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EP345 Why Your Sales Problem Is Really a Clarity Problem · Profit With A Plan

• 0:04
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: What if your sales problem really is a clarity problem? When your message, website, lead generation, sales process, and tech are all not aligned, growth feels harder than it probably should.
• 0:18
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Your website gets traffic, but maybe it's not enough of the qualified leads. Your team may explain the business in different ways, or your follow-up feels scattered.
• 0:30
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: As the founder, it's still carrying too much… you might still be carrying too much of the sales process.
• 0:36
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So, in today's episode of Profit with a Plan podcast, we're going to be talking about how to build a modern B2B revenue machine, and get this, 120 days. You'll hear how to set up your website to capture the ideal customers, how AI is changing the way your business shows up in the market.
• 0:56
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And why the right message to create momentum across your entire business.
• 1:02
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So, if your company is visible but not converting, this conversation will help you see what it is that you need to fix first.
• 1:13
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Hey, entrepreneurs, are you showing up?
• 1:16
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Hey entrepreneurs, are you working too hard for too little profit? Well, welcome to Profit with a Plan podcast, where we help
• 1:23
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: business owners grow smarter, increase profitability, and build a business that's worth more, whether you plan to keep it or sell it. I'm Marcia Reiner, business growth strategist and the profit booster behind Infinite Profit.
• 1:36
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Each week, I bring you practical strategies, expert insights, and real-world steps that help you grow revenue, improve margins, and build a stronger business.
• 1:47
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: By the way, this episode is brought to you by Infinite Profit, where strategy turns into profitable growth. And before we jump in, I have something special for you. If you find that your revenue has plateaued, or your marketing is not producing the returns it should.
• 2:04
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Go get your free Profit Booster Growth Map.
• 2:07
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: In just a few minutes, you'll… it'll help you find and identify where it is to bring in more qualified clients, and where profit leaks may be costing you a lot more money than you expected. Go get yours today at ProfitBooster.biz, and there's no sales call required.
• 2:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So now let's get into today's conversation. Today's guest is Mark Gordon, known by founders as the Rebel CRO. Mark helps B2B companies build modern revenue machines by aligning the pieces that too often work in silos. That's messaging, lead generation, sales processes, websites, and technology.
• 2:49
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: He scaled companies from $1 million to over $30 million in annual revenue and has rebuilt go-to-market engines across SaaS, services, and tech.
• 2:59
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Through the integrated go-to-market solutions, Mark helps founders move from sales hopefuls to sales-led, and systems designed to attract the right buyers, create clearer conversations, and close more consistently. All right, Mark, welcome to the show!
• 3:17
  Mark Gordon: Thank you so much for having me, Marcia, and sharing your audience with me. I really appreciate it.
• 3:21
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Oh, absolutely. I just love this platform of podcasting and how it brings people from across the country, across the world together.
• 3:29
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And, we get to share valuable insights with them, so I like that too. Appreciate you being here. All right, so yeah, let's go. Let me start off with some questions. My mouth is tongue-tied today, and I mean, it seems like it's gonna be one of those days, but we're going to pound through this and get it to happen nicely.
• 3:46
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But, you know, most people don't come up and say, okay, I'm gonna go into marketing, and I'm gonna talk about go-to-market strategies. What got you into that lane?
• 3:56
  Mark Gordon: Yeah, it's a really interesting story. So, I spent almost 20 years in the mortgage and real estate industries, and in the United States.
• 4:04
  Mark Gordon: especially in the mortgage industry, a lot of it is under government control, meaning that there are 2,000 companies all selling the exact same products at the exact same rate. So, it's a sales and marketing knife fight, and while I was in it, I never even thought of it that way, I just thought that was kind of how business was.
• 4:20
  Mark Gordon: But after kind of doing everything I could do in that space and leading a company to over a billion dollars a year in lending.
• 4:27
  Mark Gordon: I took some time off, and I started helping my friends and family build their companies, and what I was finding is, I was running into companies that had a bunch of, like, Wharton grads, and MBAs, and all these other different things, and no one in the company could tell me
• 4:39
  Mark Gordon: what the company did, what problem they solved, who they solved it for, in a way that anyone would be able to understand. And you go to the website of those companies, and you couldn't tell what they did.
• 4:48
  Mark Gordon: And I just realized that some of the skills I had picked up fighting that knife battle over 20 years were translating really well to other industries, and I started kind of
• 4:58
  Mark Gordon: seeing where the disconnect was in the market. I saw all these companies that would be, you know, your messaging and brand expert, your lead generation team, marketing, your sales trainers, and everyone was like, I've hired all of them, and it didn't work. And I started thinking about, like, why was that? And it's because I kind of think of it as a rowboat. It's like with four paddles.
• 5:16
  Mark Gordon: And if the whole idea of getting that crew boat to go forward and straight is to have everybody paddling at the exact same speed, with the exact same in and out motion of the paddles.
• 5:26
  Mark Gordon: And what's happening in those other models is someone's coming in and making one paddle go faster.
• 5:30
  Mark Gordon: And that's not making the boat go faster, it's making the boat spin around in circles. And so, what we came in to do is say, okay, I think we need an alignment between those four things, right? Messaging, product-market fit, lead generation, sales execution, revenue technology, and when they're all moving together with purpose, they don't even have to go that fast to get the boat moving forward.
• 5:50
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah.
• 5:50
  Mark Gordon: And that's what we really brought to it.
• 5:52
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love the analogy of the rowboat, that is so… and it's so true, so many businesses are siloed, and they get these experts that they go, oh, we need, you know, our sales is failing, so let's bring in a sales expert, and then they, like, craft and design all this stuff over here, but then, like, the rest of the company's not on the same page.
• 6:12
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And I just… I find that just as frustrating as you do, and…
• 6:16
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I think the business owners don't realize that this has to be a well-conceived plan across the board, rather than just this… this one hack over here, this one hack over there. So, I'm so glad that you brought this to the… to the conversation today, because I think it's going to be really great.
• 6:34
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So, let me ask you a question. So, when, when I've talked to business owners in the past, you know, you bring in a consultant like you that's gonna.
• 6:43
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: you know, look at the whole picture. They start off with kind of that fluffy, soft stuff, like, oh, what's your vision? What's your mission? What's your values, you know? And then the business owner goes, ugh, I don't want that. I need something really fast. So how do you kind of get them to the table and see that it's the big picture?
• 7:02
  Mark Gordon: Well, I think there's two things that are really pivotal… pivotal to the success of our offer that I think,
• 7:08
  Mark Gordon: have worked well for us, and one is that we have a defined timeline. For almost all of our clients, it's 120 days. And then it's funny, when you say that you're gonna go that fast, the reaction of them is like, how are you going to get all this done in 4 months? It's like, well, if I said it was in a year, you would, you know, you'd be like, that's too long, right? So…
• 7:24
  Mark Gordon: But the reality is that, actually, when we get purpose-driven founders who are spending 45 minutes a week with us, we are actually able to get this done in 4 months, and we break it through these segments, because I think it's pretty clear, the first thing that we do is we come in and we interview their core team and a bunch of their clients.
• 7:43
  Mark Gordon: We also interview some competitors, and we kind of figure out, okay, what is our messaging and product market fit? Are we on the right track with those things? And usually, there's a lot of opportunity for improvement.
• 7:52
  Mark Gordon: How do we make it so that when someone gets to that website, if your ideal customer shows up on the website within 3 seconds, they're like, it's for me, I found it, I'm, you know.
• 8:02
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yay!
• 8:02
  Mark Gordon: Solves my problem, right?
• 8:05
  Mark Gordon: And we get that going in month one. And then once we get that right, that becomes the foundation for the lead generation, the sales execution, and the revenue technology, which we address in months two, three, and four.
• 8:15
  Mark Gordon: And so what we found is having that defined timeframe of saying, like, listen, here's our plan from day one, here's how we're gonna get it done, and here's the timeline we're on.
• 8:24
  Mark Gordon: And by the way.
• 8:26
  Mark Gordon: everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. It's my favorite… one of my favorite quotes, it's Mike Tyson, right? And so we say, well, we're gonna get… we're gonna get punched, and by the way, this plan may change. That's why we have to have that 45-minute meeting every week, is we're gonna let you know exactly where we are, what's changed, then we're gonna design the strategy going forward, and we're gonna be able to iterate as we go.
• 8:43
  Mark Gordon: And that's why you're hiring us to come in here, which is we know that the situation's gonna change, reality's gonna change.
• 8:48
  Mark Gordon: that your plan for AI in December looks radically different than it does in April, right? Because the world's moving so quickly.
• 8:54
  Mark Gordon: But we're… at the end of this 4 months, you're gonna have a predictable, scalable revenue engine, you're gonna be able to measure what's my customer acquisition cost, what's my lifetime value, you're gonna understand your churn, and you're gonna be able to make really good decisions going forward based on that.
• 9:10
  Mark Gordon: And… and then when we deliver it, you know, we go back through what we started with at the beginning as the goal, and where we're at the end, and we find that our customers are thrilled, you know, for the vast majority.
• 9:21
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love it. And it sounds like, you know,
• 9:25
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: 120 days, to some people, can think, oh, wow, that's really fast, but then some people are thinking, 120 days, I need it yesterday, right?
• 9:32
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And… but it sounds like the… the first step in your plan is getting the clarity on your… on your product-market fit and the messaging, which creates this, like, momentum behind you. So in reality, I mean, I'm hearing from the way you explained, that actually things start happening faster than you can expect.
• 9:52
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Or that you wouldn't.
• 9:52
  Mark Gordon: Thanks, buddy.
• 9:54
  Mark Gordon: 100%. I mean, by month two, all of our customers are seeing an uptick in interest and people taking action on their website and different things. So yes, you will see movement, right in that second month, right? That first month is more like a…
• 10:09
  Mark Gordon: let's go ahead and map the plan, really get to know your team, your product, make sure we have all this stuff right. By month two, you're definitely seeing that action.
• 10:16
  Mark Gordon: And, you know, what I'll say is, it takes time to move an organization, right? And you have to have…
• 10:24
  Mark Gordon: you know, one of the things we're like, oh, you have to really… you really have to interview all the people on our… on our C-suite? I'm like, yeah, because we have to make them a participant in this, right? Is it happening with them, for them, or to them? And the way that we present a lot of that is going to be…
• 10:37
  Mark Gordon: a lot of how they take it on, and one of the things that's really given us license is, you know, when I used to come in just as a fractional chief revenue officer without a defined timeline, people were very threatened, right? The head of sales, the head of marketing, they're like, they're coming for my job, they're gonna replace me.
• 10:50
  Mark Gordon: Now it's like, hey, we're coming in for 4 months, my job is to make your life easier, to make you perform better, and to make you look good.
• 10:56
  Mark Gordon: now work with me to help you do those things, right? And so when you graduate in 4 months, you're going to be the one who is taking credit for all of this work that we've done. You're the one who's going to be able to operate in this easier world. No one's going to even remember we were here. And so my job is to help make that easier for you, and once we can have that conversation, we rally everyone to our cause. So it's not just.
• 11:15
  Mark Gordon: What we bring to the table, but it's what we get out of your team through our strategic coaching, messaging, and the services that we deliver that bring everybody in your team together for that alignment, even once we leave.
• 11:28
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love it. You know, the biggest, one of the biggest words that people fear and hate is change, right? So if you're coming in there and you're getting them to buy in.
• 11:39
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: to the process that's going, then the changes are not so threatening to them, right? Because the worst thing you can have is that internal sabotage from the team members that are going, I don't want to do it differently. I've been doing it this way forever, and it works, but it doesn't work, and they don't realize that, but they block that change.
• 11:58
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And, I think that process of getting them on board and on the direction of the change and how it's going to benefit them will make it a lot easier to have everything processed.
• 12:10
  Mark Gordon: 100%. I'll just say, Yes, people still feel cha- fear change.
• 12:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Perfect.
• 12:16
  Mark Gordon: That's not gonna go away. But what I will say is I've seen a real change in,
• 12:22
  Mark Gordon: collective thinking around change, given what's going on in the world right now, and I will just share that, even the ones who don't want it.
• 12:30
  Mark Gordon: are resigned to the fact that it's here, separate from even what we do, because they know they can… everybody can see the landscape is shifting, and I think top-down organizations are now… realize that the entire job of leadership is to navigate change, right? The teams that see reality the best win.
• 12:47
  Mark Gordon: And it's all change management, and it's constant and forever, and it's indefinite, and so if you… if you are uncomfortable with change, you are… find your… find yourself out of corporate America right now, because change is just the… the permanent state that we are going to be in on a go-forward basis, and your ability to thrive in that environment is going to dictate the course of your career.
• 13:07
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: A thousand percent, because it's like, you have to be nimble and be able to go, or you're going to be left behind, especially in the speed that we're dealing with in today's market. So, good point on that. Alright, so let's shift a little bit. Tell me, you gave us the overview on how it looks, and how it feels, and the results that you get after 4 months, but let's kind of dig into that first month a little bit.
• 13:31
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: How do you really determine with the client, that you're onboarding.
• 13:36
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: you know, their current go-to-market strategy, because that might, you know, they might think that this is the right path, and… and therefore, you know, everything might have to change because that's not really working. Do you… what do you do?
• 13:51
  Mark Gordon: I would say that I don't even run into… I wish I ran into more companies where there was conviction in the wrong direction. I actually very rarely find conviction at all. And what I usually find is…
• 14:05
  Mark Gordon: Kind of a, here's where we ended up, because the customers that showed up wanted us to be this, and we let them lead who we became, and now we don't even know how to talk about it.
• 14:17
  Mark Gordon: By the way, like, anytime that you see operations in a company that's frustrated, or fulfillment that's frustrated, it's because we took whatever customer showed up and tried to change our company to fit that customer.
• 14:29
  Mark Gordon: And that is, like, an impossible way to operate in the medium and long term in a business. And I get it, when you're struggling to make payroll, or you don't know where your next deal is coming from, and you don't have marketing and sales working the right way, any opportunity feels too good to pass up.
• 14:43
  Mark Gordon: But the problem is now you're letting opportunity define your vision of the company, and you can never get great at anything, because you're always trying to do everything for everybody.
• 14:51
  Mark Gordon: You know, I met with a company earlier this week, they're doing $2.5 million in revenue, and when you look at their website, there are, like, 40 things they say they do.
• 15:00
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You can't be…
• 15:00
  Mark Gordon: good at 40 things. Even the biggest companies in the world aren't good at 40 things, and so if you're a small company, pick the three things you're organically best at, and let's build our messaging, marketing, and sales strategy around those things, your area of genius. Another thing I think that makes us different is I think a lot of companies will come in and consultants and be like, this is the opportunity in this space, you guys should be doing this.
• 15:20
  Mark Gordon: That's not what we do. We come in and we assess what you're already doing well, what makes you guys special to begin with, your customers that love you, why do they love you, your team that executes, what are you best at, and then we build a commercial narrative around who your authentic
• 15:37
  Mark Gordon: team is, and what they authentically do well. And so what you find is after that first month, the whole team is energized now, because you're telling the world, hey, we're great at this stuff, and your team loves that they're great at it. We're telling a story where they can be proud of the company and what they're doing, and suddenly you're attracting the customers you already know you can serve best, instead of trying to figure out some creative way to serve customers that, like, you probably should be passing on to somebody else.
• 16:02
  Mark Gordon: anyway.
• 16:03
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Mmm, that is so smart, because it is, you know, there are a lot of consultants and people and coaches and, you know, that'll come in and go, oh, you need to be over here, and then it's like a total, you know, it's a total shake-up for the company. But I love the way that you come in and you say, okay, what are you already doing that works, right? How do we optimize that? How do we make it sound better, and how do we attract more of those customers for you?
• 16:27
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And I think that's the real sweet spot, because they've already had some success. You and I both don't work start… work with startups, right, and trying to create everything. We're trying to optimize what they're doing, and I think that this is a fantastic way of going in, and seeing, because then it feels better. Again, back to that change word, nobody wants to, you know, be flipped on their head. They want something that's
• 16:51
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: you know, gentle in movement and going in the right direction, and it also proves that they've already done something that worked. So let's optimize that, and I think that that's fantastic.
• 17:02
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So when we do that, and when we start to optimize, where are we… we kind of discussed this a little bit, but I'd love to dig into it, but where are we really sharing that message, right? You know, and getting that cohesive brand voice that goes out?
• 17:20
  Mark Gordon: hopefully everywhere that your customers are, right? And I think that's a really, you know, that's another piece of it is, like, when we kind of…
• 17:28
  Mark Gordon: nail into the firmographic and psychographic and behavioral aspects of your ideal customer, making sure that your message is where they are. But in the interest of, kind of, streamlining the conversation, I'll just say, your website, your company LinkedIn, your team's individual LinkedIns.
• 17:46
  Mark Gordon: Any other social media your company has, and then really understanding that how to create a commercial narrative that you can communicate in a one-sentence version, a three-sentence version, a 30-sentence version, and having those things be aligned
• 18:01
  Mark Gordon: So that people understand what they're getting wherever they're seeing you, because what's happening is when there's a disconnect in that messaging, you're teaching people not to trust you, right? Because… and they don't even think of it that way, it's almost,
• 18:14
  Mark Gordon: You know, it's not like a…
• 18:17
  Mark Gordon: it's intuition on their part, right? It's like, I shouldn't trust this person because I'm getting all these different things in different places, right? But when you have that cohesiveness and the simplicity of it.
• 18:27
  Mark Gordon: and you're really good at just saying, this is what… this is the problem we solve, this is who we solve it for, and that's consistent, then those people gravitate towards you because they just want someone who has the answers. But you can't look like you have the answers for everybody. You have to have the answers for that specific niche, right? So…
• 18:43
  Mark Gordon: Yeah, again, in that website, LinkedIn, any sort of other ads or anything else you're doing, all of it needs to be aligned that way. But those are kind of the basics.
• 18:51
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love it. So then, when we get that message clear on the front end, and it helps us with the lead generation, right? How does that, how does that transition into the sales process and the technology that we use? Are we… are we,
• 19:07
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Are we complementing that, or… I mean, I guess… I guess that's where I'm trying to put the link now. Now that we've got the messaging dialed in, does it improve the process and the delivery and the technology that we use?
• 19:20
  Mark Gordon: Well, yeah, think about it, of course it does, right? We already talked about…
• 19:24
  Mark Gordon: How… you've probably all worked for a company at some point.
• 19:29
  Mark Gordon: if you're listening to this, where the sales team was like, hey, I have this new client, this is what they want, can we add this product, or this feature, or this thing? It's like, we can just get this one thing, we'll get this customer. It's like, oh, cool, now all of a sudden.
• 19:41
  Mark Gordon: the next… the… our product plan becomes what each individual customer says they want. And then, by the way, you build that… you build that feature, and then that client doesn't even show up, or they don't use it, or whatever else it is, right? Like, we just…
• 19:52
  Mark Gordon: We've seen the dysfunction of this. That is all the passing of defects down the line, right? If you're messaging push those customers away to start with, they don't even end up in the front of your funnel.
• 20:05
  Mark Gordon: If your lead generation process disqualified the people that were not your core audience, and you were willing to do that because you had all of the right people coming in top of the funnel, you felt secure in where your next deal was coming from, you'd be able to push those people out, and you wouldn't have to make those concessions.
• 20:20
  Mark Gordon: Your sales guys are always going to make those concessions, because they're incentivized to do so. They are trying to find a way to put the puzzle piece in the puzzle, and the best sales guys, the ones who are absolutely the best at what they do, will find a way to do it, and they will destroy your organization if at the front end, you're giving them
• 20:37
  Mark Gordon: people that shouldn't be in the puzzle to begin with. Like, and you can't, you know, it's like, oh, you know, Mark on the sales team, he's always trying to find a way to make every, you know, square peg fit a round hole. It's like, that's literally Mark's job, is to get people in here. And by the way, and so if you let him
• 20:52
  Mark Gordon: He's gonna do that. You have to create firm rules for what you do, and not those people in the front of your… in your process, and say what you will and won't do, and have those things in place, right? You're… you're rewarding… you have that person in that role because they're that person. You can't penalize them for it, right? So you have to build a system and structure that supports that.
• 21:09
  Mark Gordon: And so, yes, we need to get the right people to raise their hand with our messaging. We need to get messaging in front of those right people, identify who they are, before we even put the messaging in front of them, so that only the right people are seeing our messaging.
• 21:23
  Mark Gordon: And then once they raise their hand, we need to have a sales execution process that's tailor-made for that specific audience, with that specific problem, and then the sales becomes easy.
• 21:31
  Mark Gordon: Right? You don't have to fit a square peg into a round hole, because you already identified who needs your thing, you already identified the language that made them interested, now you get them in and it's easy.
• 21:40
  Mark Gordon: Right? You have your buyer personas lined up, you know who you're talking to and how to move that needle. And then the technology is just the support behind it that automates as much of your process as possible, so that once someone's in, there's a flow that's predictable, and that we can get people across the finish line.
• 21:56
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So good, so good. Okay, so that makes perfect sense.
• 22:01
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Because, you know, you're right, the sales guy is… his goal is to make sales, right? What can I do? How can I get this deal closed, right? And if you have the right funnel coming in with the right people, it all looks natural. But I think, too, is that it also, when you look at the other systems in the company, right? So we're talking about not being siloed, so the delivery of the product is natural, because you're not trying to put all these other people
• 22:25
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: pieces in there, you're delivering what it's supposed to be that you originally aligned everything with, and everything seems to flow through. So for me, it sounds like it's just a smooth transition all the way through the process.
• 22:38
  Mark Gordon: Yeah, and this is what I mean, I think, even in the intro, you mentioned it, like, what it means to be sales-led as an organization. I think people often get, like, a weird thought in their head about, like, oh, so if we'll do whatever the sales team says, it's like, that's not what we're saying at all.
• 22:51
  Mark Gordon: What we're saying is, we need to know who our customer is.
• 22:56
  Mark Gordon: and what they're willing to buy, and that needs to drive the decisions about what we do with our product, or our service, our execution, because we need to be making our decisions based on delivering what our customers are willing to pay for, and willing to pay for at a price where we can drive a profit. And, like, and so if you start anywhere else.
• 23:16
  Mark Gordon: Right? You can go really far down a long path with building really cool stuff that no one's willing to pay for. And we've all seen a lot of customers, a lot of clients out there who do this, right? It's like, yeah, that's really cool. It doesn't solve anybody's problem who has the budget.
• 23:31
  Mark Gordon: to pay for it, right? Like, the economics of it don't work, and so…
• 23:36
  Mark Gordon: you know, when you're a sales-led, it means, okay, we are solving a problem, people are willing to pay to solve that problem, and then at the rate they're willing to pay for it, we can turn a profit. And you have to get that right first, and then simplify from there.
• 23:49
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love it. Oh, so good. Okay, so then now that we've decided, okay, where our fine-tune is in our communication and our language,
• 23:59
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: It seems like… it seems like when we look at websites, right, many of those websites, the… one of the entry points, right? You know, whether it's your marketing, or your ads, or conversations, or telephone calls, whatever, they're always going to go to your website and kind of troll you and figure out who you are.
• 24:17
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: how do we make sure that the website is actually converting, right, instead of just being a pretty business card or brochure?
• 24:25
  Mark Gordon: Well, there are a bunch of tools that you can use, but let's stop there and say.
• 24:30
  Mark Gordon: The purpose of your website, even your homepage, is that it is a landing page.
• 24:36
  Mark Gordon: And the entire goal of that front page that shows up when someone first hits your page is to let your ideal customer, whoever that is, know that they are in the magical place they were supposed to end up.
• 24:50
  Mark Gordon: Within 3 seconds of them getting there.
• 24:53
  Mark Gordon: And I think that 98% of websites are not doing this today.
• 24:58
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Mmm.
• 24:58
  Mark Gordon: 98% of websites will read about something they do, about them. It'll be like, we've been here since 1983, which nobody cares about, right? And again, and it's not a shot, like, you should be proud of that, right? But it doesn't… and it should be on your website, but not on the top, and not in the front, and not in the message that matters, because that's not what's going to move the needle for me. I want to know that your firm exists to solve my specific problem.
• 25:23
  Mark Gordon: That you are the person on earth that is most qualified, or you have the product that is most designed to fix my pain.
• 25:30
  Mark Gordon: And if you can convince me of that in 3 seconds, everything else is, like, extra. And if you don't convince me in 3 seconds, I'm already on somebody else's website.
• 25:38
  Mark Gordon: And so those are the stakes. And when you accept that as the meaning of your website, it changes the conversation. But, I mean, I go to websites every day, every single day, where it takes me minutes, if I can ever figure it out, what that company actually does and who they do it for. And it's like, what's the point of having a website?
• 25:55
  Mark Gordon: what's the point, right? Like, it's… you… you've lost the forest through the trees, right? Like, it's,
• 26:02
  Mark Gordon: You know, I just think that people are really missing that. And the other problem is that they don't… everyone is so afraid that they're gonna push away somebody that could be a customer, right? Like, well, if we say that, then we're gonna lose this person. It's like…
• 26:14
  Mark Gordon: You can't be everything for everybody, right? Have a separate… have a separate website with a separate landing page, with that messaging. Have 3 sections of your company on the homepage, and just have there, pick…
• 26:23
  Mark Gordon: that speak to exactly the audience that you're looking for, and then drive them to a landing page that makes sense. There are solves for it.
• 26:29
  Mark Gordon: But you have to get people
• 26:32
  Mark Gordon: In that 3-second mode. You have 3 seconds to let them go, it's for me. And if you miss that, it's over. And we have, I mean, I just looked at the data from a website earlier this morning, 89%
• 26:43
  Mark Gordon: of visitors to the website, they were driving cold traffic there, were leaving without clicking or scrolling anything. Which means they got to the homepage, they never even… they never scrolled, they never looked, and they were gone. 89%. 11% of people were converting to something.
• 26:57
  Mark Gordon: 89% were just leaving without doing anything because they didn't have that first 3 seconds down.
• 27:02
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Wow, that is really impactful, and that's above the fold, right? So the… whether you're on a laptop or a tablet, or a phone, it's got to be in that first cup… that first part of the section so they can see it. But I love it! 3 seconds is all we've got!
• 27:18
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's a… that's a huge challenge to do, and I think that reverts back to your original conversation of saying, you gotta know who you're delivering a problem for, right? And that clarity that you need to spend that first month on to kind of get, really, that 3-second pitch right there where the money is, right? And in today's environment with
• 27:41
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: with AI doing SEO now, and you've got the old SEO where you had, you know, a bunch of words at the bottom. You've got to have that kind of attractive nature that brings people to your site, and when they get there, they have to stay, right? That's the magic of getting you into Google or wherever you're gonna have your engine.
• 28:06
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You know, that searches for you, but you have to have that. And I think it's… I think it's the biggest missed piece, right? How many… catch me if I'm wrong, right? How many websites do you see that there's a giant logo in the… in the first… in the first part of the… the website, right? And it's their logo, and you're like, I don't care.
• 28:26
  Mark Gordon: Well, it's also so powerful, because your logo is designed to get people to notice it, right? That's why you do it. And that's great on a, you know, in the world, right? You want them to see it on a t-shirt, you want them to see them on a water bottle, right?
• 28:38
  Mark Gordon: But on your website, where we have 3 seconds, the last thing we want is a giant logo distracting people from the problem you solved. You better have the color scheme and the word sizing and everything on there to draw their eyes specifically to the most important message you want them to see.
• 28:51
  Mark Gordon: Right? And if you don't have that, you're losing people, right? Again, they're… they're…
• 28:56
  Mark Gordon: And it needs to be simple enough that any 8th grader can understand what you do. There's another myth that business owners tell themselves, which is like, well, you know, we're selling into a sophisticated space, and our buyers understand. No, they don't. I've never seen a company that didn't have a message that my mom at 70 years old would be able to understand what you do and who you do it for, that was succeeded no matter what industry they were in. You could be selling astrophysicist solutions.
• 29:21
  Mark Gordon: I promise you, if an 8th grader doesn't understand the problem you solve, you're not gonna grow. It's gonna… or it's gonna be very difficult to do.
• 29:27
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's… that's really, really important, too. I love it, I love it. Okay, so, I know we can talk about this forever, but I wanted to, touch on a couple more items about the website, and about bringing in people, and how important your messaging is.
• 29:43
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: to attract your right audience. When we're doing that,
• 29:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Kind of the trigger that you just brought up was, you know, industry lingo, or tech language, or whatever.
• 29:56
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: how do you really bring it down to an 8th grader, or something your 70-year-old mother can understand and still make it impactful? Is there a formula you use? Is there something, you know, that you can kind of bring it out with?
• 30:09
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Because you're going to use that in your conversations as well.
• 30:12
  Mark Gordon: So, so, a couple different things. One is I'll say, it usually takes me…
• 30:18
  Mark Gordon: days or weeks, even having done this a long time, to… to get to the fully, what I'll call, perfect version of working with a client, where we… where we nail the hero statement on that front page of the website, because
• 30:30
  Mark Gordon: I want your whole company to go there, and as soon as they see it, they go, oh yeah, we finally got it, right? Like, it should be, like, it should be this magical moment for everybody, like, of course that's what we do, and it… I can't believe I never thought of it that way before. It's like, we should have that moment, right? Like, if you come to my website, it says you're 120 days away from having a world-class B2B revenue machine.
• 30:47
  Mark Gordon: Simple as that. It's not about me, it's not about what we do, or my expertise, it's about you, and the result that you're gonna get, and the problem we solve, and you'll be able to get it in 5 seconds. And by the way, an 8th grader would get it, and my mom would get it. It's simple, right?
• 30:59
  Mark Gordon: That's… that's it, and so… but that did not appear to me in a dream. It was… it was workshopped and played with a long time, and I… and I went out and asked people, like, do you understand what this means? And, like, I was missing it for a while, and so…
• 31:13
  Mark Gordon: That's part of why… again, I'm not saying that any of what we're talking about is necessarily easy, I'm saying it's the work that's worth doing, because once you get that right.
• 31:22
  Mark Gordon: Right? Everything else that we're talking about becomes so much easier. And it's the difference between trying to push a boulder up a hill, or try to walk next to it while it's rolling down the hill. And that is getting that work right, right? And so, yeah, I think, I think the formula is…
• 31:40
  Mark Gordon: is… is it understandable by everybody, or almost everybody? And does it… is it… is it about them, and the result, or their problem that you're going to solve for them? Or are you listing your credentials, or why they should work with you, or some kind of an about us that is, like, so secondary?
• 31:56
  Mark Gordon: You want them to go, oh, they aren't… that guy understands me. This website is… is for me. And so that's… that's the… the formula is just that, is ask yourself, when your ideal customer shows up here, is there any chance they're gonna leave?
• 32:08
  Mark Gordon: Is there any chance they'd be like, that's not for me, or they're gonna be like, ugh, it's a miracle. Finally, I found somebody who knows what I'm going through.
• 32:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Exactly. Alright, so one final question for you here.
• 32:19
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So, in the world of technology, in the world of AI, and the fact that we're… everything's going by, and we only have 3 seconds to capture someone's attention, are people still looking at websites, or are they looking at ads, or are they looking at, you know, something on…
• 32:35
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: you know, their phone that pops up. I mean, are websites even worth it anymore?
• 32:42
  Mark Gordon: I would say yes and, right? So, to your original question. So, the short answer is yes, they are 100% worth it.
• 32:50
  Mark Gordon: And SEO is still very real, and I can… I can list a bunch of different clients that we've… we changed… we added $100,000 a month in revenue to them in 3 months just by optimizing SEO, right? And these are companies that are from, like, $200,000 a month to $300,000 a month in 3 months, just on SEO, without spending a dollar on ads or anything else.
• 33:09
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Wow.
• 33:10
  Mark Gordon: All of those different things have their place.
• 33:13
  Mark Gordon: And… and again, that's why understanding
• 33:15
  Mark Gordon: when we talk about your ideal customer profile, I talked about the 3 different areas of that.
• 33:20
  Mark Gordon: it is…
• 33:22
  Mark Gordon: and understanding your customer acquisition costs, and how much can you afford to spend to attract somebody where you can still make a profit and it all still makes sense, right? So… but… but yes, anyone who's… like, if I… the first thing I do if I see an ad on Instagram that's interesting to me is I go visit the website.
• 33:37
  Mark Gordon: Second thing I do is I go search for people on LinkedIn and the company, the founder, I want to go see those people, right? So, and we know we track people who come to our website, we see who comes to the LinkedIn profiles, we have AI go in and do an analysis on that every day, so we can see it. And so, yes, you want to…
• 33:53
  Mark Gordon: you want to get attention through all the different ways, right? Whether it's… I mean, there's just infinite ways to try to get into the minds of the people that are your ideal customers.
• 34:02
  Mark Gordon: But once you do, you have what we call our public go-to-market presence, which is what is a buyer who looks you up, find and see, and what decisions are they going to make about your credibility, your professionalism, the results you drive.
• 34:16
  Mark Gordon: when they go and look that up. And so we have an assessment on our website, and I know we'll talk… you're gonna ask me this in a minute anyway, so I'll just kind of jump the gun. It's completely free, 25-point inspection. There are 25 categories we grade you on, your public go-to-market presence. You get a score from 0 to 4 on all of them.
• 34:34
  Mark Gordon: And what we find across the board is that companies that score above 70 on this assessment grow at almost 3 times the rate
• 34:41
  Mark Gordon: companies that score under 60, and if you're under 50, you're dead in the water. Like, unless you're doing completely founder-led sales or relationship-led sales, you're dead. And so… and… and so this is like a… and it's… by the way, it's all stuff that you can fix on your own. You could spend a weekend in Claw, for the most part, and get this stuff to a 70, for the most part, right, at this point, if you're willing to do it yourself.
• 35:00
  Mark Gordon: And so… and it makes such a difference, and again, it's both conscious and subconscious on the part of your… on the part of your buyers. They are… it's almost like a test, right? They're coming to your website, like.
• 35:11
  Mark Gordon: does this company meet my minimum threshold for somebody I would trust with my money to solve my problems? And if you aren't nailing your messaging, if you aren't nailing your case studies, if you aren't in all the places you're supposed to be, if you don't have all the boxes checked.
• 35:26
  Mark Gordon: They're gonna decide to go with somebody else, and you don't even realize all the leakage you have, all the reason why all those ads you're doing right now aren't converting because someone is going to your website, or is looking that up, and they go, not for me. You missed it. Spend all that money to get somebody to raise their hand, and when they did, you just kind of let them there.
• 35:42
  Mark Gordon: Right? Like, and so we just see so much of that, right? It's why you need that fully aligned approach, and why you need to be doing all of the things along the way.
• 35:50
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love it. Yeah, it's so important to have your entire brand presence out there, because customers will troll you, look at everything, and make a decision before you even have a chance to say hi, right? They're making this impression on you, and I think that's why I think a website is still very important, your LinkedIn presence and everything that you've got going on that's out there and visible.
• 36:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: will help attract people to you and give you that legit status so that you can, A, move up the list and get to that opportunity when they're eventually ready to have a conversation.
• 36:27
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So I think that this is super valuable. Mark, this is great. I love it. I don't even have to ask you where people can find you, but I'm going to ask you one more time, what's the link to that opportunity so they take that assessment, and where can they find you?
• 36:40
  Mark Gordon: You can see it right on the front page of our website, and our website is IGTMS.com, integrated go-to-market solutions, IGTMS.com. You can also find me anywhere, Instagram, LinkedIn, under Mark D. Gordon, and yeah, we'd, we'd love to help you.
• 36:56
  Mark Gordon: With either that public go-to-market presence or any of the other issues you're having across those core four.
• 37:02
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Love it. Thank you so much. All right, listeners, thanks for tuning in today. I hope you were able to walk away with some practical ideas that you can put into your business that'll help you be more profitable and your business more valuable. And I know that Mark's ideas of really getting that messaging dialed in in your go-to-market dialed in will significantly help you. So go take his, assessment.
• 37:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Alright, and before you go, if you want a clearer path to more revenue and stronger profit, go grab your free Profit Booster Growth Map. It'll quickly show you the top strategies to grow revenue and stop those profit leaks that may be holding your business back.
• 37:42
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You can go get it anytime after the show, obviously, at ProfitBooster.biz.
• 37:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And if this episode gave you value, be sure to subscribe and share it with another business owner who may need to hear it.
• 37:54
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And I'll see you on next week's show with more strategies to help you grow smarter and profit stronger. So until then, make your plans and profit with them. Thanks so much, Mark, this was great.
• 38:05
  Mark Gordon: Thank you so much for sharing your audience with me.