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Why Accountability and Discipline are a Game Changer for Business Growth [Endless Customers Podcast S.1. Ep. 41]
![Alex Winter](jpg/500px_square_alex_winter89d9.jpg)
By Alex Winter
Jun 17, 2024
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This transcript has been generated with AI and not checked for accuracy.
Brian Casey
0:00:00
Alex, if you are trying to, as a business, implement endless customers or really any substantive change in your business, there are two things that you have to have in place that seem easy, but a lot of businesses are falling short with. Well, I definitely want to talk about those two things.
Alex Winter
0:00:15
What are they?
Brian Casey
0:00:15
Accountability and discipline. All right, let's get after it.
Alex Winter
0:00:18
♪♪♪ Welcome back to Endless Customers.
Alex Winter
0:00:28
My name is Alex Winter and today we are joined by Brian Casey, a head coach here at Impact. Brian, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Alex. Good to be back.
Alex Winter
0:00:36
Good to have you back, man.
Brian Casey
0:00:37
It's great to see you. How's everything going?
Alex Winter
0:00:39
It's good.
Brian Casey
0:00:40
It's starting to turn into summer, so I have more incentive to go outside and do things afterwards, so life is good.
Alex Winter
0:00:52
The sun stays up longer, yeah, no, I'm right there with you, man, I love it. Well, today we have a really great topic, and this is one that I think you're perfect for, because you train and you coach a lot of companies in different industries and different backgrounds,
Alex Winter
0:01:04
but we're talking about accountability and discipline today, and that may seem basic to some people, but I don't think people realize how important these things are fundamentally in order to have like long-term success so, you know we talked about like We have same-day delivery with Amazon Prime. We have streaming services. We can watch from our cows. Everything's at our fingertips
Alex Winter
0:01:25
There's like this instant gratification and we live in like a very fast-paced world But should we really be? Having the same mentality and expecting the same thing when it comes to results from our sales and from our marketing efforts?
Brian Casey
0:01:39
Yeah, that's a tough question because the answer is sometimes and it depends. Ultimately, there's certain things that you could do that are going to give you very quick results if we talk about paid social or paid on search or if we're talking about launching a tool that's going to immediately start to give us leads, we could do those things. So there's some quick hitters,
Brian Casey
0:02:06
and then there's things that are foundational that are gonna take a while that you're gonna live off of in a sustainable manner for years. So those things generally are the ones that do take longer to create and develop
Brian Casey
0:02:19
the foundation for.
Alex Winter
0:02:20
Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. And since we're talking about that, or at least that's what I want to focus on, because I feel like when they ask you an answer and we start to talk about endless customers and gaining traction with having an endless flow of customers with your business, you have to think long term. You have to think about digging in a little bit more than some of those quick hits and
Alex Winter
0:02:38
those quick wins that you can get. Those are great things, but longevity-wise, you really need to lean into it more. When we start to talk about gaining traction with sales and marketing, it tends to take more time. Why is that or why should that be the case?
Alex Winter
0:02:52
Yeah, so those things that I mentioned
Brian Casey
0:02:55
that are the quick hitters, those are the things that are generally pay to play. So if you're talking about Google Ads, it's like yeah, you can put money in and you can get some money out. And if those are profitable,
Brian Casey
0:03:04
that probably is a part of your long-term strategy. The thing that we're talking about that does take more time is the stuff you don't have to necessarily pay for. It's articles and content and a website that brings people in. And that takes a long time to develop because ultimately you have to have a lot of different mechanisms and ways that people can find you and come back to your
Brian Casey
0:03:26
website. And ultimately every piece of content that we create, um, every video that exists on YouTube or on a website, every time we make an optimization to a part of a website, the goal is we're building this future state that will continue to be iterative, but this future state of a lot of entry points, a lot of different ways for people to find you. And it's not as if everyone has the exact same question that leads them to your website.
Brian Casey
0:03:58
Everybody takes a different path. Building this foundation of content and having a website that really helps someone to be able to make a decision is a long process. There's a lot of different angles you gotta consider.
Alex Winter
0:04:12
Yeah, and I totally agree that you have to meet people where they are and everyone finds information and digests information differently. Some people like to be on their phone, some people like to be on their computer, there's different apps, there's different,
Alex Winter
0:04:23
there's so many different ways, so it's really important to be thinking about how everyone's going to meet you or get to know your brand or your product or your service. But I also think there's a lot of companies out there, too, that don't even have some of these things in place.
Alex Winter
0:04:35
Like you're talking about iterating on your website and how important your website is. And I couldn't agree more. But some companies that are just starting out or that may be a referral type business might not even have a website. So they have to start to build these things first before they
Alex Winter
0:04:48
can even really start diving in deeper onto what you're talking about. Is that fair to say?
Brian Casey
0:04:53
Yeah, I mean, there's several companies that we have talked to, whether they be a prospect or they end up being a client, that have not had to focus on their website. And they're getting to a point where things are starting to level out.
Brian Casey
0:05:07
And it's not able to scale, the business isn't able to scale how they want or into the markets that they want, or they have new products and those products aren't able to go to the same market. They're trying to find a new market. That's when the dynamic of like today's modern customer using the website starts to appear and have them say, oh, we're not going to be able to do what we have done historically.
Brian Casey
0:05:36
We do have to find a different mechanism for it. So I think it's totally fair to say, like there's a lot of people who probably haven't thought about their website. And if your website's not your number one salesperson, your number one sales tool, you're probably missing out.
Alex Winter
0:05:49
For sure, no for sure. So for people out there that are, there's some, and I know we're speaking generally because there's so many different stages and potentialities of like where people could be in their journey, whether they have a site, they don't,
Alex Winter
0:06:01
the size of their company, their industry, but generally speaking, what are some things that business leaders and business owners can do to speed up this process, or at least to start the process and get the wheels turning so that they can get into a better place?
Alex Winter
0:06:13
Yeah, so let's say you don't have someone on your team
Brian Casey
0:06:15
who can create a video or can write an article right now. Like, that's a common place that we find companies in is they've never had a content creator in-house or they've outsourced it historically. One of the quickest things you can do is say, who cares about the formality of it?
Brian Casey
0:06:33
There's never been a lower barrier to entry for video. And if I can imagine a question or a concern that's gonna come up in my sales process and just record a quick video on my phone without having to do any editing, and I can send that in the sales process,
Brian Casey
0:06:53
I don't have to have someone do that. We can be scrappy. And depending on your industry, depending on the savviness of your consumer, maybe that does, maybe it doesn't work. But for the vast majority of businesses
Brian Casey
0:07:05
that we talk to, that we work with, getting scrappy and just creating a piece of content or sitting down and just hammering out your thoughts and putting it into an article, that doesn't even have to be well refined with the intention that you're gonna be able to use it
Brian Casey
0:07:20
in the sales process to educate a prospect or to answer a question or to get ahead of a concern before it becomes something that ends up having them ghosting you. Those are things anybody can do and do quickly without having to think about,
Brian Casey
0:07:34
you know, we just don't have the bandwidth to do it. We don't have the people that know how to write videos, write articles, or shoot videos. It's not a skill we have. All you have to do is be able to communicate what you do now and be able to send it in a sales process. And that's generally where we see the quickest wins, is if you have a sales team that adopts a culture of content, that really takes it seriously in job being I'm a teacher, I'm here to help educate you
Brian Casey
0:08:03
and allow you to make the right decision. And I'm gonna be here to guide you if you want my feedback. I'm gonna give you a recommendation based on what I feel in diagnosing where you're at. But outside of that, I'm gonna let you lead. And I'm gonna give you the education to do it.
Brian Casey
0:08:18
That helps the entire thing happen very quickly is when the sales team has adopted that mindset and they know that content's a big part of that. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And there's times where that can happen organically
Alex Winter
0:08:30
and there's times where that can happen internally in a company and as the leadership, or as the leader or as being part of the leadership team, that's the driving force of making those relationships and bridging those gaps in order for that to happen. But what if someone's struggling with that?
Alex Winter
0:08:43
What if like, historically sales and marketing sometimes tends to butt heads and they tend to be in different lanes or different sandboxes, whatever you want to call it. When a business owner or like a marketing manager or somebody's in a seat where they're struggling
Alex Winter
0:08:58
to make that happen and bridge those gaps, what advice do you give? And at what point do you go like, okay, maybe you can't do this internally and you need some help from somebody outside to help bring in these ideas or help with accountability and keeping people, you know, disciplined.
Alex Winter
0:09:15
Yeah.
Brian Casey
0:09:16
So ultimately the, the thing that generally is true about the companies that break down those traditional barriers between marketing and sales is that they are meeting with each other and they're having honest conversations about where they're at from a deal standpoint, what deals are moving through the pipeline, what deals are stalling. Um, they're having honest conversations about, uh, why, why they didn't close and it's not just like we were too expensive
Brian Casey
0:09:42
We're talking about why it was too expensive or what led them to believe that it was too expensive, right? They really didn't understand. Yeah What are they not percent from a value standpoint to the point where their cop-out answer was it was too expensive So that's one thing that everybody can do is get your marketing content creating team in your sales meetings. We historically at Impact have called them revenue team meetings.
Brian Casey
0:10:07
But ultimately I view those as sales meetings that marketing is privy to, because that's some of the best advice and guidance you can give to your marketing team is, these are the active deals we're working on, these are the conversations we're having,
Brian Casey
0:10:18
and this is where we're struggling. This is where we could use your help. Now, oftentimes I think the idea and concept of that is easy to think about, getting your sales team and your marketing teams in the same room. When it comes to actually having the conversations,
Brian Casey
0:10:37
a lot of people struggle. A lot of people struggle to have the marketing team be able to hear things that are happening on the sales team and just walk away with takeaways and know how to solve those problems.
Alex Winter
0:10:52
Right. And then reversely, it feels like, I feel like sales teams tend to be like, marketing's making stuff that I can't use in my sales process or in the conversations I'm having. So there's a disconnect there. Like historically, there's a disconnect there. And it happens a lot. It's even happened here internally at Impact at times as we've shifted the business or changed certain service lines. But those revenue team meetings or those meetings where you get sales and marketing folks together, that is really the differentiator.
Alex Winter
0:11:17
I can't tell you how many times I thought we were making content that was really creative and really cool and wonderful. Maybe it was all those things, but it wasn't helping our sales team close more deals. To be able to be privy to those conversations, it unlocked all these new ideas and all these
Brian Casey
0:11:32
new potentials for content that we had never even entertained before. Yeah. And from a, sometimes teams are going to organically be able to do that and they're going to, it's going to click. And a lot of time you need someone to, to moderate that process. You need someone that is going to ask the hard questions. And when I say hard questions, oftentimes I find myself asking the seemingly stupid questions that it's just like, this is where I have a knowledge gap. I know that I'm not exactly in your space in a day to day sense,
Brian Casey
0:12:03
but I don't know why you would create that piece of content based on what you just heard. And then they're like, Oh, so oftentimes I find myself being the consumer or having the mindset of the consumer where they're getting very stuck into the, like, this is our language. These are the conversations that we have. Um, there's a lot of assumptions and a lot of, um,
Brian Casey
0:12:22
just misguidance in terms of what the consumer's actually thinking, feeling, even sales team members. So it is really helpful to have someone come in and just ask the dumb questions, and then have to, that often makes everybody like reframe or rethink about how they were thinking
Brian Casey
0:12:41
about it in the first place.
Alex Winter
0:12:42
Oh, that's a great point, and I think that's a great segue too with like, when you're that close to something, if you're in the trenches on the sales team, the marketing team, if you're living and breathing that company and that culture all day, every day. Sometimes it's hard to take a step back
Alex Winter
0:12:54
and look at yourselves from an outside perspective and look at yourselves like how a consumer or a potential customer would look at them, which is why having a coach or a trainer or somebody that's not part of the organization might be a really good value add to gain that perspective.
Alex Winter
0:13:08
And that's what you do on a daily basis, right?
Brian Casey
0:13:11
Yeah, it's perspective and it's also, like the beauty that I get is I've been, I don't work in an industry. So for me, I can come in and I can take something that's worked in a B2C capacity and apply the same principle to a B2B2C company
Brian Casey
0:13:26
that's selling to major manufacturers. Because the principles are the same, but ultimately the shared knowledge and being able to pass along the same principles to different applications oftentimes just changes the way that companies that we work with do business from a sales standpoint. And it's really cool to be able to say like, hey, I know this is potentially going
Brian Casey
0:13:49
to sound really stupid, but there's a roofing company in Myrtle Beach that did this. And the way that I think it would apply to your business is in this sense. And they're like, wow, that makes a lot of sense. We would have never thought of that, because that's not how everybody else in our industry sells.
Alex Winter
0:14:06
Yeah, that's really innovative and really cool ways of approaching it and just bringing in different ideas to cross-pollinate and see where it can take you and see where it can take your company. Speaking of that, like I said, you work with a lot of companies
Alex Winter
0:14:18
and you coach and train a lot of people on this. Do you have a story, have you seen businesses that start off super excited and they're bought in, they've read the book, they're ready to go, they wanna start seeing these results and maybe they start off great,
Alex Winter
0:14:32
but then they start to taper. Or maybe they read the book and they thought they could do it themselves and they started off okay and then it starts to taper in. Can you just share some of those experiences with us and where it tends to fall off
Alex Winter
0:14:43
and how to get those people back on track?
Brian Casey
0:14:46
Yeah, so there's a couple scenarios where that typically happens. Ultimately, if you see some initial success, you might be like, we got this, we understand it, we know how to do this, we know how to do it well, we're already seeing traffic and we're already getting leads coming through the door. When you peel behind the curtain a little bit, it's like one article that went viral.
Brian Casey
0:15:16
That's not a sustainable thing. And that brought a lot of traffic in and leads back to the site. But what happens if that article, because it's not optimized, drops in ranking? Or what happens if Google is no longer
Brian Casey
0:15:28
being the primary source where people are searching for information, and AI is taking over that component?
Alex Winter
0:15:33
Right.
Brian Casey
0:15:35
You lose out on that. And that's happened a lot. I mean, we've had a lot of companies that we've worked with that get really fast starts. And the conversation they end up having is like, we feel like we got this.
Brian Casey
0:15:46
We feel like we're good.
Alex Winter
0:15:47
We understand it.
Brian Casey
0:15:48
We're executing this really well. And they're starting well. And the unfortunate piece of that is, some people, I still have access to their HubSpot portals because I was working with them. Or sometimes I'll just follow up with them
Brian Casey
0:16:04
and they'll be like, yeah, we just went off the rails. We thought we had it, we were kind of coasting a little bit, we got fat and happy, and now we're back to the point where we're like, what did we not know? What did we think we knew and what did we not know that ended us being here to the point
Alex Winter
0:16:22
where we really need to have a conversation about getting back to basics. Yeah, getting back to basics and getting back into that consistency piece. Because you're right, when you start to have some of those wins, I don't want to call it like you get a big head, but you start to get kind of fat and happy where it's like, oh, this is working, we got this. And that's where mistakes can happen, is when you start to get a little bit comfortable
Alex Winter
0:16:45
or complacent and you don't keep your pedal on the proverbial gas, it can start to go back in the other direction. So how do you help businesses with accountability and keeping them disciplined? Because we're talking about a lot of content here, right? When you own your marketing,
Alex Winter
0:17:00
like we're talking about with Endless Customers, it's two to three pieces of content every week, written and video, and to stay consistent with that and fresh with that and to continue doing that takes practice, it takes work.
Alex Winter
0:17:13
Yeah.
Brian Casey
0:17:14
So, at Impact, we operate in these 90-day cycles. So these 90-day cycles help us to identify, like, what's the work to be done? And that's our checkpoint, is every 90 days, we're going to get back, we're going to talk about how we did, we're going to talk about what we saw from a success standpoint, we're going to talk about, you know, where do we struggle or where did we fail over the last 90 days, and let's bring some focus into the areas that we fell short in.
Brian Casey
0:17:39
And if we did everything or if we got really close to getting everything on our list, knocked out, that's when we know it's like we have a conversation of, do we let this marinate and kind of double down on this? Or do we feel like it's actually time to add something more to the plate? Cause from an endless customer standpoint, it's not just, you know, publishing content. There's a lot of components that go into having your website
Brian Casey
0:18:03
and your company be the most trusted voice in your space. And it can be very easy and reductive to say, we know how to publish content. We're doing that endless customer as they ask you to answer a thing really well.
Alex Winter
0:18:16
Yeah.
Alex Winter
0:18:17
Yeah, and I couldn't agree more with that. And I think too that this is something that I love about Impact, and this is like a shameless plug here, but it's the truth. We don't stick with clients
Alex Winter
0:18:26
if they're not willing to put in the work. So like you as a coach, if you're in an agreement with a client and you keep showing up to your bi-weekly calls or your weekly calls and they're not doing the work and they're not staying consistent, we tend to back out of those deals because it's not going to help them, it's not going to help us, it's not going to help anybody. So there is an agreement of like we're going to put the work in and we're going to put the time in and we're gonna invest this time,
Alex Winter
0:18:49
because there is ROI if we do it, but you have to stay consistent with it. If you don't, it's just not gonna work, and we don't wanna waste anybody's time. So that's a big component of this too. And I'd love for you to share a story if you can.
Alex Winter
0:19:02
Like, do you have a business or somebody that maybe was struggling with the discipline a little bit or needed some accountability and you maybe had to be a little tough with them, but over time, they really got it locked down and they've gone from A to B
Alex Winter
0:19:14
and have just grown or like have really got it dialed in.
Brian Casey
0:19:18
Yeah, so I have one like accountability type story and then one perseverance type story.
Alex Winter
0:19:24
Love it, all right cool. Let's start with the accountability one, that's great.
Brian Casey
0:19:28
I'm gonna start with the perseverance.
Alex Winter
0:19:29
Oh, okay, switch it up on me.
Brian Casey
0:19:30
Yeah, so insurance company that we work with out of central New York. They know who Barry Insurance is, they follow the Barry Insurance story, and they're a very similar business. And they have been doing the Ask the Answer for coming up on 18 months. And they were doing the right content, they were putting out all the right content, and
Brian Casey
0:19:52
it was just kind of middling results. And a combination of things happened. They launched a new website that had a different URL. It had a different experience and flow to it. And instead of us being like, what are we doing wrong? The conversation like immediately became, oh, the website was like holding us back a little bit from a performance standpoint, from a user experience standpoint. And then everything started flowing. And I talked to them about three months ago
Brian Casey
0:20:29
and they were mentioning, we wrote our most policies in company history this week or this month. I forget what the time period was, but wrote the most policies that we've written in this time frame.
Alex Winter
0:20:42
Wow.
Brian Casey
0:20:43
Like, that is not the conversation that I anticipated having today, but I'm really glad that we have it.
Alex Winter
0:20:49
That's great, but that means that it's working, because that means that they're writing more policies than they ever have in the past. So their website and the work that they've been putting in is clearly attracting more of their best customers.
Alex Winter
0:21:00
Yeah.
Brian Casey
0:21:00
From an accountability standpoint, long-standing customer that we worked with a long time ago, they're in industrial packaging. And their content writer was a very talented content writer. He was consistently able to hit his production cadence. And there was a point where the feedback
Brian Casey
0:21:28
that I was giving him to try to help him create the best articles possible in terms of being found and converting, he just wasn't taking the feedback. And I had an honest conversation with him, I was like, look man, we gotta clear the air.
Alex Winter
0:21:40
There is like something between us
Brian Casey
0:21:43
that what I'm putting down, you're not picking up. And we had a heart to heart about it. And so.
Alex Winter
0:21:49
That's awesome you did that though,
Brian Casey
0:21:50
because it sounds like maybe he wasn't,
Alex Winter
0:21:52
something was off, he wasn't feeling it
Alex Winter
0:21:54
or wasn't vibing, so you just had a very candid and honest and open conversation with him. That's great. So what came out of that conversation?
Brian Casey
0:22:09
Yeah, I love this story because almost right after that, the tension was gone. We were able to just have very honest, direct conversations with each other. And it pushed him out of his comfort zone as well to really be coached, to not just be able to rely on his, his own
Brian Casey
0:22:28
intuition and his own intelligence, which he'd both, he had in spades and both of those areas, but it was really taking to feedback and being pushed to do something different than what he had been doing. Um, and he was able to figure a lot of pieces of the job out. One of the pieces that he, he did really well was the analytics piece. Um, and so a couple of years ago when we did the impact, um, awards for clients,
Brian Casey
0:22:54
he actually won the biggest ROI on any piece of content because he was able to tie a piece of content they did about contract manufacturing back to a deal that came in and sold for a million dollars. Wow. And the entire contract packaging part of the business was new to them, they had a couple big clients that had done that type of business with them. He got pushed to get out of his comfort zone
Brian Casey
0:23:21
and then he's sitting here singing the praises of the content and the strategy because he can actually prove in HubSpot, in Lucky Orange, through these tools, that a deal came in that was worth a million dollars, a single deal.
Alex Winter
0:23:38
Wow.
Alex Winter
0:23:39
A million dollars off a single deal off of a piece of content off of one article. I mean, if that's not motivation or exciting to hear, I don't know what is. That's crazy. So, there's something that you said in there that really stuck with me that I find fascinating,
Alex Winter
0:23:50
right?
Alex Winter
0:23:51
You had a quote unquote difficult conversation with him. Maybe it felt a little awkward. You were butting heads a little bit and you were like, hey, let's just talk about the elephant in the room and let's level with each other and really have a candid conversation. I love that.
Alex Winter
0:24:06
And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because I feel like there's a lot of times in companies and in organizations, whether it's sales, whether it's management, whatever the case may be, where people tend to not have those conversations or like they're afraid, there's fear, worry, doubt, concern, whatever it is, but they don't end up having those very important conversations that clearly can become a maker, potentially a breaking point in a relationship.
Alex Winter
0:24:28
So I know we're going a little off topic here, but this does play into the discipline of things, especially as a manager or a leader, where like, how do you force yourself to have those tough conversations that ultimately are gonna lead
Alex Winter
0:24:39
to a really good place for everybody involved?
Alex Winter
0:24:41
I think that's the biggest difference
Brian Casey
0:24:43
between like why I call myself a coach and why I'm not a consultant. A consultant is going to hear your kind of situation you find yourself in. You're gonna be driving that conversation, the consultant's gonna give you advice.
Alex Winter
0:24:59
Right.
Brian Casey
0:24:59
The coach is going to tell you where you're failing and why. And it takes a certain business owner, it takes a certain mentality to say, we wanna be coach. We are okay seizing some of the control in an area where there's an expert that has done this
Brian Casey
0:25:14
and walked businesses through this. And so anytime that I'm considering bringing on a new client, that's one of the first conversations we have is like, do you guys wanna be coached? Not do you want someone who's got some intelligence
Brian Casey
0:25:27
that's gonna answer the questions you have. It's do you wanna know when you're failing? Is that, do you guys have a culture in which we can call your baby ugly and we get through it. And we're better off as a result of having the conversation or do you guys want to be told you're doing a good job?
Alex Winter
0:25:45
Yeah, and that's a fundamental thing.
Alex Winter
0:25:47
And you have to discover that right up front. And I think that also plays into, so I know a little bit about your background. We've had some time to hang out outside of work and at events and things like that. But for anyone who doesn't know, Brian is also a coach
Alex Winter
0:25:59
and is really into athletics and does professional athletics and is a very disciplined guy on that side of the equation too. And I feel like there's parallels with playing sports and the discipline there when it comes to like
Alex Winter
0:26:12
staying fit, being in the gym and training. That's very similar like mentality-wise to what we're talking about right now with your business. Is that true?
Brian Casey
0:26:19
Yeah, I mean, I coached college ultimate Frisbee, which is a lot of people who have never played ultimate frisbee before that were just natural athletes. And in order for me to have a successful team, I have to be able to call out when we're not doing things well. And the same parallels exist in business. And where I've been playing ultimate frisbee for 30 years at this point, I'm coaching businesses for almost 10. And it's the same principles that apply of coach versus if you want a person
Brian Casey
0:26:52
that's gonna be on your sideline just cheering you on. And I don't find extreme value in just being a cheerleader.
Alex Winter
0:26:58
Totally. I think you make a better coach than a cheerleader, just saying. Now that there's anything wrong with being a cheerleader. All right, last thing, just some like closing thoughts here. I think we've had a great discussion.
Alex Winter
0:27:10
What is like the major takeaway for business owners, business leaders when it comes to accountability and discipline with rolling out endless customers or really if you're rolling out any initiative in your business, what would you give for advice?
Brian Casey
0:27:21
You got to figure out the things that you want to be true about the business. There's a lot of pieces of endless customers where it's like, yeah, that would be nice, or you have the mentality of like, that would be nice. Like an example is, if you have a sales team that has never really operated in a CRM, is it okay and acceptable if they're winning deals and hitting their goals to not have that be accurately reflected in your CRM? Is that something you're okay with? And for
Brian Casey
0:27:52
something that's answer is gonna be different for every company. But you have to first set the standards. So the standards have to be in place. So first you have to identify like what are the standards that we're gonna hold ourselves to? Second, you need to figure out what is our reinforcement mechanism? And for some companies, that's gonna be coaching.
Brian Casey
0:28:10
For some companies, that's gonna be internal. But you have to figure out what is our cadence of reinforcement, what's our mechanism for reinforcement, and what happens if people are living outside of the expectations that we've set.
Brian Casey
0:28:22
And I don't say this in a positive light, but there have been a lot of teams that we've worked with that have ended up turning over their sales teams. No kidding. Because they know where the market's heading, they know where they wanna be,
Brian Casey
0:28:36
and they have sales team members that are like, I'm not doing that. And that would be a decision that, obviously, the business would have to make. We would never recommend, you know, fire that person or anything like that.
Brian Casey
0:28:44
It's not our, we're not HR. We're not gonna step into that role. Of course, of course. But establishing the standards that you know have to be true in order to hit your goals, figuring out how you're going to reinforce that, and then what happens if someone's not adhering to the standards.
Alex Winter
0:29:03
Yeah, 100%. Great advice, Brian. Great advice. We love having you on the show. Thanks for being here. If people have questions about this, because I'm sure there's going to be some questions,
Alex Winter
0:29:12
how can they follow up with you if they want to pick your brain about staying
Brian Casey
0:29:15
disciplined and staying accountable and implementing Endless Customers correctly? Yeah, the About Us page on the Impact site and my LinkedIn are probably the two best places to get in contact with me.
Alex Winter
0:29:26
Awesome, brother.
Alex Winter
0:29:27
Thanks again for being on the show. It's great to see you.
Brian Casey
0:29:30
Cool.
Brian Casey
0:29:31
You too, Alex. Bye. All right. Take care. And for everybody out there watching and listening, this is Endless Customers. And for everybody out there watching and listening, this is Endless Customers.
Brian Casey
0:29:36
I'm Alex Winter.
Transcribed with Cockatoo
"Accountability and discipline are fundamental for any business seeking long-term success," says Brian Casey, a Head Coach at IMPACT.
Brian emphasizes, "Expecting instant results from sales and marketing efforts can be unrealistic. While some strategies offer quick wins, building a solid foundation for long-term success requires time and persistence."
To bridge the gap between quick wins and long-term strategies, Brian suggests starting with simplicity by doing things like creating videos for the sales process on your smartphone. "Creating videos and articles, even with a low barrier to entry, can significantly impact your sales process by educating prospects and addressing their concerns early on," he explains.
After starting with simplicity, you can then move to more strategic planning. One practical approach that Brian advocates is operating in 90-day cycles. "Every 90 days, review your progress, successes, and areas for improvement. This helps maintain focus and accountability, ensuring that your efforts align with long-term goals," he says.
Brian shares success stories, including a company that achieved record-breaking results after launching a new website and consistently producing content. He also highlights the importance of having a coach to hold you accountable, as well as candid conversations and being open to feedback to foster a culture of continuous improvement.
Connect with Brian Casey
Brian uses his background in sales & inbound marketing strategy to coach clients on creating content that impacts sales and helps businesses reach their ideal buyers. His experience in working with clients spans across all types of businesses in unique markets.
Check out Brian’s IMPACT Bio
Connect with Brian on LinkedIn
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Endless Customers is a podcast produced and distributed by IMPACT, a sales and marketing training organization.
We coach businesses to implement our They Ask, You Answer framework to build trust and fill their pipeline.
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