Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed

Simple Wins: Sales And Marketing Lessons From 2025

• Evan Polin & Craig Andrews

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We look back at a standout year and unpack why simplicity, clarity, and alignment made deals close faster and marketing work harder. We share the sales frameworks, marketing rhythms, and leadership habits that will set a stronger foundation for 2026.

• simplifying a core promise and message
• focusing on ICP fit and problem-led language
• replacing bloated pipelines with task-driven CRM
• disqualifying fast to speed decisions
• using small touches over big-bang campaigns
• keeping website, social, email, and pitch aligned
• leveraging relationships and referrals with intent
• letting data refine ICP and spend
• separating sales and marketing roles while unifying goals
• setting clear revenue targets and reverse-engineering activity

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


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_01:

And welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. I'm Craig Andrews, and for one last time, my partner in crime in 2025, Evan Poland. How are you today, bud?

SPEAKER_02:

I'm doing great. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm doing good. You know, so it's December, right? It's our final recording of the year. And and, you know, usually around this time, both you and I have a regimen in which we do in terms of, you know, preparing for next year and all that stuff. We never really get to relax, but you know, ultimately what we want to do is make this episode, this final episode of 25, of kind of highlighting the best practices our clients have had uh in the 2025. How do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think it's great for us to highlight our what's worked for our clients, what's worked for us, give folks some things to think about. And quite frankly, whether you're listening to this when the episode drops, or you're listening to this in June of 26, the tips that we're going to give you are not just tips for the end of the year or tips for the beginning of the year, but these are best practices that can really help you build your business. Um, and again, I think that oftentimes people also like to want to make sure that they're getting their feedback, they're getting their advice from folks who are actually out there doing it and not kind of talking from an ivory tower. So, Craig, even before we talk about your clients for your business for Beholder Agency, how has 2025 been? And what are some of the things that are working specifically for your business? Uh, before we get to your clients.

SPEAKER_01:

Great question. So, our business has had a stellar year, probably our best year yet, uh, and primarily thanks to you. I actually finally listened to Evan, guys. So, ideally, we're gonna listen to Evan more in 26 as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Don't take 16 years to do it.

SPEAKER_01:

It's too late. It's already gone. That's a pass, right? I gotta let that go. Um, but ultimately, the things that's worked for us is is I firmly believe that it's very difficult to learn how to be simple, right? To simplify yourself, right? We get so caught as business owners of doing all these things and so forth that the art of simplification is really what we kind of mastered, and it came from the process that you helped us put into place. Um, and then we began to apply that to our business and then to apply to our clients. Being able to simplify your message, especially in a technology world that we're in today, simplifying your message so that people really have one focus when they talk about you. You know, we do a plethora of things, but ultimately people know if I need good marketing solutions that Beholder can help them. And that was really where things changed for us because we got them asking more questions, which I know is your big thing. Get them to talk more than us talk. I heard your lessons, I got it. Right? They were able to tell us, here's where I'm having a problem. Are you able to fix it? And we fixed that problem. Now, other things build onto it, but being able to fix that simple problem is really where we began to have success this year. How about yourself?

SPEAKER_02:

So fortunately, 2025 was a great year for Proling Performance Group. Probably gonna end up with about 35% growth this year, uh, which for us is you know phenomenal because we only have so much bandwidth uh to work with our clients, although that is something that we're fixing and have started to fix towards the end of this year and as we go to 2026. Um, but fortunately it's been a great year. And for for my business personally, I I think it's a couple of things. I think it gets back to, at least part of it, gets back to your relationships. Are you doing a good job reaching out to the people who are your raving fans, who are your advocates, are you leveraging those folks to see whether there's more business that you can do there? Whether or not they're willing to tell other people about you, to surround yourselves with other people who value what you do and are around the kinds of clients and really develop some good relationships and strategic partnerships. So I think that is key. The other thing from a sales perspective that I teach, I don't always implement, but this year did a really good job of implementing it. You listen to yourself every once in a while, somebody's got to exactly um qualify or disqualify quickly. Yeah, by the way, much easier to do when you've got a full pipeline versus I'm desperate, I only have two opportunities in the pipeline, so I have to hold on tight. But the amount of time for me from first conversation to getting a decision has probably been cut in half again. Yeah. Folks who are ready, I've had turnaround times of less than a week between first conversation and signed contracts, and being willing to disqualify, being willing to ask the hard questions. And Craig, I know that you're probably gonna talk about this and talking about the best practices for your clients, but really knowing who your client avatar is. Yeah, not trying to make everybody fit, really thinking about okay, who can I best help? Who is gonna see the best value out of my service, out of my prospect? Yeah, once you start to identify that and talk to more of the right people, qualifying and disqualifying becomes much easier. It happens much more quickly, and you will see much better results and a lot better productivity because you're not spinning your wheels on opportunities that probably never had any chance of closing in the first place.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right. And I love what you said there. And as we as we transition here a little bit, we're gonna transition for you guys um best practices that you that we've seen our clients have success with this year and that you definitely, because we're the playbook, you should be implementing in 26 if you haven't already. Um, so Evan, why don't you start from a sales perspective? Let's give them something simple that they should be that your clients have success with that you definitely want people to move forward with in 26.

SPEAKER_02:

So I would say my most successful clients and my clients that have had the most success this year. Keep your eye on the ball. Especially for those of you who actually have to do the work if the work comes in, keep your eye on the ball. Make sure you have goals. You know how much revenue, how many clients I need to bring in, and keep that somewhere where you're looking at it on a regular basis so that you are always reminded of what do I need to do? Okay, if I know that I need to bring in three clients a month, what marketing activities are we going to do, and what is that driving? What things do I need to do to leverage my relationships? What sales activities do I need to do to drive that in? But when you have that front and center, when you're looking at that number at a minimum on a weekly basis, if not a daily basis, it will drive you to do the right activities. I will also tell you for those of you who use a CRM, one of my clients, a big shift that they made this year, it's a client that has ongoing clients, ongoing orders, but they also had a hard time disqualifying opportunities. And what they did is rather than just have the pipeline, they moved from their pipeline and their CRM more to tasks. Okay, with each company, do we have a clear next step? Is there a specific opportunity we're talking to them about? If the answer to those questions is no, it's no longer a sales opportunity, we may throw it back into the marketing bucket. But don't have things continue to be in the pipeline because you think that somebody might be a good prospect someday. If you don't have clear next steps, if you don't have a clear action, if you don't have a clear service or a clear product that they that you've already talked to them about and they're interested in buying, they should be in the marketing bucket, not in the sales bucket. And that's really helped them to clarify what they need to do to move the ball forward on specific opportunities and which things they need to make sure need to go into a marketing nurture campaign so that they stay front of mind, so that when they do proactively do an outreach in three months or in six months with a sales activity, that they are top of mind when they start to reach out to their prospects. So, Craig, what are some things that have worked well from a marketing perspective for your clients?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh the things that's worked well is literally the things you just referenced, right? Ultimately, the the difference that we find that clients have had success with is having small touches more than big bangs, right? As budgets get a little tighter, depending on the industry you're in and and cost of things and stuff like that, the relationships that you mentioned earlier have to apply online or on your marketing efforts. There has to be a relationship that people can understand you. And if you know your ICP, your customer that you're really targeting, the mark the relationship becomes better because ultimately the big thing that we're really pushing this year with all of our clients is clients don't necessarily know what you do because our attention span is lower. And if our attention span is lower, you have to speak simpler, going back to what I started with. And if you continue to stay simple in terms of what your messaging is, ultimately you'll find that your clients will engage you more because they understand. There's a marketing, another marketing guru that I followed recently, who talks about burning calories as you're as you're trying to figure out who you're going to use. And the more your prospect has to burn calories to figure out what you do, the less likely they're to go with you. So a great example of that is there's a client that we have that we literally try to be as honest and transparent with our clients as possible. And we look through their stuff and I go, I have no idea what you do.

SPEAKER_02:

I've mentioned they love hearing that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. I I can be bad guys sometimes, but I go, I'm sorry, I'm not the smartest guy in the world. I can admit that, but I don't understand what you're trying to tell me. And they go, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whatever they said, and I go, I understand that. That's not on that's not on your marketing material. That's that's the first line of defense, right?

SPEAKER_02:

So, Craig, the other thing I find from a sales perspective with this messaging and with this keeping it simple, and I don't know if you find the same in the marketing, is these days there's so much noise out there that if I can't immediately identify, and yeah, you know, this is one of my favorite settings. If I can't immediately identify the with them, if I can't understand the what's in it for me and why I should be talking to you and how it's gonna benefit me, yeah. I've got a thousand other emails coming in, you know, all this other stuff as I'm scrolling. I'm not gonna pay attention. So, one of the things that I'm having my clients really focus on and what's giving them the most success, nobody cares what you do. Don't provide them a verbal brochure of all of the products, all of the services, every logo, every client that you've ever worked with. Focus on the problems that they need to have for them to be interested in your services. Talk about how you help your clients and the problems you solve. And if you're talking to the right people, they're gonna raise their hand and go, wait a second, that's me. How did you know? Did you have a bug in my office? And those are the people who are gonna want to talk to you, who would that that sales cycle is gonna be shorter because they immediately see how you can help them fix something that could either make them money, save them money, save them time, you know, better the reputation, whatever it might be. Yeah, so I don't know if you're seeing the same thing from a marketing perspective.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely, right? Most of the stuff, and when it comes to marketing, is trust. If I were to sit back and say Coca-Cola, we all know it because we've all had it, we've all trusted it, we've the brand's been around forever. The problem with our our with our audience here, which is small to medium-sized businesses, there's all sometimes a lot of assumption that people know you. But if you go and you look online and I don't see you, it's ultimately is not something that I'm going to know who you are, which means I got to go through that whole process of trying to understand you. Can I trust you? Do you have the stuff in place to help me, not you, help me, and you spewing off to you, like you said, you spewing off all the things you do, I still may not know what you're trying to tell me. And so going back to the theme here of being clear, you mentioned it in your last talk there, you have to be clear. And clear is simple. Well we always try to say, explain it to a seven-year-old. If a seven-year-old can understand you, anybody in the world will understand you. And sometimes what gets in the way, your famous line, head trash, gets in the way of the perception of myself is different than the perception outside. And so sometimes what we've been able to do is help our clients understand that, simplify it more, and you'll get more people to reach out to you.

SPEAKER_02:

Craig, the other thing I would imagine you run into, but I just want to make sure I'm not making assumptions. How many people have changed their focus in terms of who they're serving or the products or the services they're offering, but their website hasn't been updated in two or three or four years, and the website reflects what they did a couple years ago, which may not closely resemble what they're doing today.

SPEAKER_01:

That's 100% on point. And by the way, that's why you may not be getting more leads. Sometimes the marketing is just a slight adjustment. It's hard to tell, right? Because all I know is what I'm seeing before I call you. We all do it like part of what you treat, what you teach. Do the research on who you're prospecting, get an idea what they are, and imagine if you were prospecting, and I'm sure you run into this before. You were prospecting someone, you read things about them, you read online about them, they come in and go, Oh, yeah, we don't do that anymore.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. You've lost all credibility.

SPEAKER_01:

You've lost all credibility. I can't, I you know, it's easy for me to move to the next one.

SPEAKER_02:

Or again, sales and marketing, if they're not on the same page or the owner's not on the same page, that's when the finger pointing starts. Because wait a second, yeah, I've got a hundred leads, but they're all bad. None of them are the right avatar, none of them are the right person. Um, and that's when you get the finger pointing. And that's why the owner, if you're a larger company, the owner, the president, leadership needs to be involved to make sure that the company is going in the right direction that's going into their vision.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

And then sales and marketing need to be brought together to make sure that they understand the vision, and then that the messaging is matching what the people out in the field are saying as they're talking to prospects. Otherwise, you're gonna have a disaster.

SPEAKER_01:

And what I'll tell you is you you lobbed that up perfectly for us. This is the reason that we started this podcast is for people to understand one, there's a difference between sales and marketing. People still confuse that, and it's not the same. I always like to simplify it, right? Marketing is basically what people are saying about you before they talk to you. Once they have an interest, sales comes in and lets them know how they can help them. Right?

SPEAKER_02:

When I'm talking to new potential strategic partners, new clients, when they start to ask me about marketing, my first response is if anybody is talking to me about their marketing, they are in much bigger trouble than they thought.

SPEAKER_01:

Touche.

SPEAKER_02:

And and there is a my a huge difference. And again, I'm I'm gonna have them talk to my man Craig. But marketing and sales are two different skill sets, by the way, those small and a mid-sized companies. If you're hiring your director of sales and marketing, you're probably falling down in one of those two areas, if not both, because generally the skills that make somebody really good at marketing is different than the skills that make somebody really good at sales. And if you've got somebody in charge in both of both, you're probably not hitting the revenue goals that you want to hit.

SPEAKER_01:

That's fine. That's right. Because we're really talking to the same person two different ways. So imagine you're speaking English and I'm speaking Greek to the same person. Wait, which person am I talking to? Right? That's how I want you guys to visualize when it comes to sales and marketing, how the process works. Now, to piggyback on top of that, we work really well together. We really do, as long as you have the same mission and objectives and KPIs and things like that in a place. To your point, if the leadership's in place and understands it and can communicate it simply to us, people like us, all of a sudden the world gets so much easier. The process of prospecting to talking to them to um uh proposing to them and signing them is shortened tremendously because the communication is very strong with simplicity. And I think that as we talk about this, I know Evan that you have a uh course coming up in the winter, right? Of your 12-week program. You want to tell everybody about that? Because this is the sales stuff, this is the foundational stuff that will help you guys grow. I'm a testament to it, trust me.

SPEAKER_02:

So, Craig, I appreciate that I'm wiring the money to you now. Um so so I am running, and this will be our third cohort. I and this is you know, I referenced before, you know, expanding things out to reach a broader amount of people. So I have developed a 12-week course that is lower cost, a little less customized, but you know, for some people, maybe a good way to get started. Um, focusing on everything from having the right mindset to be successful in business development, especially for you professionals, you consultants, you attorneys, you accountants, how do we get you to try things that you're not used to trying or things that may not be comfortable, or you know, that sales is a four-letter word? To making sure that you've got the right plan in place. By the way, earlier this week, for the 28th year in a row, did a goal setting program looking at not only the next year, the next five years. Anybody who is interested in getting that, just hit us up in the comments on LinkedIn. I'll be happy to send you a link to that program. But part of it is making sure that you've got the right goals in place and that you've got the right action plan to make sure that you're getting in front of enough opportunities. And then the last piece that we talk about is how do we develop more urgency, shorten that time from first conversation to getting a yes or a no? So it's once a week. It'll be Tuesdays, 12 o'clock Eastern, 9 o'clock Pacific, one hour once a week for those who want a little bit more. There will be small group coaching to role play, to practice, to strategize opportunities for those who want even more than that. There will be once a month one-on-one coaching as well as getting a sales assessment. So if anybody is interested in more information, just look out for my post for post from the sales and marketing playbook with information about that upcoming program with a link to be able to register, or again, just drop something in the comments and we'll get some information out too.

SPEAKER_01:

And the reason why that's so important is it was a little selfish in which I said it. Evan and I have gone together and we've been together for so many years that we're creating a program that allows you to have the marketing and the sales together, right? So some companies who are not sure what they need, you need both, but we've created a program that allows you to get the best of both worlds right, the right way. And that's what we're going to really be pushing out in 26. Um, it's going to have elements of his sales program because we use every bit of his sales program in how we market. And this is how the two entities come together. He has a cookbook. We apply those cookbook principles to our marketing program so that we have a better idea of how to market you better. It's not just a solo thing and I do work on my own. No, no, no. I need that information so that I have a better idea how to push the marketing information out to your audience based off of your goals.

SPEAKER_02:

And when both work together, uh, and you and I have talked about this, but just in in the last couple of weeks, um, and typically, you know, for me in my business, if I'm you know on the corporate side bringing in you know 10 to 15 new clients over the course of a year, it's going to be a really good year. Well, within the last couple of weeks, three qualified leads came in because Craig designed the website. Craig designed it so that you know the right people are coming to it on all three within a two-week time period, went from first conversation. For two of them went from first conversation to sign deal. For the third one, now speaking at a group with 20 different companies in the technology sales space, all because the right marketing drove the right people to the website, which then led them to do a call to action, was what which was to reach out and schedule an appointment. And then having a good process to qualify or disqualify opportunities will very quickly get you to, you know, is this a good fit? If it's not, that's okay. If it is, we're gonna talk through next steps. So that's why it's so important for the two to work together. And that's also why it's important to work with different firms that stay in their lane and provide the expertise and work well with others, versus that person who tells you, I'm gonna do your marketing, I'm gonna do your sales, oh, by the way, you have a CRM, I'll try to figure out how to set that up for you too. And wait a second, you need this other thing, customer. A jack of all trades typically means that they're not expert in any of them. That's right. So that's why it's so important, whether you decide to hire an outside consultant, whether you are going and just looking for additional resources, that you're finding the right people to help fix the right problems. Otherwise, you're just not going to achieve the goals.

SPEAKER_01:

And all of that stuff is where Evan and I expert are experts at. We are experts at different strategies in different industries. I know that he has a specific focus, and I have a specific focus in terms of who we target. But the reality is that our services are agnostic to almost any industry because the reality is that we both help put the foundation in place and we build upon that. So look for that in 26. I think that it's going to be another great year for us both. I think that we're going to continue to produce the playbook and put you guys in positions to understand that the we are bringing you the playbook, we're giving you the plays to be successful in business. Uh, Evan, as we do with all of our guests, three goals for 26 that you wanted to impart upon them.

SPEAKER_02:

So, first, let's start at the beginning. Make sure you have a goal. How much revenue do you want to do? If you're somebody who's got ongoing business, ongoing clients, how much revenue was already booked to give you what the gap is. And let's determine how many new engagements, how many new clients, how many new products or services need to be sold to hit the goal so that now we have something that we can work with in terms of developing a plan. Second, I always find that for me personally in my business, for a lot of my clients, the past is a good predictor of the future. So look back through all of the business that you brought in this year. Where did it come from? If it came from a marketing campaign, what campaigns had the best hit rate? If it came from networking, where did you go? What associations? If it came from clients, what is your strategy in terms of proactively asking for referrals? So that's to look at what's worked so that you can figure out what you should be doing more of as we get into the new year and what you should be cutting because it didn't work. And the last thing to keep in mind is keep your pipeline full. The more full your pipeline is, the easier it is to qualify or disqualify in the right way. It's when there's not many opportunities in your pipeline that you tighten up, that we don't want to let things go, and we end up spinning our wheels and wasting our time. So again, it may be counterintuitive, but even when your pipeline is light, it's okay to disqualify opportunities because otherwise you're just going to spin your wheels and waste your time.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So those would be my tips. What are a couple marketing tips that you want to leave leave our audience with? Sure.

SPEAKER_01:

One, simplify. Too many options in marketing leads to no decision at all, right? Or find somebody else that has the better decision. This the simplest solution that you can come through and get them to understand that's what you do is the best option always. Always simple, always wins. Two, make sure there's cohesion in your marketing. Your social media shouldn't say something different than your website that says something different from your emails, which says something different than what you're telling people on the street. That all has to coordinate. And again, another process that we got from the same pollen performance group is you got to make sure that all of that stuff is operating together because you never know which platform people get introduced to you by. And then if they combine it with meeting you in person and it's two different things, oh, I thought you were doing this, but you're really doing that. That's how you instantly lose credibility, that's how you instantly lose trust, and that's very important. The third, and you know me, Evan, data, data, data. And if I forget, it's data. The data that you have produced among all those platforms, whether it be social, email, whatever it might be, gives you a roadmap of where you need to improve, where the leads came from, came from someplace originally. The data will tell you if you process it right. And if you have the data and it's telling you the right metrics, it'll help us hit the numbers on the cookbook that we're going to talk about for sure in 26 because it's that important. And so now with the data's in place, you read the data appropriately, you're having somebody translate it for you appropriately, you will understand exactly how the type of clients you're getting. And there's a great chance that that data will tell you to change your ICP of who you're really targeting because we want the more success to hit the numbers, which means we have to hit more people who like what we do. And if you've done it for X number of people in the industry, but you're really pushing to two people in the industry, it makes no sense, right? So common sense suggestions in 26 will help you guys thrive. And again, because we're the playbook, we're giving you the plays. This is exactly what you need to do. Just follow the play, and you will be successful.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

So again, in 25, we're rounding out this show. I'm Craig Andrews, my man Evan Poland, and we'll see you guys for growth next year on the playbook. Talk to you soon.

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