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When leadership says one thing and does another, employees feel it first — and your customers feel it next. In this episode of Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed, Craig Andrews (Beholder Agency) and Evan Polin (Polin Performance Group) sit down with leadership coach Devi McFadden to talk about how leadership clarity and trust drive everything downstream, including sales and marketing.

Devi explains why mixed messages create "churn" that pulls teams away from the work customers pay for, why your employer brand is now public whether you like it or not, and why engagement surveys fail when nothing happens afterward. She shares how outside advisors earn the trust to tell leaders hard truths, the leading and lagging signs that a team is struggling, and a case study of a leader who got clear on her priorities and built a stronger team because of it.

Then all three define what "clear" means in marketing, sales and leadership, and get into AI: Devi's "good vs. good enough" test for when to use it, and why the human element still wins the sale.

⏱️ Chapters 00:00 Intro 00:14

Welcome — Craig Andrews & Evan Polin 02:52

Meet Devi McFadden, leadership coach

04:22 When leadership's message doesn't match reality

05:00 Churn: the hidden cost of mixed messages

07:07 Your employer brand is public now

07:58 Why engagement surveys fail without follow-through

09:35 How outside advisors get through to leadership

10:54 Build trust: match what you say with what you do

12:42 Trust comes before the sale

14:19 Leading vs. lagging signs of a leadership problem

16:26 Case study: getting clear on priorities 18:24 What "clear" means in marketing, sales & leadership

21:26 Staying human in an AI world

22:37 AI: good vs. good enough

24:08 AI in sales: volume, not relationships

28:13 Devi's top tips for leaders

31:07 How to reach Devi McFadden

🔗 Resources & Connect

👤 Devi McFadden: https://www.kathydevimcfadden.com ·

Devi McFadden on LinkedIn

🌐 Show: https://www.smplaybookunleashed.com

💼 Beholder Agency (marketing): https://www.beholderagency.com

💼 Polin Performance Group (sales): https://www.polinpg.com

🎙️ Also on Apple Podcasts, Spotify & Amazon Music

#Leadership #LeadershipCoaching #SalesAndMarketing #EmployeeEngagement #B2BSales #B2BMarketing #SmallBusinessGrowth #AIinBusiness #SalesAndMarketingPlaybook

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We bring operations into the conversation with Jen Goldman and get honest about why great lead gen and great closing still fail when delivery is messy. We share practical ways to map roles, fix handoffs, and build a client experience that earns retention, referrals, and real growth.
• why sales, marketing, and operations must stay aligned to scale
• how misalignment creates “telephone game” messaging and client confusion
• backward engineering from service delivery to onboarding to sales to marketing
• common operational blind spots like people in the wrong seats
• responsibilities mapping to surface gaps and stop “nobody did it” problems
• the mindset required for change including openness and vulnerability
• operational KPIs that matter including meaningful touches and project completion
• why employee engagement connects to client retention and referrals

If any of you have heard anything on this show with our wonderful guest Jen, who you would like to assist us with, please like, share, and comment uh on all of our platforms.
If there are topics that you'd like us to cover, you agree, disagree, just let us know there.

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Most owners can feel when sales and marketing are out of sync — they just can't name why. In this episode, Craig Andrews (Beholder Agency) and Evan Polin (Polin Performance Group) lay out how to tell if your sales and marketing are truly aligned, and how to fix it when they're not.

They cover:

• Why alignment starts with a system and communication — not who's "right"
• "Random acts of marketing" and the finger-pointing trap
• The sales-dating-marriage analogy, and where your brand fits
• Ideal client profile (ICP): why closing the wrong deal costs more than losing it
• How to reverse-engineer your best client so your marketing promise attracts more of them
• Why closing is just the beginning of creating evangelists
• The Revenue Cookbook: a written plan that ties revenue goals to marketing
• Rabbits, deer, and elephants — getting your client mix right (and the one-client risk)
• WIIFM and perceived value — what actually turns a prospect into a client
• Six signs you're aligned: three from marketing, three from sales

🍳 Free 14-day trial of

The Revenue Cookbook: https://www.revenue-cookbook.com

🌐 https://www.smplaybookunleashed.com

Hosts:

Craig Andrews (https://www.beholderagency.com)

Evan Polin (https://www.polinpg.com)

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Marketing can generate all the leads in the world — but if your intake process is weak, your firm won't grow. Hosts Craig Andrews (Beholder Agency) and Evan Polin (Polin Performance Group) sit down with two guests who live on opposite ends of the client journey: Emily Rowell, partner at Peachtree Offices, and Andres Palma, a lawyer and founder of Motus Legal AI.

Market for show, sell for dough — and intake keeps the client. The four of them trace the whole handoff: why the first 30 seconds of a call decide whether a prospect stays or dials the next firm, why "every client can represent 10 clients," how to let your intake data tell you when to staff the phones, and why a Google Business Profile and flexible office space are step one for a firm just getting started.

In this episode:

• Why firms overlook intake — and what it costs them
• Intake as a relationship, not a form ("every client can represent 10 clients")
• The first 30 seconds: first impressions and the "answer with a smile" standard
• The 5-second problem: what a prospect does after a bad call
• People do business with people they like — and people like themselves
• Letting your call data run your intake ("the market speaks by itself")
• Flexible office space + your Google Business Profile as step one
• How the right partners make 1 + 1 = 3

Guests: Emily Rowell — Peachtree Offices (flexible/virtual office space, Atlanta): https://peachtreeoffices.com Andres Palma — lawyer & entrepreneur; co-founder iNimble, founder Motus Legal AI

Hosts: Craig Andrews — Beholder Agency: https://www.beholderagency.com Evan Polin — Polin Performance Group: https://www.polinpg.com

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/EEVD4M1DeZk More: https://www.smplaybookunleashed.com — also on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

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AI agents are moving from hype to real tools small businesses can use to sell and market smarter. Hosts Evan Polin and Craig Andrews sit down with Patrick Begley to unpack what agentic AI actually means, where AI agents fit in sales and marketing, and the practical first steps a small team can take without a big budget. What we get into: - What agentic AI really means, and where the hype ends and the useful part begins - Why the next three years of AI agents matter for small businesses right now - How AI compresses strategy work that used to take years down to months - Why AI-driven traffic still has to convert like human traffic, and what that means for your funnel - Using AI tools to cut through the content noise instead of adding to it - What AI can't replace: the human side of selling and building trust Guest: Patrick Begley Hosts: Evan Polin (sales) & Craig Andrews (marketing) Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed helps small businesses and B2B teams align sales & marketing to grow revenue. Subscribe and keep winning: https://smplaybookunleashed.com Send us Fan Mail: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2309825/fan_mail/new About the guest — Patrick Begley: Patrick is Managing Partner of Agentic Growth Advisors, a firm he founded after serving as a sales leader at Accenture. His firm serves mid-market organizations in accelerating growth by using AI to book meetings at scale with target buyers and automate the most time-consuming parts of the sales process. This enables sellers to spend time with prospects at the bottom of the funnel and return to a warm audience of willing buyers as deals are closed. Patrick is the host of the podcast '10 Minute Major' and his firm can be found at https://agenticgrowthadvisors.com.

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Your revenue goal isn’t a wish. It’s math, and if you can’t see the math, you can’t manage it.

We walk through part two of our Revenue Cookbook series and get practical about what actually goes into a predictable revenue plan. We start at the end, the annual sales number you want, then break it into client tiers based on yearly revenue: enterprise “elephants,” mid-market “deer,” and SMB “rabbits.” That simple framework forces a smarter strategy: how much of your revenue mix should come from big deals, how much should come from bread-and-butter accounts, and how to avoid the concentration risk that puts 70% of the year on one shaky close.

From there, we build the pipeline backward through the sales funnel metrics that drive forecasting: total leads, qualified leads, discovery calls, proposals or presentations, and closed deals. We talk about using real CRM data when you have it, using reasonable assumptions when you don’t, and why skipping steps in the process tanks close rates and burns time. Then we translate the whole plan into weekly activity targets so each salesperson knows exactly what “on track” looks like, and leaders can coach with clarity instead of guessing.

We also address the sales and marketing alignment problem head-on: when both teams track revenue outcomes and funnel performance together, the blame game fades and the adjustments get obvious. If you want better sales forecasting, cleaner accountability, and a simple system you can review every week, this is your playbook.

Subscribe, share this with a teammate, and leave a review with the funnel stage your team struggles with most.

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Your revenue target is only useful if you can explain, with numbers, how you will reach it. We take you behind the scenes of the Revenue Cookbook, our simple framework for building predictable revenue by turning a big goal into a clear weekly plan based on real sales pipeline math.

We talk through the data that makes the plan honest: average deal size, close rate, how many first conversations become qualified opportunities, and how to track where each opportunity actually comes from. Whether you use HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, or a spreadsheet, we share the habit that changes everything: logging attribution so you can stop guessing, cut waste, and double down on the actions that consistently create revenue. We also add an important reality check on timing, because one month of results is rarely enough to judge a marketing campaign or a relationship-based channel.

Then we break down our favorite way to think about client mix for professional services, agencies, and growing firms: rabbits, deer, and elephants. We explain why chasing only small clients drains your time, why relying on one or two huge clients is risky, and how a balanced mix helps you scale without panic. We also tee up part two, where we go deeper and show how the tool turns your inputs into concrete targets.

Subscribe, share this with a teammate who owns a number, and leave a review if you want more practical sales and marketing systems like this. What is the one metric you need to start tracking this week?

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Likes are easy to count. Profit is harder. Today we get brutally practical about measuring ROI across marketing and sales so you can stop guessing, stop “feeling busy,” and start building a growth system you can actually defend with numbers. We talk about what ROI really means, why tracking time and spend matters as much as tracking revenue, and how to tell the difference between activity that looks good and activity that closes business.

We also unpack the simplest way to make sales and marketing work as one team. Craig shares why vanity metrics mislead leaders, and Evan explains the sales side scoreboard: lead source attribution, conversion rates from first conversation to first meeting, qualification rates, proposal to close ratios, and how long deals take to move through your pipeline. We connect those metrics to customer lifetime value, margin, and revenue by source so you can see what is working and what needs to be cut.

Then we get into planning and accountability. If you set a revenue goal without a plan, you are just picking a number. We explain how a revenue calculator can map targets to the volume of qualified leads and closes you need, and why “throwing more money at it” fails when your team cannot handle the leads you already have. You will also hear why comfort activities like the same trade show every year should be treated as community, not prospecting, unless the data proves otherwise.

If you want clearer customer acquisition cost, better lead quality, and a sales process that gets more efficient over time, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a teammate who owns a number, and leave a review telling us which ROI metric you track most closely.