LinkedIn | David Asarnow | Life is Precious. Time is Short

Life is precious, and time is short. We never know what tomorrow holds, so why wait to make an impact? After losing my mother-in-law last week, this truth hits harder than ever.

We’re here to change lives, to make a difference. Let’s not waste the time we have on this beautiful earth—start today, and make every moment count.

Funnel Marketing Expert

Aligning Sales & Marketing

Do you ever feel like your sales and marketing teams are on opposing sides? 

It’s been a constant battle for decades for many business owners. These two “sides” always seem to be chirping at each other… 

“These leads aren’t good.”  

“You don’t use our content properly to sell.”

Tell me something…Is this representative of your sales and marketing teams? 

WATCH THIS FUNNY VIDEO 

However, the real question is… 

Does it actually matter if your sales and marketing teams are aligned? 

Will that really help you SCALE your business?

I can simplify those answers for you in a few bullet points:

• You absolutely need sales.
• You absolutely need marketing.
• You ABSOLUTELY need them on the same page.
• Period. 

Sure, you’re selling. Revenue is there. But it’s just OK. 

Just OK is NOT how you are going to scale your business. 

At this point you might say, “Well look, if I’m selling, I’m selling. Marketing does their thing, sales does theirs.” 

And I’d agree, that works to a certain point. Say, up to about  $2M/year. Beyond that? 

No. 

Why does the alignment matter? Because sales people need the right assets to start and then continue conversations to build relationships…

Cohesion is needed on all fronts: branding, messaging, and especially offers. Remember, when a prospective client senses any type of inconsistency, trust is BROKEN. 

A great example is a pretty big insurance company a few years back. The sales team were ignoring everything the marketing team was creating–in fact, they were creating their own assets. Nothing was brand aligned, nothing was on-message with what the company’s marketing conveyed. 

Basically, everyone was selling from a different playbook. 

It worked for a while, but it crashed and burned. Buyers talked. People were getting different info, angles, and deals from different salespeople. 

Nothing was consistent. What eventually happened? 

People ended contracts. Eventually the brand was sold for pennies on the dollar to an apex player. 

The lack of cohesion killed them. 

What else can you do to better align your sales and marketing?

Two things. 

Incentives & Culture. 

Incentives are often overlooked by business owners. As a company scales, the folks at the top are generally the first to be taken care of – so they don’t always remember to create an incentive structure for the rest of the team that are in “the trenches”. 

It’s important that this incentive is one that motivates everyone to work together to reach both the short and long term goals of the company.  

Truthfully, sales and marketing have different incentive structures by nature. Sales is much more trackable. You sold A and B, or you didn’t. You sold them within this quarter, or you didn’t. Your pipeline is XYZ, or it’s not. 

Marketing is much harder to track. We have more marketing analytics than ever before in human history, but we don’t use them as well as we could. (A topic for another newsletter.) We’re not always sure whether A-piece of content or B-video or C-infographic or D-banner at the trade show drove those prospects into the funnel. 

We think we know, and we claim to know, but it’s not always as obvious as we want to believe.

Business loves “what’s measured is what matters.” So we focus more on sales, especially when there’s pressure from investors or the market. 

When we focus too much on sales metrics (and ignore marketing), and a strong company culture doesn't exist, it results in a few negative off-shoots. 

A lot of times in a company where revenue generation is seemingly the one and only metric goal, all the other important aspects of a business – customer satisfaction, employee connection to the mission (and eventual employee turnover) – fall by the wayside. 

Entrepreneurs can become overly-focused on immediate success instead of what long-term success would look like, and as a result, they might not even be a company in 8-10 years. 

Specifically at the sales and marketing levels, we see some flare-ups too:

• Sales starts treating marketing like their admins (example: “Schedule these calls for me.”)
• Marketing gets laid off because their ROI can’t be proven in tight, stressful windows. (And honestly, many Entrepreneurs we’ve worked with don’t even set up their analytics properly. They can’t prove ROI on anything outside of sales. That’s a bigger topic, again for a different newsletter, but–it’s definitely a problem.)

It’s a race to the bottom.

I’ve seen Entrepreneurs do pretty creative stuff around incentives…

 Extra days off, beer gardens, taco trucks, KPI-tied bonus structures. Those all work. But always remember, we can always go a step further… 

All of us want to belong to something. It’s a core principle in the hierarchy of needs. 

Oftentimes, the simplest incentive is respect and recognition and acknowledgement of a job superbly done. 

A few years ago we integrated something called “snaps” (and I can’t take credit for this idea, it all goes to Chris Tuff, author of The Millennial Whisperer). 

He says rewards and recognition are essential in any organization. They don’t have to be financial either. Chris calls out his team members in meetings, and gives them “snaps” for the good things they are doing in the company.

We took it a step further…

We encouraged each team member to give “snaps” to other team members when they do something worthy of recognition. 

We then added a quarterly award for the team member who got the most “snaps”. 

9 plus years of doing this, I can see the enormous impact that positive accountability has created within our team around our culture. 

Going above and beyond had become “THE” standard amongst the team. Performance soared. The team was happier than they’d ever been. 

Everything was just BETTER. 

It’s all about Culture. 

Companies miss on culture because it’s a poorly-defined word, almost amorphous in many organizations, and Entrepreneurs are often product people or idea people – they don’t always know how to corral the fluid energy associated with culture. 

When you are missing culture, chances are you also have high turn-over, which makes it nearly impossible to align sales and marketing. 

Here are some things to think about regarding both pieces of this puzzle…

Consider these questions on the incentives piece:

• Is your head of sales meeting with your head of marketing at least once a week to discuss wins and pain points? (If this role is the same person, are they meeting with people from each team once per week?)
• How can those in marketing earn more as the company scales?
• What is sales’ biggest win and biggest complaint about marketing?
• What is marketing’s biggest win and biggest complaint about sales?
• How often do the two sides meet and discuss their goals, individually and collectively?
• How transparent are the metrics everyone is being evaluated on?

Consider these questions on the culture side:

• What is your culture? Can you define it?
• Do you have core values?
• Can people on your team recite those core values without checking your website? 
• What activities, remote and in-person, shape your company culture?
• How often are you talking with and involved with all your team members?
• What’s the most fun thing about working with you, and your company? 
• What do they tell their friends at happy hour about working in your company?
• How often do you revisit this idea of culture and reshape it?

These are big questions and they take time, and they look different at different growth stages. A company with five employees and $2M has a different culture and incentive structure than a company with 200 employees and $3B. 

You may prattle on about “the DNA” of your culture, but the jump from $2M to $3B changes virtually everything, and it’s best to lean into that reality as you go.

So where do we come in? Well, the good news for you is, we’ve been doing all this stuff for decades now, collectively. We maximize sales and marketing output all the time, and work with teams on culture (and even now hiring) daily. 

We put much of this under the umbrella of strategy, but we can also help with the nitty-gritty around Leads on Demand and more.

If you want to build an Infinite Business that people enjoy growing with and yet still make money hand over fist for your own family’s legacy to prosper, you need the right people, incentives, and culture. That’s what we do, so let us know if you want our help to get you there. 

Simply reply to this article and we’ll set up a time to chat. 

To your success, 

David 

P.S. Recruitment and Hiring is the #1 Entrepreneurial Blind Spot which is why most avoid it like the plague… 

Let’s face it, the entire process can be utterly frustrating & time consuming, AND often results in attracting and hiring the WRONG talent for your team and/or business. 

But what if ALL the heavy-lifting was done for you, and you were only handed the highest qualified candidates that checked every box you were looking for? 

Head to this link to see if Nitrogen Hiring Network™ could be your talent recruitment solution. 

P.P.S. Not sure how to find and attract more of your ideal clients? If you have a proven high ticket offer, we know EXACTLY how to fill your pipeline with a constant stream of qualified and highly-motivated leads through our exclusive Leads on Demand™ program.

Simply click this link for more details.

ActiveCampaign Certified

The Multitasking Myth

Ever been guilty of answering text messages during a meeting? Or checking email while you’re on a video call?

MOST OF US do it.

And if you said yes, who could blame you? Growing and scaling your business comes with a seemingly never ending to-do list.

In our minds, it’s simply smart thinking to make the best use of our time, right?

When your company is growing fast, we’re forced to find ways to “fit it ALL in”.

But here’s something that may shock you…

On average, people who try to multitask take 50% longer to complete a single task and make 50% more errors in their work than people who stay focused.

Suddenly multitasking doesn’t sound like such a great way to get more done, does it?

But, we were brought up believing that in order to be productive we must learn to multitask to reach our goals and get things done…At least I was.

Here’s the problem with that…

When you are moving the needle on multiple projects at one time instead of focusing on making significant headway on one or two, you’re less likely to reach the goals you’ve set in the time frame you’ve set for yourself.

All those little strides you make for each project become shorter and shorter until you are now moving at a snail's pace to reach the END result of each.

Plus, when you only focus on one or two projects at a time, it's amazing how clear priorities become. Your mind is forced to choose which projects are most important and you can stop allowing the small stuff and “noise” derail you.

I know you’re thinking…. “But…I’m really busy!”

Trust me, I get it.  Being as busy as we are, there will always be temptations pulling at our focus…

Emails, text messages, other opportunities, “do you have a minute” meeting requests, etc.

These are called distractions, and we will always have them.

The key is to limit distractions as much as possible.

Think about it this way. There are distractions within our control and there are distractions out of our control.

Here’s a few things I do that help me eliminate the distractions I CAN control:

1. Put yourself in an environment that is distraction free. If I need to focus, I’ll turn my phone off or leave it in another room so I won’t be tempted to answer calls or texts that come in. If you have an iPhone, put it in Privacy Mode as I learned how to do last week. I’ve also been known to close my office door so I’m not distracted by sounds or commotion going on in other rooms in the house.

You know what distracts you. So make a conscious effort to remove them altogether, or remove yourself from their presence.

2. Set 3 main objectives for the day. By limiting the number of daily “goals” to 3, you’ll know exactly what your focus is and you’ll work with greater intention towards achieving those objectives.

TIP: I like to set my goals for the day the evening before, that way I know before I go to bed exactly what I’ll be focusing on the next day (this also allows my subconscious mind to work on those goals while I’m sleeping).  When you wake up, work on the most difficult project first, even before calls or checking your email.

3. Give yourself a shorter time frame to accomplish things. Parkinson’s law states that “work tends to expand to fill the time we have available for its completion.”

What happens is, the more time we give ourselves to complete something, the more likely we are to fill any time remaining with distractions.  Our mind is programmed to conserve energy when possible.

And speaking of mastering your time, one great tip a colleague shared with me a long time ago was a process called the Pomodoro Method.

It’s an exercise that helps train our brains to stay focused by gradually working up our concentration. The goal of this method is to strengthen one’s ability to focus for longer periods of time.

How it works…

Basically you set a timer (start with 30 minutes and gradually work up to 45 minutes). Within that 30 minute time frame, completely focus on the task or project at hand with no interruptions or distractions.

After the 30 minutes is up, allow yourself a 8-10 minute break (In a 45 minute stretch, you allow yourself a 15 minute break afterwards). Challenge yourself to work diligently on your task or project until the timer goes off, then give your mind the break to indulge on whatever distraction you’d like! Continue practicing this until it becomes a habit. Then, gradually increase your focus time from 30 min to 45 minutes.

Avoiding distractions will definitely help you increase your accuracy and ability to complete tasks and projects faster…

When you integrate some of the tips I just mentioned, you’ll be closer to focusing on what you really need to be focusing on to move the needle in your business at an accelerated pace.

Here’s what I know…People aren’t really pulled in a hundred different directions. They allow themselves to be pulled in a hundred different directions.

They know exactly what they need to do.

They just need to TAKE ACTION and change it.

To your success,

David

P.S. Recruitment and Hiring is the #1 Entrepreneurial Blind Spot which is why most avoid it like the plague…

Let’s face it, the entire process can be utterly frustrating & time consuming, AND often results in attracting and hiring the WRONG talent for your team and/or business.

But what if ALL the heavy-lifting was done for you, and you were only handed the highest qualified candidates that checked every box you were looking for?

Head to this link to see if Nitrogen Hiring Network™ could be your talent recruitment solution.

P.P.S. Not sure how to find and attract more of your ideal clients? If you have a proven high ticket offer, we know EXACTLY how to fill your pipeline with a constant stream of qualified and highly-motivated leads through our exclusive Leads on Demand™ program.

Simply click this link for more details.

Business Nitrogen

#1 Entrepreneurial Blind Spot

One of the fastest ways to successfully SCALE your business is recruiting and hiring the right talent to get you where you want to grow…

Yet 9 out of 10 Entrepreneurs avoid it like the plague.

Sure, most of us already know we need TOP talent to grow and scale our businesses, BUT the majority of Entrepreneurs really struggle “cracking the code” when it comes to successfully attracting, qualifying, hiring and ultimately RETAINING the right people for their team. 

In all fairness, it’s not like they teach us this in school. And I’ve yet to come across a training program or course that outlines a proven formula and step-by-step process to successfully hiring right-talent for each unique business out there (especially for Entrepreneurial-based businesses). 

It’s our Greatest Entrepreneurial Blind Spot.  

As Entrepreneurs, we eventually come to a pivotal point in our business when our sales and marketing will hit a plateau (or in some cases, take a dive), OR our sales and marketing efforts will far exceed the infrastructure we’ve put in place to support it.  

The quickest, sure-fire way to break through that invisible glass ceiling and SCALE is to add the right talent to your team that possesses the right specialized knowledge and skill set to get you where you want to grow. 

Make no mistake about it. This is truly a defining moment in your business.

You can either help your business: 

• Shift in the RIGHT direction and move in an upwards trajectory (so you can successfully SCALE) 

OR

• Shift in the WRONG direction, and spiral downwards at an accelerated pace. 

Having worked directly with Entrepreneurs over the past 20 plus years (helping them successfully grow and scale their businesses), I know a thing or two about what their mindset is, and what usually happens next. 

Entrepreneurs either avoid hiring, or overlook important steps in the hiring process; resulting in hiring the wrong talent for the right position.  

Does any of this sound familiar?

• You honestly don’t know what or who you really need, therefore you don’t have any idea where to start. 
• You’ve hired in the past and it turned out to be a complete disaster so you’ve resigned to the fact that you’re just a “bad picker” and now you don’t touch it with a ten foot pole. 
• You experience pretty high turnover (more than 10% a year), so you are constantly trying to “plug the leaks” in an effort to keep the boat afloat–making it nearly impossible to focus on the future needs and hires of the business.
• You procrastinate because you know how terribly time consuming hiring is, and you simply don’t have the time to invest in it. 
• You push it off to another team member to “handle” and magically expect this person to know (or learn) the secret formula to hiring the right-fit talent for your unique team and business.
• You’ve never abided by the rule of “Hire slow, fire fast”, so you admit to cutting corners when qualifying, screening and hiring so you could check it off your to-do list and move on to the next thing.
• You decide that you don’t really need a new team member, so you task your current team with new, additional responsibilities and tasks necessary in an effort to push forward. As a result your current team is pulled away from their current responsibilities and they become completely overwhelmed. Now things are falling through the cracks, and you feel like you’re in a worse situation than you were before…so do they. 

Any or all of these can lead to some pretty big mistakes when it comes to building a team.  

I know because a majority of our clients ask us for our guidance in this area, so I’m really going to spend some quality time around hiring, and dedicate the next few newsletters to helping you avoid making these same mistakes. 

Mistake #1: Not hiring the right talent to get you where you really want to be. 

It’s vital to have the right key players in place to help you break through that invisible glass ceiling so you can successfully SCALE.  

“Oftentimes the people who got you to where you are, aren’t necessarily the ones that will take you to where you want to grow.” David Asarnow

This is not to say you have the wrong people on your team in place… It simply means you need unique talent that possesses the specialized knowledge in said area to get you to the next level in your business. 

Many Entrepreneurs will take the talent they already have and simply give them more responsibilities in an effort to avoid hiring new people. 

Here’s where this backfires…

When you overwhelm your team with other jobs and responsibilities that may not even be in their wheelhouse, you distract them and pull them away from what they are supposed to be doing (and then those tasks and responsibilities are overlooked or not done to the superior level they should be). 

Not only that, but overwhelm, stress and burn out can result within your existing team structure and that’s when businesses start seeing high-turnover within the organization. Which then leads to another set of challenges and problems (I’ll get more into this in the preceding newsletters).  

Keeping your existing team “in their own lane” focused completely on what they do best is where you’ll really gain traction to scale your business. 

Each team member working within their unique talents and coming together to collaborate is the difference between a high-performing team and a mediocre team.  

High-performing teams take you to the next level.  

Here’s how I suggest you start questioning the hiring of key players for your team going forward. 

By asking yourself this:  

Will there be a significant negative impact on the business, your team or on you if you don’t hire for this position? In other words…

What is the COST to you to NOT hire someone for this specialized position within your organization? 

Sometimes the INACTION of not filling a key role can be just as detrimental as hiring the wrong person for the role.  

Hiring the wrong team members comes with a plethora of challenges which we will dive more into next week. Stay tuned!

To your success, 

David 

P.S. Recruitment and Hiring is the #1 Entrepreneurial Blind Spot which is why most avoid it like the plague… 

Let’s face it, the entire process can be utterly frustrating & time consuming, AND often results in attracting and hiring the WRONG talent for your team and/or business. 

But what if ALL the heavy-lifting was done for you, and you were only handed the highest qualified candidates that checked every box you were looking for? 

Head to this link to see if Nitrogen Hiring Network™ could be your talent recruitment solution. 

P.P.S. Not sure how to find and attract more of your ideal clients? If you have a proven high ticket offer, we know EXACTLY how to fill your pipeline with a constant stream of qualified and highly-motivated leads through our exclusive Leads on Demand™ program.

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