Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed

How Sales and Marketing Win Q4 and Set Up a Bigger Q1

• Evan Polin & Craig Andrews

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Q4 doesn’t forgive drift. We pull back the curtain on the exact plays we use to finish the year strong while quietly stacking wins for a faster Q1—no fluff, just moves you can run this week. From pinpointing the two or three channels that drove most of your revenue to reviving “closed-lost” opportunities with value-first outreach, we show how sales and marketing work together when the clock is ticking.

Evan Poland (co-author of Selling Professional Services The Sandler Way) breaks down a practical pipeline audit: tag every deal by originating activity, identify the patterns behind wins, and double down. He walks through the A/B/C relationship model to activate trusted contacts for warm introductions and explains how to re-approach stalled deals without sounding needy. Craig Andrews (CEO, Beholder Agency) maps the marketing side: amplify proven messages, retarget recent engagers, and pair time-boxed incentives with a low-friction CTA. We also address the “no one buys after Thanksgiving” myth with real-world examples of seven-figure engagements that started during the holidays—because urgent pain ignores the calendar.

You’ll learn how to turn social signals and site behavior into prioritized outreach, why speed-to-context beats speed-to-lead, and how to balance “rabbits, deer, and elephants” so you hit this year’s target while advancing next year’s enterprise wins. Expect clear steps, simple language, and a playbook you can hand your team today: align on data, shorten next steps, and make every touch move a deal one stage forward.

If this helped sharpen your Q4 plan, follow the show, share it with a teammate who needs momentum, and leave a quick review so others can find it. Want to go deeper or pitch a topic? Connect with us on LinkedIn or via the website—and keep winning.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the sales and marketing playbook Unleashed, the premier podcast for innovative growth strategies, hosted by two seasoned experts. Meet Evan Poland, the president of Poland Performance Group, a master in sales coaching with over two decades of experience. Evan is not just a consultant, he's a force in sales, focusing on mindset, planning, and skill development. He's also the co-author of Selling Professional Services The 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_03:

And welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. I'm Craig Andrews and my partner in crime. Yes? You got it. I got it. Okay. Uh Evan Poland, uh salesperson, expert, extraordinaire. And I want to start by saying um I had a conversation with a client the other day, and then I realized, you know what the sexiest part of business is, Evan? Any idea?

SPEAKER_01:

Besides going to the bank?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, that's part of it. It's the sales and the marketing. We're the sexiest part of business because as we enter the fourth quarter of the year, we are the guys who get the most pressure to get things really going, right? And I think that uh you're going to kind of tell us what today's topic is. But I think that you know what we do is either the ones who take all the blame or get all the glory, which makes us the sexiest, you know, part of every business that exists out there. Uh, why don't you let everybody know uh how you're doing and what today's topic is?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And you're absolutely right. Um, unless people are independently wealthy or are okay accidentally running nonprofits and not-for-profits, um, yeah, the sales and marketing is going to be a very large part of what's going to drive um at least the financial success uh of organizations. And to that end, uh for those of you listening in real time, uh, it's the beginning of Q4. And Craig and I thought that what might be good is to give everybody in our listening audience some good practical tips from a sales and marketing perspective of things that you can still do now to impact change in in 2025, and things that you can do to really finish Q4 strong and finish out the year strong to set yourself up for even greater success, uh, come Q1 and 2026.

SPEAKER_03:

And I think that when you sit back and from a marketing perspective to kind of set everybody up, this is the crunch time, right? This is the last three months. And if you didn't do what we've been suggesting all year, which is really plan out your year, have a good idea. You've talked about the cookbook and making sure you're not at this point in the year going, oh my gosh, now how do I hit my numbers? The marketing part of it is important, right? So you really, from my perspective, data, data, data, which is always say, you go back to the marketing wins that have helped, and you double and triple down on it. And maybe you can do something in terms of a pay-per-click campaign, maybe you can do something in terms of a marketing outreach, promoting the stuff that was successful all year, just to remind people from a marketing perspective of what was helpful, and maybe they just kind of slept on the moment and provide uh some form of incentive to bring them back to you. Just this morning, I got an email about a piece of software that I use, and then somebody said, Um, by the way, for this weekend only, we're gonna give you full 100% access to this software just for this weekend only. And I went just like this go. Okay, I'll take it, right? So I thought that was a great thing as we prepped for this podcast today, just to get me to revisit software I already had, but I just didn't have the upper level. So let me see what that is, which also entices me from a marketing perspective to kind of take action. And we always believe marketing is about taking an action. Uh, from a sales perspective, Emma, what would you kind of see people kind of prepping for for the fourth quarter?

SPEAKER_01:

So, first, I'm a little upset that you cheated off my paper. Uh, hey, a and took one of the things that that that I had down as well. So, yeah, you you said from a marketing perspective, you want to go back and look at what works.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

You want to do the same thing from a sales perspective. One of the things that I personally have done for the last 20 plus years, something I coach all of my clients on, is anything that gets into your pipeline, you should be putting what activity or what set of activities led that to get into your pipeline, whatever business you closed, how did you initially get in front of that opportunity? So this is the time of year that I'm going back and looking at all of my business closed. I'm saying how I got in front of those opportunities, and I'm saying, can I double down? Can I triple down? If they came from associations, if they came from certain campaigns, can I go to more of those events from that group, rerun certain campaigns, or rerun similar themes? Um, if I got a lot from referrals and introductions, go back and look how much have you proactively set up meetings to ask people for referrals and introductions if that was working and you've stopped doing it. We need to get back to doing that and really looking at what's working. How do we double down? How do we triple down? And the stuff that you've been working on all year long, if you were expecting quick results and weren't getting those results, maybe it's time to reevaluate. Say, geez, maybe maybe we cut out a couple of those things so that I can spend more time doing the stuff that's working.

SPEAKER_03:

Absolutely. And I think that from a proactive perspective, this is also a nice test because you and I both have talked about it on numerous occasions. We're always supposed to be ahead from a sales and marketing perspective, right? We're supposed to be ahead of the trend from a marketing perspective. We're supposed to be ahead of where we're trying to go. So, what this leads me to talk about here is even though we're on a push to finish out the fourth quarter strong, we're almost preparing for the first quarter in the same way. So now anything that we're doing in a marketing perspective in the fourth quarter is to maybe get closer to our numbers. But you've always taught me in a lot of our sales trainings pieces that we have, if I can set up that first quarter from a marketing perspective that generates lead opportunities for my sales side, now all of a sudden I'm already steamrolling into the new year and now really have opportunities. But if we wait to do the stuff in the market and say it's the fourth quarter, nothing really happens, I'll just kind of finish out what I have. Now all of a sudden you're slowing your momentum into the next year or next quarter, I should say.

SPEAKER_01:

Um especially for those of you who have a little bit of a longer sales cycle or sometimes prospects put out, put things off. You know, if you work really hard, even if that stuff doesn't close by the end of Q4, you know what? If you've made really good progress, you're gonna set yourself up for a really strong Q1. I also love those people who don't think that any business has ever transacted between you know Thanksgiving and the end of the year, people who those are the same people who don't, you know, don't really prospect much in the summer because no business is ever done.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I've got to tell you, one of the largest clients I ever brought in in my career put in an email inquiry on December 24th. Um, guy was on the road three and a half out of four weeks out of the out of the month, was shocked that I responded. We actually jumped on a quick phone call again. We're not talking like three o'clock in the afternoon, New Year's Eve. We're talking 10:30 in the morning. And that client was worth close to seven figures over a several year time frame.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

And guess what? The guy was working between Christmas and New Year's, the guy was working after Thanksgiving, and guess what? He wasn't doing his travel then, so he was around and we got things done very, very quickly. So when you hear people say, Oh, well, geez, I really only have October, November, and nothing ever happens after Thanksgiving. They are just excuses, and it's people looking for reasons not to work in the month of December. If you take off, you're gonna, these are the people who are like, I don't know why Q1 started off slow. You know, I I thought I was doing if you're not working Q4, you're also not gonna have a good Q1.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Can I get on a soapbox for a second? Can I can I get on the soapbox about that point?

SPEAKER_01:

You're you're already much taller than me, but go ahead. Yeah, get get a little higher, get up on that soapbox.

SPEAKER_03:

All right, thank you. I appreciate it. So the important point that you brought up there is kind of what I've been explaining to clients for the longest time now, in terms of marketing, at least. We all are at victims now, and this is why I love your training that you that you provide from a sales perspective. The the the most popular radio station that you and your dad bring up in terms of whiff them totally hits home. Um, what's in it for me? Just so people who may not have heard that phrase. Then that moment, that's a perfect case study of I need that now. That is my pain, right? So I need that now. I don't care if it's New Year's Eve, I don't care if it's Christmas Eve, I don't care if it's Thanksgiving Day, whatever that pain was, they obviously did the search or contacted you or reached out to you, or called you, or whatever it was, because that was a pain that needed to be addressed. And a lot of times, because we're talking about fourth quarter here, these are things that's probably happening throughout the course of the year that people have ignored. And so the key thing here, and why this fourth quarter is so important, is just keep mind of what those pains are. This is why going back to the successes, that they might have referrals that you help them with those pains that might help that fourth quarter move a little faster for you. At the end of the day, we're all asked in networking events and we're all asked in social events we're at, what business do you do? How did you do last year? What type of people do you work with? And we're all asked those questions that really does lead to the success of our business. The key phrase here I want everybody to remember is just because we're having more technology does not mean that the relationships go away. The relationship is paramount to the success, especially in a fourth quarter moment, because if you've been ignoring relationships all year, you can't rely on those relationships in the fourth quarter to say to bail you out. That's that's my soapbox. How was that?

SPEAKER_01:

That was that was perfect. And it's you know, you you need to build up those thick relationships before you actually need the referrals and introductions, because it's just not realistic for me to reach out to Craig, want to catch up with Craig, and then expect that he's gonna have five referrals for me that are gonna turn into business tomorrow, especially if it's been nine months since I talked to Craig. So it's something that's consistent. Actually, one of the other things that I have kind of put down in terms of things that you should be doing this quarter is for those of you who have listened to the podcast before, you've heard me talk about looking at your contacts, grading them as an A, a B, a C. For those who haven't listened in previous episodes, um, your A contacts are people who are going to get back to you within a couple of days, within a week, people who could either do business with you or who are well connected with the kinds of people you want to do business with. Your B contacts are people who get back to you, but it might take them a week or two. They may really want to help you, but maybe they're just not in as obvious position to give you the right referrals. And the C's are everybody else that we're not worrying about. You should be going back to your A's and your Bs, looking at who you haven't touched base with in a while. Be proactive in terms of reaching out. These are the people who want to help you, want to see you succeed. And this is a great time of year to catch up, to see how things have been going, offer to see if there's any way that you can help them. And they will offer to help you. But we want to make sure that we're staying in front of that. You should be tracking that. You should be keeping track on when the last time you reached out was, what happened during that reach out. But this is a great time of year to go back and refresh that a little bit and really reach out to that list.

SPEAKER_03:

And I'll say this is one of the reasons why when we talk to people and they confuse sales and marketing, what you just referenced is something that shouldn't be happening regardless of the time of year. Because at the end of the day, marketing and the way we define it is marketing is about getting you to the forefront in the eyes and be front of mind when it comes to the service that they need in that fashion. So we might say one of the ways that you can do have a nurturing campaign with your clients is to reach out to that, which you say your ABC list. It isn't always to brand new people. Uh, weren't you the one that told me that most of the work you're gonna get is from repeatable people, repeatable customers?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. It's about referrals and instructions. Um, but something that you alluded to. Um, where, and again, this is the sales and marketing playbook. We're talking about how the two should be working together. This should be happening regularly, but if it's not, this is a great time of year. Where sales should be checking in with their marketing folks. Hey, who where are we getting our clicks? You know, who who's responding, who who's liking, who's reacting to what we're doing on LinkedIn, on Facebook. Yeah, this is again a great time if people have been receiving the messages, they've been interacting with the messages to coordinate with marketing to see who we should be proactively reaching out to, whether it's with an email, with a phone call, some other way. Um, and marketing's gonna have that great data to be able to share with you. So, again, if I'm looking at a thousand leads, I know I'm gonna have better luck with the 15 that have been interacting with our content versus reaching out to those folks who haven't been interacting, I'm gonna have to introduce who we are. I'm gonna have a much better chance with people who already know who we are.

SPEAKER_03:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

And may have an opportunity.

SPEAKER_03:

And and a little tip here, because we're the playbook, we want to give you guys some tips here. One, if you've been doing the LinkedIn, which you're a big proponent of using in terms of business, if you've been putting up posts pretty regularly, you're gonna start to see your number of likes and and thumbs up and all that stuff increase. That is a great platform to be able to say, connect with that person if I don't know them, and then you can set up your introductory call. And you want to try and do it as soon as possible. You can't go back to a post that's three weeks old and go, okay, let's you like my post from three weeks ago. Let me click and follow you and so forth.

SPEAKER_01:

They're gonna have no idea what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_03:

Like, who are you again? Right? So the more interactivity you and your interactive you can be, the more that you can be engaged because marketing is about engagement, the better off it's gonna be because now you seem genuine. One of the tips that you give us in our sales training, Evan, is to be genuine. That's huge. Because at the end of the day, if people do business with people who they like or like them. Did I get that? You got that. You're good. Well, we are finally catching on. I I like this. It takes a while, but it absorbs, it absorbs every once in a while, right? So now, if you're not building those relationships, the sales process is harder. And if the sales process is harder, you guys, from a sales perspective, put more pressure on marketing to bring in more leads. And we're gonna sit back and go, these 20 leads that we sent, have you followed up with them? What's happened? What is the transaction? It was there a transaction. Did they come talking about something totally different than what we what we do as a business? All of that information, that's why I say data, data, data, all that information has to funnel back and forth. There we go, back and forth between the two of us to make sure that we're we're hitting the that way. That's what you're right. I was pointing at you. Okay, gotcha. Um, but either way, we have to be able to put the two forces together so that we continue to be the hot one walking into the office and knowing that we're making the business move. That's really what it's all about.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And actually, Craig, something that you just alluded to is one of the other tips I have. Go back to your pipeline, look at those close lost opportunities. Which things did you talk about? Maybe there wasn't a need right now, maybe there was price sensitivity when we talked to them, but can be a great time, especially if it's been two months, three months, six months that you've talked to them to reach back out, see if things have changed, see if the players have changed. So in your pipeline or however you're tracking your opportunities, go back and look at that close lost. Look to see who it might make sense to re-engage with, uh, because there may be some low-hanging fruit there.

SPEAKER_03:

And as a final point here, is there's a lot, usually a lot of streams from a marketing perspective that's happening. As you enter the fourth quarter, some point before we get to the fourth quarter, which we're obviously here now, you want to have collaborated on which one of those streams is much more profitable. And I know getting leads is nice, but if you get a bunch of what what what um what Evan would call rabbits that won't really help you turn the needle in your business, um, they may not be the ones you want to go after for the quick sale to help your fourth quarter, right? So you really want to be able to engage that. Everything in marketing is messaging, everything in sales has a messaging. I'm sorry, not messaging, is is I lost my train of thought. Gosh, thinking about rabbits. Um, everything in marketing is should be measured, just like everything in sales should be measured. And if you do the right measurements, you'll be much more efficient, much more effective, and you'll hit your goals in the fourth quarter quite easily.

SPEAKER_01:

And something you alluded to, um, and for those who didn't hear previous episodes, rabbits are the small little clients in terms of revenue, deer are the mid-sized clients, elephants are the really large clients. The other thing you want to make sure that you're doing to be successful now and in the future is go after a combination of those things. If for you in general, the small ones close faster. If we're close to our goal, we need to focus a certain amount of time on what we can still close this quarter. Because for some of you, some of those really large opportunities may take three, six, nine, twelve months to close. We still want to, we need to put the effort into those now so that those are closing next April, next May, next June. And we really need to balance where we're spending our time so that we can close out what can be closed before the end of this year, but that we're also planting those seeds and moving along and getting forward progress on those larger ones that may not close for three, six, nine, twelve months.

SPEAKER_03:

Love it. Love it, love it. So, as we say, we're the playbook. We're giving you tips to help you grow your business and win in business. And I think ultimately, Evan, why don't you finish off? You want to give them the tips? You want to summarize your tips like we usually would do with a with a uh guest?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. We'll we'll pretend that I brought as much insight as some of our great guests have brought. Um so so a couple of tips. Go back to your pipeline, look at what can close right now. Make sure that we we we go and create a plan for what we're gonna do to move those things from wherever they are in the pipeline to closed. Go black and look at your closed loss things from your pipeline to see which of those things it may make sense to go back and re-engage. Look at what the business that's closed this year. Look at what activity or combination of activities have led to that closed business. Can we do more of that stuff between now and the end of the year to drive in more opportunities? Make sure that you're leveraging your relationship. Go back and look at your A's and your B's, see who you need to reach out to, who you need to proactively reconnect with, so that if referrals is a large part of your strategy, you're able to do those things. And again, just go back and track what's working, what's not working, what of the things that aren't working can we drop? And of those things that are really working, what can we do more of? And again, which of those things might give us some quick closes so that we can close out the year strong. And Craig, how about from a marketing perspective?

SPEAKER_03:

From a marketing perspective, they're very similar. What I would say is just make sure you go back and look at the data that allows you to understand how you want to really approach the fourth quarter. I would say that if you know those successes are working, double down on some sort of paid ad, some sort of uh advertising that's going to draw more of the favored leads to you. Um that's a great way to kind of put the word out. And then also in the fourth quarter, make sure that no lead is too small. Go after every one of them, make sure, because again, anything that you're technically doing in the fourth quarter also helps the first quarter of the next year. So I think that when if you really try to focus on the marketing message, putting out social media posts, double down on everything that's really working for you in terms of product, in terms of service, in terms of culture, they'll really help you going into the new quarter. Uh, and as always, we're the sales and marketing playbook. We're on all the major podcast platforms. If you love seeing Evan and I's beautiful face, you can always go to YouTube. Uh, we're on Apple, Amazon, Spotify, and more. Uh, and if you're interested in being on the show, or if you're interested in a topic, by all means, reach out to us. We're both available on LinkedIn uh emails. You can always email us through the website and the whole nine yards. Again, I'm A and Craig Andrews. I was gonna say I'm Evan Andrews. That was crazy. That's evident. And we'll talk to you guys next time, all right? Be good and keep winning.

SPEAKER_00:

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