SPEAKER_00: 0:12

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_01: 1:11

And welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. I'm Craig Andrews, and that handsome gentleman right there is Evan Poland. How are you doing today, Evan?

SPEAKER_02: 1:20

Hey, for a guy that's got a face for radio and a face for podcasts, I'm doing great. How about you?

SPEAKER_01: 1:25

Not too bad. Not too bad. And so we have a guest today because he's going to be the perfect blend between you and me because he does what we like to say is help businesses grow, right? We're a growth marketing agency. You're helping people grow their sales, grow their grow their whole process in terms of sales process. So I'm excited to have him on. Why don't you explain to everybody who he is?

SPEAKER_02: 1:49

Sure. So let's bring to the stage Dave Jimenez, who is the director of AANIC Capital. Dave is a six-time CRO, three successful exits, and really specializes in small business scaling and acceleration. So, Dave, uh, welcome to the sales and marketing playbook unleashed. And why don't you share with everybody a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_03: 2:13

Yeah, thanks, Evan, and thanks, Craig. Appreciate the introduction. Um, I work right now out of a family office called Aana Capital. Uh, what we do is we look for founder-led uh technology businesses that need to scale uh and ultimately try to help them with their growth plans as well as bring in some investment capital to help achieve that scale. Right. We'll talk a little bit about that during the podcast, but appreciate having me on Unleashed. Looking forward to working with you guys.

SPEAKER_01: 2:43

Very nice, very nice.

SPEAKER_02: 2:45

So uh I again wait well, we're we're happy to have you. I I know that you're gonna provide a lot of great expertise, uh, especially for our listeners who are small business owners really looking to grow grow, really looking to scale. Um, what I'd like you to do, I'm sure this will be easy, but a program that you've put tons of time, tons of effort into, um, your your path to a billion-dollar framework, uh, in terms of how you've helped businesses grow from a million to over a hundred million. Um can you provide companies, can you provide business owners with a little bit of a framework in terms of how they should think about the stages of um proving product, proving market, proving their company, and really being able to think about how to scale and how to grow?

SPEAKER_03: 3:34

Yeah, absolutely. Um look, I think most founders and most business leaders recognize that the business grows through a series of chapters. Um, you know, sometimes we come across these businesses at different stages of their growth, but recognizing that these stages are like chapters in a book or ultimately like a path in a lifetime, it's important to recognize those various chapters because each one has a series of fundamental uh characteristics that allow us to, on my side at least, evaluate the business and evaluate it not just for where it's at, but ultimately where we can bring value to the business, right? And I'll give a few of those and I'll probably take us up to the level of where it's already a hundred million dollar business because beyond that, it's a whole different ballgame. It stops being a small mid-market account, it starts being an enterprise account at a global scale. You know, the first stage, Evan, is really just proving out an idea, right? Founder comes up with an idea, they build a product, they might go ahead and have a couple of customers where they see a problem and they try to identify that problem and build out that product. That's usually a stage where businesses are generating from zero to one million. A lot of venture capital is often sought out at that stage. It's not what we focus on. We don't really look at ourselves as venture capital investors, but you know, one of the businesses that I worked on was a company called SENPOS, in which we were building a payment technology platform solving a fundamental problem within the auto dealership space. And we thought it would be a simple problem, but as we kind of got in there, once we proved out that idea and got the customer to agree to the call it the beta test, we were able to then move into what we call proving the product out, right? This is where you start to learn that the product has gaps. Uh, the broad depth of that dealership wasn't just a front desk POS system to accept the payments where you go to the cashier's desk, but you had multiple departments within the same business that interacts with a similar consumer. You had the FI department, or you had the parts and service group. You might have even had the fleet and loaner vehicle uh department. Uh, and so you had to start figuring out how to build out the functionality for that product to make it stickier and ultimately to be able to broaden your customer base within that vertical. That product stage is usually the business will grow from one to three million dollars in annualized revenue. Um, following which you'll actually go into proving out the market stage. And the market is a fun stage. This is the stage when founders will invest in sales and in marketing and they'll go to trade shows, they'll put together a plan with the pollen group to try to make sure that you're training the people to go out in the field. You'll work with groups like you know, uh I'll call it consultants like myself to help you with driving that uh that team and the performance of that team. And that that stage ultimately is a business stage is usually when you're generating between three and up to$10 million on you know, as a usual uh benchmark. Um, you know, the the part that's interesting though is up to this stage, which most most people don't realize, is as a founder, you shouldn't get too hung up on things like metrics and profitability yet, right? You're trying to really just get it right, get the distribution model right, and ultimately get your product right. But following the market stage, you go into really the proving out the business.

SPEAKER_02: 6:57

And actually, Dave, before continuing, just a question for you.

SPEAKER_03: 7:01

Sure.

SPEAKER_02: 7:01

How does an entrepreneur know what they are feeling, seeing, what are they feeling, which would let them know, you know what, this is growing beyond just you, and you really need to look at starting to scale and starting to bring in people, bring in processes, bring in systems.

SPEAKER_03: 7:17

Yeah, so I I like it when I see a business like this where they where they see the business and they recognize that they're they're very vertically focused or narrowly focused, right? You know, in that market stage, we actually came to the realization that all of a sudden the product fit other verticals and we started to experiment with other verticals like lodging, where you might have a restaurant under the same roof or potentially even a lounge of some sort. Uh, and so the technology development had to integrate to the respective property management software, no different than the dealer management software. So there's there's opportunity there within those stages. Um, but it's when you reach the business stage, that's when you really start looking at metrics. You want to drive things like cost of acquisition. Um, you want to drive things like your profitability. If you don't have good performance salespeople, that's when you need to manage them out and start thinking about productive salespeople, right? And get the right leadership in place so that you can, in fact, uh achieve a scalable business beyond the uh that that stage of the business stage.

SPEAKER_02: 8:22

After that, I one other question for you. Yeah. Do you sometimes find with the businesses that you work with that the people who got somebody from stage one to stage two are not the right people to get them to stage two or something?

SPEAKER_03: 8:36

100%. 100%. Yeah. A lot of times even the founders aren't equipped for it, right? A good founder, depending on what the product is or the service is, might find that they have a niche they like doing and building products and tinkering, and they're not necessarily great at managing people or leading people. I found founders that uh often hate managing sales teams because they don't want to deal with managing the KPIs associated with uh with a sales organization. You know, so they need to bring in other people to help you with that those pieces. So 100% self-awareness in the leadership of uh of a small business is absolutely critical and recognizing where your strengths are so that you can help carry it through those various stages.

SPEAKER_01: 9:18

Yeah, I think I think we should sidebar a little bit, right? Because we always have a difference of small business and medium business and large business or whatever the case may be. If you could just put some definitions behind your founder-led, which some people would be going, what does that mean? Or somebody else. If you just give us a little definition in terms of how you do it.

SPEAKER_03: 9:36

No, absolutely happy to do that, Craig. You know, we find that founder-led businesses are often the ones where, at least when I'm doing my outreach, I find that the founder-led is often a sales team that is founder-led as well. Meaning that when they're approving the idea, obviously they don't have a sales team. They're going and calling on customers, they're trying to test something out or proving out that product and modifying the product, whether that's fine-tuning the delivery mechanism or ultimately in the software. But those founder-led teams are small. It's one man, it's one lady basically driving the performance of that business and ultimately trying to get more customers to adopt, right? And one thing that you'll find also with founders is that they get hung up on working with their initial adopters and they become personal close friends with them, right? Because they give up half the farm, maybe uh some price concessions in order to be able to get them to test the product out. And what they end up doing is end up getting to a point where they they can no longer add more customers themselves. So that's a great stage when they need to realize, hey, it's time to go in and think about maybe building out or hiring some salespeople to take some of that workload off the founder's plate. Good business under, you might find businesses around 4 million to 6 million as founder-led businesses. It's rare that you'll see them get up to the 10 million stage without having an actual um, you know, that three to 10 is where you'll start to see them uh build out a sales team. So uh, but the highest I've ever seen was a$5 million business, which was led by a singular founder, which is found to have outstanding performance.

SPEAKER_01: 11:09

And so when do you think is a good time to have some of those guys invest into other things like marketing or sales teams? What are the kind of the signs of that?

SPEAKER_03: 11:18

Yeah, so it goes along with the revenue that's generated in the business, right? So when you're bootstrapping it in the beginning, you're really trying to build up the product and the delivery mechanisms. At some point, as a founder, you start to recognize that the business now needs more help, needs resources. Um, a good founder realizes it, or at least the ones that have taken time to kind of think about these various stages. But sometimes founders are walking into this by pure accident. I see founders now in their 20s that are building out, you know, unique product sets and getting out to market and building up a three or four million dollar business, and then they're selling it just because they don't know what to do after that. They've never even worked in the workplace, much less, right? Been through the processes and the stages of having that experience. So I think it's key is to recognize when you lack an understanding or the experience to get it to that next stage, that's a great time to do some outreach and start talking to some folks about what you should do. And that could be a business coach, it could be a business like Poland, it could be talking to someone that's actually on the investment circles who will give you some pointers along the way, right?

SPEAKER_01: 12:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 12:27

My guess is for those founders. The biggest challenge is giving them to give up some of that control. Again, whether it's on the marketing side, if they've been bootstrapping it and doing it on their own or the sales side, is they figure, hey, I I've been able to get it to here. You know, why should somebody from the outside come in and tell me what to do? Is that anything you ever run into? 100%.

SPEAKER_03: 12:49

Yeah, listen, there's there's some early warning signs that you can actually identify uh in a business. So the first one is um I call it the lifestyle business, but it's the one where the founder's generating sufficient income to live in a beautiful home, drive the fast cars, have a great travel schedule with their family. And at some level, they're just like, well, if I just work harder, all I'm gonna do is beat myself to death. So why grow the business anymore? Right. So, you know, it's important that they it's great that they're bootstrapped, right? Means that there's uh there's more margin potentially in the business. But at the same time, it's also a risk of the business not growing, and and that's important, you know, and that goes back to another early warning sign is growth stalls, right? In the early days, you might grow 20, 40, 50, 60% year on year as you get more customers to adopt. Um, the minute I start seeing single digit growth over maybe a 12 to 24 month window, I start to worry that the founder has failed the business on what might be an opportunity to grow it, right? Um, the last one I think I've seen in the past, which is an early warning sign, was I and I saw this recently about eight months ago. I saw a business where the founder cut costs by laying people off and then hiring family members, right? So they, you know, made the wife the CFO, made the son the salesperson.

SPEAKER_02: 14:14

That that's not an insustainable plan.

SPEAKER_03: 14:17

I mean, it I get it. You take care of the family, but keeping the money in the family, I understand it. The downside is you're now hoping to get someone from the outside to take a look at your business, but that represents risk, right? Execution risk. You know, so I think it's important that they, as they reach that understanding, uh that self-awareness, that they get to a point where they actually build out a sales, a formal sales and marketing plan, right? You know, move away from the founder-led sales into an area where you can have KPIs, metrics, you know, because let's be honest, who's gonna tell the founder that he has to make five more calls before five o'clock, right? Or after five o'clock. Remember the old five after five model, right? You don't nobody's gonna tell the founder because he's the founder. He doesn't need he doesn't feel the need to be managed that way, right? Right. So I think it's important to definitely have uh consider having a sales organization, um, some discipline. It may start with one, right? There's no reason to build out this massive expensive operating expense over the business, but you can actually start with a one and then build out to the second one. And when it starts building sustainability, you can add respectively leadership to to cover for it.

SPEAKER_01: 15:30

You know, I think because we're the playbook, we like to make sure that the the end user, the end viewer, the people who see our beautiful face every week is understanding what those signs are, right? Or what those cues are to help their business grow, right? So what I I know that I deal with it, I'm sure Evan deals with it, I'm sure you do as well. Once we're talking to a prospect, we always, at least from our perspective, we always have a trigger where we know you get it, right? You get it from a marketing perspective. So this won't be a tussle and a pull and a tug, you know, pull and a tug to try to get you guys to understand what we need to do to your business. We like to call ourselves the disruptors because we're gonna come in and disrupt you because generally you called us because of the fact that it wasn't working or something wasn't working. Evan, I'm sure you have the same issue, correct?

SPEAKER_02: 16:17

Absolutely. People don't know what they don't know, they get to a certain point. Um, on the one hand, they may not be thrilled with the results, but one of the things that I talk about all the time is there's nothing people hate more than change. So it's that, okay, can I convince you that you are going to get so much value out of moving out of your comfort zone and doing something different that you're willing to bite the bullet and do it? Or are you so averse to change, so averse to doing things differently, that you're going to get to that plateau that David talked about, and you're you're not going to have that sustainable growth. Um again, you know, David, before you'd mentioned sometimes the founder who's bringing in their wife, their son, their cousin, their uncle, whatever. Um, I would imagine that buyers don't really look for that when they're looking for companies that they want to invest in or purchase. What are things that business owners can do to make their businesses more attractive? Whether it's a buyer they want to attract or outside investors, what are some of the things that they should be doing to make their business attractive for some of those outside folks?

SPEAKER_03: 17:28

Great question, Evan. And by the way, having family business, I'll just make a sidebar that that's not the problem. It just ultimately, how does that, how do you drive accountability sometimes becomes trickier, right? But the things that make it attractive, right? Uh there's two ways to look at it. And I'll I'll share the ones that we look at at Ayonic Capital. Uh, the first one's the metric side, right? We want to see the measures. Does growth yields greater returns? Okay. A business with high growth offers the return to shareholders five times greater than a medium growth company. So, what's high growth? 60% is a good high growth business. A 20% is more like a medium growth business. It's good, it's good year on year, but a five times market cap for the shareholder return on capital is is massive, right? Um, growth also is important that it you got to realize it's a predictor of long-term success, right? So companies that grow greater than 60% are eight times more likely to reach higher valuations than business growing at 20%. And the numbers may vary by size of business based on mid market, small SMB. But the key is um that you have to maintain that high growth. If it starts to go into those single digits, like I mentioned earlier, it's a little bit of a red flag, right? And then growth matters in higher levels when you get into plus 10 million level uh and even up to$30 million, growth matters more than margin or cost structure, right? Uh you know, the the increase in revenue growth is twice as much on market cap than it is on you know cost structure. I always most of us all watch things like the shark tank. And the first thing that the you know sellers to the sharks are trying to accomplish is a more effective cost structure in their product build, right? And they're hoping that one of the sharks is going to bring that to them. And that's a fact. It's because ultimately their initial cost of product is too high. Um we at Aonic, we also look at other things, right? We look at the personal side, we get to know the founders, we love the passion that the founders have for their business, right? We also like to see, you know, things like if they need a sales plan or a marketing plan. But that's my own personal thing because I love driving the sales aspect of it like you do, Evan and Craig. So it's one of those areas where I think that when I see a gap or a lack of a good distribution model, I like to come in and at least walk away giving them ideas. And you know, no business has ever met with me that has not walked away with at least three new ideas or three ways in which they can enhance their business in that manner, right?

SPEAKER_01: 20:11

So I would say with that to be the case, you just kind of perfectly lobbed that up for me. That's a sports analogy. And I forgot to do the traditional go bird statement that we usually do every other show. So go birds, go birds. Well, well, Evan and I pontificate here a little bit. Dave, I'll save it. I want you to think of three things that you can leave the audience with, okay? We're gonna come back to you here for a second. But Evan, why don't you like explain everybody kind of what we usually do here uh in reference to the show and the podcast and who's coming and all that fun stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 20:40

Yep. So uh right now we are starting to gear up for year end. So there will be a couple sessions coming up on what to do to make sure that you're finishing the year strong, starting next year strong. Uh, we will have a couple of additional guests between now and the end of the year. What we'd really like you to do also as we start to put together our calendar for next year is reach out to us. Uh you know, like, share, but also post. What topics would you like to see us cover? What experts would you like to see us bring in? But we are the sales and marketing playbook helping small to mid-sized businesses grow. So please share with us what additional resources that you need to be able to grow your business for next year so that we can bring those to the table for you. In terms of finding the podcast, um, if you're looking to lose your appetite, you you can actually see us. Um, if if you go to our YouTube channel, you can see our pretty faces. Dave Dave kind of pulls up, David pulls up the rest of us uh for today's episode. Um, for those of you who'd like to take things a little bit safer, if you'd like to listen, you can go to Apple, Spotify, just about anywhere that you find the podcast. Please subscribe and you know like and share uh on LinkedIn as well.

SPEAKER_01: 21:54

Done like a pro. You hear that, David? Done like a pro right there. All right, David. You are up. Sir, the top three things you want our audience to walk away with.

SPEAKER_03: 22:03

Listen, top three things that I think the business and folks you do, um, a good founder. Um honestly, I think that they should sit down with the investment community at least once or twice a month. It doesn't hurt, right? It's always important, right? You got into the business to build something, maybe to leave it as a legacy for the family, maybe because you yourself wanted to get to an exit. Um, sit with investors regardless of your interest to sell. At the very least, you're going to learn something from those folks, right? They've been down the path of evaluating businesses and looking at the different metrics, and they can give you some of that constructive feedback and allow you the time to digest it, right? And ultimately think about how you might make a change so that you can shift from one of those earlier stages we talked about to another. Um, the other thing I always talk to folks about, thinking about walking away from is they should all also have a working deck that tells the story of their business and not just a presentation. Most everybody has that, but more about what stage are you in, right? And talk to your employees, talk to your uh co-founders, talk to your co-workers about what stage is the business in. You might not always divulge your revenues, uh, especially if it's a privately held company, but at the very least, talk about your ambitions to grow it to another level and get people to be part of that journey, right? I think that's important. The last tip that I always say is don't go at it alone. Um, get a coach, walk work with mentors, talk to folks like Evan, Craig, myself. Um, doesn't have to be us, but we certainly enjoy talking to you as well. But connect with us in a way where we can at least maybe share some insight. Um, I'm never afraid to provide some guidance and or offer up some tips. And there's a lot of professional coaches now for CEOs. You got to remember, it's lonely at the top, right? It almost stinks being at the top because you almost don't have the ability to have friends there. But your your your position causes you to draw lines in the sand around your staff. So allow yourself someone that might be able to mentor you through some of the stages and ultimately help you through some of the uh the uh the lack of disciplines that might that you might require to grow the business.

SPEAKER_01: 24:22

I absolutely love that. I love that. And I and to kind of piggyback out before we go, you know, it's very important to understand, and I've I've done this on other shows, right, Evan. It's very important to understand how technology kind of isolates us in that same fashion. And the thing that we want to make sure we're not losing out on here is the touch to others who've already been through the wars and the battles. And I think you bring up a great point there in terms of making sure that you use it as a resource. And by the way, that's why we're called the playbook, because we're trying to give you the answers as best as we can without having real conversations with you. Um, and so before we go, Evan, if you have anything else to say before I hit this go home button.

SPEAKER_02: 24:59

So I uh Craig, why don't why don't you take us home again? Actually, David, one other thing. If people want to sh find you, uh what where's the best place that they can uh find you and connect with you?

SPEAKER_03: 25:11

Uh yeah, uh David at Aoniccap.com. Um, but at the same time, just David Jimenez at LinkedIn on LinkedIn uh is an easy way to connect with me. And then I'm happy to go ahead and send you an invitation or give you access to my calendar so we can schedule some time together.

SPEAKER_02: 25:28

So I think this is a great time of year to evaluate what stage your business is in. If you want to grow, where do you want to get to? And again, now is the time to put together that plan, figure out what you need to do in the upcoming year to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

SPEAKER_03: 25:46

Totally. 26 is around the corner. It's time don't wait till January.

SPEAKER_01: 25:53

And again, um, Evan, why don't you pitch your um your dream book, your dream book session? I think would be a great update. Uh into that.

SPEAKER_02: 26:01

I absolutely so for folks who are really looking to put together a good plan for next year, in the next couple of weeks, I will be hosting on uh December 10th a 75-minute goal setting program, not just looking at next year, but where you want to be over the next five years, not only looking at your professional goals, but looking at goals in seven different areas of your life. So if you are interested, you can either comment uh when we post this on LinkedIn, reach out to me at Evan at Polandpg.com, and I'd love to have you as a guest for the uh for that webinar.

SPEAKER_01: 26:37

That webinar is game-changing. It made my year the last couple years, and it took me forever. I get I know Evan. It took me a while to get through, but it did get through and it works. I'm telling you it. Don't wait on it. Don't be hard-headed like me. Take advantage of it while you can. I'm Craig. That's Evan. That's David, and we are out on the playbook. Till next time. Bye-bye now.

SPEAKER_00: 27:02

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.