polin-performance-group

Your Sales Team Decides Whether Marketing Pays Off

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 11:17:17 GMT

When a company tells me "marketing doesn't work," I usually find the leads were fine. What happened after the leads came in is the problem. On the latest Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed, Craig Andrews and I talked about ROI as a measurement of your whole revenue system, and a big part of that system sits with the sales team. If your sales process isn't built to follow up, qualify and close, you can spend a lot on marketing and have very little to show for it.

Know your numbers first

Most owners I meet have a goal: $1 million, $10 million, $100 million. Very few know what that goal means. How many clients? How many small, medium and large ones? How many proposals, final meetings and first meetings does it take?

That's what the revenue cookbook does. It breaks the goal down so you can track every week whether you're doing what it takes, instead of hoping you're close enough when October and November roll around. Once the bones are in place, you fill in how you'll get there: which campaigns, which associations, how much from renewals versus new business.

Follow up within two business days

The biggest leaky bucket I see isn't the webinar or the ad. It's the stack of business cards from the networking event or trade show sitting on a desk for a week, two weeks, a month.

My rule is simple. When I meet someone, I follow up within two business days. If someone says "we should talk," I get back to them the next day. After a trade show, I'm following up that Monday or Tuesday, unless we agreed on a different time.

Your prospects are just as busy as you are. Let a few weeks go by and they've forgotten the conversation. If you want to make yourself sick, add up the booth, the travel, the giveaways and the hourly cost of everyone who worked the event. Then let the follow-up slide. That's money down the drain, and it hurts your credibility too. If someone showed interest and you never called, what does that tell them about how you'll treat them as a client?

Be in the right rooms

The other mistake: showing up at the wrong events. Even if you do everything right, there may be no real prospects there.

One of my clients is a small to mid-sized construction management firm. They belonged to eight professional associations and were spending somewhere around $30,000 to $40,000 a year on them. We looked at each one: why they joined, how often they went, and whether it brought in clients, subcontractors or education they'd otherwise pay for. About two-thirds earned their keep. For the rest, the answer to "why did you join?" was "somebody suggested it a couple of years ago." We pruned three or four of them.

I do that exercise with my clients every year. Look at the money, but also the time. Time is the cost people forget.

Sell the problem you solve

Marketing can get you in front of the right person. If you then give the verbal brochure (here's what we do, here's our product), you lose them. People don't care what you do. They care whether you solve a problem for them: more money, less cost, an easier life. Focus on WIIFM, what's in it for me. If they don't get that, they'll treat you like a commodity and only buy if you're the cheapest. This is a core piece of our sales training .

Close rate and time in the pipeline

Once qualified leads are in the pipeline, watch two things: close rate and how long deals sit there. If the team isn't qualifying well, setting clear next steps and pushing for a decision one way or the other, either the close rate drops or a deal that should take two conversations takes five months.

Have the budget conversation early. Too many teams send a proposal or engagement letter without ever discussing price, then wonder why they're getting ghosted. Your people should be asking good questions and learning what will drive a decision, not just presenting. When that doesn't happen, the finger-pointing between sales and marketing starts, and the owner starts wondering whether they have the right people. Ongoing sales coaching is how we keep those habits in place.

Track where every opportunity comes from

I'm agnostic about which CRM you use, as long as you're tracking. For every opportunity I want to know where it came from, how long it was in the pipeline and what it closed for. That tells you whether you're bringing in the right clients, whether you have too many small ones, and whether you're selling a lot of a service that isn't very profitable.

It also shows you your best source. For me, that's referrals from really happy clients. They warm up the prospect before I ever talk to them, and my close rates go way up. Keep clients happy and retention pays you twice.

The bottom line

Track the numbers. Have a process. Have a system, and yes, some might call it a playbook, for what you need to do to hit your revenue goal. Sometimes an outside advisor spots the one or two small changes an owner is too close to see. If you want a second set of eyes on your pipeline, let's talk .

�� Watch or listen to the full episode on Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed .

Trust Comes Before the Sale: Leadership Lessons for Sales Teams

Sun, 04 Oct 2026 11:18:02 GMT

Every good sales process is built on the same thing: the prospect has to trust that you have their best interests at heart before they’ll buy. On the latest Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed, Craig Andrews and I talked with leadership coach Devi McFadden, and it was clear that the same rule applies inside your own company. Your team has to trust you before they’ll perform for you.

Mixed messages slow down your sales team

I asked Devi what happens when the owner or managing partner sends one message one day and a different one the next. Her answer: churn. People spend their energy trying to figure out what leadership wants instead of doing the work.

For a sales team, that shows up fast. Devi gave the example of salespeople who are having the conversations but not closing them, because they’re exhausted and pushing “good enough” out the door. If your team keeps hearing new priorities, your pipeline pays for it.

Earn trust by listening, not pitching

Craig asked Devi how she builds trust with a prospect for the first time. Her answer could have come out of one of our sales training sessions: be a listener. Listen to what they need, and be willing to help whether or not they ever become a client. Don’t get attached to what you think the answer looks like.

That’s the difference between a salesperson who gets used for free consulting and one who becomes a trusted advisor. People can tell when you’re there to serve them and when you’re there to close them.

Watch the leading indicators, not just the lagging ones

Devi described the lagging indicator of a leadership problem as attrition. By the time people are leaving, it’s late. The leading indicator is what your team keeps asking for. “If you’re hearing the same request from your employees over and over and over again, that’s an indication that there’s something that is not being met.”

Sales leaders can apply that directly. If your reps keep asking for a clearer process, better qualification criteria or more support with proposals, that’s not complaining. It’s data. That’s a big part of what we work on in ongoing sales coaching .

Getting clear means a clear value proposition

When Craig had each of us define “clear,” I went straight to the value proposition. Know who your ideal client is, because if you’re talking to the wrong person nothing else matters. Know what problems you solve. And be able to show the prospect what’s in it for them.

If you’re crystal clear on your value prop, it becomes easy to qualify or disqualify opportunities quickly, and the clients you do take on know exactly what to expect. Devi pointed out that leaders need the same thing internally: an employee value proposition, so the team knows the deal.

AI helps with volume, not relationships

On AI, my view is simple. Once you’ve identified your ideal client profile and your message, AI can help you get it in front of more people and do some early research. But it’s not going to replace the trust and the relationship. I get 15 to 20 AI-generated emails a day from people who apparently want to invest millions in my business. That’s what volume without an ICP looks like.

Devi’s test fits sales well: is this good, or good enough? A first-pass prospect list can be good enough. The conversation that wins the business has to be good.

The takeaway

Trust drives the sale, and it drives the team that makes the sale. Be clear about what you want, follow through on what you say, and listen closely to clients and to your own people. If your team’s results aren’t where they should be, let’s talk .

�� Listen to the full conversation with Devi McFadden on Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed .

Develop an Elevator Pitch that Differentiates You from the Competition

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 13:51:30 GMT

Over the course of your career, you will probably attend more networking events, seminars, conferences, trade shows, and cocktail parties than you can count. If you are like most professionals I have met, you haven’t given much thought ahead of time to the question of how you will introduce yourself when speaking to someone for the first time.

If you are like most people, you won’t really think about your message until two seconds after you have started that conversation. If someone were to walk up to you right now and ask you what you did for a living, what would you say?

How would you differentiate yourself from your competitors?
Would the pitch grab the attention of the person who you are speaking with, or would it be littered with the same information that someone could find in your brochure or web site?
How do you react when someone begins sharing that kind of information at a party? Does it leave you enthralled? Or does it make you look around the room for someone else who is a better conversationalist?

Here is the real question: How much time and energy have you devoted to preparing your elevator pitch? If you are not prepared to deliver a truly powerful elevator pitch, you may miss out on your chance to convert a conversation with someone into a new client opportunity.

Tips to Develop a Killer Elevator Pitch

1. Don’t sell during the elevator pitch. You are probably not going to close a new client in under five minutes. Just identify if the person with whom you are speaking has problems you can help them solve.

2. Articulate the problems that you solve for your clients and the ways in which those problems could have an impact on them.

3. Start with big-picture problems first. Once you have identified some of the big picture issues, you can move to more specific, detail-oriented issues the prospect might have.

4. Craft a variety of different elevator pitches. If you are with a professional services firm, you might craft one commercial pitch for your specific area of business and another one for the overall firm. A pitch to a small company may sound different than a pitch to a large company.

5. Tell stories to articulate ways that you’ve helped your clients with those issues.

6. Ask questions to identify if the person you are speaking with is open to discussing the ways you might be able to help them.

7. Determine next steps for you to follow up. Maybe it’s agreeing to speak for another 20 minutes. Maybe it’s scheduling an appointment. Just don’t finish the conversation until you understand the next steps.

I like to compare a salesperson’s elevator pitch with a resume for someone who is looking for a job. The resume will not get someone a job, but the resume will get the potential employer interested enough to call the candidate.

You are not going to close a new deal based on your elevator pitch, but you will be able to qualify or disqualify a prospect and get someone interested in speaking with you for the next five minutes with a good pitch.

If you are unsure about your elevator pitch, or the elevator pitch for your people, it might make sense for us to speak. Please reach out by calling 215-970-2360 or contact me.

If you are not prepared to deliver a truly powerful elevator pitch, you may miss out on your chance to convert a conversation with someone into a new client opportunity.

Sales and Marketing Alignment: A Sales Leader's Three Signs It's Working

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 20:48:42 GMT

When marketing and sales argue, everyone assumes it's a personality clash. In my experience it's almost always a process problem. On the latest Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed, Craig Andrews and I dug into how you actually know whether your sales and marketing are aligned. Craig gave the marketing view. Here's mine, from the sales side.

No system, no alignment

The first thing I'll say — and Craig agreed — is that alignment requires a system. Without a defined sales process , you can't tell whether sales and marketing are working, whether something's broken, or what to fix. When there's no system, salespeople go build their own materials because they don't trust what marketing handed them, marketing runs campaigns that don't reflect what's happening in the field, and the whole thing devolves into random activity and blame. A system replaces "he said, she said" with something you can actually measure.

Closing the wrong deal is a loss, not a win

Here's something that doesn't come up enough in sales meetings: was that customer even good for the business? I've worked with teams doing a bang-up job closing deals while losing money on nearly every one — a flat fee that took twice the hours, or a big-name client whose expectations they couldn't profitably meet. A close that drops your margin from $200 an hour to $40 an hour isn't a win. It's a problem you now have to service for years.

That's why the ideal client profile matters as much to sales as it does to marketing. When the deal closes, the client has to actually get what they thought they were buying — that's how you earn the reviews, referrals, and introductions that make the next sale easier. Closing is just the beginning of turning a customer into an evangelist.

The Revenue Cookbook: put the plan in writing

Craig and I built the Revenue Cookbook because too many owners say "I want to do five million" without knowing what that requires. How many clients need to close? What's your mix of small, mid-size, and large clients? What's your closing percentage? How many first meetings turn into real proposals, and how many conversations does it take to get those meetings?

We break it down so you can plug in your own numbers — and we sort clients into rabbits (your smallest by revenue), deer (your mid-size, bread-and-butter), and elephants (your largest). It's revenue to you, not brand name: if Disney buys one tiny thing, Disney is a rabbit. And if 75% of your revenue comes from one client, your business is at severe risk, no matter how big the logo. Getting that mix right is a core part of how we run ongoing sales coaching .

Sell to WIIFM, not to your feature list

The number one radio station your prospect is tuned to is WIIFM — What's In It For Me. If they can see the value of working with you, they become a client. If they can't, they pass, or they grind you down to the cheapest price because they see you as a commodity. This is the discipline we drill in sales training : stop leading with features, start leading with the problem you solve and the value the client perceives.

My three signs you're aligned

There's a plan in writing that sales and marketing both signed off on. Sounds simple. Most organizations still don't do it.
Your closing percentage is going up. That tells you the right kinds of leads are coming in and your team is closing them well.
The clients you're landing are profitable. You're not just churning revenue — the business is making money, which means the message is landing and people see the value.

Craig's marketing-side signs were a great complement to these, and we got into the full framework — system, data, client mix, and the promise your brand makes — on the episode. Watch or listen: https://www.smplaybookunleashed.com

If your sales and marketing aren't rowing in the same direction, that's fixable. Get in touch and let's look at your process.

Intake Is the First Sales Call — Most Firms Treat It Like Paperwork

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 12:09:47 GMT

Plenty of firm owners think of intake as an administrative step: capture the name, the number, the email, decide if there's a case, move on. On the latest Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed, our guests Emily Rowell of Peachtree Offices and Andres Palma made the case that this is exactly backwards. Intake isn't paperwork. It's the first sales conversation you'll ever have with that client — and it's the one most likely to be handled by the person you've trained the least.

You don't get a second chance at a first impression

One of my favorite lines, and it applies here more than anywhere: you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. In the first thirty seconds of a call, a prospect decides whether this firm cares. If the person answering is callous, rushed, or just harvesting contact info, the prospect reads it instantly.

And then they do the most natural thing in the world — they hang up and call the next firm. It takes about five seconds. Everything your marketing worked to earn is gone because the first human contact fell flat.

People do business with people they like — and people like themselves

This is the part machines can't do for you. People do business with people they like, and people do business with people like themselves. Put someone likable and relatable on the phone and the prospect's guard drops; they get more open, more honest, more forthcoming. Put someone with no personality on the phone and you turn off roughly 95% of the people reaching out — and you'll spend the rest of the call fishing for one- and two-word answers that don't help anyone.

That's not a personality accident. It's a hiring and training decision, and it's the heart of a real sales process . Who answers your phone is a strategic choice, not a clerical one.

Answer before nine seconds — and answer with a smile

Emily's team runs a standard worth stealing: calls get answered before nine seconds — two rings, going on the third — and you answer with a smile, because people can hear it when it isn't there. Simple, measurable, trainable. Those first three things — speed, warmth, and actually engaging — are exactly what sales training should drill into anyone who touches a prospect, receptionist included.

Every client can represent ten clients

Andres framed the upside better than I could: every client can represent ten clients. When someone reaches out for help and genuinely feels they can trust you, that leads to a case — or to referrals, and more prospects after that. Intake done as relationship-building is a referral engine. Intake done as data entry is a leak.

This is where ongoing coaching earns its keep, because rapport isn't a one-time fix. It's a habit your whole team has to keep sharp.

The point

Attorneys are usually excellent at the law and less practiced at the business of running a firm — and there's no shame in that; there are very few classes on it. But the first sales call in your business is happening whether you've designed it or not. Design it. Decide who answers, how fast, and with what intent, and treat intake like the revenue-critical conversation it is.

Hear the full episode with Emily Rowell and Andres Palma on Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed → smplaybookunleashed.com

AI Won't Close Your Deals — But It Will Put Sellers in Front of the Right People

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 20:15:57 GMT

Plenty of business owners hoped AI would be the cure-all — that it would take them out of the sales process entirely. Generate the leads, send them to the website, ask a few questions, and out pops a customer. On the latest Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed, with Patrick Begley of Agentic Growth Advisors, we watched that fantasy fall apart in real time. The people who tried to remove the human from selling spent more money and got worse results. That tracks with everything we believe: technology does not replace the sale. It clears the runway for it.

Use AI for the research. Keep the human for the relationship.

Here is the honest division of labor. AI is excellent at figuring out who you should be talking to — surfacing the signals that show who has their hand up and who is actually a fit. It is not a substitute for the conversation that follows. Trust, authority, and rapport are still built human to human. Our clients tend to be experts first and reluctant sellers second — attorneys , financial advisors , accountants — and no agent is going to earn a prospect's confidence for them. Let AI find the right person. Then a real person has to show up.

The point of automation is more selling, not less

Patrick's framing is one we share: sellers should be in front of clients four or five days a week. There is no reason for a capable salesperson to spend the day buried in cold outreach, CRM updates, and proposal admin. Those are exactly the motions to automate first — cold outreach at the top, then the proposal, solutioning, and pricing steps that eat the middle.

And notice who benefits. Leaders want more revenue; sellers want to sell. Automating the busywork aligns both — it gets your team in front of qualified prospects and lets them do the part they are actually good at. When reps walk in to find qualified meetings already on the calendar, closing rates climb, because they are no longer wasting hours on people who were never going to buy.

Misaligned ICP is a structure problem, not a motivation problem

We say it often: stalled deals and inconsistent follow-up are almost never a motivation problem — they are a structure problem. AI makes that truth impossible to hide. If marketing thinks it is selling to one buyer and sales is chasing another, no amount of hustle fixes the miscalibration. Get the ideal client profile right, align marketing and sales to the same target, and the whole team can finally run one shared process instead of everyone selling their own way.

Strategy before tools — every time

The most expensive mistake we are seeing is teams automating before they have decided what they are automating toward. On the show, I described a client whose automation would have taken longer to build than just doing the task by hand. AI is the ultimate hammer looking for a nail; it has to be the other way around. Build the strategy and the process first. Then let the technology run it at scale.

That is the whole Polin Performance Group philosophy applied to a new tool: assess, build the strategy , train the team , and coach them until it sticks . AI changes what is possible at the top of the funnel. It does not change the fact that people, running a real process, are what close business.

If your revenue rests on two rainmakers and a steady drip of referrals, that is not a strategy — it is a risk. We build the sales process and coach your team to run it , so results stop depending on luck. Talk to Polin Performance Group.

Catch every episode of Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed — this one is "AI Agents for Sales & Marketing" with Patrick Begley. Watch on YouTube.

10 tips to increase business through referrals and personal introductions

Sat, 02 Jul 2022 18:42:16 GMT

1. Ask for referrals. Studies have shown that 20% of the people you know will automatically give you referrals without being asked and 20% of the people you know are uncomfortable giving referrals and will never give them out. Your job is to properly ask the other 60% of the people in your network for a referral.

2. Understand your target market. It is difficult for people to give you referrals if you can’t tell them who you’d like to meet. Make sure that you can articulate what you are looking for in an ideal referral. Identify the industries where you want to meet people, the size of organization you are looking to get referred into, the specific types of people you would like to meet, and 2-3 talking points that your referral source can provide when they reach out on your behalf.

3. Create a target list. Make sure that you have a list of prospects that you would like to target and carry that list with you everywhere. In addition, do research on LinkedIn before you ask for referrals. Get an idea of the people and companies your contacts are connected to before you ask for the referral so that you can be more specific in identifying potential clients.

4. Don’t accept a lead instead of a referral. Many times, our contacts will say, “Call (insert name of lead here) and just use my name when you call.” Our experience tells us that these leads only turn into business 25-30% of the time. Typically, that lead is not expecting your call and often you will not even receive a returned phone call or email when you reach out to that lead.

5. Teach your contacts how to give you a proper referral. After you request a referral, ask your contact to call the potential referral. Have your contact tell the potential referral about you and your services and have them request permission for you to call. Tell your contact that if the referral source does not want to accept your call, it’s ok. The last thing we want to do is bother someone who does not want to take our call. Closing percentages for a good referral are about 50%.

6. If your contact is willing to reach out to the potential referral with a phone call, take the next step and ask for a personal introduction. If a contact is willing to make a personal introduction for to you, offer to set up a breakfast or lunch with your contact and the referral. It is worth the extra time and effort if you can arrange a personal introduction. Personal introductions close into business 80-90% of the time.

7. Follow up with your referral source after you have been given the referral. When someone gives you a referral, it is your responsibility to report on what happened after you’ve spoken with the person you were referred to. We want to provide positive reinforcement for someone for giving us a referral, so that we will get more referrals in the future. Our referral source should feel good about giving us a referral, regardless of whether that referral turned into business.

8. Keep your referral sources happy. If someone gives you a referral, recognize it with a thank you, a note, or a token of your appreciation.

9. Track your strategic partnerships and referral groups. If you are not receiving qualified referrals from these relationships, you may want to pivot from your current relationships and develop new referral relationships.

10. Don’t pressure someone who is not comfortable giving referrals. We don’t want to jeopardize our current relationships, so if someone is not comfortable giving referrals, don’t push them for a referral.