Spiraling Up — Marketing For Professional Services

Would You Rather: B2B Sales Edition + Is Marketing Attribution Real? with Amy Franko

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How do High Growth professional services firms go to market today? Download the 2025 High Growth Study to find out: https://www.hingemarketing.com/highgrowth

In this episode of Spiraling Up, we discuss whether marketing attribution is a myth, inspired by Sherehan Ross’ hot take on LinkedIn which sparked a debate about revenue as a marketing KPI. 

Then, we welcome author, speaker, and sales strategy expert Amy Franko to play a game of ‘Would You Rather: Sales Edition.’ In this fun, gameshow style interview, we explore sales team dynamics, the importance of integrating technology, and practical tips for professional services marketing. In this fun-filled segment, you’ll hear whether Amy would rather…

  • measure a marketing team’s performance based on revenue or a combination of core funnel KPIs?
  • lead a team that excels in traditional sales tactics but is resistant to change, or a team that's adaptable but less experienced?
  • focus on selling to established industries or emerging markets?
  • have a salesperson who talks excessively and doesn't effectively listen to the client's needs or one who is too passive and fails to proactively guide the client through the sales process?
  • enhance your sales team’s expertise in traditional sales methods or in new technologies such as AI and automation?


BONUS: At the end, we do a rapid-fire ‘lightning’ round with Amy to see how many questions she can answer in 5-minutes.

Connect with Amy Franko on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyfranko/
Visit Amy Franko’s Website: https://amyfranko.com/

Austin McNair:

In today's episode of Spiraling Up is marketing attribution a myth Our team is going to discuss and then we're playing. Would You Rather? With sales and strategy expert, Amy Franco. Thanks for being here with us everyone. This is spiraling up with Hinge. All right. Welcome to Spiraling Up the podcast where professional services, marketing comes to life. Our goal here is clear. We are creating engaging, interactive segments, covering the latest marketing stories. I. And providing honest, actionable insights for marketers and business leaders. my name is Austin and I'm joined by my co-host, Mary Blanche and Joe Mary Blanche. How are you doing today?

Mary Blanche:

Doing good. Doing good. How are you guys doing is the real question. Um. Know you both have new babies in the house. Who's getting more sleep?

Joe Pope:

Yeah. Austin, how much did you get last night?

Austin McNair:

Uh, not as much as I would've wished. We've actually, our baby has been, I would say, spectacular sleeper. Um, which, you know, blessings, knock on wood. Do every, you know, I don't want to get in the middle or mess any of that up. But, yeah. Uh, last night might've been a little bit of a harder night. Not gonna let that affect our episode, though. How about yourself? You doing all right?

Joe Pope:

last night was rough, but I would, I would say we're pretty much in alignment on, overall pretty good, pretty solid. Maddie is, uh, just learning how to babble though, and when you learn a new skill, I believe the idea is that you'll just constantly do it at all hours of the night, in which case, uh, she and I had a one-way conversation, mostly her talking to me from the bassinet.

Austin McNair:

That's really funny that you said that because actually, uh, our girl started the babbling thing too, like as of yesterday. So, and for, those who don't know, Joe and I, our little girls are like, is it like less than a week apart? About a

Joe Pope:

or six days I think. Maddie was the last baby born in 2024 at the hospital. Uh, so we were, we were last of the alphas is what we were calling her. I think it's generation Alphas,

Austin McNair:

Wait, so was it It was actually New Year's Eve, right?

Joe Pope:

That's right. Yeah. we watched college football from the, uh, delivery room. Not my choice. My wife is a huge Penn State fan, so she, she wanted it on the TV and I wasn't gonna deny her anything.

Austin McNair:

See that's very memorable information. That's how, you know I'm a little bit sleep deprived.'cause I remember that. And our girl was born on January 2nd, so it was, it was like three days apart. So I feel like we're, we're like tracking, uh, completely together here and kind of our experiences and be anything going on in your world, anything new.

Mary Blanche:

Well, I was just, uh, you guys saying the dates. My niece was born on the third,

Austin McNair:

wow.

Mary Blanche:

a girl. So yeah, I just got that from St. Louis to, to meet her for the first time, so

Joe Pope:

Oh, baby cuddles.

Mary Blanche:

Yeah, baby guts.

Austin McNair:

great. All right, well, I know we've got a great episode in store today. Why don't we turn to today's pivotal story?

Mary Blanche:

All right, let's do it. So today we're gonna be tackling a recent LinkedIn post gone viral by Shehan Ross. Uh, fractional marketing leader at Digital Bricks Marketing, and a shout out goes to our colleague Keely, who's the one that actually shared the original post with the three of us in the first place. But it's a topic that clearly struck a nerve with many marketers. The hot take being that revenue is not. A marketing KPI. The posts go on to say that, you know, while marketing can be a driver of revenue, its sole function is not to drive revenue, it's to drive demand. So this kind of more radical take on revenue as a marketing KPI sparked quite a debate in the comment section around what should we as marketers be focusing on and what really does define success. For marketing teams. Um, so y'all, I want you to give it to us straight here between the two of you. You know, you both covered the full spectrum of all things marketing, MBD, so awesome. Let's start with you.

Austin McNair:

Yeah. Well, I love this. This is a great find. Um, and exactly the kind of topics that we want to cover in Pivotal stories. What I can say is that there are a lot of marketers out there that agree with share hands. Post. Um, and actually we have research that backs it up. In our most recent edition of the high growth study, we, we asked, um, I. Survey participants to rate themselves on a scale of one to 10 in how proficient they felt like their organization was. In both capturing and then using marketing and business development data and going into this research, I think we kind of suspected that this was gonna be a challenge. That's why we wanted to measure it, but we totally did not like comprehend the degree to which this would be a challenge. More or less. Three out of four, marketers told us that they would rate themselves as low proficiency. So under a six, if we were rating on a scale of one to 10 under six, three out of four said, yeah, we just don't have it. It's not in the bag and we followed up with those people and and we got all the usual answers like. We don't have time. Our technology, is old or it wasn't integrated properly, but there was a handful of people that were just like, yeah, it's not important. we just don't think that it's gonna be valuable to measure, marketing attribution, that it's just not as as important. Now, I don't think that Shahan was. Saying completely that it was unimportant. I think her perspective, like many marketers is that, hey, as marketers, our job is not just to drive revenue for the company, it's to drive other things. Like you mentioned MB demand, to Draw awareness to our brand, to nurture clients. and, and there's, you know, a bigger conversation there. but you know, when we have conversations with leadership, oftentimes, We wanna know about revenue. and I think a lot of marketers are, you know, have their backs put up against the wall.'cause I think a lot of them say like, marketing attribution is so hard. Maybe it is a myth. so I, I'm curious, and b, what, what, what are your thoughts, you know, and takeaways going into this is.

Mary Blanche:

Yeah, I mean, I think attribution is, is key really. I mean, it's, it's so important to really understand the role each of your channels. Play in the sales funnel so you can get a clear picture of not only what's working, but also what you know, what's not working and you know, are you investing your energy, your budget into your time, into the strategies that are gonna provide the best ROI. attribution also alone, it doesn't tell you the full story either. And that's where, one KPI we haven't really talked about yet is. looking at client lifetime value to understand the total revenue that you can expect from a client over the entire duration of your relationship with them. Because when you can, when you can shift your mindset, and, and it really is a mindset shift from, you know, looking at that immediate. Revenue that you're generating, client lifetime value encourages you to think about that full life cycle of the customer and how you can build those stronger, longer lasting relationships. in terms of what should marketing teams be. Focusing on. So back to the original question, it's really that attribution and that client lifetime value together. Um, you know, neither standalone, they're very interconnected, right? Attribution, helping you to, to understand where to focus your marketing efforts, and then client lifetime value then helps you measure the true value of those efforts over time.

Joe Pope:

It is a fun topic for you and IMB especially, right Uh, being partners in a small business that sells marketing services. So I think we live on both sides of this issue every single day. I mean, as a business owner, I would, I would love it if clients didn't really hold us accountable to things like direct ROI. I mean, we help many clients get these types of things done. But you know, marketing is a test constantly. You're always having to adjust and make modifications, changes, learn lessons, and so forth. And if the only thing that somebody cares about is ROI, well. You'll miss out on a lot of the important details and insights that can lead to performance, to drawing demand, to creating visibility. Um, you know, I think one of the interesting things, especially for the three of us when we talk about something like this, you know, Austin, I. Uh, runs hinges marketing, but he's a marketing expert who works with our clients, but he also runs hinges marketing. Uh, I typically lead most of our sales and business development efforts, and Mary Blanche started as a project manager back in the day and is now drawing and leading our operational side of the house. So we really do kind of cover the entire business spectrum. Uh, just kind of interesting to kind of hear how you guys have. Talk this through, but from the BD sales guy perspective, as somebody who listens constantly to folks saying, well, what can I expect? Right? What am, what am I going to get from my marketing? What are those different elements? The first thing I do is I, I bring up an illustration that shows the various ways of which we can measure success. You know, we talk about the marketing funnel, visibility at the top. Engagement, drawing and nurturing and developing demand in the middle and then at the bottom opportunity. Uh, so when we get that MQL, how many of them can turn into something that allows us to hopefully sell into them and so forth. But, uh, nope. I, I gave that kind of marketing pitch. Now let's continue the business owner perspective. If our marketing isn't working, you know, a year or two, those types of things go down the line and you're not necessarily seeing the results of all this effort and expense, that's not acceptable either, right? So another great way of thinking of how to measure. Marketing success across the board is to pair leading and lagging indicators or KPIs together. So when I say leading indicator, I mean something that's designed to predict future outcomes. You know, pipeline, for example. Uh, and lagging indicators. That's something along the lines of, Hey, let's look and see what was our billable numbers the last 12 months. So that's a performance metric, but you can actually pair these two different things together. Uh, so an example of pairing would be marketing qualified leads, elements that have been driven by direct marketing efforts, and then revenue from new clients. So we're gonna remove out the larger revenue picture of reoccurring revenue and so forth. Uh, another could be something along the lines of if. We're trying to look more towards existing relationships. We could talk about clients' digital engagement. So how many of your clients are going to your webinars? How many of your clients are reading your emails? You know how many clients are completely willing to answer a survey you may potentially put out, compare something like that to your retention rate, so your efforts designed to nurture and maintain your relationships. So a real good discussion here. Uh, I think I. Sharon that, I mean, she obviously struck a nerve and uh, that's the best kind of content on LinkedIn'cause who wants to read another boring post? Uh, and I, I think it's just a fun one for us to discuss as a team.

Austin McNair:

so much for for us to, to unpack here. Um, great stuff. MB uh, Joe, I am so excited for our next segment. We have a great guest. Her name is Amy Franco. We're gonna tell you a little bit about her, in a moment. But before we get to that segment, guys, we bring it up every episode at this point, because it is in the middle of our conversations with our great guests. It is at the center of our pivotal stories. What am I talking about? I'm talking about hinges high growth study research, and we've mentioned it before. We'll mention it again. You can get this free executive summary. Right now at www.hingemarketing.com/ high-growth. This is the 10th year in a row that we have done this research on professional services marketing to try to understand what are the fastest growing companies doing. I can tell you one thing, some of the stuff that the fastest growing companies we're doing 10 years ago is not the same, as what they're doing today. So if you haven't yet. Go high growth study hinge marketing do com slash high growth. Okay. Well, we'd like to now, welcome to the podcast today's guest, Amy Franco. Amy Franco is a leader in modern sales strategies. She helps mid-market organizations to grow sales results through sales strategy, advisory, and skill development programs. Her book, the Modern Seller, is an Amazon bestseller, and she is recognized by LinkedIn as one of the top sales voices. Welcome to Spiraling Up, Amy. How are you doing today?

Amy Franko:

I am Great. Thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

Austin McNair:

Absolutely we're, we're really looking forward to it as well. Now, Amy, we've crossed paths in a few different places. I think. Uh, one of those is, uh, the Association for Accounting Marketing. I know that you've been involved in that association. You've spoken at their summit as well. we were just wondering like what other places have, maybe we crossed paths or what was your involvement with aim? I, I know you have a lot of experience with working with professional services firms at B2B firms.

Amy Franko:

Yeah, and it's interesting. I'm not like, I don't have a professional like accounting background by trade. I found my way into this space. You know, later in my career I got my start in technology and so for the first 10 years of my career I worked for, um, IBM and Lenovo. I was a quota carrying salesperson. And then I, I took a pivot into entrepreneurship, oh gosh, like 17 years ago now, and got into the learning and development space and spent quite a bit of time there. And then over the past decade or so, I brought together like everything I love about sales, sales, leadership, learning and development. And, uh, what that looks like today is, um, I found a home in professional services. So I actually spend a lot of time in professional services, public accounting and advisory, other types of professional services, working with their firm leaders, up and coming firm leaders on everything from sales and growth strategy to, uh, business development skills.

Austin McNair:

Amy, what could you tell us real quick? Just like how did you land on a focus with, uh, with mid-market clients? Because at Hinge that's something that we found as well. I mean, we work with firms of all sizes, but definitely there's a lot of those mid-market players that I think where there's a lot of opportunity and we're wondering kind of like, you know, how did you find that as kind of one of your specialized areas as well?

Amy Franko:

I, I think I landed on mid-market because I was fortunate enough to win some clients in that mid-market space. And what I found was I really resonated with. direct access to all the leaders in the organization and um, being able to work more closely with a lot of the firm leaders and the people coming through my programs, that is what really has helped me to say this is a great space for me to be in. And not to say that if larger organizations don't come calling, like certainly I would always welcome those conversations, but I have just found that that mid-market space is a great sweet spot. They're large enough that they have what, you know, we all offer and they need it, but they aren't so large that they've built all of that capacity in house. And so we've just fit in that great spot for them.

Joe Pope:

Enough to be dangerous, but not necessarily get it all taken care of. Amy, what are some, uh, what are some other industries that you feel, uh, outside of the accounting one? I know you referenced professional services. Any other industries that you typically find yourself gravitating to in that mid-market Sweet spot.

Amy Franko:

Yeah. Um, so, you know, other professional services might be like IT consulting, management, consulting, things of that, that nature. But also I have clients that are in the manufacturing space. I have some that are in the, um, I'll call it the FinTech space, which kind of then gets into kind of towards my roots in technology. But those are probably the other industries that I spend the most time in. But in terms of, you know, we think about outbound marketing and outbound relationship building. A lot of my time is spent in the professional services and accounting space.

Joe Pope:

Well That's that must be music to the ears of anyone listening to this podcast because of, and honestly, Amy, a lot of those are industries that our content is angled towards, and I think there's gonna be some nice crossovers here, especially as we get into the game we have planned, I.

Austin McNair:

That's right. Yeah. let's turn to our, our segment, Amy. Um, one thing that we like to do when we talk to experts like yourself is to. Kind of set up a couple of, uh, dilemmas for you to think about, right? Oftentimes marketing leaders, business leaders, like things aren't just black and white, right? There's these kind of situational dilemmas that have us choosing one thing or another. And, what we'd like to do is involve you and bring you into this, you know, classic form of this game. Would you rather, so, Amy, in our segment, we are gonna give you some tough either or decisions that sales leaders and professionals out there might be grappling with today. So we'd like to hear which way you'd choose, and then maybe hear some of your experiences and stories working with professional services leaders and maybe how this intersects with some of your perspectives on, on, on the space. So you, you down and up for it.

Amy Franko:

I am up for it and just for anybody watching and listening, these have not been planted, so I actually don't know what they're going to ask me, so this is gonna be very entertaining. Let's do it.

Austin McNair:

That's awesome. mb our first question is, uh, I think related to a little bit of what our conversation was a little bit earlier on the episode. Do you want to tee us up for our first, would you rather.

Mary Blanche:

All right, Amy, would you rather measure a marketing team's performance based on revenue or a combination of core funnel KPIs?

Amy Franko:

Ooh.

Mary Blanche:

I.

Amy Franko:

I would personally do core funnel KPIs because if we are focused on the right activities, and we're in agreement in the organization on what those activities are because they're high value, they're high value metrics, high value KPIs, high value activities. Should yield the leads that yield revenue. And I'm all, I look at the bottom line of profit. So not just revenue but profit, but I'd go with the second one so that we're focused on the right activities to lead to the right opportunities.

Joe Pope:

You, you said something that really resonated with me just there, Amy, which was that we're in alignment on, and so your space being in sales and, you know, obvi, we're, we're in the marketing realm primarily. what are, how, how do you come into that alignment? What, what are some of the ways that you've felt and, and as you talked to and you provided training to leaders, to, we all know marketing's important, especially professional services, but how do we come to alignment on what those performance metrics are?

Amy Franko:

Yeah. So maybe if I take it by, let's take it by like a service line, perhaps as an example, or an industry as an example.'cause that's maybe something concrete that we can all wrap our minds around My philosophy is that marketing activities and sales activities, they should be integrated. They are different, but they're both mission critical to being able to be successful. And that's something I'm seeing, um, change in professional services, public accounting, where, you have to have a marketing and a sales function. Take the people out of the equation, but just the roles in the, in the activities. So if I am leading an industry, I want to understand what, the revenue and profit goals of that industry segment are. And then I want to talk to marketing leaders and sales leaders on how we can all come to an agreement on what the right measurements are. I'm a big fan of less is more, and then what the right activities are that will put us in the best position to create opportunities.

Austin McNair:

One thing I'm thinking about as, as you're talking through that is I can't tell you how many clients that we work with where there is some sort of misalignment between what the marketing team says they're doing and you know, leadership still feeling like having this big, broad, disconnect of like understanding like why, why are we doing this again? Why are we spending so much on, on Google ads right now? Why are we paying for this conference every year? Like, I don't know what we're getting out of it. and so this is like Amy one, one of the things we've measured recently, from our annual high growth study is that we've identified that, Generally professional services firms are really weak when it comes to, capturing and using business development and marketing metrics. I'm wondering if you have any stories to share about, you know, a client you've worked with where you kind of got the sense that the firm leadership was like totally disconnected from what the marketing team was doing, did you think it was kind of on that topic of attribution and like they just weren't getting the right data, that the marketing team wasn't making a compelling case for the work they were doing? Or was it actually like Yeah, there just wasn't enough happening that, at the company in terms of the marketing.

Amy Franko:

Yeah, I'm thinking of a couple of examples where, um, one of the biggest culprits was language and. The language of the business and what the business wants to accomplish versus the language and the activities of marketing. So many times what I see, especially when people are really, they're, they're technical and they are really brilliant at their particular craft in this, in this case, marketing. It's being able to take the technical aspects of it and be a translator to why it matters to the business, and being able to use language that is business oriented, results oriented versus technically oriented. That's a misalignment that I see really often. And then the other misalignment that I see is the confusion of activities to results. So I think Google ads or just, just social in general is an arena where. It's likes and impressions and reactions don't always align to creating tangible opportunity, and that's another misalignment that I see happen pretty frequently.

Joe Pope:

one of the key takeaways from our earlier discussion was kind of the combination of leading and la lagging indicators and how they can potentially be meshed together. I think that one you just provided is a, is a great example, right, where it's, if you, sure it's working, we're getting impressions, but at the end of the day, six months, seven months down the line, we still haven't seen revenue from that. There's clearly a disconnect in how that can then translate forward.

Amy Franko:

Well, I think you just hit on a point, which is the other disconnect is the time to measure. How much time, how much time do we allow ourselves to measure something before we, um, pivot off of it. I was actually, ju you just reminded me of a client I was talking to a couple weeks ago and one of the activities I asked them to bring to our conversation was, I want you to do an analysis. It doesn't have to be heavy handed of your sales activities. This could also be done for marketing activities, but what activities actually produce. A return IE opportunities, something's closed, whatever, and which ones are not bringing you any value. And I want you to bring a list of those so that we could make some decisions about which ones are gonna go as we oftentimes hang on to things. Because at some point they were budgeted for and somebody said this was a great idea. Right? I see a lot of head nods here. And we give ourselves too much runway before we, um.

Austin McNair:

Yeah. And I, I mean, I know anecdotally I've, I've met a lot of marketers where it's like a particular partner at a company has like an emotional stake in a certain activity. And it's like, well, I mean, we're not sure it's quite the best fit as the marketing team, but hey, you know, this guy has a lot of influence. we, you know, we gotta let him go to his golf tournament or something. I don't

Joe Pope:

There it is.

Austin McNair:

Joe, I'm not talking about Joe, by the way. Uh, I'm not talking about Joe, by the way. I think we could talk about this topic all day, but I wanna make sure we get to some of our other questions. We've got some other good ones here, Amy, uh, and B, what's our next, would you rather.

Mary Blanche:

Yep. All right. So Amy, for second, would you rather, uh, would you rather. lead a team that excels in traditional sales tactics but is resistant to change? Or a team that's adaptable but they're less experienced?

Amy Franko:

Adaptable and less experienced. All day, every day. in the first scenario, there's no guarantee that even when, even when somebody has skills in like the traditional selling and, and foundational selling is important, but if there's no adaptation, you're going to get passed by. At a certain point, I'd rather have a team that's adaptable and a little bit less experienced, and maybe they haven't developed too many bad habits yet. That can be, um, you know, that that can be, that can be capitalized on. I'll take enthusiasm and adaptability all day.

Joe Pope:

You mentioned bad habits. Let's talk through some of those.

Amy Franko:

Oh, yes. Uh, where, where shall we start? Um, Probably one of the most challenging. Bad habit to, um, to reverse is when you've accomplished success and you've enjoyed success, and you have created a degree of success, say with your current client base, I think this is very true in all professional services. You've accomplished it with your client base, and that has now become like a run rate in an, in an expected outcome each and every year. And then all of a sudden, because you have gotten yourself kind of lulled into this groove, all of a sudden a competitor comes in and takes out your run rate business or the client's business has changed significantly and you know, for things that are beyond outside of your control, and now all of a sudden the success that you've had is now a liability. And if you aren't adaptable and you haven't been thinking about that all long now your success is, is a liability.

Joe Pope:

Yeah. Amy, the marketing equivalent to this is when folks come to us and they, uh, they, they're looking for marketing strategy. They're looking for help in identifying what the right tactics are. And then when we talk about the advantages of bringing research into this, pers like this larger perspective, of course hinge. We have research that we can bring to the table, but we don't know your ideal client like this client A, that's gonna provide you with the best, uh, lifetime value. Things along those lines. And we bring up the idea of research. And one of the first things that sometimes we'll hear is, well, I know my clients, I'll just tell you what they said. I'll tell you, they know I know my clients really well and, uh, you know, I play golf with'em, making fun of golf earlier. But, uh, the, the ability for them to then understand that things change and competitors change and reality changes, technology changes. We saw AI pop up as a big concern, uh, across professional services in our latest high growth study. And, and how it's gonna be incorporated in these things are what may mean that sure, you might know your client to a C level, C plus level, but if you really want the a, you really wanna understand what it looks like. Sometimes asking questions from a impartial third party can really provide great benefits and, and so I just resonated really closely to, as you were talking that through.

Amy Franko:

I think that that last comment about the outside perspective becomes really important and it's, um, this is less a like a sales or marketing habit, but just more of a general habit if for anybody who's in a decision making capacity in their organization, or maybe you have influence. If we swing the pendulum one way or the other too far, it becomes really a challenge. Like if, if we send everything to the outside. That's a challenge because we don't maintain our own thought processes, if you will, our own internal intellectual capital. But if we do everything ourselves, which is a lot, that that's typically the other end of the pendulum, that people, that organizations are most prone to where they try to do everything themselves with no outside perspective, then all of a sudden everything's passed them by and they're wondering why.

Joe Pope:

You, you mentioned something earlier as well in terms of foundational sales, right? Uh, if you can get that team of, they've got some level, some foundational experience, but they're eager and they're ready to learn and they're ready to adapt and grow, uh, what are some of the foundations that you typically really like to see, uh, that you can build on quickly?

Amy Franko:

Yeah. So, um, if I were to point to. I'd say two or three things from a sales standpoint, but that also really tie to marketing. There's probably no shortage of activities that we could do for marketing or sales, but if we're really gonna hone in on things that are foundational, that create opportunity and drive revenue and drive profit, it's, um, prospecting, which is being out in the community, out in the marketplace, whatever that looks like for you, where you are meeting new people, cultivating new relationships, and ultimately cultivating new opportunities, which is where marketing and can of course, be a huge help with that, that, that, that strategy. There's, um, active sales conversations. So we need to be having conversations with prospective clients and current clients about what's happening in their organization and ideally uncovering opportunities to help them. And then it's actively presenting, um, proposals, engagements, solutions to those clients, something that somebody with authority makes a decision over that ideally is a yes, if it's a right fit, that we could move on if we paid attention to those three things. And if marketing and sales came together to focus on those three things, we'd get further faster. And then of course, there's other things we can focus on, but those are three of the basics to put time and attention to.

Joe Pope:

And, and so for the less experienced folks, having just some amount of experience in those three presents you with kind of the, the channels to build into. Right. I'm, I'm, that's how I'm, how I'm hearing this.

Amy Franko:

Absolutely. And if you have a team that's younger and maybe, or just maybe less experienced, let's say, um, it's that first one, being out in the community and talking to people, building relationships. Maybe you're partnered with somebody who is more experienced. Maybe it's a partner in your firm. Maybe it's somebody who, um, has a business development role in your firm. There's any number of ways to do that, but just being out and getting into the habit of meeting people, building your network, having conversations. If you're gonna start somewhere with a less experienced individual or team, that's a great place to start.

Joe Pope:

Yeah. That's great. That's great insight. I

Mary Blanche:

I think that's a really good point too, especially for younger people and kinda how we've come out of Covid. They don't have they don't have that prior experience of what it was like getting out there and having that networking and, you know, building that rapport, um, with different people, partnerships, they, they don't have. That, so like really starting them out and making that a priority and, and teaching them early, getting them out there. That's, that's good advice.

Amy Franko:

I have one client and, and marketing plays a role in this. I have one client where, um, they do things like, uh, research calls. They do, uh, ride-alongs where that does give people the opportunity to spend real time, um, understanding client challenges or being out with somebody in the field who has that business development experience. And that is actually a function of, um, marketing and sales together.

Austin McNair:

All right, so Embi, what's our next, uh, would you rather.

Mary Blanche:

All right, next, would you rather, all right, would you rather focus on selling to established industries or emerging markets?

Amy Franko:

Ooh, okay. I personally love emerging markets like that. That is like my, I, I enjoy being out in new places and building new relationships and finding new opportunity. So I'm answering that from my perspective. If I were to answer that from a, like a client base perspective, I would go, I would go the, um, the former route, looking at your existing clients, and here's why. 70% of an organization's revenue typically comes from run rate business and existing clients, and about 30% roughly will come from net new logos coming into your organization. It is less of an opportunity cost for your firm to maintain your run rate and find new opportunities in your existing client base and then augment that with new opportunities like new pipeline, new net, new logos. So, um, so if I answer that from the client perspective, I'd, I'd go with the first one. And first sho, make sure you're shoring up existing clients and finding those new opportunities in your existing clients. Protect your downside and grow that. Grow the existing base while also augmenting.

Joe Pope:

You did say you were an entrepreneur, so I do understand that the natural tendency is to go to the emerging market. What, what are some of the, what are some of the other excitement factors there? Right. So when you, when you look at emerging markets, uh, and in that entrepreneurial mindset, what, what are you typically kind of wanna see before you jump into it or target it or go to that event? Uh, that really will, uh, key to your interest.

Amy Franko:

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, think about it for myself. I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer that from how I might counsel my clients on that, because how I might do it might be a little bit different than what, than like a, than a client might. I think this is where marketing can play a really significant role in an emerging market. Because there's a lot, to your earlier point about research, there's a lot of research that can be, gathered, analyzed about an emerging market, the total addressable market, the solution market for you. All, all the things that like you hear in startup, startup language, how it might be funded. Like, are you go, is the firm gonna self-fund it? Are you going to look for maybe outside investment, which is probably a whole other, uh, conversation. But I would leverage marketing if I were considering an emerging market for all that research piece. And then once I've done that and I figure out what my metrics are, then I'm going to look for what are my best opportunities to experiment in this market that are low risk. But help me to understand what our position could be in the market.

Austin McNair:

If we go back to that, um, established industry side, right. Which I think for when you were talking about how you would kind of advise your clients directly, that's you, you'd lead'em in that direction. Are there any like pitfalls there that like you just see over and over again when you, when you start a new engagement with some of your clients, what are some of the common things that you see in terms of like that run rate and those, those core central clients that are being neglected by, by teams?

Amy Franko:

I would say there are probably two things I see the most often. The first is, and this kind of goes into the camp of assuming that you're, you'll continue to get the same business over and over, is lack of a of strategic account planning. So if you look at your top, you know, say 20% of your clients, the chances are really good. They account for a significant portion of your business. It's that, that old 80 20 rule, right? and one thing that I see lacking often is no, uh, strategic plan for maintaining and growing that client. Relationships change. People move in and out of organizations and many times clients, um. They get stuck because they've lost a key relationship that maybe they weren't paying attention to. Maybe that person left the organization. So it's that account planning. And then second, and this is probably a little bit more on the tactical side, and probably something that marketing and sales could do together, which is, um, We get used to selling the services that we, that we're already doing, but it does take that proactive approach to get into the organization, to find other problems to solve. And sometimes we don't do it because we don't feel confident with who to talk to and what questions to ask and how to conduct those conversations. If we can we correct the code on that and have a proactive approach to it. That puts us in a much better position to find the project that's in it versus in finance or to find the, um, I don't know the, the marketing opportunity that we could help with because we're stuck in some other area of the business. So I see that pretty frequently.

Joe Pope:

This is a reason why we really lean towards a qualitative type of research when trying to develop the strategic plan that you were just talking about, Amy. Uh, and like you were saying, this is a strategic plan or research that's typically focused on the top types of clients. So your top 10, top 20, but by taking a qualitative perspective, interviews versus survey, for example, you have the opportunity to ask for more, right? Like you, you ask a question and they give you an answer. But you, you, you can listen in really closely, having experts who do these types of things all the time, uh, do interviews and research and, and start to pull those threads a little bit further. And the next thing you know, when you stretch it out, over 20 responses, 30 responses, 80% of those responses all pointed to this new technology. You may or may not have ever been thinking about, and then suddenly we have the basis for what might make sense for that next iteration or how we could potentially grow our own practices or you know, some of the larger folks, it's who are we gonna go and buy next in terms of bringing in skillsets,

Amy Franko:

And to play that thread out, you know, let's say that you do, you, you've, you've done that research and you've uncovered this pattern. We can't know everything about everything. Right? But if we, if we can understand the high level implications of something like that, and then have a couple of good questions to ask to frame up a conversation. I've, I've, I'm seeing this in the research. Let's talk about how this might be impacting you. Let's talk about what a next conversation could be. That's way different than feeling like you have to come in with all the answers.

Austin McNair:

All right. We got time for a couple more here before I got a surprise for us in a, in a minute, but I'm not gonna spoil it yet. Mb what's, what's our next, would you rather.

Mary Blanche:

All right. Let's see. would you rather. enhance your sales team's expertise in traditional sales methods or in new technologies such as AI and automation?

Amy Franko:

I'm gonna go with the former

Mary Blanche:

Okay.

Joe Pope:

Skills, not tech.

Amy Franko:

because it's, um, a little bit of background on myself. It's interesting coming from, from a technology background myself, how much I've always personally gravitated toward, in, leaned on the, what I'll call the more traditional aspects of selling, which is the relationship building aspects, conversational aspects versus using technology. However, um, I wish that, I wish that yes and could be an answer because, um, really smart sellers and marketers don't shy away from using technology. You can't not use it. Sometimes what happens is we feel overwhelmed by it or we have too many tools and therefore we're not effective with any of it. So I really like having the foundational skills that then tools and technologies the right ones can augment. So, for example, I myself love to use AI tools for, helping me with initial, um, like either background research or maybe, giving me some ideas for smart questions. But I never just rely on that. I use it and then I use it kind of as a starting point for the next work. So being able to blend tools, whether it's AI tools, it's things like, um, well in, in the sales world, you might use something like, um, sales navigator. You have your CRM, like what are the tools that can help you? But they can't become crutches.

Mary Blanche:

Yeah, and where you can, you know, over just having a bunch of siloed tools that you're using, like how can you integrate them with one another to create that kind of ecosystem of tools. So the data's all speaking to one another.

Amy Franko:

Right, right. And um, this data's probably a couple years old at this point, but at one point I think per sales professional, and this is not professional services specific, but upwards of$5,000 per sales professional on tools alone. Technology tools. So multiply that out by, you know, the staff that you have and I would offer that. Professional services probably has some similar types of numbers with all the tools that are available and professional services these days. And. You talk about like making an investment and coming all the way back around to ROI. It's not just events, ROI, but like the technology tools, ROI, how much are we putting out in financial investments every year versus like the meaningful usage of those tools?

Joe Pope:

Uh, hinge is not a pure, what you might call technology implementation partner, but we naturally have to get involved in discussing them with our clients based off of tracking of performance. And, uh, it is just how they are so ingrained, as you just said, Amy, and, and basically everything that professional services organizations are doing. But I will tell you the amount that have made these investments but aren't using them properly or just aren't using them at all, is astounding, right? Like it's gone from people that don't even have them to, they have them, but they just don't use them.

Amy Franko:

Mind boggling how much money is invested in these tools. I'm thinking about an example of for, for myself with a client where we were looking at using, um, a tool for a client organization. And a lot of times with, with that type of scenario, I will, um, tested out myself before using it or think about my own use cases. And we had started to go down the path of looking at a tool and then after some conversations and just understanding all the other tools in the organization, we decided not to do it because it was going to be a tool for the sake of having a tool. And they had other technologies already in the firm that would've gotten them a large percentage of the way. And if instead we invested in, if I worked with them on how to adapt what I was doing to using their tool, that was gonna be a much better solution for them.

Joe Pope:

we have a rule here at Hinge that we remain platform agnostic for that reason.

Amy Franko:

Mm-hmm.

Mary Blanche:

All right, we ready for our next? Uh, would you rather, this is kind of, this next one's kind of like a worse or or worse, but, um,

Joe Pope:

Would you not rather.

Mary Blanche:

yeah,

Amy Franko:

Two bad choices. Let's bring it

Mary Blanche:

Love it. Okay. So would you rather have a sales person who talks excessively and doesn't effectively listen to the client's needs, or one who is too passive and fails to proactively guide the client through the sales process?

Amy Franko:

I would take the former, the reason why I would take the first situation is if there's some really good, like raw skill to work with. And the challenge is just being, if the challenge is slowing down and listening and pausing, I can work with that. A leader can work with that and coach to that ideally, and then you can kind of dial it back a little bit versus the second scenario where you may have somebody that simply isn't, doesn't have the, like, the wiring for that. Like they're, so there might be some other, like if they're too timid, they're too passive, if they, there might be, there just might be a lot of hurdles to overcome

Mary Blanche:

I, I agree with you. Just hearing you talk through that. rationale. The first one is much more of a coachable

Amy Franko:

Yeah. And, and it really does come down to how coachable the person is. Um, there was some interesting research that was done, um, by, uh, Adam Grant in Wharton School of Business. And, um, this research is a few years old at this point, but I, I still think that the concepts are very relevant. He wanted to, um, explore who would be a more successful sales professional, someone who was more extroverted, which is your first example, or someone who is more introverted. And, you know, the, the wor the working theory was that somebody who was highly extroverted would be more successful as a seller. So, so after, after performing the research on, I think it was maybe 300, 300 plus sales professionals, the, the revelation that he came to, which was really interesting, was that most of us. Two thirds of us are neither extroverted nor introverted. We tend to fall somewhere on a scale, um, that he called being an ambivert. And I'm more on the extroverted side, but I still consider myself to be an ambivert. Um, but I'm, I lean toward being more extroverted. But if you are an ambivert, you tend to be a better listener. You tend to be more flexible. You tend to be able to read a, read a room because you're not so focused on what it is that you're going to say next, or talking or owning the conversation. So that, that's the danger of somebody who leans toward talking too much. But if they are a coachable individual, I would take that and I'd work with them and coach them and help them to build those skills in.

Joe Pope:

Uh, Amy, I, every, I completely just found myself nodding along to everything you kind of, that you were just saying. For somebody who is more introverted, and maybe we'll just say they're kind of in. a position where they have to sell, maybe it's a smaller client, for example, and, and if they're, if they're not gonna do it, then no one's gonna do it, then they're in a big, they're in a big challenge. What are some ways that you help. Train or see if you can help bring people out of their shells, for example, and, and, uh, bring it forward so they can just get to that level enough where they can, they can make the connections.

Amy Franko:

yeah, and that's probably a very real situation in a lot of firms where, um, yeah. Where you do, you do need to bring people along. And I've, and I've seen this in some of the firms that I've worked with, and sometimes it takes some time and, and patience and encouragement for somebody to kind of come out of their shell. I can think of at least one or two scenarios where, um, a lot of times when I'm working with my clients, we'll work together for a couple of years on business development, um, skills. And I remember after year one in one organization, we'll take a look and we'll evaluate who's come through the program and, and who would they like to continue investing in for a second year because it is an investment. And there were, there was at least one individual I can think of that it's like, man, it just really isn't, this doesn't really seem to be working. For this person because of all the things that you just mentioned, like really shy, really introverted, really struggled to speak in front of a group. But when, um, it came back around to coming through for a second year, this person raised their hand and said, I really want to do this. Like, I know that these are things that I need to work on, but I know I can work on them and I know I can get better and I'm committed to doing it, which is why I take somebody who's committed, you know, all day and that person came back through a second, a second year, and just watching this individual grow over that second year's time was amazing. Still, you know, still on the like quiet or shy side, but much more willing to take risk and much more willing to stand up in front of a group. Um, so I would encourage, you know, some patients, but with people who are raising their hands to say, I know I need to work on this. Let's figure out how, how to do that, and then work with them. I'd maybe work with them on what are some things that we can, what are some ways that you think you would like to step outta your comfort zone, and how can I help you to do that?

Austin McNair:

All right. Well Amy, this has been such a great conversation so far. Um, we've got about five minutes left, so what about a lightning round? Are you up for a, a lightning round with us, where we give you kind of the rest of our, would you rathers and we can see, uh, how many we can get through in the next five minutes?

Amy Franko:

All right, let's do it. I love it.

Austin McNair:

Well, we'll, we'll cue the timer and we'll maybe, you know, maybe we'll get some thunder and lightning music. I

Joe Pope:

We need some music in the background.

Austin McNair:

Yeah, we'll get. Some, bring some energy into it. Um, but you've, you've mentioned, you, you've been doing so great with, you know, this, this has been super insightful. I'm gonna go ahead and queue up the timer. Why don't we get going with this mb you got the prompts. Let's go. I.

Mary Blanche:

All right, let's do it. Okay. So first up, Exceptional written communication skills. or vocal communication abilities.

Amy Franko:

Exceptional written communication skills.

Mary Blanche:

Love it. Okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep going. We're gonna keep going here. It's a lightning round. Uh, existing clients or new prospects.

Amy Franko:

I love new prospects, but I would counsel my clients to pursue and grow existing clients right now.

Mary Blanche:

Love it. All right. Short term or long term sales targets.

Amy Franko:

Ooh, long-term sales targets, because short-term sales targets may not lead to long-term success.

Mary Blanche:

Yep. Yep. One high value deal with a potentially difficult client or staggered smaller phase deals with an established relationship.

Amy Franko:

The second, because no matter how much of a big deal that you land, if that client is really difficult, that could become an unprofitable, difficult client really quickly, and you could end up with a lot of morale and cultural problems in your organization.

Mary Blanche:

Oh, solid point. Yep. Yep. Um, okay. Uh, prioritize building deep relationships with existing clients or aggressively prospect for new leads.

Amy Franko:

Oh, I have to say both on this one. And here's why. Because I believe you can simultaneously build deep relationships and you have to prospect in your existing clients and you have to build across your clients. If you only have two or three relationships and an existing client, and this depends on client size, you could be, you could be at risk, um, of losing that client. So I would aggressively prospect in my existing clients, but you also have to, you have to keep that, that pipeline fresh. So I'm gonna have to say, I'm gonna have to say both on that one.

Joe Pope:

You can get one.

Mary Blanche:

yeah, yeah.

Joe Pope:

Yeah.

Mary Blanche:

No, I love the way you frame that too. All right. Um, focus on short-term sales targets or long-term client loyalty and advocacy.

Amy Franko:

Oh long-term client loyalty and advocacy because that will lead to more opportunity and they will introduce you into new prospective clients,

Mary Blanche:

you go. There you go. Okay. Compete primarily on price or focus on value added solutions and differentiation

Amy Franko:

value added solutions and differentiation because every price conversation is actually a value conversation. We just haven't figured out what that value is yet.

Mary Blanche:

Yep. Yep. All right. We got three more.

Amy Franko:

Alright.

Mary Blanche:

Prioritize individual sales performance or promote collaborative metrics tracking.

Joe Pope:

Oh. I can't say both. Now that we gave you

Amy Franko:

I know, right? I already used my Mulligan. Um. In professional services, I'm gonna go with collaboration because most professional services firms do have a collaborative approach to sales. In traditional selling organizations where you have quoted sales professionals, that's, they're automatically gonna be comped on individual performance.

Mary Blanche:

Yep.

Joe Pope:

an entire guide on that topic. Uh, so you, you took the hinge point of view on that as well.

Mary Blanche:

All right. Build an extensive network with softer ties or a smaller network of strong influencers.

Amy Franko:

Hmm. I'm gonna go stronger. Network with smaller network with strong influencers, especially as it relates to business development, because you can, um, I think you get more leverage out of that, but you can also add more value.

Mary Blanche:

Mm-hmm. Yep. All right, last one. Outreach over phone or email.

Amy Franko:

I'll tell you my tendency is outreach over email, which is probably what most people's tendency is. Um, I would offer to not let your tendency become a trap. If I can't pick two, that's what I'll offer.

Joe Pope:

I, I think everyone's gotten very reliant on email sometimes. Uh, but I mean, but it's also challenging. Sometimes we get people on the phone, right? We got busy days and so forth, but boy does it make things easier if you can get somebody on the phone.

Amy Franko:

yeah. Well, and back up to your first question where I didn't elaborate too much on written versus vocal communication, depending on where your strengths are. A very well written, like, well-crafted anything. can really open the door and then give you the follow up. So where your tendencies are building your strengths becomes really important,

Austin McNair:

That was right on time for five minutes, so

Joe Pope:

I tried to, I tried to drag it over.

Austin McNair:

Yeah. Joe kind of dragged us over the.

Amy Franko:

five minutes or less.

Austin McNair:

That was, that was awesome, Amy. Well, Amy, thank you so much for joining us on, uh, spiraling Up. We've had such a great time talking with you, learning from you, where can people learn more about you and, and get in touch with you?

Amy Franko:

Um, the first place is please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn, please, and please let me know that you heard me on this podcast. And then secondly, uh, Amy Franco com.

Austin McNair:

Excellent. Well, yeah, thank you so much. If, you know, if you're out there and you've just heard all that great stuff from Amy, absolutely do that. Go and connect with her. Uh, you can also find MB Joe, myself, we are also quite active on LinkedIn. and if you have any recommendations or suggestions for future episodes of Spiraling Up, then please send us a message. You can always email us at podcast@hingemarketing.com. There we can review your feedback as well. And don't forget, if you're still watching this, you're on YouTube, hit that like button subscribe. We're working hard to bring you great guests like Amy, great conversations on professional services, marketing and the like. And so, do us a favor, leave us a review. Like subscribe, all of that good stuff. And yeah, you're not allowed to say that. You're not allowed to tell people Fivestar. Yeah, we're gonna have to cut that. Just kidding. Well, everybody, on behalf of, uh, our team here at Hinge and, and our new friend Amy, such a great conversation. thank you for another great episode of Spiraling Up. Take care everyone.