Sales and Cigars | Matt Anderson | How to Think About Marketing with Matt Anderson | Episode 180

[00:00:01] Hey everybody Walter Crosby with Healing Sales Development your host of Sales and Cigars today my guest is my buddy Matt Anderson We're talking marketing. We're talking marketing for EOS people or if you're running EOS

[00:00:14] We talk a lot about how the the marketing message applies perfectly within an EOS organization We're talking to founders who have a great product that have built their their business to three four five seven ten million dollars

[00:00:28] On sheer will and a great product, but you're trying to scale we talk about how that marketing message can be adjusted And at the end we talk about the secret project that that Matt and I have been working on that is going to help you do this

[00:00:43] Superfast give you a deliverable for your sales team so that they can go out and have the right message and help you scale Your revenue so go grab a cigar Grab a cocktail strap in for a really important episode of sales and cigars. Thanks

[00:00:59] So Matt welcome back to sales and cigars. I appreciate you taking some more time to flush out these marketing ideas Yeah, I'm glad to be back. It's always a fun conversation. I always learn something and

[00:01:28] I've been and if you can we'll be able to hold this up and see the First fix your message, but that see all the tabs there that I got going on. Oh, yeah it's sort of like

[00:01:42] Like the old school highlighting and the in the tab call and the tab in the pages I've been digging into this and I really recommend that our listeners who are Struggling with sales to go get this book to help them fix their messaging

[00:02:00] Which is going to help them fix sales and scale Yeah, it's always good to see the book being read You know hope it can help a lot more people So what I wanted to talk about today Matt is the

[00:02:16] The market that I work in are that entrepreneur who's Built a company by sheer force. They have a great product typically They're typically a little bit more expensive because they're trying to deliver value and differentiate themselves

[00:02:33] And that founder that maybe the visionary sits in that that that sales seat or Sales adjacent and helps people close. They're out there telling the story and the story comes is bouncing around in their head They have it all there. They have all of the messaging

[00:02:49] But what I'm experiencing what I've been seeing for the last six or seven years is that getting that out of their head and on to a Document that we can use to teach the sales people how to tell that story is

[00:03:04] Is not there and I really think it's the that CEO that leaders responsibility to figure out how to get that out of their head and And put it out And it's one of the things that we've always tried to do is to help

[00:03:18] That that leaders scale their company by changing their messaging and stop talking about product and start talking about what concerns the their customers and And I think there's there's a big disconnect there and it's I Want to start with is their responsibility to fix this and you know

[00:03:39] What I say to them is you take us we put a straw in your ear and suck out all of that stuff and then put it on to A page and try to get the sales people to sing from the same Sheet music and I know that's not

[00:03:54] Graphically attractive, but yeah Yeah, I think your experience the kind of mirrors mine even though we have slightly different client bases and Obviously I work with companies from the marketing side of the you know the coin and you come in and your job is to really help

[00:04:12] The sales team become effective and begin to scale and hire the right people and get the right processes in place And and really move the organization forward but what I've seen from the marketing side is that is

[00:04:23] Is the same thing that you have these growing companies that are founder led and The founder knows so much about their space and they know so much about their market and They have such a clear vision for what they feel that they might be able to go into

[00:04:40] You know a whale client and close the deal right because they You know are able to pivot in the meeting and supply the right messages and their enthusiasm and passion for the product and they're you know just the sheer force of hey

[00:04:56] This is the owner of the company. This is the founder. This is the inventor and You know brings a whole lot of persuasion To the table and so they go to market They're able to land those first few clients to get to you know

[00:05:10] Three million five million seven million in sales and maybe they have a few other sales people who you know kind of pick up the scraps for them But you know when it comes time to really scale they hire

[00:05:22] You know director of sales or something they pay them a couple undergrandy year and then they're frustrated that the sales team All of a sudden doesn't perform Right, they don't perform the way they do and so they want to put on the cape again

[00:05:35] Go back in and sell the is sell to show you know how bad the sales team they hired was Right and in and at the end of the day, you know

[00:05:44] Even if the founder can close the sales that doesn't mean they have a message that is portable that you know can scale that will actually You know in the hands of other people

[00:05:55] That you hire and that you hand that sales responsibility off to will begin to move the needle And they often have the same problem from our marketing perspective You know they hire an ad agency and then the ad agency asked them some questions and they give

[00:06:08] You know the best answers they know how the marketing firm comes back with some assets and you know They spend tens of thousands of dollars and they don't get any leads and it's the same problem

[00:06:18] It's because they haven't really zeroed in the in on the message and they haven't figured out What is going to get the customer? The customer's attention what's going to persuade them to want what you're selling and ultimately what's going to call them To action until they buy

[00:06:33] And until you have that kind of message that can Orchestrate the connection between sales and marketing and build that customer relationship You're not going to move the company forward in a way that's going to scale And I think you hit on one of those points

[00:06:49] Well, you had on a bunch of points But I want to tag on one of them is that marketing whatever that is the website the brochure The business card the luncheon learn deck whatever It it has to have a

[00:07:04] Consistent message throughout the marketing thread the represent what the that story is what we want that brand character to represent But then there's a thing there's a little this little conduit that goes between marketing and sales that

[00:07:19] Instead of it being locked down right and then it gets it gets tighter for the salespeople to be able to have a sales Conversation right and then and go build off of that with the same thread from marketing

[00:07:32] So we're not switching things up. We sound the same instead of that being a metal conduit It's this sieve like yes Just holes all though it and that whole message gets turned around and then when you give Generic bland stuff to a salesperson they're gonna just

[00:07:50] They're gonna start pitching they're gonna start doing Features and benefits and and we lose it we lose the customer because we're not being consistent. We're not representing that They're brand yeah, all the bad habits start to come out You know when hand off isn't really well orchestrated

[00:08:08] In the salespeople even if they go out and find something Right, they still have to be consistent with everything that was said during marketing because somebody's gonna go out and look at the website

[00:08:19] Like well wait a minute. What the hell do these people do? I don't understand right because the sales guy said this and now the website says that I'm confused So there was one other thing that you said when we were talking

[00:08:31] Prior that this almost needs to become like they're separate their second operating system And a lot of a lot of my customers are running EOS yep or some similar System that helps them navigate how to communicate within their business and how to measure things

[00:08:49] And we I know it's more complicated than that EOS people But we're using a language to run our business and we're using a system to run our business And I love it, but can you expand on that idea because I think there's some some really cool

[00:09:04] Threads there for that the second operating system is our messaging and marketing. Yeah. Yeah sure thing so I am a big fan of EOS I was introduced to that when I partnered with an ad agency that

[00:09:17] operated according to EOS and I came to be a real fan for With many the tools that it introduces into an organization What I think EOS does really well is first this concept of an operating system for the business

[00:09:32] Right that there are certain ways that we conduct meetings and there are certain ways We chart our vision and there are certain ways that you know, we run a quarterly meeting And this is what we're supposed to achieve and this is how we begin to

[00:09:45] You know bit by bit turn the ship of the business around and get it on target and growing in the right direction and EOS is fantastic all of its tools are great in terms of how you hire people and what you're looking for and

[00:09:59] You know the vision the mission the values and how you actually operationalize that and so, you know It does a great job of governing the Operations side of the business right? It's an operating system for how work gets done and planned and

[00:10:15] Envisioned and all of that in or in an organization and you definitely need that And I think that a lot of what passes for strategy in the sales and marketing realm today is really in that category

[00:10:30] It's a lot of discussion at the operations level from a marketing perspective It's here's how you plan what channels you're going to go into and here's how you're gonna allocate your budget You know almost every marketing plan I've ever seen

[00:10:44] Prepared by an agency not that you know not that I worked for began with here are the channels And here's the budgets and then you know Here are the tactics that we're going to use to reach your customer and get in front of your ideal customer

[00:10:57] And then you know once the client signs off on that then they try to figure out what they're gonna say Inside of those channels right and from a sales perspective. It's so much sales process training

[00:11:07] I've seen and been a part of over the years it has been well You know here's the meeting that you have when you meet the lead And then here's how you nurture the lead and then here are here's the communications pathway

[00:11:17] And here's operationally what you do to move the lead from you know from lead to prospect to Qualification to you know finally closing the sale right here's where we prepare the bid and so on and that's all great That's all important stuff that you need to know

[00:11:32] But it what it does and this is why I wrote that book first fix your message I became convinced from the marketing side that what almost all of the marketing strategy books

[00:11:43] I've that I've encountered it nearly all of the sales training books that I've encountered did is by approaching things from an Operations perspective they ignore the very thing that moves the needle at the end of the day sales and marketing have the same goal you need to

[00:11:57] Persuade someone who maybe isn't even aware that you exist to be you know to grab their attention then persuade them to want what you're selling and At the end of the day find a way to call them to action to make offers and and so on until

[00:12:13] You get them to buy until you turn them into a customer if sales and marketing isn't producing customers regularly Then it isn't doing its job and what is the number one thing that drives?

[00:12:24] The the ability of an organization to turn you know as someone out there who ought to be a customer into someone who's Raving fan. Well, that's your message your message is the thing that builds a bridge between what's in your customers head and

[00:12:39] What you do such that the customer begins becomes persuaded that they need your product and they're actually willing to buy it And sometimes but sometimes it's just recognizing

[00:12:51] That you have something that they didn't even realize was available to them. Yeah, right? I mean, it's like it's almost like they're They're in a room that's completely dark

[00:13:02] There's no light and you all of a sudden flip a switch and they and they can see like oh wow This might be a solution now totally the flipping of the switches allows them to be like oh I didn't even know this existed but

[00:13:16] It you know that idea is is that that fall I keeps I want to keep saying this it falls back to the To the leadership of the company the owner the founder of CEO the entrepreneur

[00:13:29] To create this message and take it out from their head and give it to the rest of the team Marketing needs it right marketing doesn't have this they can't do their job totally right because you just described it

[00:13:40] Like we got all these tactics. That's okay. That's a tactical plan But like where's let's go backwards and like start from the beginning Is what I what I see in and what you're describing is we're we start in the middle

[00:13:53] Without really doing the homework at the beginning to get to the to really understand You know who it is We're trying to talk to and what they give a shit about and what we need to talk about right

[00:14:03] You know in the absence of a well thought out messaging strategy The sales and marketing organizations fall back on the same tactics right they you know

[00:14:12] They understand that features aren't going to sell them the the product benefits are so they create a list of features and benefits and You know try to emphasize the features they Excuse me that they have that their competitors don't and that's going to achieve you know differentiation

[00:14:28] And maybe if they're you know kind of more marketing driven They'll come up with some clever slogans that you know sound kind of catchy and cool And maybe that's going to grab people's attention and is going to separate me from the competition

[00:14:40] And you know maybe if my pictures look better or my logo is more slick or my website is more eye-catching Then you know I'm going to be only that stuff does you know move the needle at the margins

[00:14:50] But you know what the reason why I've fallen back in talking with my clients about really driving home this idea that your message is a second operating system for the business is because

[00:15:03] You know those those core components of your message the key insights into what your customer psychology is The your understanding of what your product brings to the customer and brings to the market that will differentiate you and achieve

[00:15:17] What you're trying to do and then the brand that you're trying to build which is you know Essentially this character that you try to you know, you create that will have a relationship with your customer

[00:15:28] You know what that characters values are and how it behaves and how it's going to connect with that customer Those are the things that you know a get marketing and sales working together

[00:15:39] But B provide them a solid foundation for everything that marketing and sales is going to say and and until You have that well thought out into a strategy that you know based on the research

[00:15:52] You've done is going to work, but you know activate your customer psychology to achieve what you're trying to achieve You're going to be spending your wheels you know marketing and sales becomes a kind of a random walk and

[00:16:05] You're exactly right in saying that that has to come in part from the founders You know the founders mind. They're the ones who invented the product, right? And one of the reasons I say it's an operating system is once you have those core insights behind your message

[00:16:21] You know nailed down and you understand that strategy. It informs everything else It doesn't just inform what your marketing says It doesn't just informer your salespeople say but it will influence how you deliver what you do

[00:16:34] It may even cause you to change your products or invent new ones or create new offers That you bring to market because you know in once you have that message It becomes very clear what you need to do for the customer in order to move the business forward

[00:16:49] And you know that ultimately is the responsibility of the CEO or the founder or the board of directors or all of the above and You know it and so that's why I focus the majority my practice not on working now inside an ad agency

[00:17:04] but really working with those founders to Help them create that message and then work with their agency and their marketing team and their sales team to you know Turn that into you know something that's actually you know going to go to market

[00:17:18] Make it and it's that I've mentioned this before it I was sitting I was sitting at where they Somebody that in my network right that I was introduced to a very successful lawyer who does a lot of

[00:17:36] work with business owners who are trying to grow and scale and deal with the legal issues and HR issues that they have and We talked for like 20 minutes about

[00:17:46] Variety of things nothing about business and then he looked at me. He's like, what do you do? Yeah, and I'm like I help All of those people you were talking about

[00:17:55] Scale their sales and he's well how do you do that? And I'm like well think of it this way You put a straw in the ear of That CEO that visionary that Founder and suck out all the things that are rattling around in their head

[00:18:12] And then put structure around it and then give it to a sales team so they can scale And that's all I said to him and he looked at me He's like I understand. Yeah Okay, and I went and I handed them one of my books

[00:18:28] And I said well, this is this will give you a little bit more insight as to you know The way we do about and the mistakes that those people have and but it was like That that message Resonated with that person so what I do right?

[00:18:45] You know because we've talked about offers in the past and we've talked about how we differentiate And we've talked about our our prospects and our ideal customers as we've been talking about your messaging in the book

[00:18:54] But it's you can have a slightly different offer based on who you're talking to Right if the customer is in a little bit different segment that offer Substantially is the same but we're gonna use a little bit of different language or a little bit of different color

[00:19:11] I hit a different little thing to get to bring them in in my is that yeah, yeah Yeah, no exactly. I mean correct me if I'm right

[00:19:18] Imagine in your world of B2B sales that you know, maybe 80% of your customers offers are the same from client to client But I would imagine that you know There's a step in the process where you're creating a bespoke proposal

[00:19:33] Or you know a bespoke quote that you know You've uncovered unique needs that those the specific client has that you can satisfy and you know It all goes together into

[00:19:45] Into a compelling offer that's not you know at that point that's job of sales and not marketing but the same principles apply You know, it's still a message that has to have cohesion from the very first time they encounter the company all the way through delivery

[00:19:59] And you know if you don't have a coherent strategy for that you're gonna be spending your wheels and you're gonna do You're gonna do bespoke Proposals that every one of them is unique and takes an hour to put together If you don't have the strategy

[00:20:17] But if you do if you if you've come up with two or three four offers Whatever the number is if you've got the solid offers then didn't the sales process becomes does this person?

[00:20:29] Have the problem that we can solve and if I do have the problem that we can solve Do they care about it? Is there enough urgency is it compelling for them to do something about it as a cost in the money?

[00:20:41] Right, but the sales process if we know what those things are then we can go there quicker It's like a trial lawyer asking a question of somebody on the stand. We know the answer

[00:20:54] Right. They know the answer when they're not gonna ask that person a question and be surprised Oh crap that that's gonna take us in the wrong direction sales is similar We want to make sure that we can help them and if we can't help them

[00:21:04] We want to tell them that too we want to let them know that this is this isn't a really good fit but if we can get those offers to be substantially the same and And it'd be very simple to articulate what it is that we're gonna do

[00:21:19] Life is easier for sales the sales cycle shorter the the win rate goes up People become more effective and efficient because we're not

[00:21:28] Creating all this stuff if we've done the work at the beginning right and I keep I keep going back to this that CEO that leader that Entrepreneur that visionary you got to be able to give this to your team

[00:21:40] You got to give it to marketing you got to give it to your salespeople Even the people in on the dock Shipping the product they need to understand right? It's it's how do we get connect that that vision that that that?

[00:21:55] Entrepreneur has and let everybody in the company know how they can help the company achieve that within their role And it'll vary a lot and sometimes it's not a not a big deal, but

[00:22:08] Yes, everybody has a role. Yeah, so there's a lot there that I'd like to unpack for a second The I guess the first thing I know what I hear from a marketing perspective But I wonder if your experience is similar to mine

[00:22:20] I can imagine the kind of CEO that we're talking about right now Raising their hand and beginning to object but you know to say well You know I I thought that the reason why I hired a VP of sales or a chief revenue officer

[00:22:35] The reason why engaged in ad agency or have a you know a chief marketing officer is that it's their job to figure out the message Right, hey, that but that's a mistake. Well, yeah Imagine that's an that's an objection that you hear all the time, right?

[00:22:51] Like what did I hire you to do mr. Salesperson? That's one of the first thing Yeah isn't your job to be persuasive or you know I've heard isn't it your job to you know make things sound good and look pretty

[00:23:02] Right, I mean like if you can't do that for me then why why am I hiring a marketing person or why am I hiring a salesperson? I don't know about you The I've worked for it with some very good

[00:23:14] CROs and VP's of sales and and all of that and every single one that I've ever worked with or who has engaged me has Always said, you know one of the very first things out of their mouth has been well

[00:23:27] I'm not my job isn't to figure out the message that's going to persuade the customers My job is to figure out the process that will make the sales team effective Is that something that you've experienced that?

[00:23:38] So finding a CRO or VP of sales or even sales people that understand that is Much more rare than the ones who do do get it. I mean I go back to like I'll ask

[00:23:50] Like pretend you're interviewing me as a salesperson mr. CEO and I asked you this question and you have to answer it Right and this is gonna help you you want to hire me, but this is gonna help you

[00:24:03] Determine it's gonna help me determine if I want to work with you, right? Tell me how you sell something here without talking about your product. Yeah, tell me about why I should buy this product without or service

[00:24:16] Without talking about yeah, right and it if they look at me like I got three heads, right? And like if you're talking about your product your service you've already lost. Yeah Your very best customers in that situation are

[00:24:32] Their default response is gonna be no their pitch to all day every day and They don't want to be taken advantage of they don't want someone to waste their time

[00:24:42] You know there they usually are clear-eyed about what they need and what their problems are and and what solutions They're pursuing and if you don't fit into that immediately

[00:24:51] They're gonna stop their ears and they're gonna get off the phone because you know the last thing they want is You know another sleazy sales, you know conversation

[00:25:00] And so you know if you can't grab their attention in a way that's relevant highly relevant to them from the beginning You know you're you're gonna be missing out on you know the vast majority of your best potential customers

[00:25:12] And ideally we we ask them something we ask them to think about something in a way that they've never thought about it before Right. Yeah, so we're what we're really doing is

[00:25:22] Asking question from a sales perspective or asking questions to make them think about their problem from a different perspective Right. It's not telling them about the features in the product it's about like

[00:25:33] The getting them to realize that the way they've been thinking about this has some some challenges in it there's that completely wrong but That that just usually it's a minor little tweak, right and their airplane flying across the country You know goes off off track on almost

[00:25:51] Consistently and they have to bring themselves back every you know three or four Degrees off track they got to bring themselves back. That's what the autopilot does Otherwise the thing will just just you'll end up trying to go to Los Angeles and you'll end up in Spokane, Washington

[00:26:06] And we have to we have to do that that that thread that comes from marketing comes from that visionary And they have to help put that story in place put the guardrails in place Put that that messaging in place

[00:26:18] They don't have to know how to do it but they got to work with somebody that does know how to do that Yeah, no exactly and you know I think the CEO objection that we talked about just a moment ago

[00:26:29] Is a little more insidious when it comes to the marketing side because there are a lot of bad agencies and you know Marketing staff that you will hire who will

[00:26:39] You know if you say well your job is to figure out the message they're going to see that as Kind of your permission to undergo

[00:26:47] the kind of creative exercise they like to do and so they'll ask a couple of discovery questions and you know try to understand your Features and benefits and then they're going to go off and they're going to try to you know

[00:26:59] Use their creative skills as a writer or a designer or a video editor to create the kind of assets that they want to create and What is is unfortunate is they actually think they're giving you the message, right?

[00:27:13] But all they're doing is they're taking the portly defined message that you gave them this little bit of discovery that they did and Then they're putting lipstick on the pig They can make it sound better if they can make it look prettier

[00:27:25] but until the meaning of the message is as cohesive and strategically calculated as it needs to be you know, you know You're not you're you're not going to fix the problem just by making it look better or you know Sound nicer, right? You spend money on ads and

[00:27:48] Websites and email systems that that are putting out a crappy message. Yeah, exactly And so what I realized early in my career I want the first ad agency that I worked for that wasn't doing direct response marketing

[00:28:02] I started out as a direct response, you know kind of junk mail copywriter And then I moved over to an ad agency that did brand work for billion dollar companies and

[00:28:12] Challenger brands and they had you know, the most talented creative director that I've ever worked with or for and You know, we did some absolutely incredible work for some brands But then, you know, the very same team that did this amazing work that literally won national awards

[00:28:30] You know like top top five top ten campaigns on the year Nationally would then you know have this client that had tremendous, you know a tremendous product and you know all the runway in the market that they that you could want and

[00:28:44] We would you know apply all our creative skill and then all of a sudden it would fall flat They'd spend hundreds of thousands of dollars get very you know Very little from it and then we'd be fired a year later and you know, I started to wonder

[00:28:57] Well, what's the difference between you know those campaigns that scaled the skies and you know make the owners multi-millionaires and you know duck a millionaires and You know make shareholders, you know in some cases hundreds of millions of dollars and those campaigns that crashed and burned

[00:29:13] And what I realized was the key determinant wasn't who was working on the product or who was You know how hard they were working or how talented they were, you know It was the same team across all the all the different campaigns the single biggest determinant of what

[00:29:31] You know of whether we succeeded or failed was how good of the you know How good of a message we got from our clients first and you know from my direct response background I started to understand psychologically what was missing in those campaigns that failed, you know

[00:29:47] It was where the client didn't have a Really good understanding of their customer psychology or they weren't able to communicate that understanding very well Or they you know

[00:29:58] We're so close to the product that they emphasize features that were irrelevant and forgot about the benefits that really moved the needle and You know, there were just a number of very simple things

[00:30:09] That if we could get the right answers out of our clients in the first place our campaigns were going to be a lot more successful So the process that I document in the book first fix your message started there, you know, we

[00:30:22] Overhauled the strategy process from a go away and be brilliant model, which is what we called it to Facilitation where you know to use your analogy. You're trying to suck all that

[00:30:33] implicit knowledge out of the mind of the leadership team out of the sales leaders out of you know People who were involved in marketing even out of some sometimes people on the factory floor and when you got that latent knowledge

[00:30:46] Out of them and then we're able to structure it in a way that you had the message That you could create a message in strategy first that you Really built that bridge between the customer psychology and the product you're selling

[00:31:02] then all the other stuff that you have to do in marketing and sales became a lot easier and That's where I started to recognize that hey, this is almost a second operating system for the company You know like you said

[00:31:15] I've had clients who have taken the messaging strategy document and they've done all hands meeting with every shift in the factory hundreds of employees who are making their products and You know then they report a quarter later that morale has never been higher and that you know

[00:31:29] The person who's running the welding machine or the person who's stamping out parts on the steel press All of a sudden are able to connect what they're doing all day every day with the customers whose lives

[00:31:41] They're making better and they come to work motivated and inspired and they actually understand what the business is about They understand the whole the whole the whole piece They get the why as to what they're doing is one piece of the puzzle

[00:31:56] But they're really helping deliver that for the end user changing things for the better right and most people want to do Now and I'll say this and I Wonder if your experience is the same as mine has been I've worked with hundreds of clients in the last 23 years

[00:32:14] upwards of ten billion dollars to a billion dollars to a hundred million dollars to you know just starting out I Have never walked into a client now especially in not even the most sophisticated ones that have a 500 page brand guide

[00:32:28] Where they have a document that clearly articulates what their brand character is how their company behaves and the key You know distinctives of their message that creates a customer Even though your message is this implicit operating system for the business. I have never seen a company

[00:32:47] Before I've started to work with them Actively managing that in a way that you know they have a very simple document That's portable that you know can drive the strategy forward. I is that similar to your experience?

[00:33:00] It's just never there it no matter no matter that whether the the offering is a is a B2B service or the B2C service or or or a manufacturing distribution Nobody has put the time and thought into it. They've built a great product and and

[00:33:19] They've worked really hard to get it out there But they've never really thought about what it is that they're doing why they're doing it and how to tell that story Yeah, so if you're listening to this

[00:33:29] I'd be very surprised if you have the kind of messaging strategy or document that we're talking about And I just want you to imagine being a salesperson and you go into a company You're just tired along with four other people. You have a great track record of sales

[00:33:44] And you know they tell you hey Here's the kind of customers you want to go talk to and here's the product You're going to sell and you ask them well, okay, what do I need to say?

[00:33:54] To my customers and they give you, you know a standard elevator print that they paid you know 20 30 grand to an ad agency to create and Imagine how likely do you think you're going to be successful with those tools?

[00:34:08] Thanks for being part of another fun episode of sales and cigars. Let me ask you a question Are you tired of struggling to hire sales talent that's gonna move the needle for your company?

[00:34:19] Well, maybe you should attend my sales hiring secrets program and discover the number one mistake that business owners are making With hiring sales talent in our organization. The details are in the show notes

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[00:34:44] And you show up that first day and if they're not giving you here's your top 100 prospects because they fit this Profile and this is what they care about and here If and if you don't get that you're very unlikely to stick around right yeah, I

[00:35:04] I've left the job the first day Yeah, you know I was excited but I show up and like they don't have any of the stuff that they said they had Right, if you do stick around it's going to be incumbent on you to figure all that stuff out

[00:35:18] And you're gonna succeed only if you can guess it what's in the head of the founder and figure out a message that works And as we already said most salespeople that's not their forte. You know, it's not it's not a strength

[00:35:31] It's not it's not there. It's not the job responsibility, right? It's not something we should be accountable for so And I think this kind of takes us to that point Matt where This is why you know We've been working on this like I call a secret project

[00:35:48] Yeah, we've been working on a project that I think will if for anybody that goes and looks under the covers of their own company And realizes oh crap they were describing us. We don't have that brand character

[00:36:00] We don't have that message that we can connect to our salespeople and help them close business We can't generate leads if we don't have that It's a relatively short document that it points out these pieces and then there's some things that need to be built out around it

[00:36:16] Yeah, but if they don't have that We have a solution that we've been working on so can you Yeah in part because of these conversations and the needs that You know you identified in your clients

[00:36:31] I think it was maybe end of February or something that you came to me and you said You know, I know you have the system for developing the message from a marketing perspective and you know You can build a you know full-scale messaging strategy

[00:36:45] But you know a lot of my clients they you know, they're not open to that or maybe they don't even need it Initially, but the sales team still needs effective messaging and you know

[00:36:56] So are there ways to to adapt the tools that you've developed over the last 20 years from a marketing perspective to help me Be able to deliver solutions for the kinds of clients that I work with

[00:37:08] and so what we decided to do is to take some of the facilitation based approach that I've developed and a couple of those tools and then adapt those to create a sales

[00:37:20] Deliverable and I think the term that we landed on was you know, and the thing that we wanted to focus on is You know if we can get sales teams to have a Good message for their first or second encounter with lead

[00:37:35] You know where they introduce the company they you know, whether it's a cold call or it's a scheduled meeting or a demonstration or something like that and Be able to attract the attention of that customer

[00:37:49] Validate that they're a you know qualify that they're a good client and weed out the people who they shouldn't be spending time with then we'll have moved these organizations forward in a big way and We'll also have laid the foundation where

[00:38:03] You'll have the beginning of those insights to begin to be able to solve the rest of your sales problems with that message And so what we came up with was this concept of a sifter message You know, which is that two-minute conversation?

[00:38:18] How can you do it in a way that is you know that respects the different personalities of your salespeople But is still somewhat scripted so everyone's singing from the same sheet of music

[00:38:29] And you know, how can we very quickly figure out what needs to be said in those moments to convert a lead into a prospect? qualify and Attract the very best, you know customers a while, you know disqualifying the tire kickers

[00:38:44] and you know, so we've I think we've we've got a way to do that and You know, I know from you know doing this for 20 years in the marketing realm that the Facilitation tools that we're using do a very good job of drawing out, you know

[00:39:00] pulling out those key insights in the organization to and and you know build a message from them and You know, I know that your You know you this sifter message is using scripts that you've used to great effect

[00:39:16] For your clients to you know increase their lead conversion 20 50 even 100% So, you know, I'm really excited to see what this is going to do for for the clients That raise their hand and say yeah, I'd really like to solve this problem

[00:39:35] It's gonna do a few things. I'm excited about this because it's gonna help somebody Move the needle right because we're always about trying to figure out how we can scale things But you know, we can put all the systems and processes in place that operating system for sales

[00:39:49] That's relatively easy. Like we know what that's supposed to look like. We just customize it for them Yeah, that message has always been this black hole that they look at me as like well

[00:40:00] That's you're supposed to do that. I'm like no you're supposed to do that. Who's the who's the ideal? yeah, it's sort of like that Three-season Abbot and Costell to skit right who's on first right well turns out that no one and everyone's on first

[00:40:17] You know the real problem the real problem is that the founder doesn't have the skills to do it They have the answers But they don't have the skills to translate the answers in a way that will power sales and marketing

[00:40:29] Sales doesn't have the ability to do it because they don't Ultimately know how to persuade they know how to have the conversation when they're armed with the message That's where their skills lies lie and they know how to do the process

[00:40:41] but they don't have the insights right and You know this product is what builds the bridge that draws out the insights that the founder has so that they're actually able to maintain some leadership over sales, but then

[00:40:54] Translates it into a tool that makes the sales team effective from day one And what also excites me about this is that the very things that people are going to learn in this first engagement

[00:41:06] It opens up the doors to really fix a lot of other things than the organization And so for a very small amount upfront, you know, you're not having to commit to you know

[00:41:15] 50 60 75 thousand dollars of work which you typically would if you brought an ad agency in to try to tackle some of these problems You know, you're able to you know solve an immediate problem get things moving and then figure out

[00:41:29] What else you need to do? You know all from you know investing, you know, maybe 10 hours of your time across You know six weeks You know and and getting some sales training to boot

[00:41:41] We'll be able to give them a deliverable that will move the needle for but it's also going to set the stage If they're so inclined and they should be It's set the stage to make the rest of the marketing conversation to get that right

[00:41:57] It it's gonna it's gonna inform that and make that go faster. So what I really see we're really selling here What we're really talking about is being able to scale and go faster, right? All of the stuff in your book, right?

[00:42:11] First fix your message all of the stuff is here We can give them that with a much much more efficient use of their time We and like you have it will help you pull it out

[00:42:23] And then we'll give it to you in a way that you can use it, right? So that's their responsibility It's not for them to go take and write it put it all down

[00:42:32] That'd be great if they could but most of them can't no we can pull it out and put it back Yeah, all you have to do is show up to maybe six hours of meetings

[00:42:41] you know five to six hours of meetings and answer the questions we ask and Then you know, it's our job to create the script in the document And then you're gonna go and train the sales team to be effective with it

[00:42:54] You know and and what's cool is we involve the sales team so that it feels like it's their idea You know they participate in the facilitation and they contribute the market intelligence that they have And I have never not seen that result in a tremendous

[00:43:10] uptick in the the rate at which everyone is Speaking with the same message and ultimately if the message is what drives the sales organization forward If you don't have confidence that your sales team is saying the same thing to prospects It's gonna cause a ton of problems downstream

[00:43:26] You can't have any confidence in the forecast they give you because you don't know what they've said to the customers And you don't know whether they've validated, you know, they've qualified them or not You also don't know whether you're making the right offers

[00:43:38] And if they do end up buying you don't know if you're gonna be able to deliver on the offer Because in the absence of a message salespeople I hate to break it to you But they're gonna promise whatever they have to promise

[00:43:49] To keep the customer interested and sometimes that has nothing to do with what your product actually does I mean how many times have you heard from operations that the customer is unhappy because the sales Person promised them a whole bunch of things that our product doesn't do

[00:44:02] Not my clients, but that that's a big problem when we start Yeah All the time when I first start working with them But that's one of the biggest problems they need to solve and you know It's because there's that disconnect in the message

[00:44:19] I was having an operations conversation with operations leader the other day And he's like they give us this information and they expect us to go You know take a turd and make it into some golden nugget. I'm like well if you accepted the turd

[00:44:31] Without telling them I'm not doing this. You didn't give me enough information. Yeah, they're from you. Yeah exactly And he's like what do you mean? I'm like you tell the salesperson They did not give you the information that you need to do the job there

[00:44:43] The expectations were set if you accept it and you let them off They're gonna keep doing it and it'll get worse. Yeah, how them know tell them to give you the right information and

[00:44:53] And but what you were talking about with this facilitation bringing sales people in what we're really doing there is We're giving them a tool given the deliverable that they can go have the right conversations. Yes, but we're Changing the mindset. Yes of that sales team to realize. Oh

[00:45:10] Nobody cares about that feature. I think it's really cool. Yeah, it's cool. It might be awesome But Nobody cares unless they have that particular problem. We need to change how we talk about you could talk about that later down the road after you

[00:45:23] Hold it. Yeah, I mean how many organizations do you know that spend? You know tens of thousands of dollars a year on sales training because that's just what you're supposed to do They you know get the sales team with a highly touted trainer for a week

[00:45:38] Everyone's really fired up for a month And then you look at the end of the year and it didn't move the needle Right because you know what passes for sales training so much of it is fun and games. It's generic

[00:45:49] It's not adapted to exactly what you have to do every day to create a customer And what I love about this engagement and you know these facilitation based

[00:45:59] Encounters is that it I found that they're more effective than any sales training that I've ever been involved in and it doesn't look or sound like Training at all it's really it's facilitating the sales team You know to make themselves more effective

[00:46:14] but it accomplishes a huge mindset shift because they're giving the answers that are changing their minds it all comes down to you know That having the right structure to the facilitated exercises and the series of questions

[00:46:29] That you're you're you're asking you're you're pulling out what they already know But putting it in a new shape so that can actually be effective

[00:46:36] And and giving it to them in a format that they can articulate get behind because it was their idea that formed these yeah, right? And you know I can tell you I just came back from a conference

[00:46:49] That that helps me get better one of my partners actually two two of my partners were there talking about You know what's going on in the market and one of the things that I do is an executive briefing

[00:47:02] But there's a data that that's shown up in the last Let's see since Q1 of 22 to Q3 of 24 effectiveness of our sales organizations have dropped 31% yeah, just think about that. Yeah, how Poorly their behavior and how much more difficult it is to to be effective in sales, right?

[00:47:30] And there's a lot of factors there But one of big ones is them having the right message to be able to share with the customers So if productivity and effectiveness is dropping to that level

[00:47:42] And you want to go grab some market share because most of your competitors have crappy salespeople You can go out and go grab market share. You can go grab revenue You can go scale start to increase your brand awareness all of those things with this simple

[00:47:58] Facilitation that we're that we're talking about and we'll have this have this Available suit. Yeah, so if someone is listening to this and you're saying well, you know, this sure sounds like they're describing me I have a lot of these same problems

[00:48:15] What what I'd encourage you to do is to you know, raise your hand and say hey, I'm interested What what will this take? You know, I would encourage you that you just go through the first six hours of facilitation

[00:48:29] If that doesn't uncover some key insights and it doesn't kind of shake up your sales team in a good way Then, you know, tell us hey, it was it was money, you know poorly spent. Let's let's bring an end to this

[00:48:43] I will tell you that 95% of the time I've done one of these Facilitations I get the same answer from the client Especially the ones that thought they didn't need it. It's this is a this is one of the most valuable things I've ever done for my business

[00:48:58] You know and b I didn't realize how much that We haven't really documented that's crucial for moving the business forward There were so many new ideas and insights that came out that we have a full agenda now that will really transform this company

[00:49:17] Their rocks for the next year will be laid out for them to start to work on Yeah, and especially especially if you're an eos organization I think you will find that this is an incredibly valuable complement

[00:49:29] To what eos does for you and that it fills in a lot of the missing pieces because there are missing pieces in eos Uh, and you know, that's again why I talk about the message as as the second operating system

[00:49:40] So walter if someone is listening to us now, uh, you know We might be to a point by the time this airs that we'll have a link in the description

[00:49:48] But I'm guessing not how's the best way for them to get in touch with you to talk about whether this would be a good fit for them All of my contact information is in the notes below This this piece your contact information my contact information if you're interested

[00:50:04] Ping one of us say you heard it on stales and cigars, right? And we know how to do this We're just working on putting a structure together that makes it so simple that

[00:50:15] You would be silly not to do it. Um, yeah, so if you if you if you think you're you don't need it You're probably the best candidate, but if you're thinking that you need to make improvements Ping us

[00:50:27] Um, and one of us will get back to you both of us will get back to you and we'll get you get you on the path You don't have to wait for the offer because yeah I've been working on this in a in a very separate way

[00:50:40] And you've been doing this for decades Um and refining this and we we know what the deliverable is. We know what it looks like We know how to do it It's just it's just putting the offer together in the right way

[00:50:50] We haven't come to terms on how big a discount to offer. I think we have a little tussling to do on that afterwards But uh, you know if you're hearing this, uh, you know close to the time that it launches

[00:51:01] There's probably going to be a pretty good introductory discount as well. So, uh, you know Whether you just need this as an alternative sales training or you're really interested in how to get your sales team to be more effective

[00:51:12] You know raise your hand reach out to walter myself and uh, we'll take care of you In the grand scheme of things it's such a small investment. It's you know, virtually guaranteed to pay itself back in short order Yeah, the roi will be 10 times. I mean there's no

[00:51:29] Within within months the the thing is that I want to land and we can land the plane here Is I don't believe in doing sales training until you've fixed all this other totally because sales training Is is is important?

[00:51:45] Billions of dollars are spent every year and most of it is wasted because we're training people to do things That shouldn't be trained because they're not competent to do them Right, but we haven't given them all the tools and we haven't fixed the infrastructure building a house

[00:51:59] You know on on the cliff in california on a fault line Right and some sand without their proper foundation. That's what sales training is most of the time So it's it's the other pieces. It's the same thing from marketing perspective

[00:52:13] I I have clients come to me that just says, you know, they just say well, I need more leads And then i'm like, well, okay, what's your message? and they don't really know and You know until they can fix the message

[00:52:26] They're lead they're gonna their lead generation effort surgery is going to waste a ton of time and money But if you just spend a little bit up front to get that right Your sales and marketing efforts are going to be so much more effective

[00:52:38] And you can go use your sco friend. You can go use your website friend You can go use your your your person that writes facebook ads If you give them the right material

[00:52:48] It's just a matter of how much fuel you want to put in the tank. So matt um, i'm excited about this Likewise, it's a pleasure as always walter

[00:52:57] I think this is going to be a lot of fun and i'm most excited about the difference this is going to make in In in the listeners lives when they raise their hand and You know actually get get their message moving forward

[00:53:09] I mean, I think we have a common goal is that we'd like to really see Like for me, it's a thousand businesses, you know by um 2029 thousand businesses that are scaling in the right direction that i've had some impact on

[00:53:24] Right to help them move and this is one of the ways it's going to help them move fast And and be effective. So Thank you. Yeah, thanks a lot walter. It's always fun. I look forward to the next conversation Thanks