May 1, 2025 • 35 mins
Episode 88 Frederick Dudek (Freddy D) Copyright 2025 Prosperous Ventures, LLC
Revenue Revolution: Strategies for Predictable Growth with Kyle Mealy
Today, we're diving into the importance of fusing marketing and sales into a single, powerful revenue team with our guest, Kyle Mealy. He’s the founder of Next Level Revenue, and he’s got a knack for transforming businesses by unlocking their hidden potential. Throughout our chat, Kyle breaks down how he helps companies scale from 1 million to 10 million and beyond by establishing one clear leader, one unified goal, and a shared scorecard.
With his extensive experience in turning around struggling organizations, he shares strategies that focus on collaboration rather than competition between departments. This episode is packed with insights to help you rethink your approach to growth and start creating your own business superfans.
Discover more with our detailed show notes and exclusive content by visiting: https://bit.ly/4mbM4Bs
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Listeners are treated to an engaging dialogue between Freddie D. and Kyle Mealy, who share practical insights on creating a thriving business environment through synergistic marketing and sales strategies. Kyle candidly discusses the common pitfalls businesses face when they operate in silos, and how he utilizes the Revenue Cascade model to diagnose and remedy these issues. He provides examples from his work, illustrating how simple adjustments in strategy can yield significant results, such as transforming a previously unprofitable company into a thriving business within months.
The episode underscores the importance of a unified vision among team members, where every employee feels vested in the company's success. This collective ownership fosters an atmosphere where everyone is motivated to pull in the same direction, ultimately leading to enhanced customer experiences and increased revenue. Kyle's approach is not just about immediate sales; it's about building long-term relationships, cultivating super fans, and creating a ripple effect that extends beyond the company walls. The conversation concludes with actionable steps for listeners, encouraging them to rethink their organizational structures and consider appointing a single revenue leader to oversee both marketing and sales efforts. This radical shift could be the key to unlocking their business's full potential.
This podcast is hosted by Captivate, try it yourself for free.
Takeaways:
- In this episode, we dive deep into how aligning marketing and sales isn't enough; they need to fuse into one cohesive revenue team with shared goals and accountability to truly thrive.
- Kyle shares his journey of founding Next Level Revenue after experiencing firsthand the disconnect between marketing and sales in a digital agency, emphasizing the need for a unified approach.
- The conversation highlights the importance of measuring metrics effectively, as understanding the customer experience can directly influence a company's growth and profitability.
- We learn that fostering super fans within a business is crucial, as they can drive referrals and word-of-mouth, ultimately boosting sales without heavy marketing expenditures.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Next Level Revenue
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:54):
Hey Superfan superstar FreddieD. Here in this episode 88 of the
Business Superfans Podcast,we're joined by Kyle Mealy, a dynamic
leader, gifted teacher, andenergized speaker who's on a mission
to unlock the trappedpotential in entrepreneurial businesses
and their leaders. As thefounder of Next Level Revenue, Kyle
serves as a fractional chiefrevenue Officer, helping client service
(02:18):
and reoccurring revenue.Businesses scale from 1 million to
10 million and beyond withpredictable, profitable growth. With
a track record that includesdoubling revenue for a martial arts
school and taking a digitalmarketing agency from 3 million to
7 million in under threeyears, Kyle brings both sharp strategy
(02:38):
and infectious energy in everyroom he enters. His unique blend
of humor, storytelling andheart makes his lessons stick. Whether
he's in the boardroom orteaching his kids karate, you're
in for an episode packed withinsight, inspiration, and maybe a
few laughs, too. On thisepisode of the Business Superfans
(03:04):
Podcast, we have Kyle Mealywith Next Level Revenue. Welcome,
Kyle.
Thanks for having me. Excitedto be here.
So, Kyle, what is thebackstory of how did Next Level Revenue
come about?
There's a lot of entry pointsinto that story, but I think one
(03:24):
that will sit well with youraudience is it started with really
tough customer experience inthe digital marketing agency I was
involved in. I was sitting inthe marketing and sales seat for
a digital marketing agency andI noticed that if a marketer bought
our tactical product,sometimes it would go well because
(03:47):
a good strategy turned ourtactics into reality and turned it
into leads. But every once ina while that marketer might have
good leads but sales couldn'tclose and we were thrown out the
door because we were theproblem. Sometimes the opposite would
happen. The sales leader overmarketing and sales would be in charge.
(04:08):
They wouldn't know how todeploy the tactics, so they're VP
of sales and kind of marketingand it wouldn't work. And we would
be shown the door and theperson sitting over top of how that
ended up being. All therelationships with me and I got tired
of it and I just said therehad to be a better way to do this.
We can't keep having marketingconversations and then point at sales
(04:29):
the problem. We can't havesalespeople pointing at marketing
the problem. I spent about ayear preparing and thinking through
what this was going to belike. I combined all of my experience
because when I looked at allthe success I had in raising top
line and bottom line, neveronce was it pure marketing or pure
sales. It was always thishybrid of them both. It's not just
(04:50):
marketing and sales alignment.I'm talking about something more,
a true fusion where the lineshave been completely erased. And
so I said, I'm going to startto solve marketing and sales problems
with one attribution model,one measurement method and everybody
in the same room. And it'sbeen quite a ride.
Well, sure, because they'rereally intertwined at the end of
(05:12):
the day because they go handin hand. The messaging is going to
be the same and everybody'sgot to be on board with the messaging.
If you think of a rowboatwhere you're racing, you know those
racing rowboats with fourpeople, they have to be all in line,
they have to be insynchronization, otherwise you ain't
going anywhere fast.
We saw that usually there wasan expertise in the room, a marketing
(05:35):
expertise or a salesexpertise. And so it was like the
robo captain was only yellingat two of the four people on the
robo.
Right.
That's where I'm like, there'sgot to be a better way. I spent a
year developing theintellectual property, building on
all my past experience,brought it out to the marketplace
(05:57):
and we've seen some prettyamazing things since then.
So what is it that you do? Howdo you step into a company and transform
them?
So what is our service called?Our service is fractional chief revenue
officers for small business.It's a part time executive to oversee
the marketing and salesdepartments of your one to $15 million
(06:20):
business. What we have foundis that usually there's some sort
of catalyst that starts this.Either it was a failed marketing
agency relationship. Theclassic is a bad sales hire, a bad
VP of marketing and sales or abad VP of sales and marketing. The
owner is still running all themarketing and sales strategy and
(06:41):
wants to escape that seat onceand for all. The problem the market
has told them is you've got tochoose path A or path B because you
don't have money for both. Youcan't really solve marketing and
sales at the same time becausemarketing is expensive and so are
salespeople. By having afractional leader, you can get somebody
who's done this before, whoknows how to do it. And then we come
(07:02):
in and we are not theexpensive ones. I'm not trying to
lower our value. It's like,no, we're the right price for what
we do, but we're duct tape andpopsicle sticks. Because it's not
like we need it to be prettyor perfect. We need to make progress.
And so how do we transformcompanies? We bring in this IP with
this executive presence, tobring them together with duct tape
(07:23):
and popsicle sticks and growprofitably and predictably.
And the important part isreally getting everybody onto the
same page. And that's whatyou're doing, is you're bringing
everybody in the company, thewhole team, into the robo so that
everybody's part of theequation. They know where they're
going, what they need to do,who needs to do what, and then you're
(07:46):
the orchestrator or the coachthat is propelling that company to
go in that direction.
Right when I was deciding,when I was. I knew I was leaving
the agency, I knew I needed todo something different. And I was
looking at what my gifts wereand what my knowledge was, I realized
that it all starts withmarketing and then sales. Everybody
(08:07):
wants to have this beautifulmission. Everybody wants to do something
great to solve theircustomer's problem. Even in the nonprofit
world, you do somethingspecial. Well, it's money that moves
the machine. If I caninfluence that, we get to do some
really fun stuff. The part Iloved creating was the money machine,
because that's when weactually solve people's problems.
That's when we get to make thehires. That's when we get to have
(08:29):
the team events. That's whenwe get to celebrate our success.
It starts over there. And so Ilove being and our team loves to
be that catalyst.
It's important because yearsago, I was in charge of global sales
for a software company.Whenever we hit milestones, I invited
everybody into the conferenceroom, brought in lunch, and it was
(08:51):
impromptu. So I kept it as asurprise, which created more of the
effect. I'd say, okay, Kyle,we got a quick meeting in the lunchroom
at 12:45. I walked aroundpersonally to everybody and told
them to be at the lunchroom at12:45. Nobody had an idea what was
going to happen, but all of asudden, food would be there, and
(09:13):
I'd say, guess what? We justhit $50,000 in a month in net sales
from a product that start fromzero. And then, you know, we had
100,000. When we had 150,000,everybody was part of that. And that's
what got the energy going intothe company.
Yes, that's exactly. That'sexactly what I'm talking about, the
(09:35):
energy in the company. Mostpeople tell me I have a lot of energy
and I'm very passionate. Andthat's the part I love. I love seeing.
When we talk about the fusion,we're not talking about teams coming
together. We're talking aboutTeams playing on the same team without
a realization that they werein different departments.
Correct.
(09:55):
So again, I'm going to hit onthis because I see it all the time.
People will react to ourcontent, be like, yeah, you do alignment.
And I'm like, no, let's usethe Bears we were talking about earlier.
Fred Casey audience I'm inWisconsin and Freddie, you're in
Chicago area. Spent a lot oftime Chicago, classically, the Bears,
the Packers have differingopinions on which team is better.
(10:16):
That's a diplomatic way ofputting it. I respect that.
You're never going to get thepackers, the offense and the defense
to align on what they'redoing. Like that doesn't work on
the inside the team. But ifyou stop thinking about it as offense
and defense and we think aboutit, we are the packers in the off.
(10:36):
Only thing that matters isthat score. When the scoreboard says
0, 0, yes, we might have ourspecial function, but we are one
team, one score, period. Andeverybody has to play a part. And
now we're not worried about,well, we'd make fun of the people
in sports or cast them out asbad leaders when they blame the other
(10:58):
half of their team that is inalignment. That's what I'm talking
about when we talk aboutfusing marketing and sales because.
You'Re getting everybody intothe vision and now everybody is getting
energized for division. Andthen just like I shared earlier,
I share the W with everybody.I would even bring in the software
(11:18):
developers because they're theguys that wrote the code and so nobody
ever thinks about them. Butwhen I would bring them in, they
felt excited because it wastheir work that created the software
that we sold, it's critical toget momentum because once you got
everybody and you get.
Momentum and when you haveoperations like the people making
(11:39):
the product or whatever it is,if it's ass or just service company
as excited and clear on whatmarketing and sales is selling. And
it feels connected to the workthe operations person is doing and
it's actually what they'regood at. You create the energy we
were talking about. And thatmoment is probably the thing I love
the most. I don't think I'veever talked about the energy created
(12:01):
by not just the marketing andsales starting to row together, but
the other people on the boatalso being like, hey, we're actually
all rowing together now. Andthe boat gets a lot bigger. We start
to have it a lot more fun.
That transcends to prospectivecustomers, existing customers, suppliers,
distributors, complementarybusinesses and everybody else. Because
(12:25):
you Feel it. It's contagious.When you deal with somebody on the
phone or via email, you canstill tell tonality in the emails
because of the ch. Voices ofwords. You get that little feeling.
Confidence. We're talkingabout confidence.
Yeah. So share with us, Kyle,a story of a company that you stepped
(12:46):
in and your organizationtransformed that company. And what's
the whole story behind that?
It usually comes after massivechange or some sort of brick wall.
I'm thinking of one that'snear to my heart. This was a business
that had probably the bestproduct that nobody knows about.
The creator of the product hadstarted and ran a 40 million business,
(13:11):
and this was the next projecthe was working on. There's this massive
amount of success that followshim. When I came in, they're on their
third leadership team in threeor four years. Our approach is very
different, just open andhonest. This marketing plus sales
thing is not the traditionalway of building businesses. I was
brought in because I saythings that make a lot of sense to
(13:32):
people and they've neverthought about it that way. This was
chance to take. This companythat had never turned a profit in
three years, had always had todo cash calls for the founders. From
what I understand, there'ssome history. I don't know, so I
don't want to overspeak here,but I sat down at the leadership
table. The founders, thefounder who had started the looked
around the table, and therealready was a marketing person, a
(13:53):
salesperson in this executiveteam. And he looked at the marketer.
You see a marketer, he lookedat the salesperson. You see a salesperson,
he looked at me and he go,what are you doing here? Which was
a fair question. I go, youknow, all love and respect, open
and honest. Here's my opinionon this. The marketer's gonna do
marketing things, and thesalesperson is gonna do sales things.
And those two rarely arealigned. More than alignment, we
(14:15):
need to have one source oftruth, one leader, one scorecard,
one set of measurables, andone way of serving the customers.
That's my job. He goes, allright. In that company, telling the
story of more than alignment,we brought in our IP and said, this
is what the scorecard says.This is. We know if we're winning
or losing, we're going tounlock your special gifts, but we're
(14:36):
going to always meet as oneteam. So we, as one team, we have
one voice, and we worktogether, and that team has turned
a profit. It's actually aprofitable business, and there's
no cash calls that Happened infive months.
Wow, that's an incrediblestory. So they're definitely super
fans of what you did for thatcompany. If they were negative for
three years, in five monthsyou turned them around to profitable.
(14:59):
I mean, that's how you createsuper fans.
Well, and it's so funnybecause I think you're right. As
best I can humbly sidestep, Iwas very lucky. I've kind of poo
pooed on marketers andsalespeople a little bit here, but
the people on the team areincredibly gifted. They're great
marketers and salespeople,incredible at their craft, but they
would have walked in twodifferent directions in two different
(15:20):
boats. And so I don't think Iget a lot of the credit for it. I
think it's just the methodthat we have, that's the part we
spend a lot of time on is whatcreates that environment for the
really great people to doreally great work and make it clear
what the right work is. I'lltake credit for the method, but they
did the work well.
Going back to our friends thepackers and the Bears, there's a
(15:45):
coach, there's a coach. And acoach drives the whole energy of
the team. The coach drives themission, gets everybody to play on
the same team, go in the samedirection. Each team has a coach
for each department, right?You got the receivers, the quarterback,
(16:06):
the punter, the return team,special teams. They've all got their
own individual coaches.However, all that comes together
by the one main coach, whichis where you come in and you guys
come in.
I sure would love that to beso easily. But yeah, yes, in the
(16:29):
reality, we are part of abigger team in those businesses because
operations has succeedfinance. But yes, your point is well
made that in our model therestill is a marketing manager or sales
manager. Like those rolesstill exist. But the marketing manager
and the sales manager, at thatlevel of structure, they're on the
revenue team. They're still onthe revenue team.
(16:50):
Right.
We're the head coach of theoffense. You're the head coach of
the defense. The head coach isthe one with the plan. Head coach
says, this is how we know ifwe're winning or losing. This is
what good is, this is what notgood is. And I think that when you
split marketing and sales,it's like trying to say there's the
Green Bay packers offense teamand the Green Bay packers defense
(17:12):
team and then try and runthose on Sundays. You'll lose. That's
a good way of describing whatwe think about it. You let leaders
Lead. You let the great peopledo the great work. You just understand,
you simplify.
Correct. So how do you goabout and analyze what's going on
with the company? Someonecalls you up and says hey Kyle, we've
(17:34):
heard from so and so companythat you did some great work with
them. We're struggling here.We've been struggling for the last
couple of years. Come on in.And what do you do then?
Yeah, I think this is whereour model has the gifts of some really
thoughtful tools. I joke aboutit being the ultimate diagnostic
(17:55):
tool for marketing and sales.It's part of our core ip. It's called
the revenue cascade. Andremember, whenever I say revenue,
I'm saying marketing and saleslike it's they are one. It's like
chocolate and peanut butterinto a Reese's. When I say revenue,
I'm really talking about bothat the same time. Not just sales,
not just customer experience,I'm talking about everything. And
(18:16):
so what we have done, and thisis very controversial for a lot of
marketing and salespeople,it's 2025. We might have to think
different. The traditionalmarketing funnel usually has vanity
metrics, they don't mean alot. And then the sales pipeline
is usually left to right,marketing funnel, top to bottom.
(18:36):
Really we just need to stackthese things. So marketing funnel
stacks on our sales pipeline.If you are a real geek like me, it's
a vuvuzela from the old SouthAfrican World Cup. That was annoying.
I remember watching thatintimately and I had to look up what
a vuvuzela was and it's justlike a long skinny trumpet. I really
(18:57):
thought about it from like aconversion rate optimization. When
you think about marketingfunnel at the tippity top, the furthest
outreach where someone justhappens to see your name on a logo
as they walked by an eventspace or you on a podcast. It's classic
awareness marketing. And ifyou can measure how many of those
engagements you're having, howmany people take a little step further
and notice the drop off rateand do that for the next step in
(19:19):
the marketing funnel. The nextstep, if you can measure all those
fall offs, that's where theidea of a cascade or like a waterfall
comes in. And you can actuallystart to mathematically link those
to your bottom line, which iswhat we do. That's what revenue cascade
does. You can start to see theimpact of top of the funnel marketing
on your bottom line. And thetighter you can draw those connections,
(19:40):
the better. And so with therevenue cascade is it lays over all
your marketing and sales Data.It looks for the cancers, the blockages,
the tumors, the clots. Andthen instead of trying to be like,
we're going to come in withour strategy, we actually come in
and look at the metrics andwhere the blockages are in your sales
funnel. Marketing funnel.Sales pipeline. We're going to grab
(20:03):
a specific strategy to dealwith that singular portion of your
funnel and then see how theflow works. It's not me guessing
what the strategy is for you.It's not me saying, this is our only
strategy playbook. It is usactually looking at the math, and
you can't hide from the math.And that has been the biggest lesson
that our customers haverealized. I don't know what the answer
(20:23):
is on the strategy until welook at the math. Let's look at the
math.
Right. People always forgetabout good old math.
Like vacuum napkin math. Imean, it's not hard. It's like there
was a thousand here and 800here. Is that good? I don't know.
Let's see if we can do 2000and it goes to 1600. Well, if it
does, then okay, keep doingit. You know, it's not like not doing
(20:44):
anything crazy.
If it goes from a thousand to800 to 400.
Well, it's time to have aconversation about that part and
see what's stuck.
Yeah, exactly. Because a lotof times people don't spend all the
time on the metrics. And youcan get caught up in metrics as well.
So you got to be able to havea defined to where, okay, this is
(21:07):
it. And I'm not going to gobeyond and become analysis paralysis.
Sometimes you get caught up inall the metrics and you ain't doing
anything that you need to bedoing because you're stuck in the
metrics.
Yeah. And when we talk aboutthe great simplification, we don't
get analysis paralysis. I seethis a lot with CEOs who are thinking
about us or they just got thatfirst report from a marketing agency
(21:30):
and they see all these metricsand they're like, I don't know what
this means. The agency'ssaying, it's great, it's great. Trust
us, it's great. And I'm like,that isn't measuring the in between.
It isn't measuring the dropoff. And what really matters is the
drop off. I think that's whatthe revenue cascade does. It says
the numbers are kind of moot.It's the rate of change between them.
(21:52):
And if we just focus on thatand say, can we improve that? That's
the only question. And then wego try something. Progress over perfection.
If there is improvement, goimprove something else. And that's
a simple process that justabout anybody can get behind. It's
like, go make a littleprogress. Great. Try something else.
I'll share a story. To drivethe point home, I was general manager
(22:14):
of a software company forconstruction management. Founder
was funding it and we weremaking some sales, but we needed
to grow. I put together awhole business plan to get investment
money. The strategies to plan,what's in it for the investor, blah
blah, blah, the whole thing.He spent hours putting together a
(22:35):
spreadsheet thatmathematically added up, if we have
this much money, we could hirethis person. And it was just this
monster sized spreadsheet. AndI would go to him and say, Jeff,
the investor doesn't careabout this stuff. It's going to be
how much money you need, whatare you going to do with my money
and how much money am I goingto make back? That's it. Doesn't
(22:57):
care about where it all goesand all these little things. But
he was stuck in analysisparalysis and the company ran out
of cash by the time he had hismonster spreadsheet ready.
Oops. Yep. Well, and that'sanother reason why we love. I think
(23:20):
chief revenue officer hasthese undertones of enterprise sales
and we really want to bedifferent because marketing doesn't
talk about revenue and salestalks about sales. The thing that
matters to business owners isrevenue. Top line and bottom line.
That's the other half of ourequation that I probably need to
(23:43):
do more diligence on. Raisingtop line feels good, but it does
not equate to bottom line.That's something I take seriously
because whenever I've beensuccessful before I ran my own business,
it was their mortgages thatwas behind that business. It wasn't
somebody else's money that youcan't lose. And you can't lose money
because they're putting it outof their pocket to put it back in
the business. One of ourclients last year had a month where
(24:07):
the profit at the end was like$395 or something silly. It's like
you're not going to run abusiness for $395.
No, because you bring up areally good point here, Kyle. And
I want to reemphasize that.And that is that a lot of business,
especially small businesses,hit 1.5 million 2 million in sales
(24:28):
and think they're reallycrushing it. But they don't look
at the bottom line and the Netincome and their actual net profit
margin. And that's like what?But I got money in the bank. But
the reality is, just like yousaid, yeah, you ended up with 395
bucks. Go party. Good luckwith that.
(24:52):
And that I think is the dangerof us calling it revenue. But that
same client that was at 395bucks, well, they ended up six months
later profiting almost$37,000. And they raised their top
line by almost 100,000 monthlyrecurring. When we think about those
numbers, I realized when Ilooked back at the end of the year,
(25:15):
I think they spent outside ofour fee, 30,000 in marketing. It
was pretty crazy. The amountwe were able to drive in profitability,
we were able to drive with thetools in front of us. And I think
that's one of the things thatis probably under talked about in
marketing and sales. It'slike, well, if I had a million dollars,
of course we could do allthose things. And it's like we have
to come in sometimes whenthere's $1,000 a month marketing
(25:35):
budget and figure it out. Somepeople call that impossible. I call
that fun. Maybe I'm sick inthe head.
I think that's the challenge.You get fired up in those situations
because you think out of thebox, what's some of the low hanging
fruit? You can go back toexisting customers and get additional
revenue out of them. That'soften overlooked because people focus
(25:56):
on acquiring new customers andforget about the gold mine they have
sitting in the back of theirpocket. Right.
Sometimes that's anentrepreneurial approach. We gotta
look wherever we need to look.That's why I love working with entrepreneurial
businesses. They are greatproblem solvers. The solution might
be in our backyard and it's abit messy. We might have to do digging
(26:19):
and some hunting and somepainful phone calls. But you know
what? Probably they're allready for us. I couldn't agree more
with that.
And you probably got somesuperfans and they're ready to promote
your business. You just needto ask them. You know, that's the
other thing people forget todo in sales and marketing. Asking
their super fans fortestimonials, referrals, recommendations,
(26:45):
introductions, all that stuff.That's all the low hanging fruit
right there. People say, well,we got to get new business, we got
to get new business. You got awhole army of salespeople right behind
you that just needs to getfired up and know what to do.
I think people undervalue thefans that they probably have in their
(27:06):
business or underappreciatethe importance of creating fans.
I do think you make somereally good points that there is
some low hanging fruit thereusually. So I think a good steward
of the marketing and salesprograms has to look near before
they look far.
Look in the backyard and geteverybody. Like we talked before,
(27:29):
start creating super fansinside the team. Start off with the
culture in the company, theemployees. So as we talked before,
getting that energy going onbecause that's catchy and now it
goes into the customers you'redealing with, suppliers, distributors,
all that stuff starts totransform that business.
(27:52):
I'm going to add another finepoint to it. If you're working with
duct tape and popsicle sticksand you don't have a lot of money
to do this stuff, there'sprobably your highest gain effort
for your least amount of oryour highest gain in cash for your
least amount amount of effortsitting in one of those buckets.
I think it's everything inbalance. But I think our method says
(28:15):
let's look for the highestgain for the least amount of effort
and let's do it mathematicallyright. If you're sitting on a pool
of thousand old customers andyou haven't connected with them in
six years or five years, startthere. Maybe if you didn't listen
to that customer's feedbacksix months ago, a year ago, there's
probably some fruit there onhow to fix it and bring go back to
(28:37):
them, hey, we heard you, wefixed it. So I think that's all part
of a good modern way ofthinking about marketing and sales
leadership is measure orevaluate the impact before you decide
that strategy. So I don't everteach our fractional CROs. Come in
and focus on customers first.I say, let's look at the math. The
(29:00):
math will tell us where theopportunity is. And I can't tell
you how often it might be justsitting here in the customer database.
I have a saying, the littlethings are the big things. And sometimes
doing the little things ofstaying in contact with the customers,
recognizing a customer fortheir achievements, you know, all
(29:24):
of a sudden they're going togo, wow, that's pretty cool. And
they're going to be out therewith their buddies and all of a sudden
they're going to say, oh, youneed to talk to my friend Kyle, he's
a great guy. And that's how it happens.
Yeah. And it's funny you saythat because in the B2B world, which
is where we tend to spend alot of our energy and time, this
(29:47):
is extremely important. In theB2C world. It's important in the
B2B world. One of the thingswe work on in this balance is, yes,
your referral network, yourfan network is huge. That's definitely
making sure you have the bestproduct available. But we see a lot
of visionaries and CEOs getstuck when the referrals dry up.
(30:07):
Referrals are hard to predictunless you have a very clear referral
program. And that's kind ofback to this math game where at some
point you may have to gobeyond the pale of your referral
network and create some newfans. But if you think, if you start
with the end in mind, thatyou're going to create this raving
fan, that's really a flywheel.We can go get new, turn them into
(30:29):
fans. They're going to pushour referral engine a little bit
harder too. So, again,everything in balance. You got to
know where the lowest effort,highest gain is.
Oh, absolutely. And that'swhere your service comes in. It looks
at all those components andsays, how can we leverage with the
least to get the most? Youanalyze that and it may be that we
(30:50):
need to tweak a little bit ofthe marketing strategy. We need to
have our salespeople go backout to past existing customers and
collectively all that startsto get everything to work together.
Couldn't agree more. I raninto a company, had a negative NPS
and they refused to reallychange how they sold their product
(31:12):
and service. Marketing salesgets really hard when nobody is impressed
with your product or service.
Yeah, go out of business.
Yeah, it's called going out ofbusiness. That's just your indicator
that you're on your way.
Right.
I think it's usually not veryhard to get a gauge of your customer's
experience. We launched an NPSprogram with one of our clients two
(31:34):
weeks ago. They've already gottons of feedback back. It took very
little effort. Two or threemeetings. Outlook has an ability
to create an NPS form in like10 clicks and you send it to your
customer base, you'll knowwhere you are today. When I think
about a real low effort, highgain, you'll know what truth is.
And the root of all growth is truth.
(31:56):
Kyle, as we come close to theend here, it's been a phenomenal
conversation. We couldprobably talk for several hours on
this stuff and great insightsthat you shared with our audience.
Really appreciate your time onthe show today. So how can people
find and connect with you?
LinkedIn, I think it is theplace to be. So definitely LinkedIn,
(32:20):
our website. If you have someof the pain points we've talked about
and you're really ready for adifferent way of thinking about growth
and you're serious. It'sreadyforthenextlevel.com okay, and
you have something for ourlisteners? I do not believe in gated
content. I think that wentaway in the 2000 and tens. If you
(32:42):
go to ready for the nextlevel.com and navigate to the revenue
cascade just sitting there inone of the dropdowns, you can download
a PDF on how to use therevenue cascade. There's no email
gate. No gotcha. It is a toolfor you to use in the diagnostic
of your marketing and sales efforts.
Thank you so much, Kyle. We'llmake sure that all that stuff is
(33:04):
in the show notes. And again,thank you for being a guest on the
Business Superfans podcast show.
I appreciate it. It was a pleasure.
Hey Superfan superstar FreddieD. Here. Before we wrap, here's your
three A playbook Attract,advocate and accelerate your business
power move for today. Here'sthis episode's top insight Marketing
(33:27):
and sales don't needalignment. They need to be fused
into one unstoppable revenueteam with one leader, one goal and
one scorecard. So here's yourbusiness growth action step. Ditch
the Silo Org chart. Appoint asingle revenue leader to own both
marketing and sales and startrunning one unified weekly meeting
(33:48):
to drive momentum. If today'sconversation sparked an idea for
you, share it with a fellowbusiness leader who would benefit
and grab the full breakdown inthe show notes. Let's accelerate
together and start creatingbusiness superfans who not only champion
your brand but accelerate your growth.
Hey Superfan superstar FreddieD. Here in this episode 88 of the
Business Superfans Podcast,we're joined by Kyle Mealy, a dynamic
leader, gifted teacher, andenergized speaker who's on a mission
to unlock the trappedpotential in entrepreneurial businesses
and their leaders. As thefounder of Next Level Revenue, Kyle
serves as a fractional chiefrevenue Officer, helping client service
(02:18):
and reoccurring revenue.Businesses scale from 1 million to
10 million and beyond withpredictable, profitable growth. With
a track record that includesdoubling revenue for a martial arts
school and taking a digitalmarketing agency from 3 million to
7 million in under threeyears, Kyle brings both sharp strategy
(02:38):
and infectious energy in everyroom he enters. His unique blend
of humor, storytelling andheart makes his lessons stick. Whether
he's in the boardroom orteaching his kids karate, you're
in for an episode packed withinsight, inspiration, and maybe a
few laughs, too. On thisepisode of the Business Superfans
(03:04):
Podcast, we have Kyle Mealywith Next Level Revenue. Welcome,
Kyle.
Thanks for having me. Excitedto be here.
So, Kyle, what is thebackstory of how did Next Level Revenue
come about?
There's a lot of entry pointsinto that story, but I think one
(03:24):
that will sit well with youraudience is it started with really
tough customer experience inthe digital marketing agency I was
involved in. I was sitting inthe marketing and sales seat for
a digital marketing agency andI noticed that if a marketer bought
our tactical product,sometimes it would go well because
(03:47):
a good strategy turned ourtactics into reality and turned it
into leads. But every once ina while that marketer might have
good leads but sales couldn'tclose and we were thrown out the
door because we were theproblem. Sometimes the opposite would
happen. The sales leader overmarketing and sales would be in charge.
(04:08):
They wouldn't know how todeploy the tactics, so they're VP
of sales and kind of marketingand it wouldn't work. And we would
be shown the door and theperson sitting over top of how that
ended up being. All therelationships with me and I got tired
of it and I just said therehad to be a better way to do this.
We can't keep having marketingconversations and then point at sales
(04:29):
the problem. We can't havesalespeople pointing at marketing
the problem. I spent about ayear preparing and thinking through
what this was going to belike. I combined all of my experience
because when I looked at allthe success I had in raising top
line and bottom line, neveronce was it pure marketing or pure
sales. It was always thishybrid of them both. It's not just
(04:50):
marketing and sales alignment.I'm talking about something more,
a true fusion where the lineshave been completely erased. And
so I said, I'm going to startto solve marketing and sales problems
with one attribution model,one measurement method and everybody
in the same room. And it'sbeen quite a ride.
Well, sure, because they'rereally intertwined at the end of
(05:12):
the day because they go handin hand. The messaging is going to
be the same and everybody'sgot to be on board with the messaging.
If you think of a rowboatwhere you're racing, you know those
racing rowboats with fourpeople, they have to be all in line,
they have to be insynchronization, otherwise you ain't
going anywhere fast.
We saw that usually there wasan expertise in the room, a marketing
(05:35):
expertise or a salesexpertise. And so it was like the
robo captain was only yellingat two of the four people on the
robo.
Right.
That's where I'm like, there'sgot to be a better way. I spent a
year developing theintellectual property, building on
all my past experience,brought it out to the marketplace
(05:57):
and we've seen some prettyamazing things since then.
So what is it that you do? Howdo you step into a company and transform
them?
So what is our service called?Our service is fractional chief revenue
officers for small business.It's a part time executive to oversee
the marketing and salesdepartments of your one to $15 million
(06:20):
business. What we have foundis that usually there's some sort
of catalyst that starts this.Either it was a failed marketing
agency relationship. Theclassic is a bad sales hire, a bad
VP of marketing and sales or abad VP of sales and marketing. The
owner is still running all themarketing and sales strategy and
(06:41):
wants to escape that seat onceand for all. The problem the market
has told them is you've got tochoose path A or path B because you
don't have money for both. Youcan't really solve marketing and
sales at the same time becausemarketing is expensive and so are
salespeople. By having afractional leader, you can get somebody
who's done this before, whoknows how to do it. And then we come
(07:02):
in and we are not theexpensive ones. I'm not trying to
lower our value. It's like,no, we're the right price for what
we do, but we're duct tape andpopsicle sticks. Because it's not
like we need it to be prettyor perfect. We need to make progress.
And so how do we transformcompanies? We bring in this IP with
this executive presence, tobring them together with duct tape
(07:23):
and popsicle sticks and growprofitably and predictably.
And the important part isreally getting everybody onto the
same page. And that's whatyou're doing, is you're bringing
everybody in the company, thewhole team, into the robo so that
everybody's part of theequation. They know where they're
going, what they need to do,who needs to do what, and then you're
(07:46):
the orchestrator or the coachthat is propelling that company to
go in that direction.
Right when I was deciding,when I was. I knew I was leaving
the agency, I knew I needed todo something different. And I was
looking at what my gifts wereand what my knowledge was, I realized
that it all starts withmarketing and then sales. Everybody
(08:07):
wants to have this beautifulmission. Everybody wants to do something
great to solve theircustomer's problem. Even in the nonprofit
world, you do somethingspecial. Well, it's money that moves
the machine. If I caninfluence that, we get to do some
really fun stuff. The part Iloved creating was the money machine,
because that's when weactually solve people's problems.
That's when we get to make thehires. That's when we get to have
(08:29):
the team events. That's whenwe get to celebrate our success.
It starts over there. And so Ilove being and our team loves to
be that catalyst.
It's important because yearsago, I was in charge of global sales
for a software company.Whenever we hit milestones, I invited
everybody into the conferenceroom, brought in lunch, and it was
(08:51):
impromptu. So I kept it as asurprise, which created more of the
effect. I'd say, okay, Kyle,we got a quick meeting in the lunchroom
at 12:45. I walked aroundpersonally to everybody and told
them to be at the lunchroom at12:45. Nobody had an idea what was
going to happen, but all of asudden, food would be there, and
(09:13):
I'd say, guess what? We justhit $50,000 in a month in net sales
from a product that start fromzero. And then, you know, we had
100,000. When we had 150,000,everybody was part of that. And that's
what got the energy going intothe company.
Yes, that's exactly. That'sexactly what I'm talking about, the
(09:35):
energy in the company. Mostpeople tell me I have a lot of energy
and I'm very passionate. Andthat's the part I love. I love seeing.
When we talk about the fusion,we're not talking about teams coming
together. We're talking aboutTeams playing on the same team without
a realization that they werein different departments.
Correct.
(09:55):
So again, I'm going to hit onthis because I see it all the time.
People will react to ourcontent, be like, yeah, you do alignment.
And I'm like, no, let's usethe Bears we were talking about earlier.
Fred Casey audience I'm inWisconsin and Freddie, you're in
Chicago area. Spent a lot oftime Chicago, classically, the Bears,
the Packers have differingopinions on which team is better.
(10:16):
That's a diplomatic way ofputting it. I respect that.
You're never going to get thepackers, the offense and the defense
to align on what they'redoing. Like that doesn't work on
the inside the team. But ifyou stop thinking about it as offense
and defense and we think aboutit, we are the packers in the off.
(10:36):
Only thing that matters isthat score. When the scoreboard says
0, 0, yes, we might have ourspecial function, but we are one
team, one score, period. Andeverybody has to play a part. And
now we're not worried about,well, we'd make fun of the people
in sports or cast them out asbad leaders when they blame the other
(10:58):
half of their team that is inalignment. That's what I'm talking
about when we talk aboutfusing marketing and sales because.
You'Re getting everybody intothe vision and now everybody is getting
energized for division. Andthen just like I shared earlier,
I share the W with everybody.I would even bring in the software
(11:18):
developers because they're theguys that wrote the code and so nobody
ever thinks about them. Butwhen I would bring them in, they
felt excited because it wastheir work that created the software
that we sold, it's critical toget momentum because once you got
everybody and you get.
Momentum and when you haveoperations like the people making
(11:39):
the product or whatever it is,if it's ass or just service company
as excited and clear on whatmarketing and sales is selling. And
it feels connected to the workthe operations person is doing and
it's actually what they'regood at. You create the energy we
were talking about. And thatmoment is probably the thing I love
the most. I don't think I'veever talked about the energy created
(12:01):
by not just the marketing andsales starting to row together, but
the other people on the boatalso being like, hey, we're actually
all rowing together now. Andthe boat gets a lot bigger. We start
to have it a lot more fun.
That transcends to prospectivecustomers, existing customers, suppliers,
distributors, complementarybusinesses and everybody else. Because
(12:25):
you Feel it. It's contagious.When you deal with somebody on the
phone or via email, you canstill tell tonality in the emails
because of the ch. Voices ofwords. You get that little feeling.
Confidence. We're talkingabout confidence.
Yeah. So share with us, Kyle,a story of a company that you stepped
(12:46):
in and your organizationtransformed that company. And what's
the whole story behind that?
It usually comes after massivechange or some sort of brick wall.
I'm thinking of one that'snear to my heart. This was a business
that had probably the bestproduct that nobody knows about.
The creator of the product hadstarted and ran a 40 million business,
(13:11):
and this was the next projecthe was working on. There's this massive
amount of success that followshim. When I came in, they're on their
third leadership team in threeor four years. Our approach is very
different, just open andhonest. This marketing plus sales
thing is not the traditionalway of building businesses. I was
brought in because I saythings that make a lot of sense to
(13:32):
people and they've neverthought about it that way. This was
chance to take. This companythat had never turned a profit in
three years, had always had todo cash calls for the founders. From
what I understand, there'ssome history. I don't know, so I
don't want to overspeak here,but I sat down at the leadership
table. The founders, thefounder who had started the looked
around the table, and therealready was a marketing person, a
(13:53):
salesperson in this executiveteam. And he looked at the marketer.
You see a marketer, he lookedat the salesperson. You see a salesperson,
he looked at me and he go,what are you doing here? Which was
a fair question. I go, youknow, all love and respect, open
and honest. Here's my opinionon this. The marketer's gonna do
marketing things, and thesalesperson is gonna do sales things.
And those two rarely arealigned. More than alignment, we
(14:15):
need to have one source oftruth, one leader, one scorecard,
one set of measurables, andone way of serving the customers.
That's my job. He goes, allright. In that company, telling the
story of more than alignment,we brought in our IP and said, this
is what the scorecard says.This is. We know if we're winning
or losing, we're going tounlock your special gifts, but we're
(14:36):
going to always meet as oneteam. So we, as one team, we have
one voice, and we worktogether, and that team has turned
a profit. It's actually aprofitable business, and there's
no cash calls that Happened infive months.
Wow, that's an incrediblestory. So they're definitely super
fans of what you did for thatcompany. If they were negative for
three years, in five monthsyou turned them around to profitable.
(14:59):
I mean, that's how you createsuper fans.
Well, and it's so funnybecause I think you're right. As
best I can humbly sidestep, Iwas very lucky. I've kind of poo
pooed on marketers andsalespeople a little bit here, but
the people on the team areincredibly gifted. They're great
marketers and salespeople,incredible at their craft, but they
would have walked in twodifferent directions in two different
(15:20):
boats. And so I don't think Iget a lot of the credit for it. I
think it's just the methodthat we have, that's the part we
spend a lot of time on is whatcreates that environment for the
really great people to doreally great work and make it clear
what the right work is. I'lltake credit for the method, but they
did the work well.
Going back to our friends thepackers and the Bears, there's a
(15:45):
coach, there's a coach. And acoach drives the whole energy of
the team. The coach drives themission, gets everybody to play on
the same team, go in the samedirection. Each team has a coach
for each department, right?You got the receivers, the quarterback,
(16:06):
the punter, the return team,special teams. They've all got their
own individual coaches.However, all that comes together
by the one main coach, whichis where you come in and you guys
come in.
I sure would love that to beso easily. But yeah, yes, in the
(16:29):
reality, we are part of abigger team in those businesses because
operations has succeedfinance. But yes, your point is well
made that in our model therestill is a marketing manager or sales
manager. Like those rolesstill exist. But the marketing manager
and the sales manager, at thatlevel of structure, they're on the
revenue team. They're still onthe revenue team.
(16:50):
Right.
We're the head coach of theoffense. You're the head coach of
the defense. The head coach isthe one with the plan. Head coach
says, this is how we know ifwe're winning or losing. This is
what good is, this is what notgood is. And I think that when you
split marketing and sales,it's like trying to say there's the
Green Bay packers offense teamand the Green Bay packers defense
(17:12):
team and then try and runthose on Sundays. You'll lose. That's
a good way of describing whatwe think about it. You let leaders
Lead. You let the great peopledo the great work. You just understand,
you simplify.
Correct. So how do you goabout and analyze what's going on
with the company? Someonecalls you up and says hey Kyle, we've
(17:34):
heard from so and so companythat you did some great work with
them. We're struggling here.We've been struggling for the last
couple of years. Come on in.And what do you do then?
Yeah, I think this is whereour model has the gifts of some really
thoughtful tools. I joke aboutit being the ultimate diagnostic
(17:55):
tool for marketing and sales.It's part of our core ip. It's called
the revenue cascade. Andremember, whenever I say revenue,
I'm saying marketing and saleslike it's they are one. It's like
chocolate and peanut butterinto a Reese's. When I say revenue,
I'm really talking about bothat the same time. Not just sales,
not just customer experience,I'm talking about everything. And
(18:16):
so what we have done, and thisis very controversial for a lot of
marketing and salespeople,it's 2025. We might have to think
different. The traditionalmarketing funnel usually has vanity
metrics, they don't mean alot. And then the sales pipeline
is usually left to right,marketing funnel, top to bottom.
(18:36):
Really we just need to stackthese things. So marketing funnel
stacks on our sales pipeline.If you are a real geek like me, it's
a vuvuzela from the old SouthAfrican World Cup. That was annoying.
I remember watching thatintimately and I had to look up what
a vuvuzela was and it's justlike a long skinny trumpet. I really
(18:57):
thought about it from like aconversion rate optimization. When
you think about marketingfunnel at the tippity top, the furthest
outreach where someone justhappens to see your name on a logo
as they walked by an eventspace or you on a podcast. It's classic
awareness marketing. And ifyou can measure how many of those
engagements you're having, howmany people take a little step further
and notice the drop off rateand do that for the next step in
(19:19):
the marketing funnel. The nextstep, if you can measure all those
fall offs, that's where theidea of a cascade or like a waterfall
comes in. And you can actuallystart to mathematically link those
to your bottom line, which iswhat we do. That's what revenue cascade
does. You can start to see theimpact of top of the funnel marketing
on your bottom line. And thetighter you can draw those connections,
(19:40):
the better. And so with therevenue cascade is it lays over all
your marketing and sales Data.It looks for the cancers, the blockages,
the tumors, the clots. Andthen instead of trying to be like,
we're going to come in withour strategy, we actually come in
and look at the metrics andwhere the blockages are in your sales
funnel. Marketing funnel.Sales pipeline. We're going to grab
(20:03):
a specific strategy to dealwith that singular portion of your
funnel and then see how theflow works. It's not me guessing
what the strategy is for you.It's not me saying, this is our only
strategy playbook. It is usactually looking at the math, and
you can't hide from the math.And that has been the biggest lesson
that our customers haverealized. I don't know what the answer
(20:23):
is on the strategy until welook at the math. Let's look at the
math.
Right. People always forgetabout good old math.
Like vacuum napkin math. Imean, it's not hard. It's like there
was a thousand here and 800here. Is that good? I don't know.
Let's see if we can do 2000and it goes to 1600. Well, if it
does, then okay, keep doingit. You know, it's not like not doing
(20:44):
anything crazy.
If it goes from a thousand to800 to 400.
Well, it's time to have aconversation about that part and
see what's stuck.
Yeah, exactly. Because a lotof times people don't spend all the
time on the metrics. And youcan get caught up in metrics as well.
So you got to be able to havea defined to where, okay, this is
(21:07):
it. And I'm not going to gobeyond and become analysis paralysis.
Sometimes you get caught up inall the metrics and you ain't doing
anything that you need to bedoing because you're stuck in the
metrics.
Yeah. And when we talk aboutthe great simplification, we don't
get analysis paralysis. I seethis a lot with CEOs who are thinking
about us or they just got thatfirst report from a marketing agency
(21:30):
and they see all these metricsand they're like, I don't know what
this means. The agency'ssaying, it's great, it's great. Trust
us, it's great. And I'm like,that isn't measuring the in between.
It isn't measuring the dropoff. And what really matters is the
drop off. I think that's whatthe revenue cascade does. It says
the numbers are kind of moot.It's the rate of change between them.
(21:52):
And if we just focus on thatand say, can we improve that? That's
the only question. And then wego try something. Progress over perfection.
If there is improvement, goimprove something else. And that's
a simple process that justabout anybody can get behind. It's
like, go make a littleprogress. Great. Try something else.
I'll share a story. To drivethe point home, I was general manager
(22:14):
of a software company forconstruction management. Founder
was funding it and we weremaking some sales, but we needed
to grow. I put together awhole business plan to get investment
money. The strategies to plan,what's in it for the investor, blah
blah, blah, the whole thing.He spent hours putting together a
(22:35):
spreadsheet thatmathematically added up, if we have
this much money, we could hirethis person. And it was just this
monster sized spreadsheet. AndI would go to him and say, Jeff,
the investor doesn't careabout this stuff. It's going to be
how much money you need, whatare you going to do with my money
and how much money am I goingto make back? That's it. Doesn't
(22:57):
care about where it all goesand all these little things. But
he was stuck in analysisparalysis and the company ran out
of cash by the time he had hismonster spreadsheet ready.
Oops. Yep. Well, and that'sanother reason why we love. I think
(23:20):
chief revenue officer hasthese undertones of enterprise sales
and we really want to bedifferent because marketing doesn't
talk about revenue and salestalks about sales. The thing that
matters to business owners isrevenue. Top line and bottom line.
That's the other half of ourequation that I probably need to
(23:43):
do more diligence on. Raisingtop line feels good, but it does
not equate to bottom line.That's something I take seriously
because whenever I've beensuccessful before I ran my own business,
it was their mortgages thatwas behind that business. It wasn't
somebody else's money that youcan't lose. And you can't lose money
because they're putting it outof their pocket to put it back in
the business. One of ourclients last year had a month where
(24:07):
the profit at the end was like$395 or something silly. It's like
you're not going to run abusiness for $395.
No, because you bring up areally good point here, Kyle. And
I want to reemphasize that.And that is that a lot of business,
especially small businesses,hit 1.5 million 2 million in sales
(24:28):
and think they're reallycrushing it. But they don't look
at the bottom line and the Netincome and their actual net profit
margin. And that's like what?But I got money in the bank. But
the reality is, just like yousaid, yeah, you ended up with 395
bucks. Go party. Good luckwith that.
(24:52):
And that I think is the dangerof us calling it revenue. But that
same client that was at 395bucks, well, they ended up six months
later profiting almost$37,000. And they raised their top
line by almost 100,000 monthlyrecurring. When we think about those
numbers, I realized when Ilooked back at the end of the year,
(25:15):
I think they spent outside ofour fee, 30,000 in marketing. It
was pretty crazy. The amountwe were able to drive in profitability,
we were able to drive with thetools in front of us. And I think
that's one of the things thatis probably under talked about in
marketing and sales. It'slike, well, if I had a million dollars,
of course we could do allthose things. And it's like we have
to come in sometimes whenthere's $1,000 a month marketing
(25:35):
budget and figure it out. Somepeople call that impossible. I call
that fun. Maybe I'm sick inthe head.
I think that's the challenge.You get fired up in those situations
because you think out of thebox, what's some of the low hanging
fruit? You can go back toexisting customers and get additional
revenue out of them. That'soften overlooked because people focus
(25:56):
on acquiring new customers andforget about the gold mine they have
sitting in the back of theirpocket. Right.
Sometimes that's anentrepreneurial approach. We gotta
look wherever we need to look.That's why I love working with entrepreneurial
businesses. They are greatproblem solvers. The solution might
be in our backyard and it's abit messy. We might have to do digging
(26:19):
and some hunting and somepainful phone calls. But you know
what? Probably they're allready for us. I couldn't agree more
with that.
And you probably got somesuperfans and they're ready to promote
your business. You just needto ask them. You know, that's the
other thing people forget todo in sales and marketing. Asking
their super fans fortestimonials, referrals, recommendations,
(26:45):
introductions, all that stuff.That's all the low hanging fruit
right there. People say, well,we got to get new business, we got
to get new business. You got awhole army of salespeople right behind
you that just needs to getfired up and know what to do.
I think people undervalue thefans that they probably have in their
(27:06):
business or underappreciatethe importance of creating fans.
I do think you make somereally good points that there is
some low hanging fruit thereusually. So I think a good steward
of the marketing and salesprograms has to look near before
they look far.
Look in the backyard and geteverybody. Like we talked before,
(27:29):
start creating super fansinside the team. Start off with the
culture in the company, theemployees. So as we talked before,
getting that energy going onbecause that's catchy and now it
goes into the customers you'redealing with, suppliers, distributors,
all that stuff starts totransform that business.
(27:52):
I'm going to add another finepoint to it. If you're working with
duct tape and popsicle sticksand you don't have a lot of money
to do this stuff, there'sprobably your highest gain effort
for your least amount of oryour highest gain in cash for your
least amount amount of effortsitting in one of those buckets.
I think it's everything inbalance. But I think our method says
(28:15):
let's look for the highestgain for the least amount of effort
and let's do it mathematicallyright. If you're sitting on a pool
of thousand old customers andyou haven't connected with them in
six years or five years, startthere. Maybe if you didn't listen
to that customer's feedbacksix months ago, a year ago, there's
probably some fruit there onhow to fix it and bring go back to
(28:37):
them, hey, we heard you, wefixed it. So I think that's all part
of a good modern way ofthinking about marketing and sales
leadership is measure orevaluate the impact before you decide
that strategy. So I don't everteach our fractional CROs. Come in
and focus on customers first.I say, let's look at the math. The
(29:00):
math will tell us where theopportunity is. And I can't tell
you how often it might be justsitting here in the customer database.
I have a saying, the littlethings are the big things. And sometimes
doing the little things ofstaying in contact with the customers,
recognizing a customer fortheir achievements, you know, all
(29:24):
of a sudden they're going togo, wow, that's pretty cool. And
they're going to be out therewith their buddies and all of a sudden
they're going to say, oh, youneed to talk to my friend Kyle, he's
a great guy. And that's how it happens.
Yeah. And it's funny you saythat because in the B2B world, which
is where we tend to spend alot of our energy and time, this
(29:47):
is extremely important. In theB2C world. It's important in the
B2B world. One of the thingswe work on in this balance is, yes,
your referral network, yourfan network is huge. That's definitely
making sure you have the bestproduct available. But we see a lot
of visionaries and CEOs getstuck when the referrals dry up.
(30:07):
Referrals are hard to predictunless you have a very clear referral
program. And that's kind ofback to this math game where at some
point you may have to gobeyond the pale of your referral
network and create some newfans. But if you think, if you start
with the end in mind, thatyou're going to create this raving
fan, that's really a flywheel.We can go get new, turn them into
(30:29):
fans. They're going to pushour referral engine a little bit
harder too. So, again,everything in balance. You got to
know where the lowest effort,highest gain is.
Oh, absolutely. And that'swhere your service comes in. It looks
at all those components andsays, how can we leverage with the
least to get the most? Youanalyze that and it may be that we
(30:50):
need to tweak a little bit ofthe marketing strategy. We need to
have our salespeople go backout to past existing customers and
collectively all that startsto get everything to work together.
Couldn't agree more. I raninto a company, had a negative NPS
and they refused to reallychange how they sold their product
(31:12):
and service. Marketing salesgets really hard when nobody is impressed
with your product or service.
Yeah, go out of business.
Yeah, it's called going out ofbusiness. That's just your indicator
that you're on your way.
Right.
I think it's usually not veryhard to get a gauge of your customer's
experience. We launched an NPSprogram with one of our clients two
(31:34):
weeks ago. They've already gottons of feedback back. It took very
little effort. Two or threemeetings. Outlook has an ability
to create an NPS form in like10 clicks and you send it to your
customer base, you'll knowwhere you are today. When I think
about a real low effort, highgain, you'll know what truth is.
And the root of all growth is truth.
(31:56):
Kyle, as we come close to theend here, it's been a phenomenal
conversation. We couldprobably talk for several hours on
this stuff and great insightsthat you shared with our audience.
Really appreciate your time onthe show today. So how can people
find and connect with you?
LinkedIn, I think it is theplace to be. So definitely LinkedIn,
(32:20):
our website. If you have someof the pain points we've talked about
and you're really ready for adifferent way of thinking about growth
and you're serious. It'sreadyforthenextlevel.com okay, and
you have something for ourlisteners? I do not believe in gated
content. I think that wentaway in the 2000 and tens. If you
(32:42):
go to ready for the nextlevel.com and navigate to the revenue
cascade just sitting there inone of the dropdowns, you can download
a PDF on how to use therevenue cascade. There's no email
gate. No gotcha. It is a toolfor you to use in the diagnostic
of your marketing and sales efforts.
Thank you so much, Kyle. We'llmake sure that all that stuff is
(33:04):
in the show notes. And again,thank you for being a guest on the
Business Superfans podcast show.
I appreciate it. It was a pleasure.
Hey Superfan superstar FreddieD. Here. Before we wrap, here's your
three A playbook Attract,advocate and accelerate your business
power move for today. Here'sthis episode's top insight Marketing
(33:27):
and sales don't needalignment. They need to be fused
into one unstoppable revenueteam with one leader, one goal and
one scorecard. So here's yourbusiness growth action step. Ditch
the Silo Org chart. Appoint asingle revenue leader to own both
marketing and sales and startrunning one unified weekly meeting
(33:48):
to drive momentum. If today'sconversation sparked an idea for
you, share it with a fellowbusiness leader who would benefit
and grab the full breakdown inthe show notes. Let's accelerate
together and start creatingbusiness superfans who not only champion
your brand but accelerate your growth.
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