Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed

Margins Matter: The 10X ROI Secret No One Talks About

• Evan Polin & Craig Andrews

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Have you ever wondered why your company struggles to convert leads despite having a robust marketing strategy? The answer might lie in the fundamental misunderstanding that plagues many businesses today.

Dwayne Riff, President of Global Source International, joins hosts Craig Andrews and Evan Poland to unpack a critical business truth: sales and marketing are not the same thing. Drawing from decades of experience helping companies scale their revenue, Dwayne reveals how this misalignment creates significant blind spots in business growth strategies.

"Most companies invest heavily in marketing—SEO optimization, digital platforms, websites—bringing in all these leads they can't close," Dwayne explains. "They get frustrated and blame marketing when the real issue might be that the sales team lacks proper training, follow-up procedures, or infrastructure."

The conversation dives deep into what truly matters for sales success: verifiable pipelines, data-driven decision-making, and the right metrics. Rather than operating in the "I think" world of gut feelings and assumptions, successful organizations track specific KPIs that actually move the needle. Do you know your profit margins by product and client? What's your average close cycle? Where are your most profitable leads coming from?

Perhaps most valuable is Dwayne's framework for organizing sales opportunities into short-term (30-60 days), medium-term (up to 120 days), and long-term (12-36 month) buckets. This structured approach ensures balanced focus and consistent revenue flow—what he calls the "keep the lights on strategy."

The episode concludes with three powerful takeaways: be the person your customers want to buy from, hold yourself accountable to outcomes and benchmarks, and embrace disruption in your industry. As Dwayne reminds us, "Can you be the Netflix to Blockbuster?" in your space?

Whether you're a sales professional looking to sharpen your approach or a business leader seeking to build a more effective revenue engine, this conversation provides actionable insights that could transform your results. The playbook is in your hands—are you ready to use it?

Speaker 1:

Thank you, Evan Poland, the president of Poland Performance Group. A master in sales coaching with over two decades of experience, Evan is not just a consultant. He's a force in sales, focusing on mindset planning and skill development. He's also the co-author of Selling Professional Services, the Sandler Way. Joining him is Craig Andrews, partner and CEO of Beholder Agency. An expert in growth marketing With 20 years under his belt, Craig blends marketing creativity. Thank you, that will fuel your growth. Get ready to revolutionize your sales and marketing approach right here on the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed.

Speaker 2:

And welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. I'm Craig Andrews and my partner in crime, Evan Poland. How are you doing today, Evan?

Speaker 3:

I'm doing great. Great to see you, Craig. How are you?

Speaker 2:

doing. I'm hanging in there, man, but I have to admit something. I got to be honest with you, the small to medium-sized business, even the larger ones. I have to tell them something. They're never going to believe me, but I'm going to say it anyway for the sake of our audience. Sales and marketing are not the same thing. Sales and marketing are not the same thing, and so I'm going to have you introduce our guest, evan. But I want you guys to put that into context, that it is not the same thing. Go ahead, evan.

Speaker 3:

So well. And Craig, even more than that, sales strategy and sales tactics are two different things as well, which is why I'm excited to bring our guest onto the stage, and our guest today is Dwayne Reif from Global Source International. And if we want to bring Dwayne to the stage, and Dwayne, if you want to share with everybody a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your background, before we kind of jump in today, Thank you, evan.

Speaker 4:

Thank you, craig, great to be on the podcast. So I'll start at the beginning. I was born in Guatemala and grew up in Florida. I live just north of West Palm Beach. We have three boys they're grown and married and two granddaughters, and I went to school in Washington DC, george Washington University, and did a study abroad in Madrid, worked at the US Embassy and then I was VP of sales and marketing for some national and global companies sales and marketing for some national and global companies and then, 10 years ago, I started my firm, global Source International, where I help companies grow and scale their revenue, working for CEO founders, private equity or private family offices. Happy to be here today, thank you.

Speaker 3:

So it's great to have you and I think this is really good Again. Craig and I very often talk about the fact that sales and marketing are different but need to be on the same page for companies to really be able to accelerate their growth. I also think there's a difference between sales strategy and kind of the tactics and the know-how on what folks should be doing day to day, which is why it's great to have someone here who's really kind of an expert in that sales strategy, in that sales infrastructure and what might be good to kind of help set the stage for our audience. Can you share with folks maybe a little bit about the kinds of problems that you help your clients with, why folks bring you in to an organization when you initially engage with them?

Speaker 4:

Absolutely and I loved how you started this off, Craig with sales and marketing is not the same thing and I totally believe that. At the same time, I believe they have to be hand in glove and, quite honestly, I believe the spinal column of any successful company is the marketing side, Because that's what develops the strategy. I knew you'd like that, Craig that develops a strategy. I found that when you look at a successful company, they have to be integrated sales and marketing and the ones that aren't and struggle is they put a lot of energy and efforts into marketing Paper clicks, SEO optimization, all the digital platforms and they try to rebrand themselves and work on websites, which are all important. They bring in all these leads and they can't close them and they don't know why. And then they get frustrated and they point it sometimes back to the marketing where they're not bringing us the right leads and, in reality, maybe the sales team's not doing the right follow-up, Maybe they're not doing, haven't had the right training, Evan, which that's your expertise.

Speaker 4:

On the objections what's the objections? What's the best way to follow how often and and can you be professionally persistent without being annoying and figuring out that Gap and what's your closed cycle and really understanding the sales function. But the sales and marketing have to be hand in glove. You have to understand who your ideal client profile is, and you know some companies and many companies go through that process and they think they're done.

Speaker 4:

But their data may be from two, three, four years ago or longer, and the market's changing, the business environment's changing, technology is changing the game significantly for all of us with AI, and so I believe you have to constantly almost not quite, but almost on a daily basis have the strategy of okay, what are we going to do today? That's different than yesterday? How are we going to get better? How are we going to implement the right infrastructure in a sales department where our sales team knows on a daily basis what they're supposed to be doing, what KPIs, what outbound, what emails, what texting, what phone calls, what in-person or remote meetings do they need to be scheduling? Because at the end of the day, it is a numbers game what's your close cycle? And yet you need to develop relationships.

Speaker 3:

And Dwayne, you're hitting on Craig's three favorite words, which are data, data, data. It's really these days, there's absolutely no excuse to be flying blind between the tracking that CRMs have, between the tracking that can be done with the marketing metrics. There's really absolutely no excuse to be flying blind. There's really absolutely no excuse to be flying blind. And, at least in my experience, successful organizations also need to have that.

Speaker 3:

Sales and marketing talking, collaborating on a regular basis. Marketing saying, ok, this is what the trends are, this is what we're doing. Sales saying, ok, well, this is what we're seeing in the field, this is what's working, this is what's not working, this is what we're seeing in the field, this is what's working, this is what not what's not working, this is what's resonating. Um, and the other thing that you know and maybe we can talk to this a little bit as well is the third piece. That's really important is having the owner involved and ensure that everybody understands the vision of the organization. Um, I don't know, dwayne, about your experience, my experience experience Unfortunately, too frequently the owner, the founder, thinks that people can read their mind. They just assume that everybody knows where the founder wants to take the organization, but I find that that's not always the case. What is your experience with that?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I agree, I think from sales and I've been in sales my whole career it lives in the, I think world. Salespeople are great. I think we're going to be up 10 percent. I think we're going to land this. You know this client. I think we're going to do this.

Speaker 4:

And it's gotten to the point where I don't care what you think, what's the data, say Yep, and you and you have to know what the data is and you have to have access to the data through. A well-operated and well-run CRM is a good place to start. And once you know what the data is, now you can develop the right strategy. You can develop the right infrastructure, what you need to do and hit the targets that you want to hit, and whether it's new verticals, new markets, new market share growth.

Speaker 4:

But so many companies don't have access to that data.

Speaker 4:

They don't know which clients are more profitable than others, they don't know which products or services are more profitable than others. They don't know for sure what their lifetime acquisition cost of a client is, and then they're kind of shooting in the dark, they're shooting from the hip. They're in that I think world. And once you have an infrastructure that is sound and bulletproof, once you have a pipeline that is verifiable and provable and you can prove the strategy that you've developed and you can execute it and you know what the numbers are saying. Now you can invest even more in the marketing and the sales time and the deployment of capital. And the sales and marketing piece is very, very expensive. In most companies People spend a lot of money from professional services to hiring the right people, the right technology, getting the right consultants, the right training, the right infrastructure. And if you don't know what that data is, your strategy is hope, and that's not a great strategy to hang your hat on hope, and that's not a great strategy to hang your hat on.

Speaker 2:

And you know I'll jump in there, dwayne, and I'll say this Marketing takes a lot of beating because they are very expensive and part of what we spend most of our day doing is literally talking with the owners, talking with the key point or the key people within the organization and really grill them Right, because one of the things that happens is is that you know we'll walk in and they'll have a lot of assumptions and they'll go.

Speaker 2:

This is what we did in the past and it's always worked. And to Evan's point, I'll go, show me the data that can support that situation. And from a marketing perspective, you can do a lot of hoping. But I think the key part to this, in all of that information that you just referenced, is we try to say how do we keep it as simple as possible, get some simple wins, and then we build on the simple wins from a marketing perspective and we build from there. Talk about maybe a real world example, but maybe not to say the client, but a client that you've known has gone through that, who've actually seen the transformation, going through that simple journey.

Speaker 4:

Sure, I think you know sales. The actual sales process, I believe should go into three separate buckets, should have short-term, medium-term and long-term opportunities. Short-term, 30 to 60 days. Medium-term, up to 120 days. And then long-term, that 12 to 36 month cycle, and every day you need to be adding a few tokens into each bucket.

Speaker 4:

But in the beginning you should be adding a few tokens into each bucket, but in the beginning you should be adding to the short term and medium term. You need to I call it keep the lights on strategy. You want to add cash flow to your growth. You know, in some companies you know my opinion if you're not growing, you're dying. Because you have attrition, you have issues, you have market conditions. You've got to be outpacing your market share, your market share growth for a robust company. And you know companies there's three types of companies. I work with companies that want to hold long term and be that evergreen company that spans decades. Most want to get to that exit side and get to that liquidity event where they can sell in three to five years. Or they may want to transition to the next generation, transition to the next generation.

Speaker 4:

All three of those options, in my opinion, you really need to maximize top line and bottom line and have a strategy that's a proven process and really invest in your marketing and understand do you have the right digital marketing process in place? Do you have the right SEO pay-per-clicks Some of that stuff that was very valid several years ago may or may not be important today, or it may need to be tweaked and investing in your salespeople to have the right sales training and then maybe having the right comp plan I've had clients that they've gone several years without really looking at their comp plan and then you wonder why their sales activity is not reflecting what their outcome and the desires. And do you have a sales playbook, a robust sales Bible that you can start to finish, from LinkedIn outreach to sales cadences in your email outreach, to how do you close to market conditions, to even competitive analysis and price points? How are you running that infrastructure with a verifiable pipeline Most pipelines, especially in the private equity world, when people are buying, they discount the whole sales process because they've never invested in the right infrastructure, a verifiable pipeline.

Speaker 4:

If you can have a process where maybe 80% of your new business goes through the CEO's cell phone, that's a very, very poor situation to be in. Or if 80% of your revenue is with one client or in many cases, if 20% of your revenue is with one client or higher, that 20%, that's at risk. So you need to de-risk the sales and marketing piece to maximize the valuation when you do want to sell. If you want to sell or even if you want to transition to your kids or the next generation, you should want to transfer a very highly profitable company.

Speaker 3:

And Dwayne, something else I want to add to your short-term, medium-term, long-term goals, and something else that private equity. Anybody else is going to be looking at. Something that you should be looking at for your sales process that a lot of companies miss out on is leading indicator activities and lagging indicator activities. Sometimes companies just look at the results, they just look at the sales. But if your folks, if your team whether it's a sales team, marketing team aren't doing the right front end activities to get your organization enough at bats for a sports analogy in front of enough opportunities, you're not going to close the business that you need to close.

Speaker 3:

And again, going back to tracking data and metrics, if you've got a 30, 60, 90, 120 day sales cycle, if people start lagging off of that, you're not going to see that today or tomorrow. You're going to see that 30, 60, 90 days down the road and then that's how long it's going to take to make that back up If your folks, if your team isn't consistent, if there's not that accountability. So all of those things need to be looked at. And there's marketing metrics or sales metrics. Going back to Dwayne's point, you can't assume that five years ago was the same as it is today.

Speaker 3:

Or a year ago or a year ago. And Craig and Dwayne, the other thing that maybe the two of you can talk about a little bit that I think is important for our audience is with sales. Craig, you talked about a couple of minutes ago that some marketing is expensive versus expensive. What I like to look at is ROI, the return on investment, and you might be putting out a certain amount of dollars, but if it's bringing in your high-end clients, your large clients, all of a sudden that marketing spend isn't as expensive if it's bringing in my really large clients. So what are some of the things that you guys look at in terms of profitability to know what products or services companies should be pushing?

Speaker 2:

And before you jump in there, dwayne, let me jump in and say this Part of the battle I think that we all deal with is the understanding, the value of marketing and the value it can bring you, because a lot of people are gunshot.

Speaker 2:

I have a client who said I'll spend $20,000 to $30,000 a month on my marketing and have no sweat about it. But more of the small to medium-sized businesses are going well, let's try a little bit. And then all of a sudden, now we have the back end in which the marketing can't really run as far as strong as it can compared to the competition that they're competing against. You know, and I think that when you're really looking at how to evaluate your market this is why I'm a big proponent about starting as small as possible is because before I double down I need to know it works, because otherwise clients certain clients I'll deal with just won't stick around for that that year to possibly get this thing working and we start with a bad structure, as Dwayne referenced. If their marketing is in a bad structure, we have to spend the time to build that structure.

Speaker 4:

And a lot of times it's hard for them to stick around long enough. Dwayne, what's your side to that? Yeah, I love that, because for me it's the proverbial crawl, walk, run, and you have to do it in that order. We get really impatient. I do at least. I don't like to crawl and walk, but it's very important for you to understand what your ROI is. I think you should have a 10X ROI in every dollar you spend in sales and marketing. So every dollar you should have $10 of new business.

Speaker 4:

Now the challenge becomes in what kind of timeline? One day, three days or three years? And we don't have three years to wait. We know one day is not realistic. So what's your close cycle?

Speaker 4:

Obviously, that's a challenge to kind of figure out, but once you have a provable process, like you said, that you could verify based on the data and you're tracking the correct data, I see some companies are tracking the wrong KPIs. It doesn't move the needle doesn't move the ball down the field. And then some don't have any really very robust data KPI. They don't have good dashboards to look at or their data is old. You don't have confidence in the data or it takes them 60, 90 days to close the books of a month, and so they're really looking, they're trying to.

Speaker 4:

We're in August now and they're still trying to close June or maybe May, and so they don't have good, accurate data what time you get it. It's too late to do anything with that. So how quickly can you get to as live data as possible? And then, once you know that your process and your infrastructure and your strategy is working, you absolutely can double down. And that's when it becomes fun, because now you have very fast, scalable growth. That's provable and you know you're getting your ROI. That helps with cash flow for the growth you're wanting to do. And then you can do a lot of really cool things, whether you're holding long-term or you're wanting to sell, if you're in a very fast-paced, scalable environment.

Speaker 2:

I love it. I love it. So, in terms of what specifically you mentioned, in terms of the right data from a sales perspective for both of you, actually, what data would you say is hardcore? One that every business, whether it be large or small? If I limit it to two, let's say I live it to two what are two metrics from the sales perspective that you guys would say is important?

Speaker 4:

to start now, oh, let me in a complex uh situation.

Speaker 1:

I love that, so know.

Speaker 4:

I think it has to come down to margins. You have to know are you making money by product or service that you're selling and by client? And if you don't have that data it's really hard to develop a robust strategy. It's really hard to train your salespeople on how to close more If you don't know what that absolute number and some companies struggle on what their margins are and what you know gross margin and net margin and they have different definitions. So really you have to hone in on margins. I think is really important.

Speaker 4:

And then your close cycle what's your close cycle to close business? And you have to really understand what that is because it is a numbers game. You know now you need to know what your close cycle is so you can manage that top of funnel which helps the marketing piece. What kind of leads are we getting in? Are we getting in the right ones? Because one of the things that I hear pushback in sales so many times and most people can't argue with a sales guy says, hey, we need to drop our prices, we're not competitive. And what do most people do?

Speaker 4:

They get in fear and they're like okay, we'll give them 5% off. They'll kind of close it and I tend to say if we're too expensive, we're talking to the wrong clients and that's not true across the board. I get that and there's always gray areas, but in general, if you talk to the right client and you are a value proposition, whether you're selling the products or services, they'll want to pay. They don't want to pay lowest price, they want the value, they want the quality and in sales we have the three.

Speaker 4:

You have price and quality and availability, and you only get to pick two, and unsuccessful salespeople want to push for three, and it's impossible to do it well long-term. And so, once people understand that you're selling quality or an expertise or availability now, and then you. We still need to add value, because no one has an unlimited checkbook, um, but really understanding that and who your ideal client is helps with the, with the margins. And then what's your, what's your close cycle?

Speaker 3:

so in first jumping on which wayne said, an exercise that I like to do with my clients, when they say, oh yeah, it's all about price and getting all this price pushback, I suggest to my clients that they turn around and talk to the prospect and basically ask them two or three questions. Might say, hey, craig, in your space, in your industry, who's known as the cheap vendor, who's known as the cheap provider? They will always come up with two or three names of who those cheap. My next question is what's the reputation of those companies? And it's usually oh, the reputation is terrible, service is awful, product's awful. And then the last question why do you think it would be any different in my world? Yo, you're low cost, low end competitor. They really suck at what they do. Why do you think in my business that the cheapest, lowest end sales consultant, the cheapest lowest end marketing consultant, is going to give you great work? Oftentimes people go. Maybe I have a point and then we can get into that value conversation.

Speaker 3:

Dwayne took one or two of my answers. In terms of metrics, I think two other things that are really important to look at, as a company is looking to scale and a company is looking at. What they need to look at is not only what's our closing percentage, but how long is our sales cycle. How long does it take from first conversation to closing the deal and getting a signed agreement? I know and Dwayne or Craig, I don't know if this has happened with you, craig we may have talked about this on our last episode If somebody comes to me and goes I've got all kinds of sales challenges, I need all kinds of help, and they tell me that they have a 60 day runway left and their sales cycle is 90 or 120 days.

Speaker 3:

It's over. I can't help if that's the case. So the sales cycle is really important in terms of projections and looking at things. The other thing that I love to look at with my clients is looking at what sales and marketing activity you're doing and where is the business coming from. Is it coming from SEO and people hitting your website? Is it coming from certain trade associations or networking things? And if we can identify what's more successful, then we can look at. Is there a way to pour fuel on that fire to get more and more and more of those really good high margin opportunities coming in? So that you know, craig, you talk a lot about your clients liking to test things, see what's working, what's not working. Well, over time can we drop the stuff that's not working and then do even more of the stuff that really is working to really get the results that we want to get.

Speaker 2:

This has been an awesome conversation. So, dwayne, here's your chance to think a little bit about the last other three things. So I only gave you two the first time. Is there three other things that you can leave our audience with? Because I want to remind everybody this is the playbook. Dwayne even hinted upon it. Naturally, I love it about it, right? So this is the playbook we try to give you, guys. Tips and information that's going to allow you to take these practices and apply them to your business. Evan, tips and information that's going to allow you to take these practices and apply them to your business, evan, let them know about your training set, your training you have coming up.

Speaker 3:

So, craig, that's why I love working together with you. You team me up so well to be able to kind of do that cheap plug towards the end of this. So for those of you who really want to knock it out of the park, between now and the end of the year, I have a 12-week sales training program coming up. It's going to start the Tuesday after Labor Day. It'll be once a week for 12 weeks. It ends right before Thanksgiving. It'll be once a week over Zoom and we'll be covering everything from having the right mindset to move out of your comfort zone and succeed in sales. We'll talk about building out that sales plan and then we'll talk about how to effectively qualify and disqualify opportunities so that you are shortening your selling cycle once you're in front of those opportunities. So that'll be coming up in just a month or so. Please hit us up, as we're posting these up on LinkedIn If you have any questions, if you want more information.

Speaker 3:

And, dwayne, hopefully this has given you enough time to think about two or three. Actually, craig is really putting it on you. Three takeaways for our audience. Sure.

Speaker 4:

So I think one is be the person that your customers want to buy from I think not necessarily the company, which is important, but be the person. Build that trust, earn that trust and who would you want to buy from? Become that person for your clients. I think the second one is important to hold yourself accountable to outcomes and benchmarks. That's going back to the data. Yourself accountable to outcomes and benchmarks that's going back to the data, but be the salesperson in the company that you hold yourself accountable to, the outcomes and the benchmarks. And then the last one is I love and my takeaway is that we all need to be disruptive in a good way. Can we be the Netflix to Blockbuster? And I remember the first time I saw Netflix. I'm like I was at a friend's house and they had these CDs they were getting in the mail. I'm like that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. If I want to watch a movie, I'm going to Blockbuster across the street. I don't want to wait in the mail. And how did that work out for me?

Speaker 4:

I thought something was pretty dumb, ended up being unbelievable and it's disrupted a lot of different industries, not just video and blockbuster, but Hollywood and movies in general, and so can you be disruptive and not take for granted what worked well five years ago or 10 years ago, or even a year ago. Like you said earlier, craig, can you embrace technology, be disruptive and be the person that you want to buy from within your company.

Speaker 3:

I love it and Dwayne, how can people get a hold of you if they've got questions? They want to learn a little bit more about you and your organization.

Speaker 4:

Sure. So a couple of ways. Email is great D-R-I-F-F at Global, at globalsourceinternationalcom, and my cell phone 772-285-6672. So thank you for having me on today. I really enjoyed our time.

Speaker 2:

No worries, dwayne, hang tight for us, we'll talk to you in a second. So again, again, we are the playbook. We bring you information. We gave you the man's direct phone number, okay, and if you didn't hear the tips, the knowledge and the information he was dropping on you guys, I don't know what to tell you, evan. I don't know what to say. I have no idea what to say anymore.

Speaker 3:

We are answering the question, giving you the answers before you all are asking the questions.

Speaker 2:

That's right. That's right. And so you can see us on all the major podcast streams. You can catch our beautiful faces on YouTube, and if you have any comments, if any of this helped you, let us know. I'm all for it. I take compliments all day long. So again, I'm Craig Andrews, my partner in crime up in Poland, and we'll catch you guys next time. Keep winning.

Speaker 1:

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.

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Craig Andrews

Host
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Evan Polin

Host