Imperfect Marketing
Imperfect Marketing
236: Aligning Marketing and Sales: The Key to Small Business Revenue Growth with Guest Kyle Mealy
Kendra talks imperfect marketing with Kyle Mealy, a dynamic leader, teacher, and speaker who specializes in unlocking trapped potential in entrepreneurial businesses and their leaders. Kyle is a fractional Chief Revenue Officer for small businesses, helping them align their marketing and sales strategies for maximum growth.
Topics covered in today's conversation include:
- The importance of aligning marketing and sales strategies
- How to define and measure profitable return on investment (ROI) for marketing and sales
- The concept of ROASS (Return on All Sales and Marketing Spend)
- Why marketing should be the "tip of the spear" in revenue generation
- The "7x7" rule in marketing: reaching your audience seven times in seven different ways
- How fractional C-suite roles can benefit small businesses
- The challenges of marketing your own business, even as an expert
Resources:
- Traction by Gino Wickman (EOS - Entrepreneurial Operating System): https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/1936661837
Connect with Kyle Mealy:
LinkedIn
Website
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Hello and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. I'm your host, kendra Korman, and today I am joined by Kyle Mealy. He is a dynamic leader, teacher and speaker. He leaps out of bed every day to unlock the trapped potential in entrepreneurial businesses and their leaders. Wherever Kyle aims, his energy, businesses and people break through to their next level. Kyle's passion for teaching and speaking allows him to easily hold the attention of thousands while making it feel like it's just a small circle of friends. Welcome and thank you so much for joining me today, kyle.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, Kendra. I am honored to be here.
Speaker 1:Now you are a fractional, a small business, fractional chief revenue officer right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I took a bit of a play on the concept of chief revenue officer. Usually that's reserved for, like, enterprise businesses and they're usually very sales oriented. And I just saw an opportunity for us to think about revenue differently in small business and so I said, all right, I'm going to take this little space called small businesses and say, hey, chief revenue officer really means marketing and sales working cohesively to drive profitable, predictable revenue. And so we do it fractionally.
Speaker 1:I love that and I think fractional is for small businesses and entrepreneurs is fractional resources is unbelievable because you can get top level talent for just a small fraction of the investment right, and I think that there's just so much to that. It's why, when I started my business, I was basically an outsourced marketing department on a fractional basis. They didn't have to hire a team of four people to staff up and have someone who can write, someone who could direct strategy and someone who could do design and everything else in between. So I think it's a really cool idea. Now you have helped entrepreneurs increase year-over-year profits by 10 times right, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's just so impressive.
Speaker 2:I'm glad to think so, yeah, we've been I don't want to say lucky. I think what I figured out a while ago through lots of learning and improvisation and iteration, is ways to scale up with duct tape and Popsicle sticks. So I make a joke that I like to build with those tools. And the second thing is that I'm cheap and I'm kind of this atypical marketer and atypical salesperson, so I kind of had to find my own lane to live in. And most of the small businesses I work with they can't afford all the things right.
Speaker 2:So how do we, you know, take this small amount of profit that we have and drive it? And so usually it's a lot of sweat equity and a lot of moving fast. And you know we're not talking about millions in profit right To go from. We're talking about, you know, one business owner. They were making dollars like literally tens of dollars, into tens of thousands of dollars in profit In a small business. That's life changing, that's opportunity changing, that's generational wealth for a small business owner, versus like sweating every day, like living in a sauna 24-7, sweating if you're going to make payroll.
Speaker 1:And so I'm really proud of that work we've done going to make payroll, and so I'm really proud of that work we've done. That's just. That's awesome. And I love how you say that you're cheap. Yes, I tell people I'm cheap. I used to tell people that I am a recession style marketer. I like things that have results. You know, when everybody was cutting back on the budgets, that's where I found opportunities. That's where I found ways to get creative in the marketing and invest in the places that made a difference, and so there is nothing wrong with being cheap. I'll tell you that because I'm with you. All right, so let's start talking about marketing strategy. So small businesses what type of marketing strategy should they be following?
Speaker 2:I would call it an aligned one. And when I say aligned, you know I have the thesis that, especially in B2B small business, B2B marketing and sales really have to work cohesively and aligned. And so your best sales outgoing effort needs to be aligned with the marketing you're doing. And so when I think about marketing, I think about getting really targeted on your niche, really understanding what you do better than anybody else, communicating it simply and finding little pockets to distribute your content, your knowledge, your leadership, your expertise, your approach. That, to me, is marketing, and it should align with your sales process. It should align with how you talk about your product in the sales room. And so my marketing strategies are ones that are aligned and they get convoluted between is it sales or is it marketing? I just believe marketing is one to many sales and sales is one to one marketing.
Speaker 1:One marketing. I like that perspective on it a lot. I like the alignment. Not every organization has alignment between marketing and sales, for sure Not a big deal, I would say very few. Right, and I think I still remember I was the marketing director for an organization and the salespeople were like I need a different flyer. And I was like what's wrong with the one you have? This motorcycle's red and I'd really like a blue one. I'm like, but we're not selling motorcycles. And they're like but I really like the blue one, I can't hand this one out.
Speaker 2:I'm like, okay, let's make a flyer with a blue motorcycle that is the entire reason why I think my business exists is because of that kind of and then and then the budget battles, like we even talked about budget battles or credit battles who deserves credit for this effort or this effort? I roll them all under one and that way there's no argument, there's no misalignment. We're not doing, you know, time wasting activities like that I'm, and that is a huge waste of resources and small business and time.
Speaker 1:It's a humongous waste of resources, but whatever.
Speaker 2:It's not analytics-based. That's the thing I really teach my clients is hey, we're not going to make decisions on our opinion. If you can show me data, then let's have the conversation, let's test and then come back and review, then make the decision, and anything else is foolhardy. So that's I mean. I'm kind of a direct shooter when it comes to that. It's like your opinion is great and I value you as a human, but I value data more in decisions when we have to move fast and do it profitably. So, yeah, that's the nice part of having it. Chief revenue officers, I get to say, no, we're not going to have that marketing and sales conversation. That's not how we're using our time.
Speaker 1:Right? No, and I think that there's a lot of value that can be had by not changing out pictures. And I swear I mean I still, even in my business now, feel like I'm changing out pictures every now and again. It's like okay, we've got it. I have an 80% rule. Are you making it 80% better by changing?
Speaker 2:out that picture. I love that, if it's not 80%.
Speaker 1:If it's not 80%, better. With that change of picture should we really be doing it. Sometimes, the answer is yes, which is fine Sometimes the well. Most of the time, the answer is no.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've seen it. I really had to change a really good hero image of the homepage when we were selling something that didn't make sense to what? The hero image was or what. The avatar of the client was Right, and so that that to me totally.
Speaker 1:That's an 80%.
Speaker 2:That's an 80%, yeah, 80%, and I guess that's one of the things I like to work on is helping my clients and the people that work with us understand where the biggest impact is for the least amount of effort. Right, that's that 80% rule. If we can add the 80-20 rule here, it's like where can we get the 80% impact for 20% the effort?
Speaker 1:No, I like that. So let's look at the other side of the coin. So we got an aligned marketing strategy. Is that the same word you use to describe the sales strategy?
Speaker 2:ends. I think of them and this is I call this the revenue cascade, and a lot of the work that I do is really connecting the marketing funnel to the sales pipeline. And so, yes, I would probably use a line. And to your point about the sales team saying, hey, we want a red motorcycle versus a blue motorcycle or whatever it was, it's really them understanding what promises marketing is making, what's the emotional connection that marketing is trying to make to draw somebody in, to start the sales process? Well, sales needs to do the same thing.
Speaker 2:You know, I don't think about sales as a door pounding and like icky tactic game. I think about them as educators. I think of them as missionaries going out and educating their clients and thinking about the why more than the what. Right, I teach my sales teams to not think about the like, necessarily the what, until it's time for the what. And it's the same thing we think about in marketing all the time. Is we're thinking about the emotional impact. Well, that's an aligned sales strategy is when we use why, how and what all the way across.
Speaker 2:And it's the same right, same language, same communication. It's just you know where they are in the process of buying, and so I think about a buyer journey versus you know one side or the other.
Speaker 1:Very cool. I like that and I like how you're talking about the buyer journey for small businesses, because I think it's important. It's like a business plan. A lot of entrepreneurs, when they started out, they didn't really have a written down business plan or if they did, it wasn't fully complete, and I think we miss a lot of things when we don't map those things out. So the business plan, the marketing plan, the sales strategy, the buyer journey, those are things that you really don't realize where things are falling to the ground, until you you map it out right and then you follow through with it. So I love how you bring that up.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's where alignment comes from, for sure.
Speaker 1:So you have fractional chief revenue officer as your title. Why not just sales and marketing?
Speaker 2:Well, that's back to this idea which goes first, and so I talk about this in the book that's coming out, hopefully quarter three. Here I make the case that when things are going rough, what do we say? Sales are down, when we're not hitting our revenue goals, what do we say? We need more sales? When a small business owner, especially in B2B, is trying to scale, the first thing they try and go get is a salesperson.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know about you, but when this little black box rings and I don't know the number, I usually let it go to voicemail and I wait to see what happens. And if somebody were to try and knock on my door, I wouldn't answer if they were wearing a suit and tie. And so what's funny is I run into this all the time with CEOs who are like, well, they need to be out pounding the pavement, knocking on doors, making more phone calls, and I'm like nobody's answering because nobody's at that office anymore. So hiring more salespeople to get more sales isn't actually how sales gets done. And so I say we need marketing and sales working together, aligned.
Speaker 2:And so that's why I don't say sales and marketing, because there implies a distinction between the two. I really don't see them as distinct anymore. I see it as revenue. And so when and I even would say in, in, in almost all my communications you'll see I put marketing in front of sales because I really do believe marketing is the tip of the spear, it is what's going out in front and opening, or at least making the doors a little less squeaky when you try and open them, or maybe put some windows in the doors so the salespeople can kind of peer in and help. So I usually say marketing and sales. If somebody makes me say something other than revenue, because marketing comes before sales, very cool.
Speaker 1:I really like that. I think people need to pause and think about that really hard, because, yeah, the first thing you want to get is a salesperson. It's like is that really what you need? How do you need to work it together? How are you going to put this all together? And so thinking about them again as a pair, I think is very strong and the focus is on revenue. Right, I mean as entrepreneurs and small business owners. It's really about results, not checking boxes.
Speaker 2:Or fitting into a paradigm that's, you know, 30, 40, 50 years old, right, we talk about that was when we used to be able to afford a full sales team and a full marketing team, right, or when that was reasonable to do and build. But if you're under 5 million, you might have a marketing coordinator and a salesperson and that's it. And the question you need to be asking is is that actually the revenue team you need? Is that fiscally responsible? Are you getting the amount of performance and results to your point out of that group? Well, how do you know that? Who's leading that?
Speaker 2:And what I find is visionaries and CEOs of those businesses end up leading the sales like room. They're the best salesperson, so they can never really leave that seat, and they're the marketing strategist. And then they get annoyed at agencies, they get annoyed at consultants and they get annoyed at marketing coordinators because it doesn't get executed in a way that is fiscally healthy or reportable, and so that's kind of that's the world I spend my time in is kind of undoing that and I come in at with the. We're going to put revenue at the top of everything we do and we're going to make decisions based on impact and we're going to say marketing is the tip of the spear. We're only going to hire a salesperson when we have a sales process and a marketing process, and when those two are aligned then we can say hey, let's go get the right fit salesperson.
Speaker 1:I like that, and so we've covered that you've got revenue at the top of everything and we've covered that you're cheap, which usually means more profit. How do you define profitable return on investment for marketing and sales?
Speaker 2:This is the secret sauce. This is the really special spot of what I do. Now it's a bit cheeky and it is a dad joke, but I call it ROAS, not ROAS, so it's R-O-A-S-S. Traditionally, roas is return on advertising spend and that usually lives just in the marketing side. Well, that get one. Let salespeople off the hook, which in revenue world we don't. Salespeople are just as important as any marketing dollar that goes out.
Speaker 2:Because the thing that I hate and why again, why I started this business is I saw great marketing turn into nothing because the sales team was not aligned. And then I saw sales leaders running marketing programs having great and not having really good strategy. The ROAS was low and then they would fire the marketing and that doesn't make sense either. So ROAS brings together all sales and marketing spend under one bucket and we just revenue divided by cost. Like it is that simple.
Speaker 2:You get a variable or you get a simple answer. You get a, you know, no decimal or not no decimal. You get no dollar signs, nothing, it's just a number, and that number from all small B2B businesses and this is a financial metric, not necessarily a sales and marketing metric, but we're going to classify it as one is six to eight. So if you can take all of your costs in sales and marketing or revenue, and you can take all of your revenue for the year and you divide those out, and if your number is between six and eight, you probably have a healthy, profitable business. If it's lower than that, you call me. There's my point.
Speaker 1:And we'll definitely have his contact information in the show notes, so be sure to check that out below here. Okay, yeah, no, I really like that, I really get it, and I feel like not enough people look at profit, not enough people look at return on investment, and I think those things are really important. Otherwise, you start doing some things that really aren't going to make a difference in your business, and a lot of us are lean. You can't do that. You don't have space to waste, right.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think that's a fair point I think a lot of CEOs care about ROI and measurable ROI and measurable impact of marketing, but rarely do they have the right leader or the right systems in place to measure that, let alone a tight enough grip on their financial picture. And so you know, one of the first things I usually do when I come in is say, hey, let me see all the finances and I find out a lot about that business right then and there. Because if you cannot bucket all your sales and marketing spend tomorrow, then you don't really have a strong financial picture and I'll guarantee you your profit is lower than it could be. So that's where 10x you know 10x in somebody's profit becomes relatively easy. Because what you you know, what you focus on, you'll get more of.
Speaker 2:And so if you're focusing on your profit and profitability, you'll end up with more of it. You'll just make better decisions. You start to look at those softwares a little closely. You start to wonder if you have the right configuration in your revenue team. You'll start to look at your commissions. Like one of my clients, they were doing 8% commission straight up off the board. Well, that's, 8% of all sales were going into commissions that left almost no room to be a profitable business with any other marketing, sale or sales expense.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of money to be giving away Once have a tendency to have head trash around the longstanding beliefs that may not be backed up by data because, well, that's how we've always done it right, and I think, especially when we're creating it as entrepreneurs, it makes it even harder for us to change that stuff or to realize that it needs to be changed.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, here's some real vulnerable, honest perspective, and I call this the label problem. Right, it's really hard to see the label when you're inside the jar. And I have to do marketing and sales for my business too. I have a million and one things I want to say. I have a million and one sales and marketing strategies that I like to deploy.
Speaker 2:Obviously, I have one, right, I would be a charlatan if I didn't say I had one, but I have to work through my team to get it out of my head. Even though I'm supposed to be good at it, it's just really hard for me to do it for myself. And so now imagine a CEO who doesn't do marketing and sales for a living they are actually the wizard of the product that they developed, or whatever it is and then ask them to do marketing and sales. And the label in the jar problem. That's where I mean it's so hard and so it's probably frustrating to bring someone in from the outside and have them, you know, say things that feel obvious, but sometimes that's the way out.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think it's I really want to spend a second really noting that, okay, it's not failure to bring somebody else in. We are too close to it. You know, I have an MBA, I have a master's of accounting, I have, you know, 20 years plus of marketing experience. I should be able to do this. You asked me to start doing it for my own business and I'm like I know what I'm supposed to do. Can I get it done? Like, yeah, you know what you're supposed to do, but again you get too close to it and you just you don't do it right. I feel like sometimes again, because you're too close to it. So bringing in someone from the outside is not failure, it's smart.
Speaker 2:Well, it's one of the commitments I've made with this business is I sell my own stuff, and what I mean by that is I have a fractional chief revenue officer that is from the outside, that looks at my business. Now I ask them to use my model to look at my business, because I believe in my model so deeply and that is what gives me that ability to get out of the jar. Because it's so funny to look at their perspective versus what I've done in the past and be like, wow, how did I get that far off the rails? And it's because you're right, we're too close to it, we care too much, and so like it's not a fault, it's just a reality. And so the sooner we recognize reality and make a different decision, well, we start to grow again.
Speaker 1:So earlier this year I was redoing my website and I was writing the copy. And I was writing the copy in Word and I sent it over to my virtual assistant and I said, hey, take a look at this. And she's like and we had just started working together, so I think she was a little bit gun shy to push back on too terribly much. But she's like I don't know what this says and I's like I don't know what this says and I'm like it's creative. And she's like it's too creative, cause I don't know what you're saying here. And I was like, fine, and she was right, she was a hundred percent right. I thought that was fantastic, but like, cause I knew what it was supposed to mean. Um, and her being able to push me and ask those questions really got got me to a much better place. So that's always good.
Speaker 2:We're going to talk about giving the revenue cascade to your audience, and we were talking before the recording that it's currently being reproduced, and we were talking before the recording that it's currently being reproduced. Well, it's the same problem. I wrote it, I loved it, I thought it was great. I gave it to my team now and they're like we're going to have to clean this up. Kyle and I know I'm talking about my own struggles doing marketing and sales and like that's not good to prove that I know what I'm doing here. However, what I will say is you're sitting there probably thinking you're doing it fairly well and, just like I had to, even though I'm going to pull someone in, have a second set of eyes. Have somebody else from the space, come in and take a look and you'll be amazed at what you see. Right, it's the mirror problem. I love knowing if I have broccoli in my teeth, and so that would be a good way to hold up a mirror is have someone take a look and just listen every once in a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that that's really good. So one of the things that you notice that I have is the Traction book by Gina Wickman. Eos. So EOS has been gaining in popularity for teams for quite a while. I feel like I was mentioning that three of my clients use EOS. Um, I really like it. Um from um managing projects and goals and things like that. Um I I like how it improves communication. How does, how does that work together with um your chief revenue officer piece.
Speaker 2:I love businesses running on EOS. I've spoken at the last four EOS conferences. Many of my clients are running on EOS and so I think my business is honestly designed for it. And I mean this really intentionally because I've worked so closely in that space. I see the struggles they have with marketing and sales and in fact, even in their drawings and in their books and their accountability chart they have a box that says ops. They have a box that says like admin or finance. They have a box that says S, slash, slash, m for sales and marketing and EOS has a chief revenue officer.
Speaker 2:That was where I first was like hold on, wait a minute. That's what that box is supposed to say. It's supposed to say revenue, not S slash M, and so that's kind of where the thesis came in is that's where I said? I said I'm the executive leadership team, you know, for my clients and, like you, it's a little bit of a bolt on right there's. There's some hand. You know, if I could show that, my hands, you know, got dirty from my keyboard, they would be very dirty because you know my model is to actually not just manage from a deck or a slideshow, it's managed from execution and strategy and that is back to that fractional.
Speaker 2:It's like you're, you're not buying, you know, full time of someone's energy. Well, if you could afford that person, go get that person. If you can't, this is a way to get that level of strategy, knowledge and execution power at a fraction to your point. I love that. I never realized that At a cost, and do it quickly. And EOS lends itself to this. And run up to anybody who's running on EOS. Vast majority of them will say, yeah, everything kind of fits Operations, it makes sense. Admin, finance, sales and marketing is kind of like the wild wild west. Well, you need somebody who can speak. You know this language that EOS has developed and apply the concepts of EOS to the marketing and sales landscape in a way that makes sense, as I'm suggesting, in the revenue world no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Very cool, Very interesting. Yeah, I'm a big. I am definitely a big fan of.
Speaker 2:EOS.
Speaker 1:And I think the practices that it puts into place are essential, as any business continues to grow.
Speaker 2:They're all just good business practices, but what I will, you know, and I'll tell anybody and my nonprofit is based around this as well is that there is. You know, if first gear is where you get traction, there are things that traction doesn't solve and EOS doesn't solve. It puts in good practices, but it doesn't tell you what marketing and sales metrics put on your leadership team dashboard, your leadership team scorecard. It doesn't tell you what a good marketing rock is. It doesn't tell you how to build your marketing and sales teams, and so that's kind of where I like to spend my money Agreed 100%.
Speaker 1:Well, this has been fantastic. I love talking about revenue. I love talking about cheap marketing people, because I'm one too. I love talking about return on investment and looking at things from a data perspective, because, again, that's what matters Did it really make a difference? Did it move the needle in your business? And that's that's really what's important here. But since we're almost out of time, I do have to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, and that is the show is called imperfect marketing, because marketing is anything but a perfect science. So what has been your biggest marketing lesson learned?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. All right, have you okay? So you're going to be in a different category, but I doubt your audiences, so I'm going to be playful here. You're going to be in a different category, but I doubt your audience is, so I'm going to be playful here. What do we think the amount of times someone needs to see your brand before they'll consider a purchase? Do you know what that number is, that magic number?
Speaker 1:It used to be 7 to 11. Then it was 11 to 13. Now I'm hearing over 20.
Speaker 2:Do you know where that 7 comes from? Nobody does. I went on a massive research project His name is Dr Jeffrey Lant and he came up with that magic rule of seven back in the late 90s and so most of the people I talked to still use that seven to 11 number, even though most of us and most people be like even though it probably needs to be higher number, even though most of us and most people be like even though it probably needs to be higher. And I don't know where this came from. But I realized that people really need to hear things seven times seven different ways before they'll move. So I try and design all my marketing around creating that seven times seven, seven different ways, and so that, I think, is what breaks the noise, and I try and find ways to do that as cheaply as possible. And that's a huge part of my success in anything. Marketing is seven times seven ways.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, Jeffrey Lamp I was like who, where does everyone have? It comes back with the number seven and I found it out. Yeah, it was a research project he did back in the late 90s, and so it's. You know, it's a 30 year old philosophy and when you're using something that's 30 years old and modern marketing and sales, you're gonna lose.
Speaker 1:Yep, 100%. Well, I always say it because, like my clients would be like, well, we just talked about that yesterday, yeah, but like five people heard it, like you need they that those five people need to hear it seven more times before they even recall it?
Speaker 2:Before it's on their radar.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, yeah, and it's like, trust me, they don't remember. I was talking to one of my clients about something and they're like did we do that last time? I'm like, if you don't remember, they don't remember, let's just go.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Let's just do it.
Speaker 2:Nobody really has. Everybody has short-term memory on social. So it's like you, you scroll past it. If you saw it, you might've saw it. I was trying to explain it. Maybe this is really crazy, but I was trying to explain it.
Speaker 2:Like, um, you take a really good piece of content. A lot of people spend a lot of energy on one piece of content and then they give it out to the world and they get really frustrated when three people engaged with it Right, and they spent all this energy and like why and I said I was explaining to I don't know a client or maybe it was a different podcast and I'm like when you go to the pond to feed the ducks, you take your slice of bread. You don't take the whole slice of bread and throw it to the duck and hope the duck can get it right. That doesn't work. So you take a really good piece of content, you rip it into 49 pieces. What happens then? Duck number one's happy, but then duck number two, six, 20, 32 start rolling up for their little slice. And so if you want to draw a crowd, have a lot of little pieces of content, so rip your content into pieces instead of one good one.
Speaker 2:So there's, you've got to get to 49 fast and you'll draw a duck crowd.
Speaker 1:All right, I love it, I love it. So do not be afraid of being cheap. I think that's that's.
Speaker 1:That's a good lesson, because you know I'm there Take a look at your revenue, take a look at your metrics and figure out what's going to make everything go further and faster, and then, of course, align marketing and sales, which in most organizations does not happen. So the better you can do it, the better you will be. So thank you so much, kyle, for joining me. I really do appreciate it. Hopefully you watching and listening have learned something today. If you have gotten a different perspective, it would really help me out if you would rate and subscribe from wherever you're watching or listening. Until next time, have a great rest of your day.
