Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed
"Sales and Marketing Playbook: Unleashed" is a dynamic and informative podcast that provides listeners with the essential strategies, tactics, and insights to excel in the world of sales and marketing.
Hosted by industry experts and thought leaders, this podcast delves deep into the latest trends, best practices, and innovative approaches that drive success in the competitive business landscape.
Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, "Sales and Marketing Playbook: Unleashed" offers a treasure trove of actionable advice, real-world examples, and inspiring interviews to help you unlock your full potential and achieve outstanding results in sales and marketing. Join us on this journey of discovery, growth, and transformation as we unleash the power of effective sales and marketing techniques.
Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed
Financial Clarity: The Missing Leg of Your Business Table
Imagine building a table with only three legs – it would inevitably collapse. Your business operates the same way, requiring four sturdy supports: sales, marketing, financial health, and people management. When one weakens, everything becomes unstable.
Steve Kapfer, founder and CEO of Tower CFO, joins hosts Craig Andrews and Evan Polin to reveal how financial clarity transforms business decision-making. With decades of experience simplifying finance for growth-minded entrepreneurs, Steve breaks down complex concepts into actionable insights that every business owner can implement.
The conversation tackles a critical problem plaguing small to medium-sized businesses: financial statements that obscure rather than illuminate. Steve explains how reorganizing your financial reporting can reveal which products truly drive profitability, whether your overhead structure is appropriate, and if marketing expenditures are delivering returns. This clarity empowers strategic decisions rather than reactive scrambling.
A fascinating discussion emerges around business strategy and execution failures. The experts identify a common pattern where owners jump to solutions without proper planning, burn through budgets without tracking results, then abandon initiatives when they don't see immediate returns. Instead, Steve advocates for measured approaches like A/B testing, where businesses systematically identify what works before scaling their efforts.
The episode highlights how innovation and communication serve as essential companions to financial clarity. Without continuous product improvement, even profitable offerings eventually stagnate. Similarly, when owners fail to consistently articulate their vision throughout the organization, execution falters despite sound financial foundations.
By the conclusion, listeners gain three powerful financial focuses to transform their businesses: understanding true profitability, managing cash flow effectively, and evaluating return on investment across all initiatives. For entrepreneurs whose largest investment is often their own business, these insights prove invaluable.
Ready to strengthen the financial leg of your business table? Connect with Steve at steve@towercfo.com or visit TowerCFO.com, and subscribe to The Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed for more expert guidance on building a thriving business.
Thank you. Meet Evan Poland, the president of Poland Performance Group. A master in sales coaching with over two decades of experience, evan is not just a consultant. He's a force in sales, focusing on mindset planning and skill development. He's also the co-author of Selling Professional Services, the Sandler Way. Joining him is Craig Andrews, partner and CEO of Beholder Agency. An expert in growth marketing With 20 years under his belt, craig blends marketing creativity with strategy to propel businesses forward, making Beholder Agency a leader in effective marketing solutions. Together, evan and Craig are here to share their wisdom on winning strategies, best practices and transformative insights that will fuel your growth. Get ready to revolutionize your sales and marketing approach right here on the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed.
Speaker 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 today, Craig. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm not doing too bad, and so a lot of times, evan, when we do our show, what are the primary things we talk about? We talk about how sales blames marketing and then marketing blames sales, and that's a constant thing. That goes on. But the thing that we really want to concentrate on today, especially with our guests that we have today, is concentrating on kind of those, what I used to call the legs of the table, right? So you're going to help me with this, because I remember I always forget the last leg, but I know we always talk about it sales and marketing. And then what are the other parts?
Speaker 3:So next we need to look at the financial health of the business.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:Because if we've got twice as much going out as we do coming in, that's going to be a major problem. And then the last piece is the people part of things. So if the people aren't working well, it's going to lead to a dysfunctional organization which, even if you're making money, nobody's going to be happy. So we've got to have those three things all kind of working together to make sure that the organization's running effectively Beautiful.
Speaker 2:See, that's why I keep you around you kind of know this information to keep me in track, right? So, ultimately, today's guest, we're going to talk about that financial leg, right? Because without one of those legs the whole business collapses. And so he has a beautiful way in which he kind of simplifies, which we're going to talk about a little bit. He talks about a simple way that businesses really should be operating. So I'm going to bring him in and then he can kind of introduce himself. Hey, steve, how are you today?
Speaker 4:Great. How are you both doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing awesome. Everyone's better than me most of the time, so I just stick with what I got.
Speaker 4:Excellent, excellent, thanks for having me on today. I'm excited.
Speaker 2:No, no worries. So, Steve, for our audience today, you had one and I kind of a pre-production conversation. You talked about the Drucker's quote. Can you give us some sort of background on that Actually?
Speaker 3:before you do that, why don't you introduce yourself? And what you do? Sure.
Speaker 4:Absolutely can do so. I'm Steve Capifer, founder and CEO of Power CFO. Our goal is to simplify finance and to help businesses scale. So we simplify finance so that owners understand their financials and their accounting operations and then, ultimately, so that they can find the story in their numbers and know how to appropriately and timely make decisions that help them reach their goals. One way that we simplify finance is by helping owners understand that the purpose of their business ultimately is to, you know, establish marketing and sales and drive product innovation, and those two functions ultimately are what will grow the business.
Speaker 2:And so I love that definition because a lot of times when we're dealing with clients, we all kind of deal with small to medium sized businesses. We've scaled the larger businesses and so forth, but the common theme in this is simplification, at least in our end. But the common theme in this is simplification, at least in our end. I can't speak for Evan because he's the guru, but the process of simplifying is so important from a marketing perspective because we're always inundated with tall types of media, whether it be social media, whether it be Instagram, whether it be whatever it might be emails all day, and we try to get our clients to simplify. Evan, what's your take in terms of the simplification?
Speaker 3:in terms of sales. I think it's really important and it's really important for people to know their numbers, because if a company is focusing on pushing out a product or service that doesn't make a whole lot of margin but it's sexy, it's fun, or they're going after these whale clients but nobody's sitting back figuring out if the whale clients are any more profitable than those small to mid-sized clients. Again, you can start to have people who are really, really busy but not necessarily productive or profitable. And again, maybe that may lead us to a good starting point with Steve. Steve, when you start coming in and start working with the business for the first time, what are some of the things that you look for? And maybe what are some of the things that let you know that a business is doing the right things versus some of the mistakes, challenges that you may sometimes see when you initially start working with the business?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So what we find and what we like to do when we first meet with client is look over their finances. Most of our clients will use QuickBooks and they may just default to the structure that QuickBooks uses. And what we often find right is that the default view for QuickBooks and other ERPs that are out there is not often how clients should structure their financial statements. It hides the board, right. So what we'll go through with them is to understand what are their operating revenues, what are their direct costs, and then ultimately, from there you can calculate your gross profit. To Evan's point by calculating your gross profit you then know what products and services are actually profitable to deliver. We'll then separate out their overhead costs right, these are your indirect overhead costs, that our goal is that they stay fixed over time. Right, they shouldn't be increasing as we increase our marketing and sales. And then, finally, we're able to calculate our operating profit. Everything else, right.
Speaker 4:There are many other things that businesses do. Those are non-operating expenses and revenues. You know, maybe interest expense, interest revenue, et cetera. Those are all non-operating and we exclude those from the stories that we're ultimately trying to tell because we want to know how profitable is the business at delivering the products and services that it's intended to deliver. So that's where we start. The conversation is just let's reorganize the financial statements so we know what the story is. From there, we can now have a conversation to say is our overhead cost structure appropriate? Can we hold it down over the long term? Are the products and services that we're even selling profitable? You talk about pricing strategy. Is that what we need to do?
Speaker 4:You talk about pricing strategy. Is that what we need to do? Or is it, you know? Are we just not growing our sales? And taking a really hard look at why aren't we growing the sales? Yeah, we may look and say, oh, we have a healthy marketing budget, we're spending, but that's not translating to an increase in sales, right, translating to an increase in sales, right?
Speaker 2:Why? So, in terms of that, you're saying a lot of buzzwords that hit home from the marketing perspective as well, primarily because we're storytellers, right? So a lot of times when you're in a situation where you're talking to the small businesses and things of that fashion, do you have a way, through the financials, to find out if the marketing piece is maybe where you need to push more or the sales piece where you need to push more?
Speaker 4:Do you have some sort of formula for that? Um, so, there are. There are a number of different, you know metrics that you can use. What what I like to do actually is just talk with the, you know, with the sales team, talk with the marketing team. It usually starts, you know, with understanding what was the overall strategy behind our marketing efforts, behind our sales efforts, and then, from there, developing appropriate metrics or key performance indicators that we want to look at, you know, at a very high level. Right, we can always just look at what's our revenue per dollar of marketing spend or per sales spend. That's a very easy way of just quickly calculating a metric. But if there are specific strategies, specific tactics that were, you know a business is trying to pursue, there may be additional metrics to look at.
Speaker 3:So, quite a question for you. What percentage of the time do they have a thought out strategy versus? They've called kind of fallen into doing whatever they're doing and they couldn't quite tell you how they got to the point they're at yeah, it is, it's almost.
Speaker 4:Uh, I don't want to say always that clients don't have a strategy, but just the vast majority of time, clients have jumped to what we describe as jump to a countermeasure. Right, they say I have a problem, and I think this is what the solution is, without having taken the time to say what's the root cause of the problem and then what is the appropriate strategy to put in place to address it. And then put a budget behind it, right, and then figure out how do I track it, how do I execute on it, right? Yeah, far too often we just find that clients jump into things and then, when they don't work, they'll jump right back out of it, right, and without having really put the thought into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that question, Evan, because I think in each one of our disciplines we have clients who jump to you know, jump right in, assuming that the answer is right, primarily because they'll find something on the Internet, it'll sound good, or, a lot of times, in my case, they'll jump into a new piece of software that can do it quicker, faster. But a lot of times what ends up happening, probably in all of our cases? The clients eventually come back and go. I did this, but how does that work? And we all go well, we all have the same smile. I just saw that came up on screen here a second ago.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, I have a client right where they're working on generating leads, right, and so they. You know, they just tried out a number of new things all at once right and so now, now they have no idea, well, what of these strategies that are attacking now implemented, which one actually worked right and so they just wound up, that's important.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, right, right. So you know. It's a perfect example in this case. They didn't know what was working. They burned through their marketing spend. They didn't realize nearly as much, you know, revenue as they needed to until then. They just dialed everything back right, and so now they're right back to where they started, where they don't have enough leads, their revenue isn't growing. You know, cash is starting to get tighter and now they're in a tough spot Versus. If they had planned first and had the metrics in place to know what is working, then you can incrementally grow from there.
Speaker 3:So one of the takeaways that you're getting to our small to mid-sized business owners they should actually have a measured approach and track what they're doing to try to figure out what's working, what's not working, before just pouring gasoline on the fire.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, one approach I like with marketing is doing A-B testing. Absolutely, you hold everything constant and you change one thing and you just establish how long do I need to wait for results right, and then you know, use that as a reporting cadence, right, and as you're starting to see things improving or not improving, right. You can then make decisions.
Speaker 2:You know, I think that what's interesting about what you're saying there is is that the thing that I tell people all the time is marketing is not turnkey right. Everybody's case is a little different, so the key here is that people believe that once I do marketing, my sales should immediately grow and I should instantly have turnaround within a month's time. And then, all of a sudden, everything's beautiful and that's just not real. So we're here as the playbook, to let everybody know that you have three professionals here who are telling you to absolutely develop a strategy. Evan, do you think, from a sales perspective, having a sales strategy is important?
Speaker 3:Only if you want to be successful. I mean, if you don't want to make money, you don't care about being successful, then no need to put the time and effort into a strategy. But if you're actually getting into business to make money, to serve more clients, then you might want to have some kind of strategy that you can track and measure over time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know, steve, let's let's kind of pivot here a slight little bit. When we talked before, you talked about using innovation or doing some form of innovation as that other thing that you should be doing and let the, the, the, the, let the professionals or people that's designated take care of that back in work. Can you talk a little bit about that a little bit?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so ultimately, right, as a business, we're trying to develop some kind of product or service that we can sell to our customers, right? So in order to do that, we have to differentiate what it is we're trying to sell. Uh, you know, customers ultimately have to want, need to demand it, uh, and so innovation is just, is it? It's a term, uh, that that's meant to say that as a business, we need to come up with something that customers ultimately will want and that we then need to constantly improve on it over time. Um, you know, if, if we stop improving right and that and in some cases right businesses may choose for a particular product line to stop improving it, that becomes what we call often, that is, it is a cash cow or a dog, right, where it's a.
Speaker 4:A dog would be a product that, just that doesn't have any profit. A cash, that would be a product that has a profit, um, but that we just determine is now becoming obsolete, right, and so we don't want to invest in anymore. But ultimately, right, both of those want to invest in anymore. But ultimately, right, both of those. If the business overall just stops innovating, it will die, right, because demand will decrease over time, um and unprofitable products will just drag the company down right. So the company, a business, always needs to be coming up with new products to sell, to stay ahead of its competitors and to access new markets. So that's why it's such an important aspect of what businesses should be doing.
Speaker 3:And Steve, when you go into a business, as you start to look at it, how do you get a sense whether the challenge is sales, whether it's marketing, whether it's how they're pricing things and their pricing strategy or profitability, or maybe they're trying to sell into a market that's not working or a product that you know nobody really wants? How are you able to help them, kind of, you know, determine some of those things?
Speaker 4:So this is where we really like to talk with the team. We like to talk with key stakeholders at a business and get everyone's perspective and feedback and then synthesize that. Part of what usually comes out of that is is there a consistent strategy? Does everyone understand the direction that the business is trying to go? Has that been communicated well? And then, how is the team ultimately executing on that strategy? That's usually where we find there are significant gaps. The owner may have, you know, our owners may have a very clear vision of where they want to go, but it hasn't been communicated. It may be just you know that there's no budget in place.
Speaker 4:You know, know, with sales, I think a really good example that I've seen is you know, the sales team or the marketing is actually working really well and the sales team is, you know, like, has a script, knows how to sell, but they're.
Speaker 4:In this case there was a gap in that the sales team just wasn't following up quick enough on the actual leads that were coming in. It was just far too much of a delay, and so you start to try to uncover what's causing the delay. Ok, well, the sales team is getting pulled in too many different directions. The sales team wasn't properly staffed. The types of people on the sales team just didn't have the drive to follow up on the leads and ultimately, that was the chink in the armor that even though leads were coming in, nobody was following up on the leads. And when they did follow up on the leads, the sales sales team was unable to close it because they had their script. So it's like it's taking the time to really dig into what's happening out of business and getting the feedback, looking at it from a systems perspective and then starting to say, okay, where are the gaps?
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 3:I love it. Steve, the one thing that you mentioned that has been a theme across the board whenever we brought in guests, whether it's on the finance side, the people side of things, other marketing professionals, folks working with business owners If the communication is not there, everything else falls apart. If the owner doesn't have the vision, can't communicate that vision down down, then everything else falls apart and the organization ultimately isn't successful yep, yeah it.
Speaker 4:It's surprising, right? You know, as an owner myself of my business, uh, how often you have to just repeat, like, what is the vision, what is the direction, what's the strategy, like you just have to constantly repeat it in many different forms to many different. You know many different employees, especially as your business is growing. Um, and I think most, most uh owners just don't realize that.
Speaker 3:How, how important that is right and they assume that people are much better at reading their minds than they actually are. And if it's all up here and we're not articulating it, then that's a challenge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's where the part of things where the marketing comes into play is because, going back to what I started the show with, which is the clarity and the simplicity, is incredibly important. And so, steve, I'm going to give you a quick little break here and I want you to think of three things, three things you want to leave our audience with when it comes to finance in a business that you want them to know. And while you're thinking about that, evan, why don't you give everybody you have your sales training program that kind of touched upon what Steve was talking about in terms of those little chinks in the armor that can help them get through that?
Speaker 3:Sure. So, craig, I appreciate the opportunity to do a cheap plug and I will take it every time. You know that. So I have a 12 week sales training program that is going to be kicking off in the fall, the week after Labor Day.
Speaker 3:So, if any of you have, you know, either you're a business owner who's out there selling or you have a sales team that's just not hitting the numbers that you'd like them to hit. It's a 12-week program, once a week, hour-long sessions focusing on everything from having the right mindset to succeed in sales, looking at what sales activity, what sales behavior, is needed to be successful, and then giving people a really good consultative approach from selling, from building rapport at the beginning, through making sure that a client's not going to back out of the sale at the end and that you get more referrals and introductions. The program includes an accountability app, ongoing reinforcement. So if you, as a business owner, or you've got a sales team, if you want to make sure that you crush it between now and the end of the year, please just go on to LinkedIn, check it out, drop me a comment in the comment section and we'll be happy to get you information for that 12-week program be happy to get you information for that 12-week program Awesome.
Speaker 2:So, steve, I think that was enough of a break. You're up now. Here's your chance A give yourself a plug in terms of what Tower CFO does, in addition to what information you would leave for our audience about what they should be considering when their finance is an important part of the equation.
Speaker 4:Sure, yeah, so Tower CFO.
Speaker 4:The equation sure, yeah, so tower cfo uh, we simplify finance and help businesses scale.
Speaker 4:We really love to work with founders who have a strong vision, a strong drive to grow their business and who are who are really looking for a partner who can help them understand their business and grow in their financial literacy. We look at helping clients not only improve their operating profit and the cash in the bank, but we help owners understand the perspective of an investor in their business, because, ultimately, most entrepreneurs, their biggest investment that they'll ever make is in their business, because, ultimately, most entrepreneurs, their biggest investment that they'll ever make is in their business, right and so on. So ensuring that they have a strong return on their investment is is critical. Um, when, when we think about, you know some of the the three things where we can really help businesses is understanding their profitability Right, they're understanding their operating profit, understanding their cash flow and then understanding their return on their investment. Now, whether that is you know return investment specific to a sales and marketing strategy or their return on investment broadly speaking on their business, we can help them evaluate that.
Speaker 3:And Steve, how can people find you?
Speaker 4:So they can find us whether they go directly to our website Tower CFO and request an opportunity to meet with us, or they can certainly reach out to me directly at steve at towercfocom.
Speaker 2:You heard it here, Evan. Who are we?
Speaker 3:We are the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed.
Speaker 2:And you know what we do here. We give you the answers that you need to drive your business forward. And you know what? We're all sports fans. You're a sports fan, right, Steve? I?
Speaker 4:am. I'm from Portland, oregon, and we only had one professional team growing up, so I am a Blazers fan at heart.
Speaker 2:Oh, there you go. That's good enough. At least you're not saying you're a Dallas fan. But anyway, go birds, try and get it in every episode as possible, because at the start of the season. So again, if you guys have anything here that could be helpful for you, please by all means subscribe, like, share, comment. If you have any questions for any of us, by all means put it in the chat and ask us the questions. We're not afraid of you, we're not afraid to answer your questions. Questions we're not afraid of you, we're not afraid to answer your questions. Well, we do this every day, all day, in our own respective disciplines, and we will come back to you with an answer that we believe is going to work for you and help your business grow. We have a lot of good things coming down the line here and we want to make sure you guys stay with us and learn and see beautiful guests like Steve here, who's giving you input that's going to help your business.
Speaker 3:Evan, do you have anything you want to add to it? Before we take off? Please make sure to hit our episodes. We just did one on equating summer sports to sales and marketing A really cool episode coming up on AI as well. So make sure that you stay in current and go back and make sure that you're listening to some of the old episodes as well. We are giving you the tools to grow your business and succeed, so make sure all we can do is put them out. You've actually got to be the one to take them and implement them.
Speaker 2:And if you have any help, or if you need help sales marketing finance, give us a call, let us know. We're willing to help you. As we always say I'm Craig Andrews, that's Evan Poland, and way over there on the other side, at least from my perspective, is Steve, and we will talk to 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.
