Evan Polin, President of Polin Performance Group LLC

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show, programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W four CY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helenan believes that certainly applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com and now your host, Kevin Helena.

0:52 Thanks everybody for joining in again today. I am Kevin Haleanan and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio on W four orcy dot com. We're streaming live on talkfour tv dot com, and of course we're on Facebook live at Winning Business Radio, and of course we're available after the after the show in podcast form on tons of platforms pretty much wherever you go for your platform, excuse me for your podcast content, YouTube, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple. The list goes on the mission of the show winning business radio and TV, as regular listeners and viewers know, is to offer insights and advice. Really to help people avoid the mistakes of others, right to learn the best practices, the how tos, the what toos, the what not tos for sure, and to be challenged and hopefully to be inspired by the successes of others. Consultants, coaches, authors, advisors, founders and owners, entrepreneurs, people with expertise and often vision.

1:51 But as I always say, virtually every successful person that I've ever had a chance to talk to has said some form of failure in their lives and careers. So you heard every week while we all to get our knee skinned once in a while, I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it. I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses to grow from solopreneurs to small and medium sized companies all the way up to the Fortune fifty. I've seen some of those companies win and to varying degrees. I've seen some fail I've had the opportunity to rub shoulders with some of the highest performing people around, with some who probably should have found oh excuse me, and with some who should have found other professions. And in my own businesses, I've had a lot of success, but some failures too. I like to think I've learned a lot along the way.

2:38 So you'll hear from me my opinions and insights, but more importantly, you'll hear from my guests. And today we have a great guest. His name is Evan Poland. He's the president of Poland Performance Group. Here's his bio. Evan Poland Performance of Poland Performance Group LLC brings over twenty years of sales coaching and consulting expertise to help his clients maximize their business development and sales results. Hevin takes a customized approach to working with his clients as he focuses on the mindsets, a business development plan and professional sales skills needed to grow a business. He's presented at national and regional conferences and has led business development, sales, prospecting, management, and customer service programs across the country. He earned his BA from the University of Delaware and a master's degree from UPenn. He's the co author of the book Selling Professional Services The sandther Way. Nobody ever told me I'd have to sell love that title, even, which focuses on business development for attorneys, accountants, consultants, and other service professionals.

3:39 Evan provides sales coaching, consulting, and fractional sales management services to growing companies and professional services. Yeah, I can talk. I'll try that again, professional service firms seeking an increase in sales profits and productivity. Evan combines his mental health and counseling background with his professional sales and sales coaching experience to help his clients achieve results that exceed their expectations. Evan grew up in the Philadelphia area and currently resides in South Jersey with his wife Karen, his teenage son Jake, and his Mini burn Doodle. Mini Burn Doodle. I'll have to ask you about Harper and his free time. Evan enjoys spending time with family and friends, traveling, and cheering on his beloved Philadelphia sports teams. Evan, welcome to Winning Business Radio and TV.

4:24 Thanks Kevin, I really appreciate you having. Me well I'm glad you're here. I know you're busy. I appreciate you taking the time. Start with your family. Tell us a little about Karen, your wife. So, my wife has a background in management consulting. She went to Bucknell, worked for Booz Allen for a very long time on their on their government side, had her fill of working for a large corporation for a while, went in and worked with a UI firm I'm really helping with project management, overseeing their teams. And that company was acquired by a fortune one hundred company and she was there to the first part of COVID and then made a career change. Didn't love project management, transitioned over into the HR world, and she is now head of US and Canada for HR for a fortune five hundred firm called IQB, and she loves doing what she's doing, is really happy about that career transition that she made.

5:33 And your son, Jake, So, my son is a senior in high school. So if anybody out in the listening audience is a college admissions counselor and wants to help us out, were anyone looking looking to fund someone going to school, was still open for him to be adopted so just just let us know if you want to help. But he is a senior in high school involved in Decca, which is a marketing group model you in. Yeah, there's academic bowl team for his high school. So he's really active and involved, but really really looking forward to leaving his parents and spreading his wings and definitely told us he's going away for college.

6:15 Nice. And how far does that mean California, Florida. Depends where you go to one or two of his reach schools that are you top and he wants to get into a business program would be a flight away, but most of the schools are within a three or four hour drive of where we live, right outside of Philadelphia. Nice. All right, So tell us about your burn doodle, Harper. She's a mini Burner Doodle, which is a mix between a Burmese mountain dog and a miniature poodle. So she was a COVID dog. So my son had been begging and begging and begging for a dog, and between my wife's travel my travel, the excuse was it wasn't fair to have a dog alone home alone for twelve hours about six months into COVID. My son was like, Okay, well you're not going anywhere, and you're both working from home now. So so we got Harper, who was a total sweetheart. Hopefully she won't make an appearance on camera today.

7:17 She does, It's okay, just introduce her. So she is a goofy dog, well natured dog, and she loves being spoiled, and we're very good at spoiling her. Nice. I love it all right. So tell us a bit about your background. You grew up in Philly. So I grew up in New Jersey area, right outside of Philadelphia. Never went too far. I went to the University of Delaware for college and got undergraduate degrees in psychology and sociology, which allowed me to go to graduate school. And that's pretty much all that qualified me for So, so I went to University of Pennsylvania got a master's degree in social work. I really enjoy doing things around surrounding the work had a specialty in something called employee assistance counseling.

8:06 I wanted all about that. What does that mean? So I was the guy and I worked for a subsidiary of United Healthcare. So when somebody tested positive for drugs or alcohol at work, there was a threat of violence in work. I was the one that got the phone call when they called their insurance company, helped to kind of treize the situation get somebody set up for treatment. I would also be involved in tracking their treatment, helping to determine when somebody could return to work. And then I also acquired another specialty in something called critical as it stress debriefings. So after a bank robbery, after a liquor store robbery, if there was an accident on a train line, I would go in meet with the employees that were affected, try to minimize the risk of them having post traumatic stress disorder, and then helping to get them set up with long term counsel services if they needed it, which quite frankly in this dovetailing how I got into doing what I'm doing After nine to eleven, I was new into my career doing sales training and sales coaching. Nine to eleven hit and I'm about an hour and a half outside of New York. Got called by the managed care company and ended up spending about a month and a half in New York living in my friend's apartment who had got displaced because his company was right next to the Lotate Center, and I was meeting with companies every single day, who had hundreds and hundreds of employees impacted by nine to eleven people who

9:37 were going to four or five funerals a day, and I was there kind of doing a group processing session with them, counseling session with them, getting them connected with treatment, and did that for about two months after nine to eleven. So that is not at all what I expected it to be. That's fascinating. I want to ask you a few questions that group guidance. What did that look like? I mean, really people benefit from the individualized or small group, whatever that looks like. But how do you work with a whole team of people? Initially, so a lot. Of people are going through the same emotions, don't realize that other people are going through the same thing they're going through, So helping to give them an idea of what they may be currently experiencing, what they can expect the experience over the next couple of days, so that they're not surprised, they don't think that they're abnormal. Also kind of help helping people who were comfortable kind of express what they saw, how they felt, so that they could start to process their feelings. Because a lot of times people get PTSD when they keep everything pushed down, don't know how to express their emotions, don't know how to express their feelings. And then right there and then would give them how to get connected with their insurance, with their EAP benefits, with their counseling, so that they could get that individualized counseling. But a lot of times if people, if it wasn't normalized, people wouldn't feel comfortable

11:10 reaching out to get that help. So it helps to kind of start with that process. Well, and I see that you or I read somewhere that you reference your time in behavioral health with some of the work you do now working with sales organizations salespeople. Yeah. Absolutely, and we can talk a little bit about it about how I've transformed a little bit, how I've been in the business. And again, I know you work with a ton of salespeople, and as we both know, a lot of times, the biggest challenges helping people get out of their own way, it's not that they don't know what they should be doing. It's that, for whatever reason, they're not doing those things that they know they should be doing. So I'll spend a lot of my time and a lot of my experience from counseling, helping people to kind of understand why they're not doing what they're doing, helping them determine whether or not the results that they would be getting if they were doing those things is worth the discomfort of taking risk. In the intro, you talked a little bit about failure of that willingness to go out and try something new, that willingness to fail a little bit at the beginning. And if I can help the people to get beyond that, to go out and try something new, then there's a much better chance that they'll actually take action on what I suggest, versus giving them what could be the best ideas in the world.

12:34 But if they're actually not willing to go out and take the risk to try it, it doesn't matter what tools you give someone. If they're not willing to use them, they're not going to see any change and they're not going to see any results. Totally true. You're spot on, Hey, blue or not, we're going to take our first break right here. We'll be back in just about a minute. Evan and everybody will be back with Evan Poland in just just about one minute. Excuse me, you're listening to Winning business Radio with Kevin Helene on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio.

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14:10 Okay, we're back with Evan Poland, president of Poland Performance Group. Here's what I want to know now, fascinating behavioral health background. How did you cross over? How did you get into the sales universe? So a great question, and I jokingly say that I was born into it. So right when I started college, my parents bought a saandlor training franchise and one summer while I was in college, I had a sales job. I was calling nonprofits, churches, synagogues's youth groups to try to get them to sell these coupon books for fundraisers.

14:50 So I decided to sit through the sales training one summer when I was in college. I did it again when I was in graduate school and then although I loved my social work career my social work background, for private counseling sessions, I was getting paid somewhere between twenty five and thirty five dollars per session. I was working for a part of United Healthcare. I was very fortunate that I had a good mentor ID got promoted twice in my first three years, had an opportunity to speak at a national conference. Was involved when they do the dog and Ponies sale shows when they would bring through a big prospect. But my next promotion was about ten years away, looking at about two and a half to three and a half percent salary increases per year. My parents' business partner was my uncle who had been dating a woman for about twenty years who we were in the Philadelphia area, lived in Dallas.

15:43 You don't want to rush in any things, Yeah, I didn't. Want to rush in anything. I was told it was time to make a decision, so he transitioned out. I wasn't happy with what I was doing, so I decided to join my parents in the business. That was two in one. I mistakenly thought that I was joining a coaching and training product. I knew you were going to say that, that's so many. People I occasionally had to sell. I quickly realized if I wanted to do any training your coaching, if I didn't have any clients to do training and coaching with, then I didn't get a chance to do that. So I'm not I'm not the sharpest tool. I'm not the quickest So it took me a little while to figure that out. But I really had to move out of my comfort zone as a non selling professional, somebody with a non traditional background to really kind of make that transition and be successful going from that social work background, in the mental health background to know being a professional consultant.

16:47 And as you know, I'm not sure a lot of a lot of others do. They'll learn in a second here there is so much psychology in selling entirety. Touch on just one or two easy areas. We'll get more into that in a few minutes, but just show people that I'm right on that one. Not that I'm not trying to be right. I'm just saying, you know, so two things. One again from the salesperson, from the consultants' mentality. Again, if they're not willing to look at what's keeping them in a term, I know you know very well in a comfort zone that they're not going to be able to unlock themselves to try to do something new to get better results. And if you think that everybody is the same and you treat every possible thing, you're not going to get the same reaction. So it's a matter of being able to read other people and also understand that you know people don't only at least buy intellectually, that there's a lot of emotion involved. And if you can't understand what motivates someone unless they have a desperate need for your product or service at the exact moment that you talk to them, the chances of getting them to buy into whatever it is that you're selling aren't very good. And those salespeople who just try to memorize this or try to just kind of bulldog their way through guilty end up having to do three times as much activity and getting very frustrated, and they're saying things like I, why doesn't my prospect understand that this is good for them? And why don't they do what I want?

18:16 I know I can help them. Yeah, yeah, so go ahead. I'm sorry. If you don't understand the psychology and if you don't understand what motivates people to make a decision, you're going to have a very difficult time. Yeah, that's really good. So many of your clients included law firms, banks, financial service firms, architectural engineering firms, professional consulting organizations, people who you and I would call non and you reference the term already non selling professionals. Why do we call them non selling professionals. Because they would be highly offended if you ever told them that they were selling. Yeah, they went this because they were very smart people and they went to school to do other things, and sales was not supposed to be part of the equation. So for a lot of them, it's difficult for them to conceive of themselves as that way.

19:14 For a lot of them, they're already very uncomfortable. So again, just our secret. I'm sure nobody else is listening. Don't tell them that they're selling, but soften it up a little bit. If we share with them how they can use their expertise to help people solve their problems, it makes them a lot more comfortable and they're a lot more willing to buy into doing some of this business development work. That again a dirty little secret. If a firm doesn't have clients to do work for, then all of that expertise that people have don't matter if there's no clients to use that expertise on. So true, so true. Our marketing friends don't mind that we say the following, But to those non selling professionals, we.

19:57 Call it marketing or client development. Absolutely business development, anything but sales. That's a five letter, four letter word. That's right, that's right. And you developed that specialty because you were one. Two things. Developed that specialty because I was one and that was my background. Second, like all great plans, it happened entirely by accident. You didn't plan that at like nineteen years old. I didn't plan that at nineteen years old. Soon after I joined my parents in our sales spinning business. Yeah, one of my father's top clients was a financial advisor.

20:38 His top client was the managing partner of a law firm who was very disappointed because he looked to sell his firm and he had developed about ninety five percent of the business for the firm and was told that the firm wasn't worth anything without him. So that financial advisor introduced us to the managing partner of the law firm. We ended up working with about ten or caul of associates to that law firm, who then referred us to another law firm, who then referred us to another law firm, who then referred us to an accounting firm, and then, all of the sudden, by accident, we started to make ourselves experts in adopting sales and business development. For those people who are in professional services.

21:22 Love it, so let me just for the audience's sake, non selling professionals do things a little differently than someone selling software or real estate or you know, fill in the blank. Describe just a couple of those easy to understand differences. For example, they're not going to pick up the phone and make place calls and make cold calls as an attorney or CPA. Correct. So one of the biggest differences is that attorney that CPA, they are spending the overwhelming majority of their time actually doing the client work. Most of them are billing somewhere between eighteen hundred hours and twenty two hundred hours a year. Therefore, when they're looking at business development, they really only have about three to five hours per week for business development. So they need to do things that are a little bit different than somebody who's selling forty to fifty sixty hours a week so that they can leverage their expertise, they can make the best use of their time to start to get results, and for a number of them, attorneys being the big one. There are also ethics and rules around solicitation, and there's things that most salespeople wouldn't think twice about in terms of sending out an email, in terms of getting a client's third party endorsement and using that third party endorsement that professionals like attorneys ethically and legally can't do. So it

22:53 looks and sounds and feels a little bit different when they're selling what they're doing and when they're trying to develop a book of business versus your traditional salesperson. You actually wrote a book about it. Author of selling professional services, the same other way. Nobody loved the subtitle. Nobody ever told me I'd have to sell. And that's quite true, right, Yeah. For a lot of these folks, especially the ones who are working in larger firms, at the beginning of their career, they're told bill twenty three hundred hours, bill twenty five hundred hours, Bill as much as you can, and then as it comes time for them to start to be considered to be a partner, whether it's six, eight, ten, twelve years into their career, it's oh, by the way, if you don't have a million dollar book of business, we couldn't even consider making you a partner. And for a lot of those attorneys, there's accountants, it's like, well, wait a second. You've had me in this back office, you know, billing fifty hours a week for the last ten years. How was I supposed to build a book of business? I didn't even know I was supposed to do it. And it's like, yeah, well now you know.

24:02 And if you don't do it, then you're not going to make partner. And quite frankly, for a lot of them, they may not have a lot of control over their career because they're getting built out at a lot more expensive rate than somebody who's got half the experience. And for some firms it's okay, well unless you have a really niche expertise. If there's no we may make you of counsel. We may have to move you out if you don't, at some point in time start to develop a book of business. So it's a catch twenty two. And for a lot of them it becomes very frustrating because this is something that nobody told them in law school that they were going to have to do it. There's no law school classes on business development, there's no cl classes on business development, and now all of a sudden, if you don't do this, you may not make partner and you're certainly not going to have control over your own career if you can't develop a book of business.

24:56 Why did you decide to write the book? So a couple of reasons. One there was a need. Two was asked to tap on the shoulder by Dave, who had said, you know, by the way you know you and your father, you're doing you know, as much, if not more than, this kind of work than anybody else. You know, do you think that you'd be able to sit down and you know, kind of help put the put the Sandler process together and share how it works for those professional services, for those attorneys, for those accountants, for those consultants. So it was a labor of the best thing I ever did one time and I'll ever do ever again. We turned the book around, probably went from concept to the book was out there in about eight to ten months, well, and people really enjoyed it because it was really a practical approach to business development, looking at again, what mindset do we need to do, how are we going to get in front of the opportunities, and then utilizing that Sandler process and adopting it for those professional service folks, and putting two or three stories and the stories we're taking from our experiences with our clients in terms of giving real world examples of how each of the concepts applied to those folks.

26:20 There are a lot of authors in the audience and there are a lot of want to be, you know, could be should be authors. What was the process of writing the book? Like you said, eight to ten months, and you didn't say it in a fun I mean you didn't say it like it was exciting. It sounded like it was work. While you're doing your rest the rest of your work, you know, but going to take us through the process. So it was really developing an outline of Okay, what do we want to accomplish, Yeah, if the book's written, at the end of the book, what do we want people to walk away from? And then breaking it down and quite frankly, we wrote the first chapter and the last chapter. First kind of ran that through people to make sure that that's something that people thought would bring value.

27:07 And then from there it was okay, how do we break this down into bite sized chunks? So how do we make it done in such a way where it's easy to read and easy to utilize and not like reading through a textbook. And quite frankly, and you know, I was with Sandler Training at the time, and they had a ghostwriter who helped us once we got all of the content in there, to change some things around a little bit, and again to make it a little bit more digestible, a little bit more readable. But it was just a matter of Okay, what's the start, what's the end, what are the different pieces? And then for us with a business book, almost having each chapter have the ability to be a standalone and that was much easier, quite frankly, to write, as well as I think easier for people to pick it up, look at two or three chapters and be able to get something from it without having me go through the whole thing from beginning to end in one shot.

28:09 All right, we're going to take our second break right here. We'll be back in about another minute. When we come back, we'll talk about your transition out of the franchise and into kind of well little bit of a transition period into the work you do now. So we'll be back in about another minute with Evan Poland. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. The yp dot com website is your local search engine. If you're looking for a good restaurant, it can help you find the right one nearby with ratings and reviews.

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29:38 So of an after eighteen looks like about eighteen and a half years, and I want to ask you a couple of questions along that way too. You guys decided to exit from the Sanla franchise, sell it. I'm whatever, I'm not. That part doesn't concern me. I'm interested in you know why he decided to make a transition so well. The eight figure off didn't hurt. But in addition to that, our franchise agreement was coming up. Our very expensive Center City Philadelphia office space lease was coming up. Within about two or three months of the franchise agreement coming up, my father was in his seventies and looking to slow down, and he was my primary business partner. I was getting a little burnout and the office was about forty five minutes to hour commute from where I lived, in addition to networking events those kinds of things. And my largest client at the time, along with those non selling professionals, was a corporate tax firm and I was doing training.

30:43 It was an ESOP, so I was doing training for about twenty two of their partners and they wanted to carve out a larger role for me, so we decided to exit the franchise. Fortunately for us, timing could not have been any better. I think we did the franchise about six months before COVID hit and if we had stayed in, I would have signed a brand new ten year office lease and would have made things challenging. And I was with this corporate tax firm for about three years doing my own business development for them, acting essentially as the sales manager for all of their directors.

31:25 But pause that thought for a second. What was your This is a hard question, maybe not too hard, but certainly you got to think about it. What was your most important takeaway from eighteen and a half years running your own business and probably something you really enjoyed. So two things. One for any of you small business owners out there, you know running business is not easy, so yeah, it takes a certain type in two. You know, one of the other things I learned is that nobody is successful on their own, and it's really a matter of surrounding yourself with the right people, you know, having the right partners, having the right you know, having folks that you can lean on, as well as really enjoying what you're doing is really the key. At that point in time, I had just kind of been a little burnout in terms of what I was doing, and again, my partner at the time was transitioning out, so I just thought that at that point in time it was a good time to step away.

32:28 So tell us now more about Global The company I believe was Global Tax Management, right, yep. So the firm was Global Tax Management, which essentially does corporate tax for fortune and five hundred and fortune one thousand companies, so placing people in your tax departments, helping them with very technical things. So there are about eight different groups within it, everything from international tax to tax technology. So essentially I was a sales manager for all of the different directors in terms of helping them with accountability, helping you know, to coach them through strategize the opportunities.

33:12 Much like many other professional service firms, they would do webinars and a lot of things like that, and then nobody would follow up on any of the people. They would just hope that the phone would ring if somebody liked the webinar enough. I don't believe it. Yeah, So, and I actually worked very closely with their CMO because they had one or two b D folks in the past who weren't really working with the CMO. So really making sure that sales and marketing were on the same page for the firm, which really helped the firm in terms of the results that they got. But I learned after not that long, I'm a much better entrepreneur than I am an employee.

33:56 Yeah, I feel you on that one. So therefore, so so therefore, I decided to step away. And when I went back and thought about what I had done with the franchise, what I really enjoyed most, and this goes back to my counseling roots, was the one on one coaching that I did and really, you know, working with folks, you know, on that kind of intimate level, and I found that my clients really saw the impact and I really enjoyed it. And I also really found and reflecting that I got the most out of working with solopreneurs, working with people from very small firms. They could immediately see the impact of what we were doing together and how it impacted their business. So I decided when I went back out to really just focus on that individual coaching work, you know, more with the professional service firms still than anybody else, but really doing that customized kind of one on one work. You're looking at the accountability and doing that versus doing the large group training.

35:11 And again that that counseling piece of me was really fulfilled by doing that long one. I really enjoy working with those solopreneurs, those entrepreneurs, those really small firms. So that's really where I've settled into over the last two and a half years or so. So the owners often the seller doer. Very oftentimes the owner is the seller doer, or if it's a small firm, again the managing partner is bringing in one hundred percent of the business and they would make one or two of their associates to start to help with that business development work. And do you help onboard hire and on board attorneys professional services people. Is that a part of what you do?

35:56 So I will do that a little bit. I'm more just in the Okay, what is your individual strategy, what are your goals? How are we going to help you to hit those goals? And giving people some tools and some tactics. And again, in those really small firms, managing partner the owner doesn't have the time or the expertise to hold that person accountable. So really acting as that accountability piece for those folks since the owner managing partner really doesn't have the time the expertise to be able to do that. So I want to touch on a few specific areas. These are some of the specific services that you bring to your clients development. I'll just give you the bullet and just touch on it for a minute or so.

36:43 Develop a high level sales and business development strategy. Yeah, so especially those solopreneurs. I'll talk to them and you'll tell me how much business they'd like to do, and that maybe they've got a client or two if they've just started their own for somebody's come with them, but they have no idea, Yeah, how many clients they need? You know, what a small, medium, large sized client should look like. Their goal is to make as much money as possible. Their goal is to bring in as many clients as possible, right, or their. Goal is, hey, you know I you know, I want more like work life balance. You know, I'd like to have a practice of three hundred thousand dollars. I'd like to have a practice of six hundred thousand dollars. But they have no idea how to get there. So it's a matter of sitting down looking at the goal, breaking it down into pieces, helping them identify how many clients they're going to need, and then what is that strategy going to be in terms of how they're going to get in front of those folks, because a lot of folks haven't even thought about it, or even a business owner will hire a salesperson and they they'll say, well, geez, you know, this is how I did it twenty years ago.

37:56 If you know, they've been in business for a long time, but you know, what happened work twenty years ago probably isn't going to work as well today. So they can't help that new hire with what the strategy should be. And again, they're doing fifteen other things, so they're not really helping with the accountability in terms of tracking what that person is doing to see if they're doing the right things to be. Successful, changes in outreach, changes in networking, changes in social selling, right. Absolutely, And yeah, how do you leverage LinkedIn? How do you leverage your personal network to do a better job with referrals, introductions, you know, those kinds of things. And then you said the personalized coaching, how often do you This is fairly you know, I'm just saying, typically meet with somebody one on one.

38:44 Typically, at least at the beginning, I'm meeting with somebody on a weekly basis. Over time, that might go down to twice a month, But it's really that regular interaction to make sure that once we've got a strategy in place, are they putting that strategy into action, and then what's working and what's not working, so that we can tweak that strategy along the way so that they can determine what's getting them and the best results. You're assessing strengths and weaknesses probably of the individual as well as perhaps the small team, and you're going to provide training specific to those strengths and weaknesses. Correct training specifically those strengths and weaknesses. Again, if there's two or three people I'm working with from the same firm, I may work with them on a couple of concepts.

39:33 But then if Mary has been around for twenty years and has a huge network to leverage, we're going to focus with her on how to leverage her network. If Joe's only been around for three or four years, Joe may need to join a b and I a chamber, do other things to first grow his network and do different things than Mary. And that's where the one on one really comes in to help each person with what they should individually be doing. And as you know, there's fifteen eighteen different things that people could be doing when it comes to prospecting, and anybody can really only do three to five at the same time. So looking at that person's strengths and weaknesses to help them figure out which ones they should try first, and then how to track what's working what's not working. With most of my clients at the end of the year, we'll look at all of the professional associations they belong to, all of the networking things, see what's see what's working, see what's not working, to then be able to help you tweak what they're doing so that they can make the best use of their time.

40:39 And then you or how often I should say, do you function as a formal fractional sales manager, So. Really maybe for two to three clients per year, so I will do a little bit of that. Quite frankly, I'm doing more of just the individual. Coaching in acting mind, so we know a fractional means to find what it looks like as a fractional sales leader. A fractional sales leader oftentimes is integrating themselves more within the organization that they're working with, helping from everything from recruiting onboarding. Train meetings, pipeline reviews.

41:20 Sales meetings, accountability, employee reviews, all of those kinds of things, and at least from my perspective, really being a lot more integrated within the organization that they're acting as a fractional sales leader with versus the coaching which sometimes is a little bit more arms length and really giving people the tools, doing a little bit with the accountability. But I find, at least in my experience, that there's more expected out of that fractional sales leader. Right right, that's a fixed number of hours per week or month. That's a fixed number of hours per week per month. I also find that there are others much better suited to help organizations with the infrastructure with the compensation plan.

42:07 And I'd rather have someone who really specializes in that work with the company when they're looking for that, right, versus you know, doing more of the you know, individual coaching. Right. Yeah, I'm with you on that. Sales acceleration comes to mind. It sounds like who you were referring to there, yep. So so sales acceleration is a really great example of of an organization you know that does that and does that well. Yep, we have I know you do. We have relationships with some of those guys. They're good people. What what are some of the most common business development mistakes you see clients make before they meet you? So some of the biggest mistakes is not having a plan.

42:50 And the plan is you know, praying really hard at the beginning of each week, each month or each quarter and hoping that stuff is not as is going to happen. Yeah. Along with having a plan is going back and tracking historically. Okay, where have my best clients come from? And can I do more of the kinds of things that lead to that? And then I think the other thing is people are too focused on themselves in what I think I bring to the table versus it looking at Okay, what problems do I solve for my clients? And how am I going to articulate that and how can I make it easy for people to understand how I can help and how they can see whether or not my help could be beneficial for them.

43:38 Where does most of your business come from at this point in time? So I have been very fortunate in twenty some years of doing this of building up a really good network, so a large percentage of my business comes from referrals and introductions. And then you and I are part of the same professional professional organization. I don't know if we want to give them a cheap plug go for sure, We're worth part of a national organization called Provisors, which is really for business advisors who have been doing what they're doing for ten plus years. And I've been a part of that for fifteen months, and I found that to be both a great source of business as well as a tremendous resource for myself to build relationships with different coaches and consultants marketing folks that I've then been able to refer out to my clients to provide additional value for my clients.

44:31 Yeah, exactly the same experience. What is the best lesson you've taught recently or the best lesson you've learned recently? So great question you said there, We're going to be no hard hitting questions here. That's the hardest one Romiston anyway. So for me, you know, I think the best lesson for folks is really understand what you want to achieve, what you want to accomplish. I know, coming into fourth quarter, I do a lot of goal setting with my clients. I know that you do a lot of goal setting with your clients. Is helping people to understand why they're working so hard and kind of big picture what they're looking to accomplish and what's going to make them happy, and then building a plan around that. I still think that these days, people too often feel like they're judged by how much money they make. And there are people who are going out there and how can I make every last dollar? But then their relationships aren't any good, their health isn't any good. And I think when you have a better understanding of what's really important, you can then build a plan around that and be really happy and be really balanced. And I think it all starts there.

45:48 I love it. That's excellent. To that point, what do you like to do in networking? What do you like to do for fun? So great question. So my dog Harper is named Harper for a reason after Bryce Harper. Well, we got soon after the Phillies acquired Brice Harper. So I am a huge sports fan. My father and I just took a trip to New Orleans to see an Eagle Saints game, and over the last four or five years we've done a road game together every year. Nice. I'm very fortunate that my son my wife are both big sports fans, so we do that together. I'm also a big believer and again that work life balance and disconnecting at least once or twice a year. So love going away on vacation with my family. We're going to be going down to the Dominican Dominican Republic over Christmas time.

46:40 But really being able to disconnect at least once or twice a year, that's really important as well. That's really good. I was fortunate enough just to come back. We were back. So you left the seventeenth of September. I spoke at a conference in Dallas, but we have some family there, so we added a couple of days and then, believe it or not, I spoke at a conference in Cancun for a client and we added a couple of days there. So sometimes you can get away with that too. But I was most jealous when I soon after I joined my parents in the business, my father had a client that had an office in Saint Thomas and got them to fly him out there and put him up for several days in Saint Thomas. Nice before and after the conference he did for them.

47:21 You gotta love it, all right, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you? And one quick plug? Why should they reach out to you? So and I appreciate the opportunity for the plug. People should reach out to me if they're not happy with the kind of results they're getting from their business development effort, and they know that they should be doing something different, but maybe they're not quite sure what it is that they should be doing. That's a great time and what I like to say, people should reach out to me if they're looking to proactively grow their firm, proactively grow their practice. If they're not looking to proactively do it, I can be a pain in the butt, you know. I'm going to ask them to do things that are going to make them uncomfortable. I'm not cheap, so yeah, So if somebody really doesn't want to build their business, you know, probably doesn't make sense for them to give me a call. Best way to check me out if you go to my website, which is www dot polandpg dot com. You can see a little bit more about me, read some of that. I probably have twenty twenty five blog articles up there. Or you can email me at Evan at polandpg P, LIKEPETERG Likegeorge dot com. Those are the two best ways to get in touch with me.

48:36 Perfect Well, thank you so much for your time. I've enjoyed having you and we appreciate it. Thanks Kevin, I really appreciate it. You're quite welcome, and thanks everybody for listening and watching. This is the show about business and often business challenges. If you've got concerns about the growth of your company and you are if you're a non selling professional you want to reach out to Evan anybody else in any other walk of life and business, feel free to reach out to me on Facebook or LinkedIn. That's at Winning Business Radio. You can email me at one of my many email addresses. Kevinat Winning Business Radio dot com. Our company is Winning Incorporated. We're part of Sandler Training. We develop sales teams into high achievers and sales leaders into true coaches and mentors. We're not right for everybody, but maybe we should have a conversation. Thank you to one, our crack producer and engineer for another job. Well done.

49:26 Appreciate it one. Join us again next Monday, October fourteenth, my guest will be Eric Arenstaft, facilitator, bestselling author, speaker, and active CEO of Elevate ID. Until then, this is Kevin Helena. You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host, Kevin Helena. If you missed any part of this episode, the podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio. For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio dot com or check us out on social media. Tune in again next week and every Monday at four pm Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on W four Cy Radio W four cy dot com. Until then, let's succeed where others have failed and win in business with Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio