SPEAKER_00: 0:11

Welcome to the sales and marketing playbook Unleashed, the premier podcast for innovative growth strategies, hosted by two seasoned experts. Meet Evan Poland, the president of Poland Performance Group, a master in sales coaching with over two decades of experience. Evan is not just a consultant, he's a force in sales, focusing on mindset, planning, and skill development. He's also the co-author of Selling Professional Services The Sandler Way. Joining him is Craig Andrews, partner and CEO of Beholder Agency, an expert in growth marketing. With 20 years under his belt, Craig blends marketing creativity with strategy to propel businesses forward, making Beholder Agency a leader in effective marketing solutions. Together, Evan and Craig are here to share their wisdom on winning strategies, best practices, and transformative insights that will fuel your growth. Get ready to revolutionize your sales and marketing approach right here on the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10

And welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. I'm Craig Andrews and my partner in crime, Evan Poland. How are you doing today, Evan? I'm doing great, Craig. How are you doing today? I'm doing well. I'm excited about today's episode. And do you know why? Tell me why. Because you know what, gosh darn it, Evan? People like you and people like me. And part of the reason that they like us is because we're very personable when it comes to the services that we offer. We're not just kind of in the can type of people who kind of deliver stuff to them. And it's important for us to have that human touch when it comes to how we engage our clients and so forth.

SPEAKER_02: 1:46

Um and so but Craig, in addition to having that human touch, wouldn't it also be awesome to kind of identify what things don't require that human touch to be able to free us up to develop even stronger and deeper relationships with our clients and do some of those higher level things that we should be doing for our clients?

SPEAKER_03: 2:06

Absolutely. And I would say without a shadow of a doubt, part of what makes me go, and I'm I know you for several years, so I know you go, is the ability for clients to be able to have that touch with us. And I think that's important. But in today's conversation, I want to introduce who I am and what I do real quick. Uh, we're a growth marketing agency at Beholder Agency, and we help small to medium-sized businesses who want to grow their business, who are having struggles and having pains with trying to make their marketing work, and we try to help them grow their business in that fashion in all various forms of marketing. How about you introduce yourself as well, Evan?

SPEAKER_02: 2:39

Sure. Uh, for those of you who aren't familiar, my name is Evan. I am the founder and owner of Poland Performance Group, sales training, sales coaching organization, working with everyone from individual attorneys, individual producers, up to small and mid-sized firms who are looking to proactively grow their business. Where Craig and Beholder are going to help you in terms of pulling leads into your organization, help you with your branding, help you with who you are and your look and feel. What I'm doing is helping folks develop that proactive prospecting plan, helping folks once they're having conversations, once they get those leads in, better qualify, disqualify those opportunities to close the business they want to close so that they themselves or organizations can make the revenue and generate the revenue they want to generate.

SPEAKER_03: 3:34

I love it. I love it. Now, even with all that being said, AI is everywhere, automation's everywhere, and ways to make our lives easier is all there. You use it, I use it, our audience uses it, we all know it. So uh Evan, why don't you go ahead and introduce our guests, which I'm really excited about what she can offer here? But just listen to our book, you're the playbook. So we're gonna give you information that's gonna help you guys drive forward.

SPEAKER_02: 3:58

So I'd like to uh bring our guest to the stage now, Elisa Silvergrade from Tech Romanic. She's gonna talk about how a lot of professional services firms, law firms, accounting firms, as well as other companies can utilize automation to free up their time, to make them more productive doing those higher level, more profitable activities that they enjoy doing. So, Elisa, welcome to the sales and marketing playbook Unleashed.

SPEAKER_01: 4:26

Thank you so much. It's great to be here with two such likable guys.

SPEAKER_02: 4:30

We got told people like us. We are best in small doses. That's why these episodes are 20, 25 minutes long. So uh Elisa, before we jump into it, you want to give everybody a little bit about your background and how you got to doing what you're doing now?

SPEAKER_01: 4:47

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much. So, you know, my career spans a lot of different industries, but most relevant is that I managed a small law practice for over 15 years. So that um has led me in a variety of directions, but ending up at Tech Romatic selling automation is kind of the vision of the law firm experience with the potential and capability of the technology of robotic process automation.

SPEAKER_02: 5:17

So it's awesome that you've kind of got that real world experience and kind of run the other side. How did that background in terms of managing the law firm, doing everything that you were doing there, shape your perspective on where automation best fits in and why automation is so important for those professional services firms?

SPEAKER_01: 5:39

Well, you know, it kind of comes down to just even the life experience of working in a law firm, right? Where paralegals especially, you know, really want to work for law firms, they want to be close to advocacy, maybe they want to be lawyers, and then they just get inundated with paperwork, which is not really that exciting. And it doesn't feel like kind of what you wanted to do, right? And so in working for the firm, I identified, you know, a lot of the operational processes, obviously, which have to keep the firm going. You don't have firm without that paperwork. Uh, but the most valuable things that I did for the firm um primarily was my relationships with the clients, being able to get on the phone and deliver accurate information back and forth between the attorney and being able to develop that relationship and that trust. Um, and the kind of light level legal work stuff that wasn't quite the lawyer work, but was, you know, constructing documents or maybe going to court and stuff like that. So the other stuff is is, you know, why I was working, you know, 60, 70 hours a week, because you have to do it all. But the the higher value activity is that relationship building. So when I learned about robotic process automation, which is not the same as AI, it's distinct from AI. Um, I immediately thought, wow, this would be amazing for law firms because there's so much repetitive work involved in generating documents, same documents, over and over and over again. A lot of copying and pasting, a lot of, you know, uploading, downloading, saving, naming, sending, all of these things can be automated. And that frees up time for that higher value, more important work.

SPEAKER_02: 7:25

So, Annalisa, for people who aren't familiar, can you give us give us that term again and share with people who may not be aware exactly what that means?

SPEAKER_01: 7:33

Yes, absolutely. Sorry for that. I kind of jumped in without explanation or context. So, robotic process automation is referred to as RPA, and it's been around for about 20 years. It's already in use by the richest companies in the world in every industry for many years. Um, and traditionally very expensive, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And what it does is it mimics the behavior that a person takes at the computer with a keyboard and a mouse. Now, over the years, that technology has become more accessible. And um at TechRomatic, we have found different business partners who basically democratize the technology from the old model, which was so expensive, making it possible for us to build these software robots at a much more affordable price point, which has then opened the door to businesses like lawyers and other small and mid-size firms. So, what are we talking about? So with AI, we're talking about mimicking human intelligence, right? How would a person think about this? How would a person summarize this? How would a person phrase this? With automation, we're really just doing point A to point B, you know, point C to point D. If this, then that. We're only automating the things that are structurally rules-based with parameters, right? So we're looking for consistent execution. We're looking for things that we want to be the same every single time. We're not looking to replace the way people think. I mean, that's kind of your best asset, right? If you have a law firm, your best, most precious asset is the way your people think. But these other things are kind of, you know, they're grunt work. It's grunt work.

SPEAKER_02: 9:19

So could you maybe boil down, give us a couple of specific examples, some case studies of things that you've done with some of your clients?

SPEAKER_01: 9:27

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, what the thing to remember is that we're never automating A to Z. So one of the challenges here is getting people to view their work product in components and recognize which components of their work product can be automated. And it's a little bit of a different mindset. So sometimes people say, Oh, I can't automate this because there's three different points where I need to make decisions or I need there, there's nuance. Guess what? We automate around it. So, what we're talking about are these long processes where everything that can be automated is automated and the humans are doing what the humans need to do. So, for example, um, we have a bot for an estate planning firm that does a lot of probate, and the bot does about four hours of probate administration work in eight minutes. What does it do? It opens the file based on a death certificate. It extracts the data, it emails the paralegal, please do intake. So the paralegal comes in for that human part, that person-to-person intake, forming the relationship, creating the trust with the client. But then the bot takes over copying and pasting all of that data into the case management software, generating all the relevant documents, of which there are many with probate. Then the bot will ask the paralegal to please review the documents. Again, human review, very important in a law firm. But then the bot will push the docs through DocuSign. The bot will ask the attorney for final approval, human intervention again. And then the bot is actually going to go to the eCourt website, file the case with the court, wait for an email that confirms it was filed correctly, and then update all the firm records and even create an event on the firm calendar. So you can see that there, it's not just one task. It's not like I want to send appointment reminders automatically. It's it's let's take these hours long of work product and see which parts don't really require the human touch. So that's that's kind of the that's a great example because it touches so many different things. Another big one is personal injury. You know, all these personal injury attorneys have to request and then retrieve medical records for their clients. It I've spoken to probably over 150 personal injury attorneys. I hear this is the biggest bottleneck about 99% of the time. Even if they outsource, even if they have a third-party vendor, um, it's still a tremendous amount of manual behavior. They have to create a HIPAA high tech form, send it to the provider in any one of a variety of ways. Then several weeks later, they have to retrieve the documents. They have to determine who's it for, what's the case, is this a medical record or a bill? Is it correspondence? Save it with the right name, attach it to the right file, tell the attorney it's been received. All of that can be automated.

SPEAKER_02: 12:12

That sounds like a lot of work. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 12:14

It's a ton of work. We have a PI firm with a medical record department of six. And the manager told us recently they're saving three days a week, and she, the manager, no longer has to work nights and weekends. So, like overnight, six people, jobs changed because of this robot.

SPEAKER_03: 12:33

So, in terms of a sales and marketing perspective, whether it be in a law firm or any other industry, um, what are examples that would be good for a salesperson or a marketing person to use this? Um, funny enough, the phrase automation is being jumbled up, sort of like that I use the phrase q-tips, right? Can you hand me a q-tip versus a cotton slot? So the automation and AI, I'm glad you were able to distinguish between them. But in the sales and marketing space, which is really a lot of the clients that we talk to here in this case or are looking for, what can automation do for them?

SPEAKER_01: 13:07

Well, um, I think that it's about again, just pinpointing which parts of the process don't require the human touch. So maybe once contact is made, you know, then what happens, right? Do they get entered into a CRM? Are they into a certain workflow depending on the product that they're interested in or the service that they're interested in? Um, are there documents related to their query, right? So like maybe you're throwing out, you know, interested in uh estate planning. And, you know, do you need a trust? You know, there's different, there's different questions that would that would discern different information being exchanged. Um, and then there's all always the follow-up. But I think that a lot of the um the skill is is really discerning what not to automate, what not to use AI for. Like AI is great for generating like a first draft of something. It's not gonna be a copy and paste situation. Uh, it depends on your acceptable margin of error, which for lawyers is pretty low. Um, although it may be higher in the sales and marketing workflows, there may be more more, you know, error permissible. But um, you know, for me, I don't automate out, I will automate outreach. Like I will automate an initial message, but I won't automate conversation.

SPEAKER_02: 14:25

And actually, just as a teaser for a future episode and a couple of the episodes, we're gonna have in a HubSpot expert come on to talk a little bit about some of the automation tools, both on the sales side and on the marketing side within HubSpot, yeah, to develop campaigns, develop workflows, develop ways to make sure that your folks are effectively qualifying, disqualifying opportunities before having the ability to move them through the pipeline. So that's just a little teaser in terms of taking some of this automation. And we're really going to be able to boil it down in that episode for specifically, at least in terms of one CRM tool, how your organization may be able to use that both from a sales and marketing perspective.

SPEAKER_01: 15:07

And that's great because one of the things I always talk to people about is look into your current tech stack. Whatever you're currently using, it has automation availability, it has integration, something. It may not be great, but know what's offered and know why you're using it or not using it. So if you're not going to use it, is there a reason? Is it because it doesn't do what you want it to do? Does it mean you have to change other technology to make it work? What's the reason you're not using it? Because sometimes people come to me for these things and I'm like, doesn't your CRM do this? You know, like, and so so we don't want to, we don't want to build some expensive robot if you have that capability already. And, you know, and and for and like I said, I think for in sales and marketing, there are so many tools available in CRMs. That may not necessarily be the best application for robotic process automation, but for your listeners and your clients who are obviously, you know, scaling successfully with your methods, that is going to potentially create the opportunity to automate elsewhere in the organization to just free up even more time for the that the human touch.

SPEAKER_02: 16:14

And actually, along those lines, for folks who aren't looking to come in and redo their entire organization, at least at first, what are a couple of good, easy projects or ways that people may be able to start with automation?

SPEAKER_01: 16:28

Sure, sure. And just, you know, just so people know, I um we don't do like a whole tech overhaul in one project ever. We only take on, you know, one or two projects at a time. And there's a reason for that. And and the reason is because this does automation requires intention and thought and robust consideration as you move through it. It's an iterative process. We don't like to suggest like a complete overhaul. It's a constantly changing environment. So we look for the biggest pain point, the biggest manual manual bottlenecks, and we and the and the most straightforward places to automate, and that's where we start. But if you're not ready for that, and that and that's possible, you know, solo practitioners and small firms may just kind of be looking for some tips and tricks. So some of them are I gave you one already, look at what your current tech offers in terms of automation. You know, definitely use an automated calendaring system, whether it's Microsoft Bookings or at HubSpot PubSpot probably has it, Soho has it, Salesforce has it, Calendly, whatever it is, make it very easy for people to schedule with you, get automatic confirmations. You can schedule workflows for various messaging pre and post appointment, you can integrate with your CRM and it saves a ton of time. Um, there are other, you know, little things, even like just using, you know, automations within Microsoft Outlook. Um, another actually really big one, this is probably the most, the most helpful hint I can give, is that if you are finding yourself going back and forth over email to gather information or documents, I highly recommend switching to a web form. So whether it's a Google web form, a Microsoft web form, third-party web form. They're these are very customizable where you can do all different kinds of questions, multiple choice, fill in the blank, you know, yes or no, long form, short form, upload an image, upload a document. You can do conditional formatting. So if a person says yes to this question, they move on to this section instead. And what that does is it creates a structured database, it creates structured data. And so every person that fills out that form creates a row in a spreadsheet. And so then you have your data in a place where it's sortable, searchable. You can do anything you want. And when you're ready to automate and you come to us and you already have all this structured data in a database, it makes our job and the work involved in automating so much easier because we're already dealing with structured data.

SPEAKER_03: 19:18

What I like about everything that you're saying here is one, I love that line, automate has uh intention, right? So a lot of times when we're dealing with clients in terms of things, we're trying to get to the baseline of what they've done already. And a lot of times they come without intention, right? I just want, I just want more leads. That's like throwing spaghetti on the wall for us, right? So, what does that mean and that intention that comes with it? But I like your process in reference to we'll never take an overhaul, right? Because that's just at least from a marketing perspective, that's just not realistic. And a complete overhaul is very dangerous because you have things, and she hit the data line, by the way. I'm finding a pattern in all these episodes, right? She hit you have that data that kind of tells us a direction. That's already working. What we find is a lot of clients don't necessarily know that data to be able to move forward with it. So I like the even the idea of starting the stuff on the database so that it can be formatted to people who follow data and read data and understand data and how data moves. Um, you were going to say something, Evan?

SPEAKER_02: 20:16

Yeah, I was just gonna, and Elisa, I think you've you've alluded to it a little bit already. But when people are looking at automation, what what are some common mistakes or misconceptions that firms have when they start first to start to explore automation?

SPEAKER_01: 20:32

It's an interesting way that you phrase the question because I'm because I feel like it's the mistakes that the decision makers make that butts up against the misconceptions that people have that creates this problem. And we can actually learn a lot from the failures of the biggest companies in the world, right? Like there are there are a lot of companies that kind of tried this automation overhaul and then lacked company buy-in. Like it just never really went anywhere. Well, why? Because if you don't explain your intentions to your staff, they are going to assume that you're trying to replace them. And if they think that they're being replaced, they're not going to be cooperative and giving all the information necessary for automating. They may not test the product, they may not want to give up control because they know that any mistakes fall on their heads. So they don't want to give it up to the automation. So then you kind of create this diminishing proposition where you're spending all this money and time to automate, but it's not you don't have the integration with your humans, right? So I talk a lot about creating an expansive mindset rather than a limited mindset. And and the way that we do that is by, and I say we, but I mean we as humans, because it's up to the clients, but it's about asking open-ended questions. You know, it's about saying to your employees things like, you know, what do you love most about your job? What do you like least about your job? You know, are there projects that you're not getting to that you wish you had more time for? Do you have additional skills you'd like management to know about? Do you have additional skills you think you'd like to learn that might be helpful for this job? Do you have ideas about this job? And then when you say, hey, get on the phone with Tech Romatic and do a two-hour Zoom call where you show Elisa and her team everything that you do to onboard a new client, they're not going to be thinking, oh no, that's what I do for four hours a day. My job is in trouble. They're going to be thinking, oh, I bet this will free up time for those projects I'm not getting to. Or maybe I'll be expansive mindset, right? And I do find a lot of times people show up to a meeting with us without having done that. Um, and so I have to kind of do it in real time. And it's really fascinating to see sometimes people will come in, the the business users who are the paralegals, uh, come in um kind of closed, right? And and and kind of just, you know, not uncertain and cautious and guarded, I would say. And then over the course of the call, as we kind of talk about, and I'll ask those questions. Well, what else do you do? You know, how often do you spend on this? And what else do you do? And oh, do you talk to clients? And oh, that sounds like it's more valuable. And oh, what if the robot did that? Would that be helpful? Or, you know, would it be helpful if you just got a report and you could click off the names? Would that be helpful? Or, you know, would it be helpful if you got a document that was like 80% complete with all the copying and pasting and stuff? You know, and then they're going, oh yeah, yeah, that'd be helpful, that'd be helpful. And then that the excitement builds, and then they start to imagine what their job looks like without all that grunt work, and it's and it's nice, it's exciting.

SPEAKER_03: 23:41

I think that brings us around back to the human touch again, right? Because as nature hits itself, is that we're always fearing things that we don't know, but if they came prepared as you reference to kind of that open-ended thought process, which is a sales thing, by the way, open-ended questions. Right. Um, so if they come open-minded, then allows them to see more opportunity, which goes to your sales process again, Evan. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 24:07

And then the flip side for the for the for the partners and the owners is the the long-term value of having not just only happier employees, but employees who eventually, once once some automation is taken care of, you're bringing in new employees based on their you know unique skills and talents and what they really think they'll contribute to the firm, as opposed to like how well they can fill out paperwork without typos. So it's just a different proposition. And so the people are coming to work, they're enjoying their jobs more because those higher value activities tend to be more fulfilling. And if you enjoy your job, you have a vested interest in the success of the company because you want to keep working there.

SPEAKER_03: 24:52

So, as we round out the episode here, I'm gonna switch it up just a hair. You mentioned quite a few times higher value um uh events, right? So, from your experience in the law firm space that you work in, I want you to think of three higher value things so we can kind of hit home to those lawyers, three higher value tasks that you can think of that might uh be better off having the robot. I'm sorry, I rephrased that wrong. The robot's gonna do whatever service is gonna do. What are those higher value things that they can believe that they can do with those robot taking over those less valuable things?

SPEAKER_01: 25:28

Yeah, 100%. Easy peasy. It's the actual legal work, right?

SPEAKER_03: 25:32

Before you go there, before you go there, we're gonna we're think about it because we're gonna come back to you.

SPEAKER_01: 25:36

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03: 25:37

Evan, great time to talk about in terms of what we have coming up, in terms of where we can be seen in the whole nine yards. Why don't you take that for us?

SPEAKER_02: 25:45

Sure. So uh we appreciate everybody listening. We've got some great episodes coming up. Again, we're gonna be talking about automation specifically within HubSpot. We're gonna be talking about from a sales and marketing perspective, things that we can do to differentiate ourselves from the competition, sell against the competition. So for this episode, for previous episodes, I think we've got 60, 65 episodes in the bank now. Folks can go to YouTube and look up the sales and marketing playbook unleashed if you'd like to see our pretty faces. You can go to Apple, to Spotify. Uh, you can check out some clips on LinkedIn. Uh, but please go like, share, download. Um, when we post the clips on LinkedIn, um, please you know, drop questions, drop us a line, we'll be happy to respond. Um, but definitely this is where you're gonna get the playbook, the the practical tools that you can take and implement into your business. So make sure you're listening in, listening and watching.

SPEAKER_03: 26:44

Awesome. All right, you're up now. Your top three.

SPEAKER_01: 26:48

Yeah, top three. So for lawyers, you know, it's the actual legal work, the intellectual legal work that you need to be a lawyer to do. That's not gonna be automated. It number two is the relationship building, it's the hand holding, it's spending that extra time with the client to answer those extra questions, make them feel safe, make yourself trusted. And the third is is build is building the business or whatever the goal is, whether it's scaling the firm, um, retiring early, uh, selling the organization, you know, being being absorbed, you know, whatever, whatever the goal is, that's that's that's a part of the human work, right? The going out and getting getting really getting the business or making the making the firm what you want it to be. Awesome.

SPEAKER_03: 27:31

So why don't you give a plug for yourself in terms of how people can reach out to you? How can they, if they have any questions, how can they reach you?

SPEAKER_01: 27:37

Absolutely. Well, um, email is easy. It's my first name, E-L-I-S-A at techromatic.com. I'm out on LinkedIn, Alisa Silverglade, or you can call me at 914-362-8000.

SPEAKER_03: 27:53

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Alisa, thank you for being on our show today. Uh, Evan, do you have any closing words before we get out of here?

SPEAKER_02: 28:00

Uh Elisa, we just again want to thank you. I think you gave some great tips for everyone and uh for everybody out there. I keep selling and keep winning.

SPEAKER_03: 28:09

Keep winning. I love it. I love it. We'll talk to you guys next time. Have a great day. Bye-bye now.

SPEAKER_00: 28:18

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.