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11 Strategic Strategizing Strategery with Greg Pomerantz
120 Plays2 years ago
There are a thousand different ways to Chicago from where you're at. Which one's the best? Which one gets you there the fastest? The only way that you really know how to get there the fastest with the least amount of effort is to plan ahead. Marketing is the same way, so we're talking to one of our favorite Marketing solution strategists, Greg Pomerantz. Join Dave and Trygve to talk to Greg about strategic strategizing, Palm Springs in January, and championship Moustache care.
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Dial It In Podcast is where we gathered our favorite people together to share their advice on how to drive revenue, through storytelling and without the boring sales jargon. Our primary focus is marketing and sales for manufacturing and B2B service businesses, but we’ll cover topics across the entire spectrum of business. This isn’t a deep, naval-gazing show… we like to have lively chats that are fun, and full of useful insights. Brought to you by BizzyWeb.
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Transcript
Introduction to Dial It In Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Dial It In, a podcast where we talk with interesting people about the process improvements and tricks they use to grow their businesses. I'm Dave Meyer, president of BusyWeb, and every week, Trigby Olsen and I are bringing you interviews on how the best in their fields are dialing it in for their organizations.
Podcast Progress and Humor
00:00:24
Speaker
So this is our next episode, but depending on how we release this, we've been doing this for a while, Dave, and like we're finally, if you'll excuse the term, dialing it in. Ooh, I like it. I've figured some interesting things out. Do you want to, do you want to try something out? Regale me. Okay. Do you have a good dad joke? Oh my goodness. I don't know if I can do them on command anymore. My kids are old enough that they're not asking. All right. I got one. So do you know the difference between a hippo and a zippo?
00:00:55
Speaker
I do. I do, but I'll let you say it. One's a big fat animal and the other's a little lighter. Yep. Yep. Oh, look at that sound effects. Oh, stars. I found the sound effect button. So I think we've just completely ruined our chance of keeping our audience now that we can do dad jokes and have a rim shot at the same time. There goes the podcast Emmy.
00:01:20
Speaker
Yeah, shoot. Well, in the meantime, it's the beginning of the year.
Planning and Strategy in Business
00:01:26
Speaker
It's time for renewal. Pictures and catchers are reporting to camp and sooner or later we will be unburied from all the snow. So it's a good time to start thinking about what to do next. So one of the things that I think is really interesting that we do at BusyWeb is we offer marketing game plans and strategies and help people lay out
00:01:50
Speaker
what are they going to do and how are they going to do it and what's it really going to take to accomplish their goals. And one of the things that you and I struggle with all the time is sometimes people don't want to do that.
Introduction of Greg Pomerance
00:02:03
Speaker
And so that's the purpose of our podcast today, episode today is we found an expert on strategic thinking. Our guest has been trained in blue chip companies like Pepsi, ConAgra, NordicTrack, and Miracle Air for the last 15 years. He's worked with private and emerging businesses and he's worked in a broad range of different industries, but ultimately
00:02:28
Speaker
small to mid-sized software and SaaS businesses. Yeah, just an all-around great guy who's going to help us really define the case for what is the real value of strategic thinking. It's your friend and mine. He has the mustache of my dreams, Greg Pomerance. Greg, good to see you. Hey, guys. Nice to be here.
Greg's Career and Market Changes
00:02:52
Speaker
So tell us a little bit about you first of all, because we want to establish your modified credentials. I did a little bit of an intro, but tell us a little bit more about Pomerance and Associates. So my background, I mean, you did a nice job. I spent six years in sales before I went and got an MBA. So I did that. And then I did work for the big boys for a long time.
00:03:13
Speaker
And I enjoyed it to a point when I was at Miracle Air, eventually we sold the company and I was part of the sale and, and unfortunately the wrong guys bought it. And, you know, they hire a new president and next thing you know, he wants his own team. That's the way it works in corporate America. So off I went.
Digital Marketing and Customer Understanding
00:03:32
Speaker
And as I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next, my friends started calling me and say, Hey, can you help me?
00:03:40
Speaker
And it was all about strategy and how do you go to market? And this was, you know, 2005 or something like that. The world was changing back then because digital marketing was actually becoming a thing in a hurry. But that doesn't mean you didn't need strategy. You didn't have to know who your customer or consumer or client or partners were. And so it just changed on some of the things that you were doing.
00:04:06
Speaker
And so for the last 15 plus years, as you said, Trivie, I've been working primarily with family owned businesses, privately held companies. I do a lot of new product introductions and a lot of go to market strategy for a long time.
Role of a Fractional CMO
00:04:21
Speaker
And over the last few years, I finally thought myself, cause I didn't want to be that fractional CMO. So I don't like the title CMO.
00:04:31
Speaker
But what I found is in small companies, you could do a great marketing plan for someone and they simply couldn't execute it. They didn't have the people to do it. And so now I also spend a significant portion of my time as that fractional CMO where I can help do the strategy and then help execute the strategy.
00:04:49
Speaker
So I want to start like any good sales guy with an objection that I had trouble handling. I once met a guy, we had a really good conversation. He really did need a marketing strategy, which we were prepared to execute for them. And he said, no. And I said, what do you mean? No. And he said, I'm not going to pay you to learn my business.
00:05:12
Speaker
And I was sort of dumbfounded by that because it really didn't have anything to do with paying me to learn his business. It was paying him to get him out of the hole he was in. Right. So if you were in that situation, what's the difference between paying somebody to learn your business and helping them move forward?
Marketing Misconceptions and Strategy Importance
00:05:33
Speaker
You know, what I have found is many people, similar to the person you're talking about, they simply think marketing is common sense.
00:05:42
Speaker
I know what I've always done. It's worked. It's allowed me to get to this point. And why do I need somebody to help me? And my answer is almost always the same thing. It's a simple question. Are your sales growing? No. How are your margins doing? Well, they're not as good as they used to be. So why do you think you want to keep doing the same thing that got you here when your sales are flat and your margins are getting constrained? And that will often get them to think.
00:06:12
Speaker
It occurred to me that maybe companies don't really know where to start. And by thinking too tactically too soon, they put aside a whole massive opportunity to really think about the right things. So tell us a couple of the questions that you do to kind of elicit what people need to be thinking about from the 30,000 foot perspective.
Understanding Customer Behavior
00:06:40
Speaker
That's a great question, Dave. And it starts with, who are your customers? And you know, whether they're clients or customers, it doesn't matter. It's the same thing, but who are they and have they changed? And then do you know how they want to buy? You know, we all know that
00:07:05
Speaker
The sale of anything has changed because there's so much information on the internet. Learn about and research everything. I don't care if you're buying a car or you're doing work for a B2B business and you need to find a part, you're doing all that research. And so for your business, you really want to understand who your customer is, how they buy, how do they want to buy, where do they get their information?
00:07:33
Speaker
And then you can start to figure out, how do I influence all of that?
Brand Building and Research
00:07:38
Speaker
Right. And that's mostly like for, I mean, the shining example of lots of research is business to business, right? Because you're probably making a decision on a several hundred thousand dollar arrangement or at least bigger than going to Amazon and grabbing that new pair of socks that you were looking for.
00:07:56
Speaker
So do you walk them through that exercise to say, okay, well, let's think about, give me your past five clients and how did they find you? Is that kind of what they do? You know, I kind of start, yes and no. I mean, I start with, tell me about your business today. Where are you? And you know, I will always preface that conversation by saying, you know, you'll probably quickly realize I'm not from Minnesota.
00:08:24
Speaker
because I'm gonna ask really hard questions and wait for the answer. And they will laugh kind of like you did, Dave. And then when we do it, they'll look at me, it's like, oh my gosh, you were right. You aren't from here. It's like, yeah, I know, I grew up on both coasts. But it's really about asking those hard questions that people don't like to address, to think about, to answer. Then you can start figuring things out. So if you're gonna do a marketing plan, that is always the first step.
00:08:54
Speaker
And, you know, Trigley, that goes back to your question. You know, business owners don't want to pay you to learn about their business, but if you don't understand what they're doing, how do you ask the right questions? Right.
Strategic Marketing Plan Structure
00:09:08
Speaker
And it's all about getting them to talk. Yeah. And I think, I think that sort of deal, you sort of immediately get into somebody who's really scared of change.
00:09:19
Speaker
And they think that somebody's going to come in and give their own version of a nine patented nine point plan. And then if you don't subscribe to it, you're an idiot, but that's not really the case. No, it's not because when you're not invested.
00:09:38
Speaker
100 plus percent in the business, you think about the business differently, right? And I don't even know how many businesses I've worked with in different industries and different distribution systems and different types of customers, but that amalgamation of all that stuff, I've been exposed to so many different things and you guys have with the clients that you've worked with too, where you can use something that you did five years ago
00:10:06
Speaker
all of a sudden becomes relevant today and the business owner has never thought in those terms because they've never had to. What is really the value of having a full strategic plan done? Is it just simply a roadmap or is it tactics or is it a combination of both? Oh, it's definitely a combination.
00:10:28
Speaker
And so if you're going to do a strategic marketing plan, you start with that situation analysis that I gave you that I mentioned a minute ago. And then it's like, what are my objectives? And literally three, four, and they've got to be numeric. You've got to be able to measure them. Otherwise it doesn't matter. Now that numeric objective could be, I need a new website by a specific date.
00:10:51
Speaker
Yep. But that's New York. And even if they do, right, I think this is going to be really fun because this is a conversation that we have all the time with our client. I need a website. Let's even role play that out. Right. So I'm Dave, you're Greg and I'm calling you and saying, yeah, I need a website, Greg. I don't know where to start. So, so what do I do? You know, I just, do I just find the best SEO company or what, you know, what the heck is SEO or whatever? But where do I start?
00:11:22
Speaker
Who's your customer? What do you want them to see? What do they need to know? How do you want to lead them through the process of wanting to buy from you?
00:11:33
Speaker
Ah, so that's, it's all about what's in it for them. Yeah. So what's in it for my, my customer. Correct. And so in backing out of our, of our little role play here for a second, that's one of the things that I'm constantly trying to remind my customers about is like, I'm looking at your website right now and it says, you've been in business for 23 years and you do this and you do that. And I do this and it doesn't say a word about who your customers are.
00:12:01
Speaker
And there's probably one half-baked testimonial at the back of the site. Right, and that's just Mike Smith says, you're the best people ever. It's not even Mike Smith, it's Mike S. From Chicago.
00:12:16
Speaker
Right. And I think that is where most people get so messed up, especially in marketing, because it's super easy to focus on tactics because it's there in front of you. You're looking at a website or you just Google for lead generation strategies and it says, well, you should do SEO or you should do Google ads. And so you get caught up in tacticitis. Right.
Brand-Building Elements
00:12:41
Speaker
And you also never build a brand.
00:12:43
Speaker
OK, so yeah, and that's the next thing that we definitely need to talk about because brand is one of those things that's the least understood in business, I think, and probably one of the more important things that you need to have under control. Right. And there's a I went to business school at Northwestern and there's a professor named Tim Calkins there who wasn't there when I was there. I've met him twice.
00:13:06
Speaker
but he worked for 25 years in corporate America before he went back and became a professor. So I have a lot of respect for what he has to say because he's been there. He's been in the same shoes that I was in at one point in time. And Tim just defines a brand as how do your goods and services meet the want needs and desires of your customer? That's what a brand is. And how do you build that? And it's every touch point.
00:13:35
Speaker
And so, you know, in the background, Dave, you've got a screen and you've got HubSpot and Google, and that is constantly reinforcing the busy web brand. And I love that. Okay. I was on a call this morning and there were two guys and they had a nice background for their Zoom meeting. And the pop-ups, as far as how they were branding their firm was different for each one of them.
00:14:02
Speaker
Interesting. Largely different, little. That's not going to build a brand because I'm not sure which is right. Right. So it's every touch point
Need for Strategy in Marketing Tactics
00:14:11
Speaker
is when you build a brand by not just advertising, but how the phone is answered.
00:14:18
Speaker
Right. You know, how your emails, does everybody have the same signature and things like that? Your emails, I mean, are your marketing emails that go out, how consistent are they in the positioning and, you know, the look, tone and feel. I mean, so all that gets encapsulated and incorporated rather into the brand. What's the most important tactic that a company can focus on? Do a strategy.
00:14:48
Speaker
Why? Because without a strategy, tactics are just going to lead you down to what you've already done before. You know, if somebody comes and you know, someone comes to one of the three of us and says, I really need to do SEO. It's like, okay, well, I don't do SEO. So I will say, great call busy web. And you guys are going to say, okay, but what's the strategy? Right. And all they want is leads.
00:15:14
Speaker
But you know, so story about leads, I mean, 30 years ago, I was working for Nordic track and this is, you know, back in the old days of pony express and home phone lines and things like that. But we would send out these little postcards and it would cost us a nickel, a lead. But when you look at the cost per inquire cost per lead, it was a nickel. When you looked at the cost per order, it was $600.
00:15:41
Speaker
which doesn't work when you're selling a $300 piece of equipment. And then the same thing is true. What we did 30 years ago, the same type of quality leads that you can generate electronically today, it's the same strategy. And you still have to make sure that you're going to get a payoff for it. And I don't think a lot of business owners think about that.
00:16:04
Speaker
And that's part of the fun of talking about strategy is that you start getting into the ramifications of any decision that you make and that helps you decide which way to go, right? If you were
00:16:20
Speaker
you know, doing the NordicTrack mailing and you're like, okay, well, yep, it's just gonna be five cents a lead. That's what most marketing companies would stop at, right? Especially if you're looking tactically, like, well, we have a guaranteed SEO program and if you just sign up for $55 a month, our people in Pakistan are gonna help you with all of that or whatever, you know? And so, is that actually going to help you?
00:16:41
Speaker
having those five cent leads, it's gonna take 3000 of them to actually turn into one customer and you might just be flooding the market and or flipping
00:16:50
Speaker
your cost per click on advertising upside down by loading it up with junk. And you know, and you might be better paying more for those leads. Yeah. You had a better qualified lead. So instead of paying a nickel, spend a dollar or more or whatever it is.
Strategic Thinking in Marketing
00:17:08
Speaker
But now at least you're getting someone that might be closer to buying from you than just throwing an email address in there.
00:17:16
Speaker
And the right people. I ran into this this morning with Prospect. I was talking to them and we were looking at what their competition was doing for advertising. They were spending a fair amount, but it was all on their own brand keywords. And they had a very unique name. So why on earth would you pay Google to display your own website when if people were already looking for that name, they'd find your website for free? Right.
00:17:44
Speaker
So that comes back to our magic word, strategy. Are you doing things that actually mean something to your customer? Well, there's that. And, you know, take that, I'm going to take a slight tangent here, but you know, you have all these leads and you get them, but sometimes there's other ways that you can leverage that type of information.
Digital and Traditional Analysis
00:18:03
Speaker
So three or four or five years ago, I had a client that had people
00:18:10
Speaker
actually making physical sales calls in, I think, seven states. And so they were doing a lot of work online, but I went in and I said, okay, how many within the any ISC codes, I just looked at a data review. And in those states, there are about 6,000 possible prospects. And they were selling to universities and hospitals and things like that. So there may be 6,000 prospects. They were selling to about 500 of them.
00:18:41
Speaker
feet on the street. And so sometimes just doing the digital marketing isn't always the only thing to do. And so in that case, we were able to put together a program to use private label products that had nice gross margin, and they were able to provide those salespeople with a really good opening sales pitch to go into these prospects.
00:19:12
Speaker
you know, something they never would have thought of doing. So I think we also have to be really careful about how much energy we've put solely into the digital space versus just using analysis and thought to come up with other ways that you might be able to go to market to drive revenue quicker. Which I think begs the question, what's the value of a lead?
00:19:37
Speaker
And there's two answers to that. If it's a good lead, there's a tremendous amount of value to it. If it's a bad lead, there's a tremendous amount of harm associated with that. So it's not lead generation for the sake of creating rote numbers of people to call. You know, back in the dark ages of the internet, the time in my life that Dave and I like to refer to as college,
00:20:03
Speaker
There was a company that literally, it was the weirdest thing, literally your phone number would be printed in a book and then they would give the book to everybody. Yeah. That's not helpful anymore. Right. Unless you need to prop up your TV.
00:20:21
Speaker
or something.
Quality Leads vs Poor Leads
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah. I forget what it was called. Or you got a kid that isn't sitting high enough at the table. Right. Yeah. So just getting lists isn't helpful if they're not prepared to buy and if they're not ready to buy.
00:20:41
Speaker
I heard an interesting statistic earlier in this, this year is in any particular industry, only 2% of your target markets are in a position to buy right now. Right. So what marketing does is handles is perhaps the other 98 to become the two. Right. And that's not, you're absolutely right, Greg, it's not just digital.
00:21:06
Speaker
This this just occurred to me and I promise I'll keep it G rated but I think maybe what we're talking about and and a good analogy for this might be It's kind of like dating Right. So if You approach dating by just saying I'm gonna get a list of every Member of the opposite sex in my town and I'm just gonna start calling them. Well, let's be correct anybody that you're interested in and
00:21:31
Speaker
not even that, right? So I'm going to an SEO company and I'm gonna get, or I'm gonna buy a list of every viable candidate. There you go, viable candidate, I like that. There, see?
00:21:43
Speaker
But what we're kind of talking about in this branding thing is maybe figuring out what your most viable candidates are actually looking for and maybe spending some time and brushing your hair and presenting the right brand and perhaps learning good conversation techniques so that you can get a date and meet somebody.
00:22:06
Speaker
I totally agree. So think about, I said Nordic track 30 years ago. I mean, back then we were doing flashy brochures or, you know, promotional offers, things like that. And it would work today. It's about talking to your prospect in a way that develops a relationship where they want to buy from you. Yep. Instead of just giving them a promotion to try to convince them to buy from you.
00:22:35
Speaker
And it's interesting how even that market has changed. 30 years ago, you were selling exercise equipment, but if you ask Peloton what their business model is, they'll tell you they're a content company.
00:22:50
Speaker
So let's get back to the topic at hand, which is strategic
Revenue and Margin Focus
00:22:55
Speaker
thinking. So if we're going to hire you, Greg, to do strategic thinking, you're not just going to look at marketing tactics. The important thing is revenue, right? Well, it's revenue and margin. Ultimately, it's like, what is it that you want to sell and why? And if you go out and spend all this money trying to
00:23:16
Speaker
drive revenue for this product or this category, whatever, however the business wants to describe it. Is that the best use of their money? Because sometimes they may have a different product that they can market.
00:23:29
Speaker
and or go to market in a different way where they can make money. I had a client once where it was an engineering company and they wanted to market a product and sell it direct. And I kind of put the example together to say, you know, you'd be better licensing this thing because the cost of shipping is too expensive for shipping steel. Yep. And
00:23:57
Speaker
You know, I mean, I worked at Pepsi. Shipping water is really expensive. That's why they're bottling plants all over the country. Right. Okay. And so they would, they were better off, in my opinion, to license their technology to other, other metal manufacturers around the country that could do the product. So it's a little bit, it's, it's never an either or.
00:24:23
Speaker
It's about the cost of goods matters, the shipping matters. That all has to be incorporated into what your decisions are, because part of that marketing plan, if you will, is financials, and you got to address all that stuff. Trigby, I'm sorry if I just went down a rabbit hole there. No, not at all. I think that's really helpful. Ultimately, what you're really trying to determine in the first part of the process is,
00:24:52
Speaker
what's a revenue goal, but also what's a profit goal. Right. And what, and what do you want to do? You know, where are you going with your business? I mean, if your business is, you know, we're going to be keeping this thing for the next.
Business Goals and Exit Strategies
00:25:07
Speaker
15 years, that's one thing. But it's like, you know, my kids don't want to be in this, again, I work with family owned businesses, my kids don't want the business, I need to figure out how to sell the next five years, then let's talk about how you do that. And I'm not doing exit planning in any way, shape or form. But you know, how do you make sure that
00:25:26
Speaker
you're getting your EBIT, because that's all based on EBITDA, right? So how do you get your EBITDA up in a way? So I know what EBITDA is, but for the sake of our, Dave, could you roll that out a little? What is EBITDA?
00:25:43
Speaker
Are you asking me, Tricky, to prove that I might know? No, it's an important business term that I think people don't always know. And it's scary coming from a marketing guy that he might know what that is, you know? Yeah, so what is EBITDA for our listeners? It's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and what's the last A?
00:26:13
Speaker
Amortization, right? Think about it as margin. You sell a business based on the margins that you make, and there's a multiple off
Marketing Expense vs Investment
00:26:25
Speaker
of that. So the more that you can take care of that, get that margin up, and marketing can be part of that. It's not just an expense, but it can help you improve your margins done correctly.
00:26:35
Speaker
Right, and don't even get me started on people that expect or that look at marketing as an expense because that's exactly like saying I need to run a marathon. What I need to do is stop eating. Yeah. So Greg, so we've got our profit margin and overall revenue goal set. What's the next thing you look at? The distribution system. Okay.
00:27:02
Speaker
You know, so I'm sorry. Why do you go there? Second. So if you're a manufacturing company, let's say in most cases, you're going to have a distributor out there or you're going to have, you know, somebody else is going to be selling the product for you and it wraps whatever the case may be. And you need to know how
00:27:26
Speaker
how to motivate the salespeople at that repping agency or that distributor so they're selling your product.
Distribution Network Motivation
00:27:34
Speaker
You get into distributor. And so I've done a couple of beers in my career as a consultant, and that has to go through a distribution network. So there are beer distributors, right? Well, there are some beer distributors that will literally just take a beer, put it on the shelf in their inventory,
00:27:52
Speaker
but they know it's a competitor what some of their other beers are so they don't really want to sell your product. They're killing it from the market. And so understanding how your distribution network thinks and how do you motivate them to want to sell your product.
00:28:12
Speaker
Sure, because that's the way you're going to have people pull along instead of just pushing, right? So, you know, not only are you pushing it out to the world and doing your thing, but you're also finding partners to engage and to help you level up and get even more customers in. Right. So I had another client where
00:28:31
Speaker
My role was to talk to the salespeople and then basically write project recaps of work that they had done. And so they were working on water treatment centers in facilities around the world. And so I was interviewing multiple people involved in the project and then writing a recap that then became
00:28:55
Speaker
I'll call it a sales sheet, but it's something that's on their website that says, here's how our products were used. And I was talking about salespeople and distributor salespeople to make that happen. Cool. Yeah. So that's second on the list is distribution.
Pricing Strategies
00:29:13
Speaker
What's third? Because we haven't even gotten to marketing yet, which I think it's fascinating that when you're hiring a strategist,
00:29:22
Speaker
we have yet to get to marketing. So I'm intrigued to see what's next. Well, it's all part of marketing because it's how do you go to market and you need to understand what the distribution system is. So I understand how you go to market. Pricing is also part of it, but that's also an inherent piece of the product mix and the marketing mix. Say more about this, because I think this is really critical. Yeah.
00:29:46
Speaker
Again, let me just use that same story of the two-step distribution process. Let me ask a question. How many times have you gone on to a site and you're looking at, it's like you can't get a price because you have to get the price from the distributor? Yeah, I don't. Okay. It happens all the time in the B2B world and sometimes in the B2C world.
00:30:10
Speaker
And so with pricing, it's understanding the competitive set, which we haven't talked about, and that's also part of what you need to do here.
Pricing Structures in Distribution
00:30:20
Speaker
But understanding where you fit into it and understanding if the price that you're selling to the distributor, which then ends up to the customer, that the margin structure is correct. So if you're selling beer, the distributor is going to want to make 25 to 35 points. The retailer is going to want to make 50 points.
00:30:40
Speaker
30 to 50 points, depending. So you got to be able to structure all of that in a way that as you go to market, as you develop your strategies, all that gets incorporated into it. Does that answer the question, Trigby?
00:30:56
Speaker
Yeah, I guess what I think is so fascinating is that marketing permeates so much more than just a couple of people talking about a website or looking at colors and fonts. In fact, it used to be television advertising. I mean, for years, I've asked the question after the Super Bowl to a prospect, what's your favorite ad? And they can tell you exactly what the favorite ad was on the Super Bowl.
00:31:25
Speaker
And then just ask them, well, who paid for that? Who's the sponsor of that ad? And 45% to 75% of the time, they will have no idea who the advertiser was. And that's what I call a $10 million mistake. Oh yeah, for sure. And that type of mistake happens not just on the Super Bowl, but on all types of different marketing programs.
00:31:52
Speaker
Well, I think, again, kind of tying back to our strategic theme, if you don't think enough about who you're trying to reach and how you're going to get there, it makes it really easy to just kind of fumble around in the woods and waste money, waste time, waste effort, and miss out on sales.
00:32:12
Speaker
Well, right. And it's the right sales because you want to get the sales that you don't have to discount all the time to get them. You want to get good customers. You want to have customers become advocates for you. You know, so that all gets together and it's all triggered me to your point. It's all part of marketing. Marketing is not just, you know, how do I do SEO or what kind of direct mail should I do? Or, you know, what kind of sales sheet do I have to give a sales guy?
00:32:39
Speaker
I've been thinking recently that really good companies have the same sort of customer experience model as a restaurant.
Unified Brand Experience
00:32:48
Speaker
If you go to a restaurant, you're going to talk to a host, you're going to talk to a server, you're going to talk to a bartender, there might be a table busser, but all of those people are trying to give you a really great experience in one way or another. The goal is the customer experience.
00:33:06
Speaker
And all those people are working, some of them are in, you know, sales, some of them are in execution and some of them are in delivery, but ultimately everybody's trying to make sure that you have a good time. So to build on that, if you go to Trader Joe's and you're checking out at Trader Joe's and they see that you've got something where it's like, Oh, it's a bad cucumber in the package and ring a bell and they send someone to get you
00:33:34
Speaker
another one before you check out. They don't even ask you to go get it. I mean, that's all part of the brand and the customer experience at TJ's. And it's kind of cool. Yeah. So I hire you.
Components of Strategic Marketing Plan
00:33:48
Speaker
I've done this strategic thing. What do I get? Do you just sort of pontificate or do you give me a real document? You get a real written document. Okay. What all goes into it?
00:34:03
Speaker
So starts with that situation analysis. We agree on your key issue, on your objectives, numerical objectives. Then we identify what issues, key issues you have to overcome to achieve those objectives. That's the hardest part of a marketing plan. From there you do strategies, tactics, financials. You got to make sure that you can afford everything. And then you have a feedback mechanism loop back up to the top. Okay.
00:34:31
Speaker
so that you can see what's working. The only thing I can tell you, at any time you do a marketing plan, I know with 100% certainty, it's wrong. Because life gets in the way, things change. You can't get a product, the salesperson quits, whatever. But at least this way, if you've got those feedback loops, you can revisit it on a regular basis to make sure that you're doing the right things or
00:35:01
Speaker
You know, things change and you have to make, you have to cancel a program or something, but it's a way to track progress. I think if you don't have a marketing plan that allows you to do that, you're wasting your time. What's the biggest disappointment you've ever had in your career when you've found somebody who's gotten a great opportunity to take a great leap forward and then they just didn't?
Startup Challenges and Marketing Investment
00:35:25
Speaker
Wow.
00:35:29
Speaker
I helped start a business maybe four years ago, which was preventative mobile dentistry into senior living communities. All right. Say that again, cause that was a lot of words. So preventative dentistry that would go on a mobile basis, send a dentist and a hygienist into a senior living community, think assisted living nursery, you know, nursing homes, things like that.
00:35:57
Speaker
Medicare does not cover dentistry and you really need good teeth because as you age, your teeth get bad. It's just unfortunately a fact of life. And if your teeth are bad, you don't eat well, you don't smile, you don't socialize as much, and it can start this little spiral downward. And all of this is known and been published.
00:36:25
Speaker
I, when I work with startups, I will often do both the sales and marketing function. Cause again, remember I said I started as a sales guy. Great. And so I was out initially, I put together the strategy with the founders and then went out and found some senior living communities that we could, that agreed to let us come in and validate that this concept would work. Now, once you're in,
00:36:51
Speaker
You have to sell not only the resident, but quite often the resident's children who are going to have to pay for it. And you have to sell the staff and all those facilities are understaffed, every single one of them. This was such a cool concept. And I use my personal contacts of people I know that own some of these facilities, communities,
00:37:18
Speaker
And we were making really good progress. And once I started doing that, then I met some people who are involved, leading age Minnesota is one of them, but some people that were really tied in deeply to the senior community. And so I eventually pulled myself out and had them get involved because they could open more doors than I could. And to me, it's always about what's right for the client, not me. And unfortunately, the whole thing fell apart.
00:37:46
Speaker
Was it an operational issue or was it a marketing thing or did they not think about the customers? I think they were not willing to invest in the marketing to the children who are paying for some of this. I think they didn't want to invest enough money to really try to validate it in a few spots because
00:38:15
Speaker
There were a couple of dentists here and there that were doing things on a one-off basis, but we were able to get in some pretty good size organizations. And if we had validated it there, we could have been off to the races. So I opened the doors and it wasn't the people that came in that I turned over to, it was the founders and how they did it.
00:38:40
Speaker
Sure. Well, and that, that part of what probably happened and correct me if I'm, if my assumption is wrong, but they probably got caught up in, you know, trying to attack too many fronts as possible or more, more fronts than they should
Resource Allocation in Startups
00:38:57
Speaker
have. So they, they tried something for a week and like, oh crap, I can't do that. And so they pivoted and then they didn't give it enough time to actually invest properly in getting real results. Yeah. I think they got,
00:39:10
Speaker
The founder got some really talented people involved who are both dentists and business people, financial people, but didn't want to spend the money that needed to be spent, nor was he willing to bring in additional partners and lower his ownership, which is not uncommon. Right.
00:39:33
Speaker
Which I would make the argument that, especially when you're in a startup mode, sales and marketing is as important as your infrastructure. And you do have to invest in them. Well, you do. And you also have to learn from what you're doing because some things work and some things don't work as well as you want. And so you want to tweak it. So, you know, you're constantly a startup, you're constantly evolving. And how are you going to go to market? Got it.
00:40:04
Speaker
One thing that we've mentioned a whole bunch that we haven't talked much about the ramifications of it are sales.
Sales and Marketing Connection
00:40:11
Speaker
So as we're looking at strategy and driving revenue for a business,
00:40:15
Speaker
What does your strategic plan do to help empower sales teams? Or how does that work? Is that where the rubber hits the road? Or you just throw it over the top of the fence and say, here guys, good luck. Here's your call sheet. Or what do you do with those guys? Marketing is irrelevant if it doesn't sell anything. I mean, it's about
00:40:41
Speaker
Nothing happens until something is sold, people have said, right? And so everything in marketing, in my opinion, everything that I do is all about driving revenue. And driving revenue in an affordable way for the organization. And so they are not separate, they are intrinsically tied sales and marketing. And I think anybody that looks at it differently has spent too much time working in large marketing organizations in the package goods world.
00:41:11
Speaker
It's been too siloed and it was like, oh yeah, it's all sales fault that we didn't hit our revenue goal. All the marketing salespeople are saying, oh, it's the marketing, the leads are bad. They start quoting Gary Glen Ross. Yep. No, it's all about sales. Period. Well, I'm just surprised that the dentist people found the way to keep the chair steady with the car in motion.
00:41:37
Speaker
Say it again. Well, they keep the chair steady. Well, because you said it was mobile dentistry. Yeah, but they would come in and get a conference room or something for the day.
Logistics of Mobile Dentistry
00:41:49
Speaker
I thought they were loading them in the back of a car like you do with. There is an organization. There is an organization that has a I think like an RV that will drive up literally got a mobile dentist. Yeah. But, you know, this was just the preventative stuff. So if it was anything more serious, then you have to go to the dentist.
00:42:08
Speaker
Kind of reminds me of the person that came in and told me that they wanted help launching their online tattoo parlor. And I said, oh, okay, great. Where are you going to do the tattooing? And the girl looked at me like I had three heads and said, well, when you get a tattoo, you can have it anywhere on your body. And I said, well, yeah, but where are you going to actually do the work? And she looked at me and she went,
00:42:35
Speaker
Uh, uh, anywhere on the body, but where's the work going to be completed wherever the con is? She liked, she, you old man, you don't understand you were tattoos. So, um, all right. So that was the, that was the worst. What's the best success story from having, after creating a strategy, you know, I had a,
00:43:05
Speaker
a client in the Internet of Things space.
Success in New Industry Segments
00:43:10
Speaker
It's being able to open up new industry segments was just thrilling. At one point, I went to, what is it called? Farm Fest.
00:43:33
Speaker
And they literally take a field in Southern Minnesota and they cut down whatever was growing there. And it's a, um, a trade show for in the, in the agricultural industry, you know, and I'm sitting there in my little four door car and I'm driving in and I can feel whatever was cut down, hitting the bottom of my car as I'm driving through it, sitting in the oil pan or whatever. And I get out of the car and one of these guys getting out of pickup and he looks at me and he goes, you're not from around here, are you?
00:44:05
Speaker
Like, no, I'm a city boy. But what was cool is I was able to help them figure out how to open up new industries. So if you think about it, I went to a Turkey farm and we were going to be able to measure how much feed was in a Turkey bin. And the way they measured at the time was they literally would knock on the side of the Turkey bin.
00:44:34
Speaker
And they were listening to when it got up, that sound changes. That's where, okay. So we needed X amount of feed. And what we put together to put a monitor inside the bin, what I initially didn't understand is the corporation wanted to keep their guys off of ladders. There was a safety thing, but we were able to figure out how to monitor this, monitor this so that they could make sure that the turkeys are always having feed and the right feed at the same, at the right time.
00:45:02
Speaker
during whatever the 13 weeks or 20 weeks are that the birds are grown. But being able to help an organization open up, understand how different segments worked, that's always fun for me. It gets the investor to give mind going. And then it turns into real business for somebody else, which I just love.
00:45:28
Speaker
Well, Greg, thank you for all your expertise today. And if somebody wants to hire you or wants to learn a little bit more about what they can do for you, you can do for them. Excuse me, where can they find you? So I've got a website. It's pomerance-assoc. And you can get a rough idea of what we do. Yeah, I know. You like the ASS. I know that trick. Yeah. Pomerance with a Z.
00:45:55
Speaker
Pomerance with a Z or you can give me a call. I'm in one of those books that you were talking about earlier. Oh, I'll grab it off of my kid's chair and I will time travel back to 1998 and get that. Yeah. Well, we don't have to throw them out anymore. So that's a good thing. You know, yeah, it's just it's sad how much I have to explain to people who are under 30. I know the feeling.
00:46:23
Speaker
Amazing. Thanks for your time to me, Greg. And I can't wait to dig in on another strategy with another client. Absolutely. I'd love to work with you guys. Thank you so much for including me. And let's hope next year is a good year for all of us. Absolutely.