not sort of a 40 page document that you see in a lot of marketing strategies that get into, like, channel management. It's really about getting common understanding of what the key components are of a marketing strategy, and we do that again with everybody in the room, and they're really the basics, right.

Speaker 4: 8:29

Who is our target market? Right? A lot of times, sales and marketing well, you guys need to agree on that, right? Is it organizations that are $10 million a year or more? Where are they located? So, really, the way we break it down is psychographic, geographic and demographic. What is? Who are the people that we really want to be directing are precious, and I mean it's precious right. This is your money, this is your money, this is your time, your precious sales and marketing resources, too.

Speaker 4: 8:58

Who do you want to talk to? Right? Who should your message be received by? And and I do when I sit in with my sessions a lot of times, there's disagreement on that at the very beginning. Well, no, hold on. We want to appeal to everybody. Well, you know that's not the way to do it and you guys probably already know that. I've probably covered it in some of your podcasts. I think I've heard you mention it before. But, like, dealing with everybody is great if you're Charmin, but most companies aren't really Charmin. They're really trying to focus on one specific target. So defining that target market is key.

Speaker 4: 9:35

Then what we talk about is the three uniques which, you know, in a lot of different disciplines have different names, right, the value proposition or the USP, right. But there being agreement again around the entire leadership team on what that message should be. That's truly unique for their organization. Now everybody goes oh my gosh, I've got a thousand competitors that are just like me. There's really nothing unique about me. And what I say to them is there is right.

Speaker 4: 10:00

Every organization, every single one, is unique and it's in how you do things, it's in how you treat your customers, it's in the value add, it's in how you deal with your partners. There's uniqueness in there. You're just so close to it that a lot of times you can't see it. So I work with those teams to tease out what that truly unique components are, those three things. Now, maybe one of the things is really common across the industry. Two of the things might be really common, but we have to get to a point where we have all three that are really really really clear and truly unique, right, so that exercise pulls that out of them and then we get to agreement on that.

Speaker 3: 10:40

So to that point, in terms of when you referenced in terms of you know, there's a thousand people like me, I actually encounter people who say the opposite. There's no one like us out there. How do you combat that?

Speaker 4: 10:51

That's awesome. I love that. That makes the exercise much easier, right? But I think part of it is like is that actually true? And I challenge, right?

Speaker 4: 11:05

So part of my role in the room is teacher, facilitator and coach, and the coach part of it is to say you know what, if it doesn't pass the sniff test for me, I call it out right, I have enough experience with many, many, many different clients and many, many different industries over the last 30 years that if I see somebody saying, well, we are completely unique and these are our three uniques and we're different than everybody else, but they're really not, I go, well, hold on a second, isn't this the same? Isn't this the same? And then we say, okay, yeah, we need to work harder on this. But sometimes, hidden there, there's always something truly unique about every organization.

Speaker 4: 11:35

You know, I have an MSP client who didn't think themselves unique because MSPs are there's lots of them out there, right but we started talking about it and drilling into it. What we discovered is that they have a US-based person answer every call within five minutes, like to the point that they actually have a guarantee that you will be talking to an American within five minutes, no matter when you call, always, and your problem's gonna get solved. So that is pretty unique for them. So that's something that they're gonna, that's something that they're calling out. So, yeah, we have to get to that essence for them.

Speaker 1: 12:11

So, james, that kind of leads to a question that I have what kind of mindset does a business owner does the leadership need to have for EOS to be successful, for them to even look at it, for them to be able to handle you pushing back on things that don't pass the sniff test, for this ought to be successful for that.

Speaker 4: 12:40

Well, they have to be. It's sort of like do you, do you want to work out Right, which is am I willing to make the investment in time and work to be better as a person if I'm joining a fitness regimen, or to be better as a business? Right, am I willing to actually do the work? Am I willing to be challenged? Am I willing to, as a leader, be open, honest and vulnerable to not only my peers but this guy, james, who's got lots of expertise and is going to push me a bit outside of my comfort zone? Right, you have to be willing to do that. And generally, that hunger, that willingness, is driven by a desire for freedom, a desire for greater profit and a sense that and this is common to almost every business that they've hit the ceiling right.

Speaker 4: 13:21

Businesses go through these cycles where they grow. They grow evolutionarily, everything's fantastic, boom, boom, boom, numbers are going up. Then, all of a sudden, something happens. It's hard to define what that thing is, and what happens to the businesses in that period of revolution is that they either flatten out, they plateau okay, we're going to go status quo on this thing and hope we survive they close right, because they can't deal with it or they have to blast through that and break through that ceiling. Right, they have to be willing to do the work to actually get through that ceiling.

Speaker 4: 13:52

So when I see my clients that are the most successful, and it honestly, it doesn't necessarily even have to do with EOS, right, it's just about entrepreneurship. The ones that are most successful are the ones that are willing to put in the work and the ones that are most successful are the ones that have some system. It doesn't have to be EOS. There's other ones out there. Eos is the big one on the planet at this point. 300,000 businesses got to put that in. But if you have a commitment and you're willing to push hard and get there, you're going to be more successful.

Speaker 3: 14:20

Obviously, so let's, let's go back to the top right. So now you're talking about the mindset that Evan brought up and everything else. Now take what happens when that executive on that top level or that leadership group is not willing to hear the ones below in terms of how the things should be operated. How do you attack that?

Speaker 4: 14:47

Jim Collison. Well, when I'm in the room, I facilitate that. Right, hold on, bob Jane's got something to say, right, and I'm watching faces, I'm reading physical language in the room, right, and this happens sometimes, right, you have, sometimes you got a very dominant CEO or leader. They're used to being the last, the first and last word, Right, but yet they want to challenge their team and themselves. Sometimes it's seating position, like I've literally had CEOs that sit at the head of the table because that's a comfortable spot, and I say, okay, I'd like you to sit over here today, right, and I will literally shift things around and I give people the space to be able to be honest, like.

Speaker 4: 15:26

One of the big things that I advocate for is openness and honesty. Every session starts with a discussion about openness and honesty, so that people can feel open to other people's ideas and really be honest about what's happening in the business. Because if you have that elephant hiding under the rug, that's not going to work with EOS, right, it's not going to work with me. I want to reveal that, flesh it out, deal with it, solve for it and let's move on so the business can grow, because a lot of times, the business is being held back by those big hidden elephants, right? So it's really just a lot of that is on me and that's why I'm hired in a lot of cases is to give people that space to be able to communicate with the leader.

Speaker 3: 16:01

So in terms of reactory right. So a lot of times, from a marketing perspective, we're pulled to do more reactive marketing which, as you know from your history, is not the best way of pulling off marketing, which is potentially why we end up giving leads to the sales reps or the salespeople. That isn't exactly in alignment because of the reactory fashion of the process. I know, evan, you talk about having a plan, having an agenda and things of that fashion. So, evan, before we jump back to James, give us an idea in terms of, from the sales perspective, of being reactory Reactory. Is that a word? Reactory? I'm sitting there making up words on the playbook. People, you need to be on.

Speaker 1: 16:47

That's the advanced version of playbook with our new language that we add into that.

Speaker 3: 16:54

What's the advanced version of Playbook with our new language that we add into that? Yeah, so with that reactive, from a salesperson perspective, what does reactive mean to you?

Speaker 1: 17:00

So, from a salesperson's perspective and I've already had two different coaching sessions with clients today talking about it when you're reactive rather than proactive, it makes things very difficult to plan for, very difficult to anticipate. You oftentimes don't have the end in mind in terms of okay, if I hear X, y and Z, this is where we can help. If I hear A, b and C, we're wasting our time, we're not the right fit. So the more that we can be proactive, thinking about okay, who do I need to talk to, what questions should I be asking, what pushback and feedback might I get and how am I going to react to that?

Speaker 1: 17:45

The biggest mistake that most salespeople make is their prep. Is the drive over if it's an in-person meeting or it's the okay, I've got five minutes between the end of the last call before the next call starts. Let me quick, quickly look up their website, let me quickly look up who I'm talking to. I find there is a direct correlation between the amount of prep that you do and how successful you are, especially if you're making a larger sale, if you're in a team selling environment where you're going in with multiple people, if you're not doing a pre-call plan together, if you're not on the same page. The call is not going to go the way that you wanted it to go and you're going to put yourself at a major disadvantage. So I would imagine, from the marketing side, if companies are doing market research, if they're trying to push the narrative of what they want to push, they're probably going to be a whole lot more successful. Then, ok, let's put something out, let's just see what comes in and then go from there.

Speaker 3: 18:55

So, james, your reaction to that?

Speaker 4: 18:58

I mean, I totally agree, right, I agree on both the sales and marketing side. I also am a big fan, and I think what Evan's talking about is strong process, right. So process is a big component of what we do in EOS. But I was a big proponent for process way before EOS, when I was a marketer, and that's because I discovered fairly early on it was by chance, I was at QVC at the time, I was part of their e-commerce division and it was total chaos, right, and it was making me nuts, and so I basically begged my boss to create the QVC marketing process, right, and I did that. It was complicated but we got. We got there and it ran for three years and then I redid it before I left eventually.

Speaker 4: 19:46

But what I discovered in that process is when, when, the, when, the, the the systematic is in place and it's running like an engine, right, tick, tick, tick. You've got that rhythm for that stuff that you're going to do day in and day out, every single day. What that affords you is the room for creativity and to be opportunistic, right. So if you've got some margin, then it is okay. What can I do for this client? Or, oh, I just met this guy, or there's other things that you can do and be much more creative both in your sales and marketing process If you've got strong underlying processes for the customary, for the normal, for the things that happen day in and day out to drive your business forward. I think process is sexy because it gives you room to do the fun stuff see it because it gives you room to do the fun stuff.

Speaker 3: 20:37

And I also like to look at it from the perspective of in the event that somewhere within that process something goes awry or the sales and marketing are not in alignment, the process will tell you where the hole is almost instantaneously. And if you can do that and find that process, you can come back together with EOS or whatever the process is, and say you can pinpoint the exact point in which things are funky. Right, and I think that that's important to get back to it, because from that top level, what's very quick is hey, sales marketing, what's going on right, it's very quick to go, ceo goes, hey, wait, wait, wait. What happened? We were doing great, why did it change?

Speaker 4: 21:12

I would even suggest I would even do you one better and say that those key moments in the process should have metrics, right, and you should have specific goals for, if we're talking about sales, how many calls, how many proposals you're putting out into the marketplace, at what rate those proposals are closing. If you've got specific goals and we do that in EOS with what we call the scorecard Doesn't have to be EOS again but if you're paying attention and you're looking at these goals every single week and you see, suddenly you're dropped down well, what happened? Right? That's a signal flare for you to say hold on, now something's going wrong, right? If you have a lead form on a website and you consistently get a thousand leads a week and then suddenly you're getting 500, hold on a second. There's something broken, right. Our SEO isn't working, our ads aren't. There's something broken out there. If you're not actually paying attention to the metrics that you anticipate, then the chances are things are going to run poorly and you won't even know about it. That's really the danger.

Speaker 1: 22:09

And you get to the end of the quarter, the end of the year, and go oh my God, what happened? Versus knowing when something's broken, going in iterating, making the tweaks, tracking how those tweaks went, to be able to more quickly identify, fix and then be able to move on yeah, Now listen as we round out the show here.

Speaker 3: 22:30

We love to do, james, I'm going to give you a few seconds to think about it, but come up with three or four tips that the executive level can to help there in terms of a process. And prior to that, evan, why don't you give everybody an idea of your sales training program that you have going on while James is thinking?

Speaker 1: 22:57

So, for those of you listening as we release, kicking off a 12 week sales training program that's going to start the first week of June. Anybody who's interested, if you come and find us at the Sales and Marketing Playbook, you'll be able to find my website, my LinkedIn page. We're covering everything. We're going to be talking a lot about process when it comes to prospecting, when it comes to qualifying, when it comes to the right mindset, but if you have a team and you want to get more results out of them, you want to increase the amount of prospects they're getting in front of, increase that closing percentage. You may want to consider having them sign up. It's once a week for an hour. We will be recording all of the sessions and if you have questions, please reach out. I'm happy to share more information with you.

Speaker 3: 23:37

All right, James, you're up Three tips.

Speaker 4: 23:47

Three tips, okay. So the first tip is really going to be about what we talked about at the top of the call. Right, if you're a visionary, if you're a leader of an organization, you got to get the vision out of your head and you got to get it in front of your trusted team of leaders whatever that looks like in your organization, and get their input on it. You can't expect your sales leader, your marketing leader, your ops leader, your HR leader, whatever it looks like Every organization is a little bit different you can't really expect them to have a true sense of ownership for the destiny of the organization if they don't have a hand in shaping that vision themselves. So, number one get it out of your head, write it down, communicate it and open yourself up to discussion. Hey, this is what I've got in my head. How could we make this better together? Oh, sales says we can do this, marketing says we can do this, etc. Right, so get it out there and collaborate on it. That's number one. Number two is establish the right processes so that you have clarity on what should be happening and when for all those repeatable core tasks that you have in your organization, because what that offers you is the ability to not only run a better business, make it more profitable, make it more fun, make it more scalable, but, as I said before, it makes it sexy because it gives you some space to really innovate, to be opportunistic and to take chances.

Speaker 4: 25:05

Right, business is about risk. Right, you've got to be taking some risk there. And when are you going to do that? Well, it's when your processes are tight and you're running like a tight and you're running a tight ship. That's number two. The third is and I mentioned this before is data right. Use data to monitor your business, to stay clear on what's going right and knowing as soon as possible and I'm saying weekly right, those key leading metrics pay attention to those weekly. So you must inspect what you expect, right, and if you expect there to be 10 proposals going out a week or 100 proposals going out a week and suddenly it's 25, you have to inspect, you have to say what's going on here, there's something wrong. We got to figure out what's happening here. And the data gives you the ability to inspect those things so that your expectations can be met. Those are my three.

Speaker 3: 26:09

That is awesome. That is awesome, thank you. Share it among all your friends, as always. You can find us on the smplaybookcom, you can find us on LinkedIn, you can find us on YouTube. All of those things are available.

Speaker 1: 26:24

And again, before we wrap up, James, let's give you an opportunity to do a cheap plug. How can people find you?

Speaker 4: 26:31

Well, even before my plug, I want to say thank you to the two of you for having me today. This is fantastic. Really appreciate it. I can be reached. I'm easy to find jameswisdomcom, or if you just search the web for James Wisdom EOS, you're going to find me. I'm also on LinkedIn. I'm super easy because I guess I've got one of those names. Awesome.

Speaker 3: 26:52

So I'm Craig, evan and James. We thank you guys and we'll talk to you again next time. Bye-bye now.

Speaker 2: 27:11

Thanks, guys. 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.