john tell me about your vision well i my vision
really is i've been a sort of small business
specialist for going on 25 years and one of the
things that i always find is business owners
tend to be struggle with sales and marketing
you know they're good at what they're good at
experts in many cases but sales and marketing
is quite often a You know, it's a black art.
You know, it's not something that a lot of people
really understand. They tend to approach it from
a tactical perspective. I ask, you know, if I
asked people what they think marketing is, they
almost invariably get, oh, it's advertising,
it's websites, it's social media, some sort of
tactic as opposed to, you know, the means by
which they grow their business or develop relationships
or generate or drive earnings growth. and so
the vision that i have for my business has always
been to be the partner to be a partner for entrepreneurs
that they typically can't afford to hire right
so if you know a lot of small businesses really
can't afford to be to to bring on a senior fraction
you know a cmo or mark vp marketing or something
like that or vp sales and so they They end up
hiring a lot of junior folks. And so the vision
really is to show up as a partner in the business
who's responsible for sales and marketing to
really help them understand what it really is
and to take greater ownership over the process
and not just sort of abdicate the responsibility
to somebody else and not fully understand it.
Tell me more about that. From your perspective,
what need did you see in the market? that you
wanted to fulfill the role specifically with
small business owners? Well, I'll start with
my own story. When I first started my first business
back in the 90s, I started out as an analyst.
I was a data analyst and I was responsible for
looking at, you know, doing post pre -marketing
research to set up campaigns and then doing the
post -campaign analysis after the fact. And I
quite often found that the campaigns were working
really poorly. right they they were beautiful
and they were you know they looked great but
the results were often not not really strong
and so when i started my business i as a data
analyst was good with numbers but i didn't have
the experience of growing a business and so i
sought and because of my fear around all the
failure that i'd seen i was really eager not
to repeat that So I was very proactive in seeking
help. I talked to 17 different agencies. I talked
to business coaches, marketing coaches, sales
trainers, you name it. I was voraciously reaching
out for help. And unfortunately, what I got was
a bunch of people trying to sell me tactics.
And I really struggled to find anyone who was
interested in helping me, to really showing me
the ropes, guiding me through the process. and
facilitating my journey in terms of learning
how to go about sales and marketing i got sold
on just about everything you can imagine and
but i didn't want to be sold i wanted coaching
i wanted guidance and direction and and help
right but i wasn't just going to get sold and
so i see that same pattern all the time you know
most of the time in my business i'm usually the
third or fourth agency or provider that people
call and by the time they get around to me they're
usually spent all their money they're frustrated
they have got this sort of string of tactics
that they're they're doing they're doing what
there's like look i'm doing everything everybody's
telling me to do right i've spent a ton of money
on all these various things but none of the but
but they're all disjointed there's no overall
plan there's no program and i don't really know
why i'm doing it i don't know how to measure
it And so I just see this general pattern of
people getting busy doing what I call random
acts of marketing. And so the real goal is to
try to help people see beyond the tactics and
go, look, there needs to be a purpose. And to
understand what the goals are before you start
things, not after the fact. And then how do all
these elements fit together into a program that
drives growth and generates relationships and
drives earnings? And it's just that the conversations
don't tend to go together. It's just tactic,
tactic, tactic. And it's exhausting for people.
They spend all their money and they really need
people to show up who can help them. As in the
business, help them grow their business, not
just how to execute tactics. You're right. I
think there's a lot of nuances to this, though.
I think one of the nuances is the entrepreneur
also needs to take accountability. full accountability
of his business not working so if if the if the
marketing is not working why is the marketing
not working what do i need to fix change adapt
or add remove from my processes that that the
marketing would be more effective because seo
works for everyone else facebook marketing works
for everyone else it works for everyone else
so why is it specifically not working for me
And I think that's where the entrepreneurs either
are unaware, too naive, or they don't want to
find out. They don't want to take accountability
of what they're putting in their businesses.
Well, I think accountability is one thing, but
ignorance is another, right? Yes. I don't think
that Facebook by itself, any of the tactics don't
really work by themselves, right? It's not the
tactic that works. It's how you execute the tactic
in. in alignment with the customer's needs right
yeah like one of the things that i see is you
know people really are knowledgeable about their
product and their service they they know about
the problem they solve but they tend to approach
it from their own perspective right they they
describe the product or they describe the service
and they're not really connecting the dots that
this is all about serving customers right this
is about facilitating a customer's purchase process
and their journey through getting their you know
reaching their goal or their solving their problem
and so there's this inherent mismatch between
you know sort of brand this whole concept of
brand marketing or product marketing versus consumer
customer -centric marketing where you're facilitating
the client you know and i think anybody who gets
that will find their you know or who's aware
of the the sales process right or the customer
account development process right and and it's
a lot it's a big topic there's it's so complicated
so many different facets it's not realistic for
to expect an entrepreneur to know all of that
right so i think there's this duality where they
have to be able to communicate their needs effectively
and then to expect their providers to be able
to say oh well if those are your needs then here's
how you can we can help you achieve those needs
as opposed to just hey you should do a facebook
campaign or seo or some other you know tactic
of the day yeah and i think you're right on that
um I want to add another step to it. So I completely
agree with the experience that a customer needs
to face, and that's what the focus should be
for any business, per se, who are looking to
grow. I had Philippe Bousseau on the show recently,
and he used to work with Apple and Steve Jobs
on those early days. And he shared me a lesson
that he learned from Steve. He said, We, all
of us in the world, are in the business of selling
smiles. And if that's the focus, right, that's
what should be. Your KPIs and returns are not
as important as the experience the customer has
when purchasing a product or service. And I think
I couldn't agree more with him. And most businesses
are not aware of that, at least the small businesses.
They're so focused on surviving the market, let
alone growing with the market. And that's where
the detriment comes in. And I will still push
on the point where I don't think most entrepreneurs
are taking responsibility of what they are responsible
for. And if they are not, and you are very right,
we can't expect an entrepreneur to know everything.
That's true. But we can't expect them to agree
that I don't know all this and I need help to
find out. And that's where the disconnect happens
with most entrepreneurs. They are too proud or
too ignorant to see their inability to scale
their businesses themselves. And that's where
they're at. Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, what I hear
is, well, I told these people I don't have time
and I don't really understand. And so I've delegated
to so -and -so in order to handle this. But the
person they've delegated it to is a tactician
who knows, you know, maybe they're a... Yesterday,
I was talking to a woman who said, well, I delegated
this whole marketing thing to my social media
consultant. And I'm like, well, there's your
problem right there. They're probably a fantastic
social media consultant, but they're going to
help you implement your social media, not to
run your business, right? Not to set up a marketing
or sales program. And she stopped her in her
tracks. And she was like, geez, you're right.
I never thought of that. I just sort of, I don't
understand marketing. I assume that person was
a marketer, not a tactician. You know, not a
specialist in a particular tactic. And I don't
think they really understand because they don't
understand the topic. They assume marketing is
the tactic. Right. And it's sort of abstracting
it back to, you know, the business consulting
that is what it really is. Right. It's the whole
front end of the business. Even more than that,
even. Right. It's just the whole shepherding
of the customer's experience. And, you know,
which touches just about everything. Yep, exactly.
Not just the act of it, but doing it in such
a way that it generates the result for the client
as well as for the business. Yeah, exactly. So
how do you help those people? How do you help
people who are not aware of those things? Well,
over the years, I've learned that... A couple
of different things, I guess. I've put a lot
of effort into writing blog posts, into writing
free e -books. I recently wrote a book called
Being Profitable, which sort of tries to reframe
marketing as a system. And so quite often, that's
the starting point is I try to say, look, marketing
is not what you think it is. It's not this tactical
execution. I mean, tactics are important and
it ultimately translates into tactics. But putting
them in context of a system and saying the ultimate
goal are these things. And all of these activities
that we're going to engage in have a logical
rollout. There's a natural progression of things
to do in an order. And I always sort of joke
that most people start with advertising. And
they wonder why it doesn't work. And it's like,
well, in my program that I put together, there's
20 steps. And advertising is step 20. And they've
done none of the preliminary steps in order to
prepare for the advertising to be successful.
And they wonder why it doesn't work. And there's
nothing wrong with advertising as long as you
do it well and you've laid the foundation for
it to be able to generate sales. Correct. Right?
But you can't just assume that the tactic is
going to... is the whole solution right so helping
people see it as a system and as a natural order
of operations is a first step it's sort of reframe
it as something that they understand and then
once they see it as a system and they understand
that there's an order of operations then the
my philosophy is is that you enable them to be
effective not just not and the point i'm trying
to say is It's not about them learning how to
do all the 20 steps. It's learning about what
questions to ask, how to engage a vendor to help
that, to make sure the vendor understands what
you're trying to accomplish so that the vendor
can either say, well, that's not me, that's not
what I do, or they can, right? They can say,
okay, well, I can help you get those fundamentals
set up. And I can help, you know, and then you
take part of your accountability or responsibility
is not to become an expert, but to understand
the process and understand your requirements
and to be able to communicate those requirements
to people who have the ability and who know they
are being asked to take on that role. Yeah. Right.
And so that's the fundamental way that I try
to help people is to sort of reframe the whole
thing, to give them structure and process and
to empower them to ask better questions. Thank
you for being here today. I'm really happy that
you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking
forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes
continue to move forward. This is going to get
more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement
as well. We'll invite people to participate in
the show and thank you for giving us your time
and attention. Have an excellent time building
out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself.