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Have you ever felt like your marketing dollars are disappearing into thin air? Or wondered why your sales team struggles to convert seemingly good leads? The answer might lie in how well you understand who you're actually selling to.

In this enlightening episode, Craig Andrews and Evan Polin tackle the often misunderstood concept of customer personas and why they're fundamental to business success. As Evan aptly puts it, "If you don't know what a good prospect looks like, you're never going to find them." They reveal how properly defined personas serve as your business compass, guiding every marketing decision and sales conversation toward greater profitability.

The hosts share practical strategies for developing detailed personas, from conducting client interviews and analyzing historical data to exploring psychographic elements like communication preferences and lifestyle choices. Their baseball analogy brilliantly illustrates the problem many businesses face: being a pitcher with twenty catchers behind the plate means you might eventually hit one, but that's not an efficient strategy. Instead, they show how focusing on specific, profitable personas creates that "sweet spot" where marketing and sales align perfectly.

Craig and Evan don't just theorize—they provide real-world examples from their own businesses. Evan explains how he markets differently to attorneys versus commission-based salespeople, while Craig shares insights about targeting home service professionals. Their examples demonstrate that effective personas go far beyond basic demographics to include how prospects think, where they spend time, and what language resonates with them.

Whether you're struggling with unfocused marketing efforts or frustrated by low conversion rates, this episode offers concrete steps to transform your approach. Listen now to discover how well-crafted customer personas can turn your business from throwing "spaghetti at the wall" to precisely targeting the prospects who will become your most profitable clients.

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What if everything you thought about your ideal customer was wrong? In this eye-opening conversation with Kevin O'Connor, Vice President of Strategic Coaching and Consulting for Align5 and scaling up business coach, we uncover the crucial difference between high-revenue customers and truly profitable core customers that can transform your entire business strategy.

Kevin challenges conventional thinking by defining core customers as those who not only generate maximum profit but are also genuinely passionate about your product or service. This distinction proves revolutionary for businesses struggling to grow efficiently. "Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, and cash is monarch," Kevin explains, highlighting why chasing revenue alone can lead businesses astray.

The episode takes a fascinating turn when Kevin discusses applying "Moneyball" principles to business metrics. Just as the Oakland A's discovered that traditional baseball statistics weren't predictive of wins, your business may be focusing on the wrong indicators of success. Through compelling examples from his experience with call centers, Kevin demonstrates how conventional wisdom about quality scores completely inverted reality—the centers with the highest internal quality scores actually had the worst customer retention.

Perhaps most valuable are Kevin's actionable takeaways: calculate customer-level profitability, correlate your KPIs with actual outcomes, and align sales and marketing based on real customer feedback and data. For entrepreneurs looking toward an eventual exit, implementing these systems can dramatically increase business valuation, potentially transforming standard industry multiples of 3-5× into premium valuations of 10-15×.

Ready to revolutionize how you identify, serve, and profit from your core customers? Listen now and discover the data-driven approach that might just transform your business growth trajectory forever.

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The trade show is over. You've collected business cards, scanned badges, and had promising conversations. Now what? In this final installment of our trade show trilogy, Evan Polin and Craig Andrews reveal the most critical—and most commonly neglected—phase of trade show strategy: the post-show follow-up.

We begin with the clear signs of on-floor success that should set you up for effective follow-up. From high booth traffic and qualified leads to social media buzz and positive brand recognition, these indicators help you prioritize your post-show efforts. But here's the shocking truth: the biggest mistake companies make after investing thousands in trade shows is failing to follow up promptly, effectively turning warm leads into cold calls.

The secret to post-show success? Plan your follow-up strategy before you even attend. Block dedicated time in your calendar for the days immediately following the event, prioritize your leads based on conversation quality, and personalize every follow-up. Generic "thanks for stopping by our booth" emails scream insincerity—especially when sent to people who never visited you.

We explore the critical collaboration between sales and marketing teams after the show, sharing strategies for maintaining prospect engagement through targeted content, social media, and even the increasingly rare but effective handwritten note. Learn how to calculate your true ROI beyond immediate sales, understanding that a single significant client from a trade show might justify years of attendance costs.

Don't leave your runners stranded on base—this episode gives you everything you need to knock your trade show investment out of the park. Whether you're in sales or marketing, you'll walk away with actionable strategies to transform trade show expenses into powerful drivers of business growth.