The Takeover with Tim and Cindy
Ready to dominate your market? The Takeover is your go-to podcast for growth strategies that work. Whether you’re leading a company, driving marketing initiatives, or closing sales, these battle-tested strategies will help you scale. Each episode breaks down big ideas into actionable steps empowering you to generate more leads, drive more sales, and scale your business. Tune in for real advice delivered by world-class marketers & business leaders to help you dominate in all areas of Sales & Marketing. Let’s Get Winning!
The Takeover with Tim and Cindy
4 Hard Marketing and Sales Truths Most Businesses Will Ignore in 2026
The rules have changed again.
What worked even a year ago in marketing and sales is already breaking down, and 2026 will punish anyone still running outdated playbooks.
This episode is a focused compilation built around four marketing and sales truths that consistently showed up across our conversations. These are not trends. These are realities we saw play out with companies that kept closing, scaling, and expanding while others stalled.
If you want to dominate your market in 2026, this episode will reset how you think about demand, offers, selling, and growth.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Why 2026 will expose weak marketing and sales systems
04:12 – Truth #1: Buyers buy outcomes, not services
10:41 – Truth #2: No-brainer offers beat perfect sales scripts
18:26 – Truth #3: The sale does not end when the deal closes
26:58 – Truth #4: Expansion is engineered, not accidental
These four truths will determine who wins next.
RESOURCES BELOW!
Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:
- Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points.
Join The Takeover Community:
- Sign up for The Takeover newsletter and get the latest marketing tips, sales strategies, and business insights delivered straight to your inbox. Join a community of entrepreneurs & high-performers dominating all areas of Sales & Marketing. Sign up for the newsletter.
About The Hosts:
- Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy on LinkedIn and Instagram:
About PEMA.io:
- Need B2B Appointments or want to grow your authority on LinkedIn? Learn more about our services here: https://www.pema.io/discover
00:06
Welcome to The Takeover with Tim and Cindy, where we show you how to dominate your market. Let's get winning.
00:16
Welcome back to The Takeover. Today's episode is special. It's 2026, a fresh start, and we are kicking this year off by revisiting some of the most impactful moments from this past season. Over the last year, we've had direct conversations about business, marketing, industry shifts, AI, growth and failure. These moments challenged how we think, clarified what really matters and influenced how we're moving forward as we step into 2026.
00:46
So we thought it would be great to do an episode that recaps some of the best moments from this last season. Honestly, the episodes that you engaged with the most. So whether you've been here since the beginning or you are new to the show, this episode is designed to reset your mind and set the tone for the year ahead. Okay, let's get into it.
01:09
So let's go into the first philosophy that has evolved and that is a good offer beats excellent sales skills every time. And here's the thing. I am 100 % believer of if a deal doesn't close, it's my fault. Like I need to level up my sales skills. You need to level up your sales skills. The best entrepreneurs of all time, the Sam Walton's, the Elon Musk's, the
01:34
Like you look at any great entrepreneur and they were actually great salespeople. They were phenomenal salespeople. So I'm not saying don't become great at sales, but I realize if you have a great offer and I think there's so much BS out there right now about what an irresistible offer is. And there's so much, I'm excited to talk about like what a real awesome irresistible offer is, not just what's being kind of promoted out there and popular out there right now, but
02:01
100 % if you have an offer that is irresistible and we'll talk through this. You don't need a great salesperson. Like if I'm going to McDonald's and I don't go to McDonald's, but if I'm going to McDonald's, that person, the front register, I don't have to be convinced by them. Like they don't have to persuade me to buy the Big Mac. Like I'm going there and I want to buy the Big Mac. So the better your offer, the better your marketing, the better everything is set up. The sales job is more just about taking the order.
02:30
when it's done right. And I'm excited to walk through how to do that. For sure. I think past philosophy, if we look in retrospect, it was that you had to be good at sales to convert. And as you mentioned, it's like if a deal did not close, it was because you as the salesperson didn't do a good enough job of convincing that person to sign the contract. Right. Like your sales skills weren't enough to persuade the person. And that shift in thinking and philosophy for us and that we've seen internally
03:00
even at Pima with our company is the better the offer became, the easier it was to convert, right? Like we're converting over 70 % now on a cold audience just because of how the offer has been tweaked and adjusted and dialed in. So Tim, let's walk through what is like a really good offer? What are some of the things that make up that offer that our audience can start to think about for their...
03:24
business and for their products and services specifically? one thing I think about, because I we work with a ton of agencies and we've worked with a lot of different types of companies before. But I think one of the things that I see is people come in trying to get the big contract right off the bat. Right. And whether you're selling to small companies or you're selling to big enterprise companies, one of the things you have to change is stop trying to get all the money right off the bat. Simply put.
03:50
don't see the first cell as the big contract. Too many people make a mistake. They try to get the big, huge contract right off the bat and they end up having these large cell cycles. They lose deals. They're only closing at 15 or 20%, which is fine. If you're 15, 20%, you can scale cause it's pretty like healthy industry average if you can do that. But to get those really high close rates is you need to see that first cells like let me remove as much possible friction from
04:18
the sales process as possible so that I can start working with this client and displaying value with them right off the bat. And then you see your first three to six months as a continuation of the sales process. And really the lifetime of a customer should be a continuation of the sales process. The sales process never stops. And so when you're trying to get like these big, huge contracts right off the bat,
04:42
Like that's if you're used to getting that in referrals, okay, great. They already know you, they already like you, they already trust you, they're coming in with the need, with the budget, all that stuff. But if you really want to become a killer salesperson or have a killer offer, it has to have like zero friction. It has to be so no brainer, but that does require, and I'll really qualify this, it does require that you have to believe as the entrepreneur, as the business owner in your product so much so that
05:08
if you can get them to come in for a break even like you don't even make money to work with them that first initial portion that you know the value you're going to deliver to them is going to be so much that they're going to absolutely want to continue working with you. And if you can see it from that perspective and you can double triple four extra close rates while your client acquisition cost just went down three or four times.
05:33
Even if you're closing 20%, you have to be a good company to close 20%. If you can bring that up to 60 or 70%, your client acquisition costs just went down so much that it's ridiculous how low it costs you to acquire a client, even though you're breakeven on that first month to three months. The reality is in order to compete in 2025, 2026 beyond, it's not just about having the right tools in your tech stack or the right technologies.
06:03
We are really moving into a place where custom software and customization is everything. even like Bill Gates, he said there's three jobs that will be secure over the next 10 years. And the number one job for security was developers. And that doesn't mean that you have to now go out and become a developer, but if you're an entrepreneur, if you run a business, you have to realize the thing that gives your company the most.
06:29
Business security moving into the future is leveraging software and technology is an incident in AI and it's never been easier than it is now but you start have to see your role as the owner as a company as a business as Hey, we are a software company that delivers the software delivers a certain product I mean, I know at Pima we've been working on our own software There's absolutely no way that you could compete with us if you come into the game
06:56
we can deliver a lower cost per result to our clients than they could do it in house. And we do that because we have software, we have technology, we have the processes that we've built out here. You have to start seeing yourself as a technology company if you're going to make it into the future. But Tim, we're not a technology company. We deliver a service. So you got to start seeing yourselves maybe not as a SaaS company. You know, you're not selling a software as a service, but it could be a software.
07:24
enabled company. Right. So we might be a pay for performance. People come to us because they need leads. They need clients. And we are delivering that cheaper than they could do it in-house, even if they built their own tech stack. We're only able to do that because we are a software powered and enabled company. We're not just using Zapier and makes and pipe dreams, though those are amazing places to start. We're actually building out our own software and technologies. And you're going to see here very soon that it's actually easier to do that than it's ever been.
07:53
Right. So what does this mean for you or our listeners? I see this relate to you as to mentioned, if you are selling a service, if you are delivering some kind of product, you have to start to see yourself as a technology company. You have to start to determine how can we build our own custom software? How can we use taken AI to be able to deliver on the service? It's not just enough to be using chat GPT. I think we are way past that at this point.
08:22
Here are some other tools that we've been exploring that I think can help you all. And as to mention, we're building our own software. We have our own software internally that leverages AI and some really cool development that we've been building. But what's great about how AI and tech has been evolving is that there's now apps or technologies that allow you to create your own custom app. Like I think that's so cool. It's wild. I actually created my own app the other day that allows me to evaluate our expenses internally.
08:51
and it's coded, it's developed. I have this entire app and I did not need to know how to code. So you can have a look at apps like Base 44, Pipe Dream, Lovable, all of these tools allow you to create your own custom apps. It's not a nice to have anymore. This is a necessity. Yeah, and I think it's more so about becoming great at development is...
09:16
You know, you may not build out a development team like we have at Pima. As the CEO, I've actually really taken it on to how do I become a great software CEO? We're already great at the lead generation space where we've just dominated that for so many years. So how do I become a great software CEO? And then I'm, so I've been obsessing over the, over the books and building out the systems and the processes, but it's not necessarily that you have to go all in the way that we have and that I have as a CEO.
09:45
and really see yourself as a software leader. But it does absolutely start with, need to start understanding how to communicate with these AI tools that do the coding, right? Because a lot of these tools that Cindy's talking about, Base 44, it can build you and custom code you an app, right? But that really starts with you being able to speak with and get comfortable with getting the outputs that you want from AI, just understanding good prompt engineering.
10:13
The biggest shift for me has been the mindset of I'm not an agency leader anymore, right? I don't run a marketing agency. Like I'm a tech leader now. And even just that small shift in mindset of what we're labeling ourselves, that allows you to start thinking about leveraging technologies more and more, because it's not just enough to be an agency leader or a service provider. You have to be embedding tech into everything that you're doing. So I think it's that mindset shift, right? You can be like inserts.
10:42
this for you, whether you are in HR, whether you are a salesperson, like start to relabel yourself as a tech leader and then start to just innovate and see what are areas of your processes, areas of your business, areas of your role that you can start to innovate using technology and AI. If it feels scary to you, just start doing it and you'll get obsessed with replacing different roles in systems and processes with the right tools.
11:11
The first thing that we see the winning agencies do differently is they sell outcomes, not services. So I think about the average agency and we work with so many. When I'm reviewing somebody's onboarding form, reviewing their information, the majority of the agencies that fail or that are not succeeding at the level that they could be, they're selling SEO, paid ads, design, branding. They're selling the thing.
11:40
Right? What they do, their service, but they're not selling the outcome. Right? Essentially the people on the other side do not care that you are selling SEO. They don't care that you're selling paid ads. What they do want is the end result that is going to give them the outcome that they want. And this is different depending on the audience you're talking to. So if I'm selling mid-market enterprise and I'm talking to a director of marketing or CMO, the outcome
12:09
isn't just the outcome I deliver for the company. It's the outcome that I deliver for that CMO specifically. So it's not just, hey, we deliver XYZ outcome and the CMO is going to go, what? That's what everybody else says. What I want to do if I'm talking to like a CMO or a marketing leader is I'm actually going to talk about the outcomes I deliver for them, how I make it easy and frictionless for them, the type of reportings that we're going to give for them, the timeline on outcomes, because when you can make them
12:36
successful in their role, which is yes, one tied to the outcomes that the company gets, the results the company gets, but also the outcomes, the ease, the removal of friction, the way that you make their role easier and produce a better outcome, which is better for their career. That's how you're going to win. So you also have to not just preaching outcomes versus activities. We want to talk about what are the outcomes for this specific person that I am speaking with now.
13:06
And if you're doing a complex cell, you have to understand there might be three or four stakeholders involved and you want to understand what each of those people are going to be looking for and how you can make each one of those people buy into the process. So the lesson here is sell outcomes, not activities, and make sure those outcomes are something that actually matters to the specific person or persons, the stakeholders that are going to be involved in the decision making process. So here's the shift.
13:35
Instead of saying we sell SEO, we can help you do really good paid ads. We can help you rebrand your design. What you should be selling is specific growth metrics, visibility, market dominance. If you're selling the outcome that the person wants, not selling your amazing SEO package because they don't want that. What they're looking for is the outcome and what it's going to do as to mentioned for their role. Is it going to make it a lot easier for them?
14:04
or is it going to produce the outcome that their role needs at the time? 100%. 100%. And this number two is something that we've really, really seen make a massive difference for agencies. And that is you have to lead with a no-brainer offer. If you're coming in and you're, you know, sure if you got a referral and then the person's already like knows you, likes you, trusts you, they've got a budget.
14:32
Like everybody wants a million of those. Like of course I want people that are coming to me ready to buy and they've already got everything. You can do that, but your marketing and client acquisition cost becomes very expensive and very low scalability. Whereas if you have a no brainer offer, a great entry point to experience your agency, to get a taste of your agency, then you can call, you can close even the coldest of traffic with a very high close rate. So instead of asking somebody to come in and do a
15:01
$200,000 project with you find the lowest entry point the the easiest lowest risk lowest price point for them to come in taste and see and treat the first cell as Just one step in a longer sales process because a lot of mistakes people make is that we've got a six month sales Process we've got to do this. We've got to build this out and generally within six months. We get to deal close Well, what if you just made that?
15:30
the offer solo entry that you could close them on one or two calls. I'm talking about closing enterprise deals on one or two calls because you've removed so much friction from your offer. They've paid money. And remember those who pay pay attention. And so now that you've got their attention, you've got them to pay. Now you can start delivering a service that can land and expand and become very big with the customer. And so I think the biggest thing you can do as an agency is not try to get the
15:58
big huge contract right off the bat. mean, gosh, I'll be honest. I've lost hundreds and hundreds of amazing deals I'm talking about with big companies over the years because I try to get this big project right up front. Be okay losing money off the first sell. So if I'm okay losing money off the first sell, but my conversion rate triples because I've made it so easy for the company to go with me, I just
16:28
cut my client acquisition cost into one third. So if I can start seeing my initial delivery with a customer as part of the client acquisition costs overall, when I look at my sales process, I see my sales processes. The first cell is still part of the sales process. Me retaining them as part of the sales process. That first project I do with them as part of the sales process, their upsells, the whole thing is part of the sales process. And when you shift where your money's being spent on the
16:57
front end of trying to get the perfect customer to say, Hey, if I got the right person, let me land and expand with him or her. And then let this become a bigger contract. You'll actually find if you do the math and you reverse it backwards, that actually costs you less money to lose money on the first sale than it does to try to make a bunch of profit on the first sale and have such a low close rate and ultimately a much, much higher client acquisition costs. So ask how can we
17:26
So of course you want to try not to lose money, but you have to be willing to lose money. So ask how can we operationally do this? How can we remove friction? How can we lower our internal costs? How can we make our process so freaking smooth that we can at least break even on the first month or two and then ultimately know because our product is so freaking good that they're going to love us and want to spend a heck of a lot more money with us.
17:51
Absolutely. So that is the second thing we're seeing with the most successful agencies. They lead with a no-brainer offer. And this is by no means deteriorating their value. They understand that once they land a company, they're with them forever. They understand that lifetime value. So take a look at your offering, see if you're doing the land and expand strategy. And let's talk about the third thing that the most successful agencies are doing.
18:17
Number three is they don't stop selling after the first close. I think there's so much energy that goes around closing the deal as if it's a one time event. So people spend all this time and energy trying to get the perfect client just to close this one time deal. And then once it's closed, it's done. And that is such flawed thinking. You really have to see that selling is
18:44
The close is just one tiny step in the bigger sales process and the most successful agencies. They see that the sale doesn't end once the invoice is paid, but they're engineering. How do I deliver so much value that this customer wants to not just continue spending money with me, but wants to spend even more money with me. And so you treat the entire operations at your company as part of the sales team. You incentivize
19:12
all of your employees, like literally every single employee at your company should know the three or four KPIs, the activities that they can do to deliver better for the client and know that they're going to get a bonus based off of that delivery so that your entire operations becomes a sales team because that's where the most successful agencies excel. They excel, they excel by taking one client and making that client spend an enormous amount of money because
19:42
that client is getting so much value. So start seeing your operations as part of the sales team. It's not just, we've got a closer and then we've got the operations. No, the entire team's job operations, everybody is to increase revenue for the company. Absolutely. So here we're talking about how essentially expansion is engineered, right? These really successful agencies are baking in upsells, cross-sells, referrals into their process.
20:11
so that one client becomes two, three X, four X, five X revenue over time. And I think it's so interesting. We've seen this with a lot of our clients where they will get in with say a chief marketing officer at a large company, right? Say it's a B2B tech company and that CMO moves or transitions into another company. And they've done such a good job with that CMO and they have such great rapport, such amazing relationship because they delivered on their product.
20:41
that the CMO actually ends up bringing them into their new position as well. And so you start to see your agencies not just growing with one company, it starts to expand and even get referred across different companies as well. And that is how expansion is engineered. We actually had that happen recently. uh marketing ourselves leader came in, hired us for one agency, left.
21:05
Went to another agency and hired us. And so we're actually, we're working at both agencies now because that one marketing ourselves, sales leader hired us for both agencies. so happens a lot. If you ask this magic question, it's going to start moving you in the right way of thinking. That's going to solve many, many of the seven, all with this one question. And that is, what would it take for us to deliver a result to my client cheaper than they can do it in-house?
21:34
and have a 60 plus percent profit margin. Ask how can I versus can I and you will be shocked at the creativity that you start bringing up with this because guess what happens when I can deliver a result cheaper by outsourcing to me than that client can do in house and I could do with a 60 percent margin. Well that allows me to make a really dang good offer because guess what if it's cheaper to outsource to me and I can show that in my sales process then it
22:04
becomes a very, very low entry point for them to try us out and test this out. And because I know I can deliver on it, they're going to retain with us. And because my margin is so dang good and I'm delivering it cheaper, they're going to retain for a long time. I'm going to be highly profitable. And because the result is cheaper than they could do it in-house, they're also going to want to scale with me and stay with me for a long time. So ask that magic question. I promise you it's going to help you out with many of these points. And it's not necessarily about answering the question soon.
22:33
or immediately it's about starting to think about what would have to change in your operations and your cells and your staffing and the way that you do your systems and processes to actually make that happen. And I promise you six months from now, 12 months from now, your company, you're going to look back and be like, my gosh, I can't believe how we used to actually run as such a bloated agency that didn't have all these systems and processes we now have. Yes. There's been no better time than right now.
23:01
to start looking at your agency differently. With software, AI, there's technologies and tools, it's completely shifting how agencies run. So make sure that you are staying on top of asking the, can I question, as Tim is mentioning, it can completely change the game for your agency.
23:22
If you cannot create predictable, scalable growth through having a clear and predictable lead source or multiple lead sources, then you're eventually going to be in a place where you cannot grow and you get set back. I've seen companies say literally we're crashing right now because we had so much inbound, we had so much referrals, the market changed, we stopped getting referrals and now we're down. We're losing money every month. And these are $10 million agencies that are
23:49
Hey, we're losing money every month because we were 15 million, now we're down to 10 million and we didn't have the margin. So we're spending more money than we're making right now. And this is why it's very important to have a predictable lead source. I think the key here is repeatability, right? Because if you are reliant on somebody remembering to mention your name when they're in a room with your ideal client, like that's not a strategy. That's hope. And hope is not a marketing strategy.
24:18
We want to think about here, what is a repeatable way to get leads? And if you are doing this audit on behalf of your company, maybe you are the CMO or your sales leader, think about does our team have clarity on our lead sources? Can you pinpoint the two or three channels or ways that you all can predictably get new quantified leads in the door?
24:45
without waiting for referrals or for inbound leads to magically pop up. So this could look like you have a specific outbound strategy. You are running paid ads. Maybe you have an email list that's bringing you a certain number of qualified leads every single week. Make sure you have clarity on where your lead sources are, right? Where are the best channels for you to get qualified leads in? And as I mentioned, make sure that it is a repeatable system.
25:13
You do not want something that's random or outside of your control, because if it's outside of your control, you cannot predict the scale. So that's the first question when auditing your client acquisition is, do I have lead source clarity? That takes us well into the second thing to board it, which is ideal client alignment. If you're still saying we work with everyone, you're already lost.
25:43
I think about the best client acquisition systems are the ones that are built on hard data about who your ideal client is. And we've spoken about this on a previous episode, which is getting very clear on what your quote unquote niche is based on data and not based on guesswork. I would also say on this, what's really important. see mistakes that companies make all the time is they create an ideal client kind of
26:12
based off of their own like world or their company, meaning they start defining what an ideal client is, not based off of the kind of targeting or the kind of marketing that they could do to get the clients. They based on these five points, but your five points on who your ideal client is have to match targeting parameters that you can do on marketing channels. So if my ideal client is five data points that
26:40
does not align with a LinkedIn outreach, an email outreach, an ad campaign. If my five criteria's for my ideal client are not aligned with the platforms and the marketing channels that I can use to get clients, then you're going to be trying to fit the wrong criteria's into the right platforms or the wrong criteria's into the wrong platforms, which means you're not gonna get great results. So as I'm trying to create clarity on
27:08
perfect ideal client alignment. I want to understand first, where are my clients or where are they hanging out? Where can I get them? LinkedIn, email, outbound ads. Like there's a lot of places to get clients, but then I want to take that next step and say, what is my ability to target on these channels? Then I reverse engineer based off of the channels that I can market on and say, Oh, these channels allow me these kinds of targeting features.
27:34
Now I look at my ideal clients and I say, where does my ideal clients fit within these target features? So that when I go out to find my ideal clients, I'm not trying to magically make up and enforce my idea and my parameters into a platform, but I'm reverse engineering from what the platforms can deliver for me and then see how my ideal client matches within those platforms. Yeah. I definitely think when figuring out ideal client alignment or who that ideal client avatar is.
28:03
Why it's important is one, the targeting as Tim is mentioning, but also around messaging, right? The clearer you are on who your ideal client is, the better your messaging is going to land for that ideal client. Tim, you always talk about like the dog whistle, right? Like the dog whistle is where you blow this whistle, only dogs can hear it because it's such a high frequency and it only attracts their attention.
28:28
We can't hear a dog whistle, right? And it's the same thing when you're thinking about messaging or marketing to your ideal client. If you want your marketing materials and messaging to truly land with your prospects, you have to get clear on who that ideal prospect is. If you do not have pipeline, it means that you don't have scalability, period.
28:50
I always like to say, you don't only want to be thinking about immediate pipeline, meaning my leads this week or next month, or even this quarter, you want to be thinking about long term pipeline. We've had some clients that we speak to companies that we speak to say, Hey, I'm fully booked. I'm all maxed out. have enough clients for this month or this quarter. We cannot afford to take on any more clients because we're fully booked. And that's okay for now, but I always ask.
29:18
What are you going to do in six months or in 12 months? Are you going to be in that exact same position? And very often that answer is no. So when you're thinking about pipeline health, think about this in terms of the long-term. Six months down the line, even next year, how can you consistently build pipeline so that you are never at a point where you have no leads or your leads have run out or dried out? You are always thinking about building your pipeline.
29:46
And what's so beautiful about this, like right now Pima is on a waitlist. Like if you want to come be a client, if you're fit for us, there's a waitlist and people are more than willing to hop on that waitlist because we offer so much value. But that doesn't mean that we stop marketing. doesn't mean that we're going to stop building our pipeline. We're still building our pipeline. We're still building that. And the healthiest companies you see out there, they're obsessed, obsessed, obsessed about a healthy pipeline.
30:12
And really see it as like you're investing in your pipeline, not just for immediate growth, but like what I invest in my pipeline today, I know because the consistency a year from now, two years, three, four years from now, we're going to see the fruit from it. Yeah. And of course I want my pipeline to convert fast, but there's also just a point of consistently showing up in the marketplace over and over month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year that also
30:39
builds an equity for your company in the marketplace as the dominant player. And we've seen it so often when we were speaking to somebody this month, they weren't ready to sign up for one or other reason. And then six months or 12 months down the line, they come and reach back out to us because they're ready to sign up. Right. And that's the benefit of having pipeline health. You have pipeline both for immediate conversions, new revenue in the door today, this month, this quarter.
31:07
but for down the line as well. So I always say pay your future self, pay your future self for the that you might need for a few months or years down the line. Absolutely. And one thing I want to mention too is that people get this wrong all the time. go like the honest sales call with Pima. People say, just so you know, we're speaking with two or three other lead vendors and we're going to choose which one we want. It's like, great. And are you only hiring just one? You're just going to hire one lead vendor. I never thought about that.
31:38
You know, and so I actually, people are shocked that we encourage companies that are like talking to competitors that they're shocked that we're, we actually encourage them. Yeah. Try a couple lead vendors at the same time. Why, why, like, why would you only try one? Why would you put all of your eggs in one basket? Now, of course you hire two or three lead generation companies and we're one of those, of course, by the end of the program, maybe one of the other one works out. Chances are a dozen, but with us,
32:05
It is going to work out and you're going to see, have a lot of value. So I'm never scared if somebody tries on another company for me, I want to at least hire two companies at the same time. That way I'm, I can compare over a period of time, not over like one or two months. Like I'm not trying to get rich quick, but don't be afraid to try two or three lead generation companies at the same time. So long as you have the bandwidth capacity and resources to properly
32:32
invest the time and energy to make sure you're getting the great results out of these sources. Because remember, great leaders, great companies, they delegate, they don't advocate, right? If you're hiring a vendor, you're not hiring them to grow your business. You're hiring them to fill a part of your pipeline need so that you as a company can grow your pipeline and ultimately continue to grow your company. So the question you want to ask here with step four in pipeline health is
32:59
Do we have consistent leads filling our pipeline every week and every month? Where are those lead sources coming from? But always be thinking, even if we are at max capacity, are we still accepting new leads into the pipeline? That is critical.
33:18
If you're in B2B sales and you think that it requires multiple calls to close a deal, you've been lied to. And I'm going to burst that bubble and show you why you can close B2B deals, even mid-market enterprise deals in one call. And it doesn't require this massive long sales process and sell cycle to do it. So we're excited to bring you all on the inside of how we really started to close on one call, enterprise clients, mid-market clients, as Tum mentioned.
33:47
established small businesses and what that could look like for you. Before we dive in, let me explain kind of the difference on one call closing in a B2C scenario versus a B2B scenario. Because people listening, you might be like, Tim, you don't understand B2B. You don't understand my offer, my complexity. I do. do. one thing I understand is that whether you're selling to a mid market or enterprise, you can do one call closes if you're positioning your company and your offer properly.
34:17
Now in B to C, these people are scared. You might be asking them to spend, you know, money that's like a massive amount of money for them and you're asking them to take all this risk for this person that they just met. That's going to be very like high influence. You have to really understand like how to be a ninja closer and understand all the rebuttals, all the pre-framings and pre-handling. Those skills are good to have. You have to be careful if you use them in B to B, because if you overdo it in B to B like
34:46
They're just more sophisticated so they don't work. What was going to work in B2B is yes, absolutely you have to understand how to get people into an emotional state or otherwise known as the buyer's pocket. But you also have to make the logistics and the friction be so minimal in B2B that a CMO of a 500 employee company could hire you on the spot without having to bring in other stakeholders to test you out. It's interesting how you classify the difference between the B2C versus B2B.
35:14
With our clients, we review a lot of sales calls and I'll often see that a company will try to do a one call close, but their offer is not positioned for a one call, right? They have to actually be scheduling more than one call. So I'm excited for you Tim to dive into a little bit more what the offer looks like to be able to close on one call because I have seen it done so often where people are trying to close on one call when they are not positioned to do it effectively.
35:43
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm not saying every deal is going to close on one call, but I'm saying if your offer is positioned, which the key point there is your offer is positioned to be able to close on one call, you should always be going for the one call close if they're a fit, but also you should always be countered. You should always have the next meeting scheduled, right? You should always be moving the deal forward. So don't just all of a well, Tim said do one call close. I'm going to try it.
36:08
Why is it not working? Why is it not working? a proposal. Yeah, just send a proposal. I'm going to send a proposal. It's not closing. We're going to walk through how to do it right. But also just remember, if it doesn't close, if I'm talking to CMO and he's like, hey, this looks great. This is perfect. Everything we need. I can't make this decision without running it by somebody else. I'll make sure they're tied down. I'll do my, okay, great. So long as they're bought in, how do you feel about this? Do you like the strategy? Oh yeah, this is great. This is perfect. Exactly what we need. Why do you need this? Why do you like this?
36:37
I make sure they're really bought in before I schedule the next call. And if they're like absolutely bought in and it's like literally logistics, cool. Like let's schedule the next call and then I'll walk through what is that next person going to look for, right? So I'm going to position on my second call. I can one call close a B2B in 30 minutes. No joke. If I can get to that in five or six minutes where I get a total scope of the problem, the impact of the problem and the why now of the problem and label it to them. And when I tell you that and Cindy goes back, nope, that covers it.
37:07
Nope, that's exactly you're exactly right. So you're not missing anything. Now within five or six minutes, I've gotten the full scope of the problem. She's agreed the full scope of the problem, which actually might be bigger than she realized coming into this call. I might've just opened her eyes to like, dang, this thing really is been going on for years. That's pretty bad. Now I'm starting the whole call off on, we found the problem, the full scope of the problem that we're here to solve. Now I'm going to spend the rest of the call focused on solving that problem.
37:35
And then my pitch is going to ultimately be the perfect solution, low friction, low entry to solve that problem immediately. about the goal? You we often hear that you have to know like the goal, their goal, their outcome. What do they ultimately want? Does that come after the problem or should that be at the start of the call? So I would always start with a problem and B2B for sure. And B2C some like, I'm not going to go too often B2C, but just so you understand the difference between B2B and B2C here is I'll still start with a problem, but
38:04
Somebody might not be problem aware if they're in B2C, meaning like, hey, like, I don't know that Facebook ads is my problem, where a CMO is gonna know if Facebook ads is their problem. Like, B2C, they might not be aware of what their problem is they're trying to solve.
38:21
Don't get liked and ignored, get respected and chosen. So that is starting the call with frame control. Energy over words. Prospects don't judge you by your script, they judge you by your energy and your certainty. If you sound shaky, you land in the friend zone. If you're calm and confident, you become the expert because sales is 80 % a transfer of energy. Let me say that again, this is very true and I wouldn't doubt if it's more like 90 or 95%, but
38:51
Cells is 80, maybe 90, maybe 95, maybe 99 % a transfer of energy. In the first seconds, they can't judge your product. They can't do all the math in your product, and a lot of times all the features and benefits and all the stuff you throw at them, they're like, it's overwhelming them. So what is a person consciously and subconsciously doing? They are judging you. How do I feel comfortable with this person? Do I feel comfortable that this person can...
39:20
solve my problem, they can lead me to the promised land, they can help me with this problem that I haven't been able to solve myself. That happens very quickly, especially on a subconscious level. They don't even know it, but that gut feeling happens very, quickly. Tone drives emotion before logic. Your energy communicates authority, period. The friend zone...
39:43
vibe is 100 % like you're just trying to be a buddy, a pal, a friend. Hey man, how's it going? You know, I just want us to be cool, you know, I just want us to chill, you know. Hey man, you feeling the vibe? Like, you know, you're trying to be like almost like that cheesy dad that's trying to be cool with his teenage friends or his teenage son's friends. Like you're just not cool, dad. That's okay. Like don't try to be cool with your teenage son and his friends. Like you don't have to vibe with them. It's okay. Be the expert, be the dad, be the authority.
40:12
Experts are steady, they're paced, they're controlled. Your energy has to be calm. You have to reset for stakeholders. I would say even you have to reset every single call, but especially every new person coming in has a first impression. So every new person, you have to win that first seven seconds so that they get a good, good feeling about you. The authority probe submits your status and frames the entire call around the problem that you can solve.
40:41
You'll never get stuck in the friend zone of sales again. You'll run the call like a freaking boss, like an expert, like the person that they need to solve the problem that they have. And you're going to see absolutely way more deals close just from landing and nailing these first seven seconds.
41:08
Personal stories, these probably by far outperform any other piece of content on LinkedIn. People love to hear about moments that you've grown, lessons that you've learned, pivots, challenges that you've been through and how you've overcome. Share those personal stories. You can share wins and milestones. Maybe it's team achievements. Maybe you just hit 10 years in business. Maybe you were featured in a press or you just finalized a strategic partnership. Share those wins and milestones.
41:37
And the last piece of content that you could share is maybe behind the scenes. What you're building, what you are thinking through, what's to come for you and your company. All of those are just examples or types of content that work really well on LinkedIn. So always think about one, what are you an expert at? Two, what is the type of format or the content that you enjoy creating the most? Is it written? Is it visual? Is it video? And then start to put that together in a way that you can be consistent and start to post.
42:07
Ready, fire, aim always wins the game. Meaning don't try to have everything perfect, create the post, put it out there, start to test it for say 90 days on being consistent with your content creation and see how your audience responds. I always think that it's so important to throw it out, put it out and then see how your audience responds versus trying to get it perfect before you put anything out there. Okay.
42:34
So we want to be consistent and that is the way to do it. There are three components to a successful content strategy. There are your posts, which we spoke about, right? This is you actively posting content. There's your comments and then there's your engagement. So yes, I want you to be posting three to five relevant posts every week. That's great. But I also want you to be thinking about leaving comments on other people's posts as well. Because if you leave comments on other people's posts,
43:04
it is going to double, even triple your profile's visibility. Because here's what LinkedIn does, when you leave a comment on someone else's post, the people that are connected with you and that are following you, they're going to see that comment as well. It is also going to expand your visibility because your comment is now showing up on another person's post. So you can drop insights, you can ask questions.
43:29
You can challenge ideas or leave your viewpoint on other people's posts. I have literally seen comments go viral. That is how much LinkedIn rewards engagement. So think about as you are posting content, it's not just about what you post, it's how you are engaging with other people's content as well. So three to five is a great number. So three to five comments per day is great. Three to five posts per week is great.
43:58
But the most important thing is consistency. Consistency over the quantity by far. If you can be consistent with one post per week, I would prefer that over somebody that posts two to three times this week and then we never hear from you in like two months. Okay, so I rather you post once per week, but always think about the quality over quantity. Keep it sustainable to create a cadence that you know you can commit to and that you can show up.
44:26
consistently every week with that cadence and in that format. And don't be afraid to test. Test different formats, test different post types, test your content pillars. The more that you commit to this journey of creating content on LinkedIn, and truly it is committing to showing up as the expert. That's what it all boils down to. Commit to showing up as the expert, and you will see not only your follower count grow, your network grow,
44:56
you'll start to see opportunities just flow to you. And it's crazy because I am the outbound marketing queen. Okay. I'm all about go out, send the cold DM, send the cold email, go and get the opportunity. I am all about that. That's what our whole business model is built around. But something really powerful happens with LinkedIn and in building your LinkedIn authority, where you will start to see opportunities just flow to you. And from the time that I started with LinkedIn,
45:26
in around 2018, 2019 to now. I cannot tell you how many podcasts I've booked, how many collaborations I've secured. I have partnered with LinkedIn, the company, as a career expert. mean, there's so many opportunities that have come my way. I've been invited to speak on stages, guests, the whole thing, because I've put myself out there as the authority on LinkedIn.
45:53
How can I adjust my offerings to make it really, really easy and really simple for a company to test me out, for a company to jump on a pilot program or a lower offer program. And if you are an agency and you know, you absolutely know you can deliver, why not make it lower cost for the company to jump on? Because you know you are going to keep them. Right, Tim, you talk about lifetime value.
46:20
and how important it is to consider the entire value of the client, not just how much money you're going to make upfront. Yeah, the biggest mental shift you have to make here, and by the way, this is a pain that we went through. When we were first breaking into enterprise and mid-market, we were trying to go after the big contracts and we got some. We got some every now and then, some really nice sized contracts. And then when we had enough to think that we just had to keep dialing the sales process in better. But it wasn't until we said, hey, why don't we
46:49
run a pilot program with these companies where it's a three months and we're not trying to make money off the pilot program. Like sure, we're making some money, but let's get in with these clients where the cost and the risks and the commitment is it's only 90 days and the cost is so low that we're not making a ton of money off of it. We're banking that we're going to retain them. And then from their ends, a director of marketing could come in or they might not even need budget approval. So you're doing it at price points where they actually, in a lot of cases,
47:19
could get it without actually needing to get the higher ups involved in this budget decision. And what happens there is now you get in, you're covering your costs, maybe making a little bit of profit. Now they get to experience the results you deliver. And if you're confident like we are, and like a lot of our clients are, that they can deliver the results, then it's a sales move, meaning your pilot becomes part of the sales process. And if you think about it that way,
47:46
When people doing these offers correct, they're closing over 50 % and very short sell cycles and they're retaining very, very high. And so if you go from closing 20 % of your deals, if you're already really good to 50%, it doesn't matter if you're not making as much money on that first three months because your client acquisition costs just went so far down. And if you see the pilot as part of the sales process, you essentially got paid to do
48:16
the sales process. So this is like displaying the founders unique story through thought leadership, behind the scenes insights, like showing what is happening behind the scenes. And as a founder, number one takeaway here is you need to be visible online, period. If you are not actively posting content on any platform, you are going to be invisible in 2026 and beyond. And our bias.
48:45
for reason, with reason, with data is on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of those platforms where you can build so much brand authority, individual authority, because LinkedIn is the platform that has by far the highest brand equity. So there's really two sides that I see it on the one end. is posting personal stories, posting things that are going to get that emotional connection, right? And these types of
49:11
personal posts do exceptionally well on LinkedIn. You have probably seen posts like this on your feed where somebody is telling a story or sharing a lesson that they learned, maybe sharing like a picture of them 10 years ago or something like that. And I think about those types of personal posts, those are to drive visibility and just new connections, right? Really getting yourself out there. But the second type of post is that authority content.
49:38
And your authority content may not get the most visibility or engagement, but it is as the post that Tim is mentioning, these are the posts that are going to drive the result, meaning lead generation, getting new clients in the door, brand partnerships, podcast speaking. So make sure that as you are thinking about your founder visibility and getting more visible online, that you are doing a combination of share the personal side, share what you're learning, share leadership lessons.
50:06
but also make sure that you are sharing that authority side, is really going to tie back to your business or the ultimate goal that you are posting on either of these platforms for.
50:18
After analyzing those 150 million LinkedIn messages, we found that shorter DMs, meaning 150 characters or less got a 123 % boost in reply rates. That means that if you got 100 replies with a long message, you can expect to get about 223 from 150 or less character message. So treat your outreach like an old school Twitter, like deliver, punch, fast, make it really to the point.
50:45
really, really clear. Remember, clarity beats cleverness every single day. And by the way, LinkedIn shows about 96 characters in the inbox preview. So always tell people, think about the first 96 characters of your message as almost being like the title or the subject line in an email. That's what's gonna get it. So don't waste your time with.
51:07
Hey, you probably get a lot of messages like these, but that's not gonna get the click. So remember that first 96 characters gets the click or gets them to pass up your message. Yes, and I would almost say if you don't have personalization, I would stick to like a standard message than doing generic personalization because that is actually gonna backfire. I think for a long time it worked and people were like, oh, they know where I went to school. And it was nice at first.
51:33
but our consumers are very sophisticated and they have caught on. So we need to adjust. it's either you have really good personalization, right? Where the entire message is hyper-personalized or stay away from it entirely. And the third one is don't add a message to your connection request. I see people do this. I want to say 80 % of the connection requests that I get have some form of note in them and 80 % of them.
52:03
I do not accept, but the data proves it as well. think anytime somebody sees a note in the connection request, it is either that they know you personally, it's like, Hey John, like so good meeting you at that event. Those of course you would accept, but I think we've gotten to a point where the moment a prospect sees a note in the connection request message, they associate it with direct outreach, direct pictures, automation. So they just stay.
52:32
of it entirely, they won't even accept your connection request. In the way that we're doing direct outreach, we're first sending a connection request, waiting for our prospect to accept, and then going in with our messaging, right? With the call to action to get on a call with us. If we're not getting enough prospects to accept our connection request, that means our entire funnel from connection to reply to lead to booked call is shrinking, it's decreasing.
53:00
We've been chatting about this a lot internally, but what does AI personalization look like for LinkedIn specifically and how we've seen that in our operations internally? the problem with AI is that people are starting to be able to see what I would call AI spam. Like when you're starting to do these, this enriched data and it's this personalized message where it's like, Hey, I see that you live in X, Y, Z area. There's a Dairy Queen over there. I really like it. Have you ever been to there? And it's like,
53:28
It's integrating all these weird personalization things that feel very spammy a lot of it's out there and people are starting to be able to pick up even on tiny little nuances of AI personalization and we were getting insane results from AI personalization What happens is if you do it in a way that makes it feel incredibly genuine authentic and human we were starting a really good conversation It's very powerful, but you have to be careful because if you just let one of the LLMs like the chat GPT
53:56
do their own personalization, you're going to get some really weird outputs and it's going to just look like total AI spam. So you have to make sure that what you're doing here sounds, feels, just like overall is just very, very, very authentic and genuine because remember this is humans, we're human to human having conversations, we're starting relationships and we're using AI to help start that relationship so that we can have a conversation.
54:24
And there you have it, that wraps up your favorite moments from this season of The Takeover. If there's one thing we hope you take away from this episode, it's this. Winning is built through decisions made consistently. Not shortcuts, not luck, not random moments. We've been incredibly grateful for everybody who listens to the show. Thank you for everyone who shares it, who reaches out to tell us that episodes resonated with you all.
54:52
Honestly, this podcast would not exist without you all. We're so excited about the season ahead. have phenomenal guests lined up for you all and we are going to continue to help you dominate in all areas of life and business. Okay, let's get winning.