Smart Business Growth with Nicky & Ness

Achieve 38% higher conversion rates with sales and marketing synergy

• Nicky & Ness • Season 2 • Episode 13

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In this episode, the focus is on the crucial relationship between sales and marketing. Learn about practical strategies to integrate sales and marketing for improved conversion rates and customer retention.

Episode Highlights:

  • Statistics and Benefits: Aligning sales and marketing can lead to 38% higher conversion rates and a 36% increase in customer retention.
  • Sales vs. Marketing Plans: The importance of having a distinct sales strategy alongside your marketing plan.
  • Insights from a Webinar: Key takeaways from a recent sales and marketing masterclass with Bec Chappell.
  • Nurturing Existing Clients: Strategies for maintaining and growing your current customer base to reduce acquisition costs.
  • Sales Strategy Components: Understanding the current and future shape of your business and setting goals to grow, maintain, and acquire clients.
  • Practical Action Steps: How to begin evaluating your current business shape and setting future targets for growth.

Learn more about Nicky and Ness https://businesstogether.com.au

Buy a copy of Healthy Hustle: The New Blueprint to Thrive in Business & Life www.healthyhustle.com.au

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Connect on LinkedIn
Nicky LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/connectwithnicky/
Ness LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessamedling/

Give us a call
Nicky Miklos-Woodley 0403 191 404
Vanessa (Ness) Medling 0400 226 875

Or send us an email hello@businesstogether.com.au

Music by Jules Miklos-Woodley

Nicky:

Welcome to the Smart Business Growth Podcast with Nikki and Ness.

Ness:

We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of country, the Turrbal and Bunurong people of Brisbane and Melbourne respectively, where Nikki and I both work and live both work and live.

Nicky:

Hello, hello, lovely people. We're going to talk one of my favorite topics today, all about sales, and I made a joke in a masterclass that we ran recently that sometimes when I say the word sales or bring up sales in a training environment, I can feel people's butt cheeks clench.

Ness:

It's like oh, not the sales word.

Nicky:

Don't talk to me about sales, but I'm going to do that because it's such an important part of business. But I want to go deep in today's episode, today, really talking about this complement between sales and marketing. Recently we ran a sales and marketing webinar called Grow your Pipeline with Ease with the fabulous Bec Chappell. Make sure you go check her out. And that's what's inspired this conversation today, because I want to start by sharing some cool stats with you. When you align your sales and marketing efforts, it can help. Statistics show you can actually achieve up to 38% higher conversion rate. It can lead to 36% increase in customer retention. I mean, don't we want? We've spent so much time and energy and effort getting these beautiful clients and customers. We want to keep them, and that can save 30% on customer acquisition cost. Now what we know in the sales and marketing world is that getting new customers on board can cost up to five times as much as keeping a customer happy.

Ness:

Wow, it's a big stat, isn't it? It is a big stat.

Nicky:

Yeah, why wouldn't we look at what's the strategy to not only acquire, but also maintain and also keep our existing clients and customers happy? So that's what we're going to talk about today, but I want to share some practical insights with you so that you can really start to look at how does your sales and marketing align? And also there's a bit of a gap that I see in business. We were just chatting about this before we hit record that so often business owners or leaders will go yep, I need to have a business plan Great, I need to have a marketing plan. I need to know who I'm targeting. How am I going to get in front of them? All of that Amazing, but oftentimes the sales plan is missing the sales strategy, and that is actually different to a marketing plan.

Nicky:

So, before we get into some insights around what to actually have in a sales strategy, what does that look like? I would love to pick your brain, ness, because of course, you did an incredible job facilitating the masterclass with Beck and I. And also, side note, for any listeners or viewers that want to get your hands on a copy just send us a message, we'll hook you up. You can get into those insights yourself, but I would love to know from you what did you take out of it, because sales is not the space that you've spent all your time on marketing and again, you were up close and personal with facilitating. You got to see the reactions from the audience and have your own experience as well. What were your insights or takeaways?

Ness:

Absolutely. Thank you for asking, because it was interesting sitting back and watching you in your element and Beck in her element and just seeing how the two of you work so nicely together, but also just this blinding flash of the obvious that sales and marketing really do go hand in hand. And I have had the honor of being able to listen to you and beck on your soap boxes around that. And that's amazing because I think when I reflect on my business journey, I really always looked at them as separate. I have to do some marketing and then I have to learn how to do sales. But I think the way that you two presented it was in alignment with each other and how actually what you do in one area is impacting and helping what you do in the other area. And it just made so much more sense to me because a marketing strategy on its own without the strength of having the sales strategy behind it is really that throwing mud at a wall and just hoping it sticks, because I guess in my mind it was always you've got to look at the figures around the success of your marketing campaign, I think in the past when I've done Facebook advertising, for example, but it was never educated to me in a way that then also said where are your sales skills at and what you just talked about there. That's mind blowing, the whole thing around.

Ness:

I think for many it's about I need another sale, I need more sales, I need more sales, but the retention of your customers that you have already worked for and worked with, that can be so much more powerful. So we're constantly then perhaps looking at ways around how do we market to our current customer base in order to upsell or have the opportunity to continue to work for them. So it really cemented for me how they can sit side by side and actually help each other in order to get better business results, which I'm all about right, and this is about making life easier rather than complicating it, because we have to lose that mindset, break the cycle of there's so many things to juggle in the business I've got this, this, this and this and this and just start to look at how we can bring some of that together. And I love that perspective between the two, because it's not really where I play.

Nicky:

Yeah, I mean, and I think a lot of business owners would resonate with that also and one without the other is a missing half. It's sort of like I don't know, I just thought of this, but you know those BFF necklaces back in the day, Yep.

Ness:

It's like how's?

Nicky:

my Beck will love this analogy. We'll have to make sure she listens to this episode Bringing them together coming back one without the other.

Nicky:

There is something missing in the context of we're talking about growing your pipeline, and your pipeline is the backbone of your business success. You've got something missing if you are not focusing on both. Do the Smart Growth Survey in under 60 seconds to get your hands on our Smart Growth Blueprint. You'll get immediate access to our four favourite strategies for sales, profit planning and team, and you'll identify which phase of smart growth your business is currently in, whether it's crisis, build growth or momentum mode, so that you can move your way to the next phase with ease. All you have to do is click the link in the show notes.

Nicky:

I'd love to take a little step back and share personally also why this is so important To me. I know when I was in business in my early days probably six, seven years ago now I shared this at the masterclass. I had really good revenue. I was solo business owner in that business model 40K a month, six-month-plus waiting list and all of a sudden, it dried up. It completely dried up. A sudden, it dried up, it completely dried up, and the analogy I love to use is that it felt like I was driving a car full speed and then all of a sudden there's a cliff coming up ahead and I'm like whoa I don't have time to build the bridge to get along across the other side.

Nicky:

So that bridge, my friends, that bridge is your pipeline, and just like a bridge, it takes time to build. So does your pipeline, and I know that some of you will resonate with the fact that if you don't have that time to build the pipeline, you might be relying on word of mouth. I hear this all the time, ness, don't we? What's your sales strategy? Marketing word of mouth, that's wonderful, but at some point that's that's wonderful, but at some point that's what I had, and at some point it's dangerous to rely on that. And everything is reactive instead of proactive. And you're in this place of delivery. You're really busy. You've got lots of client delivery that's amazing.

Nicky:

So you're either forgetting to or you don't have time to actually focus on building that bridge, on business development, on the strategy that we're going to talk about, and where I see this leads to and I'd love to get your thoughts on this, ness I see this lead to panic. It leads to panic in the business because the cliff is coming up fast, and that leads to poor decisions. That leads to discounting. That leads to focusing on a million marketing strategies instead of the one or two that will really work for you. It leads to saying yes to the wrong type of clients, and it leads to coming from a place of scarcity instead of abundance.

Ness:

I can see you nodding along. Yeah, because I've been there. I think so many of our listeners will be nodding their head as well, having had that experience, or maybe you're in that experience right now, and it's not a great place to be, because I think the you know you mentioned scarcity mindset that when scarcity mindset is driving your business decisions, we're in trouble because it's not well thought out, it's not planned and it's back to that analogy of throwing mud at a wall and hoping it will stick. So this is why having the strategy and really having it married together and come about in a way that is thoughtful and proactive matters so much.

Ness:

But I guess, before even you start talking us through that, nikki, there's this great question that often sat in my mind, but I've heard you answer it, so I'm going to ask it for others because they might be thinking it what comes first, like is it the chicken or the egg, right? Is it marketing or is it sales? What do you think is the way to get our mindset in place to start with, before we even set the plan, because some people will go oh, I've got to do one of them first or the other one first. But I love the way that you and Bec talked about how they just, or the other one first, but I love the way that you and Bec talked about how they just. You start at the same level for each and they sit side by side. They don't come. But anyway, what comes first in marketing or is it sales? When we're thinking business?

Nicky:

I think that question in itself is actually the problem, because what the question is saying is is it sales or marketing which is separate to marketing, or is it marketing which is separate to sales? And I'm just even hearing it again. That is the mindset shift. It's not about what comes first, what comes second, because they're married, they're that little BFF necklace, remember they coincide with each other. Now, when we talk about this, yes, if you start your process around marketing, you're starting to think about things like who you're wanting to target, you're starting to think about, as Bec talked about, the product and service that you have, what your message is, your channel, and then you can think about your sales, and that's what I'm going to share, that first part of the sales strategy. But I think it's the lineal thinking that's the problem. It's not marketing or sales, it's marketing and sales combined. And even though I just said that, and then I said, you know you start thinking about the marketing first and then sales, I really want you to shift the mindset. Listeners, though that it is one Imagine, it's one word, because, also, what works really well is if you're thinking about, or you start planning your marketing first.

Nicky:

What works really well is when you bring sales elements to it. And if you ask this question to this is the conversation Beck and I have a lot to a marketing team or a sales team, they're going to answer, of course, marketing or sales. But it is that flow between both. And what I mean by bringing sales aspects to marketing is curiosity, is the first emotional state of any sales process. Now we can establish curiosity through conversations with people. They might not know who we are, but we meet them at a barbecue, at a networking event and we started that sales or sales and marketing approach. But we can also create curiosity in marketing. Marketing works best when we have a hook, when we have curiosity points. So that's what I mean by having elements of sales in your marketing is actually going to help boost it and I think it's a bigger mindset shift than what comes first. It's actually they come in alignment together and you're right, the model, the growth pipeline model that we go through, it has equal. We're both at the foundation. There's steps alongside for each one.

Ness:

Did that answer your question? Absolutely, I love it. It's right. Yes, Let go of linear like the cycle to break is the lineal thinking and how they marry together. So I would love to hear more for our listeners about this whole process that you've created in relation to how they marry together and probably more specifically from the aspect of sales, although we're just saying they do align but, that's your skill and that's your expertise, so I want to pick your brain on behalf of our listeners and viewers today.

Nicky:

Yes, I love that. I mean, you know I'm always up for this conversation. And also, if you do want the whole model, definitely reach out to us, because we will share the masterclass with you where we take through every aspect of marketing, sales and every step. So, essentially, in the growth pipeline model, there's three key areas. The first we need to look at is our plan not surprising and there's aspects from marketing and there's aspects from sales. You then need to look at your execution and then you need to evaluate your execution.

Nicky:

What I want to focus on today, though, because we don't have time to go through all of those three plan, execute and evaluate is the starting point, is the planning component, and again, particularly from a sales point of view, because, as we said, we see a lot of businesses don't have a specific sales plan. Now, if you have a team, and you have a team that's responsible for sales and selling, you have to get them, you must get them to do a sales strategy. And then there's a whole accountability piece that my recommendation is. They present it to you, they give this follow-up and accountability and KPIs, but that's a part of the execution piece. They've got to come up with the plan first, even if you have a team but you're responsible for sales, then you create the sales strategy, because we wear many hats as business owners and this might even help you decide. Actually it's time to start outsourcing or getting a salesperson in, or what does this look like for the business? Who is responsible for doing the sales and also who's responsible for doing the marketing.

Nicky:

Yeah, so a couple of things here in your plan. I love to look at this as the current shape of your business and the future shape of your business. So the current shape is all about up until this point, and if you've been in business many years, you can look at an average over the last three years, or you could just look at your last 12 months Up until this point. What is the current shape? For example and we just did this recently at our retreat For example, what percent of revenue has come from a particular client segment? So client segment could be you breaking it out into your top 10 clients and then you've got your lower yielding clients, or what percent of revenue is coming from which service? So, with your money hat on, I know that you love this I do.

Ness:

We drove this conversation at Retreat.

Nicky:

It could also be looking at what percent of revenue is coming from different industries. So you're starting to say that's the current shape of my business.

Ness:

Yeah, that makes so much sense and it was a great exercise to go through because it opened our eyes to where all those answers they left clues around where we need to focus our attention into the future, around marketing and around sales, and set some targets around how we want that to increase or decrease over time.

Nicky:

Absolutely, and I think also where we enjoy it, like where do you, what's the work you enjoy? Who are the ideal clients that you have in your business? Are they your top segment, your A clients, or are they not and actually you want to focus on your B segment of clients, to nurture them and get them to be your A clients. You know this is I love to think about the story in the numbers. I'm not naturally a numbers kind of person. You know this. We talk about this a lot.

Nicky:

However, I just love sales numbers. I love looking at this kind of stuff, and the reason that I do is that there's always a story. There is always a story that comes out of our numbers. So you've looked at your future, current shape. You then want to look at and establish what's the future shape of my business. So, like I said, actually, our A clients, our top 10% or our top 20 clients they're not the ideal clients that we want to work with. We prefer to focus on that B segment. So that could be, then, what the future looks like.

Nicky:

You want to have an increase in your B clients, or perhaps there's an industry that you've really been able to make some good inroads with and you've enjoyed the work and you're getting great results.

Nicky:

So it could be that the future shape is you want to increase that industry from 20% of your revenue to maybe 40% or 30% or 50%, whatever that looks like. So you're really breaking down those key areas and you don't have to focus on all these areas. You might focus on one or two, or you can look at it as three, because, again, when you've looked at the current shape, the numbers will tell you the story. You have a conversation with yourself or with your team or your business partner to go. What do we want? What are we proactively looking to step into in the next 12 months? And this is why marketing and sales it's not one comes first, because you can see how, through this sales strategy, you're starting to identify who you want to chase, who you want to go after. So if you've done your marketing plan, you might have to go back and tweak it a little bit and change it, and vice versa.

Ness:

That's really come clear from what you were just saying then.

Ness:

Because if you do have the marketing, say you've got somebody looking after marketing, say you've got a bigger team right and you've got somebody managing marketing, someone managing sales If they're not talking, that just doesn't make sense to me, because how do you know who to market to? You're talking about A clients. Yes, what happens if, over time, your A clients shift? What happens if and that's you know, our business has evolved and changed over the time we've been in business, so that the people that we were working with in the early days are different to the people we're working with now because we've changed our service offer and so if we were still marketing back to the people that we originally marketed to, it's not a match for the sales projections that we want to make. So it's really interesting when you talk about it like that and I can start to see more and more and I trust the listeners and viewers can see more and more about how they actually come together, and that's why we need the BFF necklace, not the linear thinking, absolutely.

Nicky:

Absolutely so. The final tip I want to share with this because, again, I think this ep is about changing thinking of how we're approaching sales and marketing, making sure that a sales strategy is included in that. And if you're thinking I don't know what the current or future shape of my business is, that's a first step. And when you're looking, the final tip I would say, which is the foundation of this pipeline growth model, is when you're looking at your future shape. A really cool, easy way that I've been looking at sales through this filter for literally decades, because it's so simple, is you look at three things. You look at what do I want to grow and you set a goal around that. So, again, that could be grow industry service type, like you've looked at your current shape, so you've got the answer from there what do I want to grow? Second thing what do I want to maintain? Maintain, in other words, if I can secure the same revenue, same number of clients or same average revenue per client, whatever that might be, that's a win, because sometimes maintaining is a win, sometimes it's about growing and growing. Remember, that might be that's a win, because sometimes maintaining is a win, sometimes it's about growing and growing. Remember, could be existing clients, so it could be an increase on existing clients. This comes back to that stat that we talked about nurture and take care of your existing, your past clients just as much as you do to go out and get new clients.

Nicky:

And the third one is acquire. What do I need to acquire, which is typically the top up, and of course, you have to have a target set for this to work. So you've got your target. What can I grow, what am I going to maintain and what do I need to acquire to hit that target? Just peel it back and keep it really simple. This is the starting point. If you want more there's so much more in the model. The next steps we've got that recording masterclass, but, ness, that's it. Keep it simple Grow, maintain, acquire. What are we growing, maintaining?

Ness:

acquiring. I love it. I love that you've broken it down into something that does feel quite simple, because the figures are there. Like I talk all the time about, we need to know our figures in business, right, we've got to be looking at our cloud-based software and what's our profit and loss telling us, what's our balance sheet telling us, what's our cashflow projection telling us. So everything that you need to know is already there, but it's bringing it through a different lens around sales, so the data is easy to capture. It's then the decisions that you can make with that quality data that allows you to plan out the next phase of business. So that's amazing.

Nicky:

And also I mean talk about profitability. This is the point of being in business. Like we talk about all the time is to have a profitable business. This will help make sure you're focusing on the right areas.

Ness:

Love it.

Nicky:

Love it.

Ness:

All right. Well, as we know, we always wrap up with a actionable action, to use your language. So what is something that people listening to this and resonating with this, other than letting us know they want to watch the webinar? What's more of a 24 hour action, something that somebody could do in the next day or so to help them get started on this process and break that cycle of linear thinking?

Nicky:

Oh, okay, I do have two things. I'm just going to have to do two things because really the first step right now is what is your current shape of business and what do you want it to be? So if you don't know those numbers, sit down with your old friend Zero or QuickBooks or reach out to your bookkeeper or ask those questions. And if you're kind of stuck that's the three Get a breakdown of client spend per client so that you know who's in your top A segment. Be a breakdown by service and also look at what industries and figure out your percentage by industry and then ask yourself is this the future shape of my business? What does it look like? That has to be really that first step.

Nicky:

But the second one that I want to throw in there is we created a pipeline growth audit. So, on a bigger picture scale, if you want to know what are my gaps and what are my strengths in terms of my pipeline, we will add a link for that for you to be able to do that, because that's super quick and easy. So that's why you got two. You got one for your overall view of pipeline growth and one for specifically understand the current shape of your business so you know where you want to take it. I love it.

Ness:

I love both of those. Yes, okay, all right, amazing, no, I think they're both really really valid and really important and a great starting point to work from. So thank you so much, nikki, for sharing your expertise with us today. It's been a fabulous conversation. Can't wait to be in your ears again next week. People, bye for now. Thanks everyone for joining Bye. Thanks for listening to today's ep. If you loved what you heard, connect with us over on LinkedIn and let's continue the conversation over there. Connect with us over on LinkedIn and let's continue the conversation over there.

Ness:

Nikki and I are obsessed with helping businesses install smart business growth strategies and leveraging people leadership for peak performance. We bring two business minds and two perspectives into your business, and our number one goal is to make sure that your business is thriving, your team are thriving and you are thriving. We offer a 30-day business diagnostic, taking you from chaos to clarity in just 30 days. Are you curious to find out more? Send us an email or go old school and give us a call. Until next time, happy listening and here's to thriving in business and in life.