Meet The Hosts And The Goal

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 Sailor Women. 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 am Craig Andrews and my partner in crime, Evan Poland. How are you doing today, Evan? I'm doing great. How are you doing, Craig? I'm doing awesome. So I'm gonna start with this as a question in today's episode. How long have we known each other? Do you know?

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Um approximately too long. Uh no, I mean uh probably 15 or 16 years now.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Yes. And so in 15 or 16 years, we've worked together on a lot of projects and things like that. And I think that today's episode, which is going to be how to build predictable revenue using the revenue cookbook, which is something that you and I developed to kind of help our clients when we work together. Um, ultimately, the cookbook has value. And we're going to go through a little bit of detail. This is going to actually be a two-part uh series. Uh, the cookbook has a lot of values for a lot of reasons. And what we're doing in this episode is hopefully explaining to everybody the value of having a cookbook, using the cookbook, and simplifying the process of having the cookbook. Uh, so before we really get into it, Evan, can you kind of explain generally what a cookbook is? Because we really got from a marketing perspective, we got it from our exclusive

What A Revenue Cookbook Means

SPEAKER_01 2:24

training from the best sales trainer in the industry.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Uh, somebody I I I I I want to meet that guy.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

So explain what the cookbook is.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Sure. And really, today in the part two of this episode, we really are giving you the playbook for what you should be doing to build the kind of business you want to build. But the cookbook is really developing a plan and developing a formula so that you can scientifically and systematically determine how you're going to hit your goals. Very often when I talk for with somebody for the first time, um, I'll ask them about their goals. They will throw out a revenue number. I want to do half a million, a million, ten million dollars in sales, whatever it is. My follow-up question is typically, geez, Craig, that's great. How are you gonna get there? And I get that deer and headlights look. Oftentimes the person just felt like it sounded like a good number when I'm dealing with um attorneys who are going and starting their practice, maybe bringing one or two clients with them. They have a number in their head, but they really have no idea what they need to do to hit that number. Or again, sometimes I'll talk to a salesperson and they'll do a number and they'll just inflate it by five or ten or fifteen percent the next year, but really had not thought through how they're going to hit that number. The playbook is the first step to figure out exactly what needs to be done for someone to be able to hit the number. And then, and we're gonna get into this maybe later this episode, next episode. We can then look at building out a marketing plan, building out a sales plan around that. But if we don't know what the number is and we don't know how we need to get to the number, yeah, well, then it's impossible to put together a plan, and you certainly can't put together a plan that you can track against.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

That's right. And I want to kind of emphasize on what Evan referenced there, you know, especially when it comes to the marketing side, most people are uh chasing leads instead of chasing the revenue, right? So for our perspective, we'll get a call and say, Hey, I need more leads. How can you get me more leads? And so we'll follow up with the same question that Evan has what are your revenue goals? And they'll go, uh well, uh well, let me get you a spreadsheet of all the information that I have.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

I Craig, Craig, I want to do more.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Yeah, I want to do more.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

In no more detail than that.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Exactly. And so we have the the fortune, I guess I'll say in a positive way, we have the fortune of kind of looking through that information and trying to decipher. That's where the cookbook comes kind of comes into play. Because a lot of times they may have the head of the organization who comes up with this overall company goal, but that individual from that marketing department or that sales department of their companies, or if they may be the same person in some cases, have to quantify how to get that revenue goal. And that's a value of the cookbook that we learned from Evan. And it simplifies the tasks so that you can understand what are the emotions and the actions that we need to go through, how many leads do I need to get, how many, how many qualifying leads do we need to get? And it'll really branch into a lot of deeper questions that we need from a marketing perspective that if they don't have the answer to, we got to get answered first. Because it's very difficult for us to represent you from a marketing perspective if you don't know who you're talking to to get the revenue of your goals that you're trying to get. Does that hit home for you, Evan?

SPEAKER_02 6:02

That hits home and it gets back to three of your favorite words, which are data, data, data.

Why Data Makes Goals Real

unknown 6:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

We can't create a cookbook in a fantasy land. We really need to get to the data. We really need to know what is your average sale worth, what is your closing percentage, what percentage of first conversations turn into opportunities? If you don't know and understand those numbers, if you're not tracking those things, it's really difficult to put together a plan to be held accountable to if we have no idea what those numbers are.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Absolutely, absolutely. And a lot of times, at least for us for sure, we reverse engineer how to get to that end goal. So if you're saying you want to be at half a million, million, 10 million, as you referenced, we're gonna backtrack back to the activities or create activities because marketing is about awareness, right? That's very important for people to realize we got to create awareness to backtrack to get them to hit you and so you can hit those goals. A very important point. Uh, as we as we move into the second part of this segment of this episode, a key question I'm gonna ask you here is what changes when you start to chase revenue instead of tactics? Ooh, funny one today. What happens when you chase the revenue focus versus the tactic it takes to do it?

SPEAKER_02 7:26

So if you don't marry the two together and you simply chase the revenue, you will find that you are wasting a lot of time, you are wasting a lot of effort, you are doing a lot of stuff without knowing what stuff is working and what stuff is not working. So um I can have a goal of a million dollars in revenue, and I can work 80 hours a week and be in front of 20 opportunities a week and work really, really hard. I can also hit a million dollars in revenue by working 30 hours a week, doing the things that are putting me in front of the right opportunities, knowing exactly what works, exactly what doesn't work. So that's why it's so important to track. And the other thing that is related to this, but a little tangential. One of the things that everybody listening to us should be doing where they're tracking their sales activity. I don't care if it's HubSpot, pipe drive, Salesforce, you've got an Excel spreadsheet, you've got a Word document, whatever it might be. Every opportunity in your pipeline, you should be tracking how that opportunity came in. Or what two or three different things led to getting in front of that opportunity. For every piece of business that closes, you should track how you got in front of that opportunity. So, you know, one of your phrases, favorite phrases is data, data, data. One of my favorite phrases is work smart, don't work hard. The more that we can see what is leading to revenue coming in, what is leading to getting us in front of good opportunities, we want to double down and triple down on those things. And if we're looking and seeing we're spending a lot of time, we're spending a lot of money, we're belonging to a number of associations, doing marketing things that aren't working, we want to be able to identify that, cut those things, and then figure out where else we can redirect our time and money so that we can get a better ROI. So if we're going back to data, if we're tracking those things, if we're building out a good cookbook, we can track and measure all of those things in week in and week out, know whether or not we're on and off track, where the overwhelming majority of the population is going by a gut feeling and doesn't really have the data to back what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Absolutely. Now, I want to put a little caveat on there for the listeners because again, this is the

Chasing Revenue Versus Random Tactics

SPEAKER_01 10:04

playbook. We're trying to give you the direct answers. Having the data for one month, one week, two weeks, three weeks is not enough data. Just to be clear, you have to do each one of these different campaigns, whether it might be for at least three, four, five months, then make the adjustment if it's not really working. So I just want to be clear about that because a lot of people will change their mind in a heartbeat, which will mean nothing from a marketing perspective, because you literally nobody's seen the message the first time before you put it out. The kind of the rule of thumb is you have to put out something seven, eight, ten times before they even start to understand that you exist. So the caveat to what Evan's referencing is in terms of doing things that don't waste time, don't have the quick trigger to switch things out too quickly without having the data to support is really not working. If you went to a trade show and you had spent $10,000 on it and you brought back $10,000, we'd have to quantify that as to why that was important. You were going to say something, Evan?

SPEAKER_02 11:00

Yeah, and from the sales side, typically what I'm doing with my clients when they join professional associations and those kinds of things, we're typically looking at that once a year to see who are we meeting, did any leads come in come from it? Did we develop any relationships with good referral sources? So, you know, as you said, I'm not joining an association and two months later making a decision. It's typically once a year I'm looking at where I'm investing my time, where I'm investing my money, and then making strategic decisions based on that.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Absolutely. Very important point. We get that all the time. Hey, can I can I do this for six months? No, it's not even worth your effort. It's just it's just not worth the effort to do it for a few six months. Some people said three. The return is not smart in terms of doing that way. Um, so as we transition here, but one of the things that I want to bring up as well is the uh the unique part of the revenue cookbook, which by the way, uh we're gonna actually offer online. Evan and I developed it in a way that can make it simple and easy for anybody to use and understand. And you can always visit it by seeing the revenuecookbook.com, revenue the revenue-cookbook.com. Um, and on there, you'll be able to sign up, you'll be able to enter in your company information based off the revenue goal. Um, and in a second, here I'm gonna have Evan explain the differences of the different sizes of projects based on the year. Um, but you'll be able to put that information in and it'll output exactly the type of legwork you need to do to hit your revenue goal. It's very simple to use, it's very easy to understand as long as you have an idea of your overall revenue based on client. Am I saying that correct? Correct. Okay, based on client size. Based on client size over the course of the year, right? That's that's how you measure it.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

Correct. So when we're talking about client size, you know, a mistake that I find that people make all the time is when they're tracking how many clients they're bringing in, they're creating all clients as equal. And that's absolutely not the case. Sometimes I'll talk with folks and they'll come and initially meet with me because they're running around like a chicken with their head cut off. They've got a thousand clients, but they're not making any money because all of those clients are really small revenue clients. So, with my clients, what I suggest is they break their clients down into three sizes of clients, and to make it simple, typically use a hunting analogy. When I'm talking about the revenue size of the client, all we care about is the revenue to you. So it could be a Fortune 500 company. If they're doing one teeny tiny project with you, that's a small client, not a large client. So the three client sizes that we have in a way that the way to make it simple rabbits are those small little clients. And for each of you in your own personal business, you need to identify what a small client is worth. Deer are those bread and butter clients. If you could identify the ideal product people are buying, the ideal service they're utilizing, the ideal dollar amount of that engagement of that customer, that's your deer size client. And then elephants are those really, really big ones. Those ones where if you bring in two or three or four over the course of the year, they're gonna absolutely make your year. In that revenue cookbook, part of what you'll do is you'll put in for yourself in your own business what would you qualify as a rabbit, what's a small client worth to you. Yeah, maybe maybe it's yeah, $500, $5,000, whatever it might be. You'll quantify yourself what for yourself, what a deer-sized client is worth. Yeah, maybe it's $25,000, yeah, well, whatever it might be. You'll then quantify what an elephant-sized client is worth for you in your personal business. And then what we want you to think about, and you may want to go back and look at historical data, look at what your ideal mix is, is then determine for yourself and your business what percentage of your uh of your income, what percentage of your revenue do you want coming from rabbits, from deer, from elephants, and then the cookbook will populate the numbers so that you know exactly how many clients you need in each of those categories. And then from there we can build out the plan. But if you're not strategic, if you're not thinking through that up front, it's going to be really difficult to put together a good trackable plan.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Yeah. And the beautiful thing I love about the cookbook when Evan explained it to us 15 years ago, is where you could ultimately do your focus. Um, when we first started our business several years ago, 2001, I believe, um, we were in a position we were just getting a bunch of rabbits. And then once we introduced the cookbook to us, we realized that we were putting a lot of work into a bunch of small people. Um, and then as we began to implement this, we went and got quite a few, a couple, not quite a few, a couple, two or three elephants, which was stressful to say the least, because those bigger, bigger clients have a lot more demands and eating up all of our resources so that no one else could really uh infiltrate into the work profile that we're doing. And so I'm

How Long To Measure Results

SPEAKER_01 16:44

sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

And I was gonna say, to that point, you know, a lot of times people you look at the dollar size for the elephants and they really want to go after the elephants. I have a lot of folks come to me because they have 80% of the revenue coming from one or two elephant clients. And if one of them goes away, they're scrambling and they're in really, really big trouble. So we don't want to put all of our eggs in one basket by just going after elephants. We also don't want to be running around after a thousand rabbits. So it's really important to have a good mix of the three, otherwise, you can get yourself in a lot of trouble.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

As you said that I had a visual of me running around after a bunch of rabbits. That's not a good look.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

I can't if we can get video uh that to put up on our YouTube page, that that would be fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Yeah, that video will never exist as far as I'm concerned. But anyway, the importance of this is to understand how the cookbook puts things into place for you. Um, and so as we kind of wrap up here in terms of this particular episode, and again, stay tuned for episode two, in which we're going to break down even deeper the revenue cookbook. The important thing to understand about this cookbook is it helps the organization as a whole understand where they need to put their resources, how much time they need to put into prospects and clients. And as we talk about the uh stuff going forward into the playbook in terms of what the ideal client is and so forth, it'll the cookbook helps mold that vision for you a little bit better. Uh, we've introduced this to all of our clients, and you'll be amazed at the number of reactions people have gotten go, wow, I can't believe I spent so much time on people who really don't help me.

SPEAKER_03 18:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Yeah, I believe that. Or I now see my revenue differently, is some of the comments I've gotten back after they got me. And then all of a sudden, here's the beautiful thing about the revenue cookbook: they began to create multiple plans for multiple departments for multiple cookbooks that they then culminate all of those type of projects, in a sense, or type of service lines into one big cookbook to allow them to understand how they can make their individual departments move forward. Uh, have you had a scenario like that, Evan?

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Yeah. Unfortunately, before we introduce this, a lot of times the salespeople, the attorneys, they all have their individual plans, but those plans don't add up to what the overall organization wants to do in terms of overall revenue. Um, and that's a big red flag and that's a big challenge. So, yes, we need to make sure if there's multiple practice groups, there's multiple departments, there's multiple service lines, that all of those are adding up to the organization's goals. The other thing

Rabbits Deer And Elephants Client Mix

SPEAKER_02 19:27

that I find, and Craig, I don't know if you find this as well, is when I start to ask people about their numbers, I will get a deer in headlights look. When I ask them what their average client's worth, when I ask them what their closing percentage is, when I ask them what percentage of first conversations turn into qualified opportunities, we get that. So homework for all of you listening to this episode, go back and start to dig into the data.

SPEAKER_03 19:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

Let's look at where you've been historically so that we can base this cookbook around some kind of reality and not around fantasy numbers.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

And Evan's famous lines, which I'm going to butcher here, is uh walking into this process without a plan is like not having a plan at all. Am I butchering that too much? How do you say it?

SPEAKER_02 20:16

Yeah, well, I I mean, uh there's a couple of sayings that I like to have when it comes to this. One is if you fail the plan, you are planning to fail. So if we don't have a plan in place, chances are we're not going to accomplish our goals.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

The other thing I find for those of you who are multitasking, the other quote that I find is really helpful for people to focus is you either have a plan or you're a part of somebody else's plan.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Good one.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

So if you know developing revenue is part of one of your responsibilities, if any of your income is tied to the amount of business that you're driving, we really need to be crystal clear in terms of what our plan is and what we need to do week in and week out. Otherwise, we're gonna be really unhappy come the end of the quarter, come the end of the year.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

That's right. And Evan's also very good at telling you don't wait to the end of the year to realize you're not gonna hit your revenue goals. Do not wait. We had one of our best years last year following this cookbook, which is one of the reasons why we wanted to make sure we deliver again another product to you guys that will help you generate revenue without a doubt. Now, this is not a foolproof plan. You do have to do the work behind the plan. That's very important. It's not just make a plan and then the plan works. No, you have to do the work behind it. And in the next episode, um, we're what we're gonna do is we're gonna literally go into the software, we're gonna break down each step for you, similar to what we went through here in an overview, so that you can see exactly how I can input my information. But again, go back and do, I went the wrong way, go back and do Evan's homework, right? Know your general numbers, and we're probably gonna try and do is open up some sort of free trial for you guys. So you can go in there and play with it a little bit and understand how I can use this cookbook. Um, and it's a nominal fee. Once you guys get into it, it's a nominal fee, but it's very important because it'll completely give you a guideline to how you're going to move forward in your business. The year just virtually started, so it's not too late to get going on it, but it's very important that you guys start the process of setting up a strategic plan with each one of our services. It comes with it. So now you're in a position that you can now work with us through it to kind of get a good idea how to use it from a marketing perspective. Sorry, wrong way, and then a sales perspective, um, to make sure that you guys are moving forward and getting a better year this year than you did last year. Evan, explain to everybody before we get out of here in terms of where they can find the playbook, please.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

So, well, you can find the sales and marketing playbook unleashed uh on YouTube and please subscribe. You can find us on Apple, Spotify, wherever you find your podcast. In addition, we put clips of the podcast up on LinkedIn. So go and check out the sales and playbook, uh, sales and playbook unleashed on LinkedIn, uh, sales and marketing playbook unleashed on LinkedIn, and you will find us there. Please drop us some comments, any questions, anything that you'd like us to cover on the shows, you can drop those comments there.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

And you notice how everybody that he tried to cut the marketing part out of there. That's the sales guy. Be careful with those guys. Like he tried to cut out the marketing piece. No, we're where we work together, okay? We're important that we work together. All right. So, anyway, stay tuned for episode two, in which we're going to break down this the uh uh revenue

Homework Tools And Where To Find Us

SPEAKER_01 23:36

cookbook a little deeper. Uh, and if you guys are interested in taking a look at it, you can go to revenue-cookbook.com and sign in and be in a position there where you guys can begin to work through the process. We're here to help you. We're here to help you understand how to make more money year after year. I'm Craig Andrews, my partner in Crime Evan Poland, and we will talk to you guys next time.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

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.