The Commission Code for Success

Two Hours a Day on What Matters Most

• The Commission Code For Success from Sims Training and Consulting, LLC • Season 1 • Episode 20

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Mark Gordon shares powerful insights on business growth through strategic alignment of what he calls the "Core Four": messaging, lead generation, sales, and technology.

• Creating clear, aligned messaging is the foundation of business success
• Niching down allows you to become an expert rather than a generalist
• Focus intently on your ideal 150-200 potential clients rather than everyone
• Spend your most creative two hours daily on new business generation
• When all team members row in the same direction, momentum builds naturally
• Modern sales requires providing new insights, not just solutions
• The magic phrase in sales: "I never thought of it that way before"
• Technology should either save time or help make better decisions
• Founders must shift from being the system to creating systems
• Constant new business solves almost every other business problem

Visit IGTMS.com or find Mark D. Gordon on LinkedIn and Instagram to learn more about aligning your Core Four for business growth.


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Speaker 1:

You think you have problems with this or that, but if you constantly have new business coming in, you can solve just about anything. When you don't have new business coming in, everything is an emergency. So how can I really narrow my focus for two hours a day on who matters and how can I get in front of those people and provide value to them? And if you do that, the rest of it, I think, takes care of itself, and that's true in almost every industry every industry.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Commission Code Podcast. We're here to help you overcome the challenges that most of us face in our business. From time to time, you know things like feeling like you're on a plateau and you just can't seem to grow your business. Or maybe feeling overwhelmed, just can't seem to grow your business. Or maybe feeling overwhelmed, just trying to make ends meet and yet it seems like you're always working. Or maybe you've done quite well for a while, but now nothing seems to be working anymore. Well, we want to help you solve those problems and many more. Our objective is to provide you with practical solutions so you can grow your business and have more time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Speaker 2:

My name is Morris Sims and I'm going to be your host for this show. I've spent years okay decades really in the corporate world teaching business owners how to increase their revenue and use professional sales processes and run their business more effectively and efficiently. I started my own consulting and training business about seven years ago, I guess, and I'm helping my clients do just exactly that Get more revenue, increase their revenue and have more time to enjoy the fruits of their labor. But I got to tell you I'm having more fun than ever helping people build successful businesses. So, with all that said, let's get on with today's episode of the Commission Code for your Success. Today, on the Mission Code for your Success, Mark Gordon is with us and Mark is from South Carolina and he is the founder and president and chief executive officer and total and completely person in control of integrated go-to market solutions. Mark, welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about what you do and how you do what you do.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, mark. So I spent 20 years building companies, selling companies, acquiring companies and most of it in the mortgage and real estate space and really dialing in my skills in the sales and marketing side of things. And then, after the pandemic, when everyone who's in the mortgage industry did exceptionally well, I started taking some extra time to kind of learn some other things and started advising people I knew or friends in growing their businesses, and I found that my passion has always been helping other people get to where they want to go. And what I really found that was most amazing is I kept running into these brilliant people, founders of companies who spent all of their time really dialed into what their companies were doing. But when you ask them what their company did or who it served, they had a real hard time with their messaging. And I realized very quickly that if your messaging is off, your lead gen is off, and if your lead gen and messaging are off, your sales team is off.

Speaker 1:

And then I started seeing some really crazy statistics, like sales leaders were, on average, getting fired after 20 months or 18 months of these jobs, and companies that had good products were having these good, successful sales leaders come in and completely fall on their face and I realized there was a real alignment problem between what we call our core four and it's messaging lead generation, sales and the technology.

Speaker 1:

And so what we do is we partner with small and medium-sized businesses and maybe some baby large ones, and we help build alignment between their core four, but also really start with the messaging, making sure that if you ask anybody in those companies what that company does and who it serves, that that message is going to be aligned. You're going to be hearing the same thing from everybody, and the benefits of that that we found with these companies is not only exceptional growth in sales and marketing, but the internal operations of those companies get cleaned up in a very different way as well. Everyone understands where they're going and where they're headed, and the results have been pretty great. So that's what we help companies do that sounds great.

Speaker 2:

Mark, tell me a little more about this whole thing. Let me put it this way If I want to grow my business and you tell me, gee, you need to get a line between these four things, I'm still going to sit here and go gee, mark, that's great, but I don't know where to begin. What do I do? First, where do you start with a client, my friend? Where do you begin when somebody walks in and says, okay, I've got this business. It's not doing as well as I'd like for it to, but I'd like to grow it? Where do you start with somebody like that?

Speaker 1:

It's a great question, and so we believe we start in a different place than most, I think, other companies that focus on messaging. I think a lot of companies focus on messaging and they go what's the message that's going to resonate with our audience? And then we go with that, whether or not that's authentic to who we are or what we do or what the company does. We set a very different precedent for that. So we will come in, interview you, your employees, your core customers, the people that you've done a good job for, and we're going to really lock in the things that you do best, and then what we do is we find that people. I'll give you some kind of examples that I think make sense for this. So let's say, you're a technology company, you're an MSP, right? So you provide technology services for companies that don't have their own IT departments, and there's literally 10,000 of those companies across the country. So if you define yourself as an MSP, you're going to get washed out. You're going to get lost in it. You're going to use the same keywords on Google. It's going to cost you a million dollars for every click. You have to find, okay, what actually is the thing that you do better. That's actually going to resonate with your audience. And then, when we figure out what you do best, we figure out how to really target your ICP or your ideal customer profile and make sure that we tighten all of your messaging for that specific person and then tighten all of your efforts into getting in front of those specific people.

Speaker 1:

And so, if you would say, where do we start? Here's where we start. What do we actually do better than everybody else? Why did we start this company? What are we passionate about doing? What's the work that we actually like doing? And maybe we've been part of this bigger thing or we've started saying yes to projects that are kind of outside our ideal because we need to bring revenue in. But, at the end of the day, who do we want to be and what do we want to do? And then we lock in messaging that we think resonates for that audience and make sure it gets in front of those right people. And I think if you start there, that's a really great place to start and it simplifies that messaging and marketing component which ultimately, is going to lead to lead generation and they're going to make life easier for you or your sales team because you're going to be attracting the right people at the right time, who are ready to buy.

Speaker 2:

That sounds great, man, and it makes perfect sense to me, but tell me now, is messaging that would be the first one? Is that the first of the four systems that you need to have in line or put together in order to scale a business? Is that part of those core four?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think so. I think companies you probably experience this before. Maybe even you have a friend or a family member, and maybe they're not even a founder, maybe they just have a job, and you're like, hey, what do you do? And they're like, oh, I'm in procurement. And it's like, okay, well, what does that mean? It's like, well, when the company needs to buy something or get something, I make sure we get a good deal on it and that it's safe.

Speaker 1:

And if you're not in procurement or you haven't done that, that doesn't make sense to you, right? And that's a very small example, right? Well, I'll tell you, I have a client who, without exposing anybody, I'll just say she went to one of the best colleges in the world, got a degree in something that is, of this moment, one of the first people in the world to have this degree, a kind of degree in college experience, where you get a blank check from private equity. And she couldn't get on a call and tell me what she did without talking about her competitors or talking about the technology, and neither one of those two things resonates with your audience who has a problem that you're trying to solve. And so, and when I found this person who's maybe one of the smartest people on the planet, literally, who couldn't figure out how to do this. You know, that's where I was like man. Like this isn to do this. That's where I was like man. This is going to be a problem for everybody, and so, yes, I think dialing in your messaging where it's like this is our target audience. These are the people we want to help. This is how we want to help them and this is how we do it, and you need to be able to get that out in a few sentences.

Speaker 1:

And if you and everyone on your team can't do that together which, by the way, is typical everything else you do in your entire marketing and sales process is going to be incredibly difficult, and it actually goes all the way to. You know, when I do this with SaaS companies, we find the engineering teams don't know what the company does and who does it for it's like well then, how do they prioritize which projects to get on Right? And you have all these different roles, these integrator roles, that are kind of redundant because actually we're just don't have the leadership in place. Where we've been very clear about this is who we are and where we're going. Once you have that clarity, everyone's jobs in the organization get better. But also you then find the people who are ready to hear your message.

Speaker 1:

And so if you go to the market with the wrong message, you attract people who are either not your core client or might not be ready to buy.

Speaker 1:

But if you're like, hey, this is this narrow thing that we do, and we do it better than everybody else, and then we can spend a little time and effort, maybe some money, making sure that message gets in front of the right people at the right time, suddenly you're talking to people who are ready to buy exactly what you do, and now you've positioned yourself as an expert or the authority in that one area, and I think people are very afraid to niche down, especially when they get started. Everyone's like want us to do everything for everybody. But if you do everything for everybody, what you're really telling me and your audience is you do nothing well. You can't do everything well, especially when you're a solopreneur. You know a small business and so you have to be willing to niche down and maybe say no to some things that are uncomfortable for you in order to become an expert and be able to deliver exceptional service in your vertical, in your one special area.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, if you chase five rabbits you catch none right.

Speaker 1:

That's it. And, by the way, like you may think, you caught the rabbit right, but what ends up happening is you take on a deal that maybe you're like we'll figure it out. It's like, well, figuring out what's the cost of them. Well, your team starts to feel bad about themselves because they're doing something they're not experts in. They spend a ton of intellectual capital on trying to get good enough at something that they're not great at, and then your customer is not happy because you weren't really the best of what you said you were going to be able to deliver. And what if you said no to that? How much extra time and energy would your team have had to go and find the right customers? Become world-class at this one thing, and then you leave with a very happy customer. What does that do for your next deal and your next deal and your next deal? So these problems stall entire companies out. Or when they get it right, you have that alignment it snowballs.

Speaker 1:

I often ask people to visualize it this way Imagine you have a crew boat, you're rowing crew and you have four people in the boat. One is messaging, one is lead generation, one is sales and one is the technology. If just one paddle is off, crooked or on a different rhythm than everybody else, the boat just goes around in a circle. You can paddle really slowly, but if you're perfectly aligned and everyone's in and out at the same time, that boat is going to move forward and it's going to start to move faster and faster as you guys build that momentum. But momentum doesn't help you if you're going in circles. And so what happens in a lot of these organizations is we're going to hire this great sales leader. It's like cool. That guy is going to go out and try to sell whatever you put through the system, but if you don't have your messaging aligned and your lead gen set up, that guy's not going to have anybody to talk to. He's going to be talking to the wrong people selling the wrong stuff. Now your customer success team gets the stuff and they're drowning in it because you haven't really sold your core product. You're selling whatever people want, and so this is where alignment really stalls for a lot of these companies. And then the other place that we see real kind of stalling is that the founder limitations in terms of what they're willing to create systems for versus where they think they are the system. And so if you are the system, you're not going to attract a talent and you're not going to be able to scale. If you create systems, then you can install really great people into them and you can watch those people flourish. So those are kind of the two areas where we see people really getting stuck.

Speaker 1:

It's very simply do we have this alignment on our core four? And then, by the way, are we willing, as founders, to go through the pain of changing? Our ego was attached to being everything to everybody in this way. Now my ego is attached to figuring out what I do best and putting people in a situation where they can succeed. Can I make that shift? And the truth is most people never do seed. Can I make that shift? And the truth is most people never do, which is why most companies never get big. And so these are really hard things to go over with somebody.

Speaker 1:

But when we find the right founders, we're going to look in the mirror and go, okay, cool, good news, I'm the problem. When I work with somebody who says, good news, I'm the problem, great, well, then you can also be the solution, and so let's go ahead and do it. If you're, if you're innocent and you're impotent, it means you can't change anything, right? So when I run into founders who are like, oh, it's the market, it's this, it's that, it's like, well, we don't need to work together, right, it's when it's good, it's you. When it's bad, it's you Right. And so we'll be like, oh, we got lucky, it's like you term. But if over 10 years, your business is successful, it wasn't luck. And so I think those are kind of the things that we run into and what we kind of help people push through and it makes perfect sense, mark.

Speaker 2:

It really does. It gets back to really what do you want, what do you want to do and why did you create and why are you doing whatever it is you're doing? Then strategy about how you're going to get there. And when it comes to that, most of the folks that I speak with my clients, who are usually small businesses with you know less than 10 employees, lead generation, finding people to talk to. I mean, it's the way the question comes to sports. What can I do to get more people to talk to and engage in the sales process? And then, of course, the next step is let's talk about having a real sales process. But how do you view lead generation, mark?

Speaker 1:

What are your thoughts about that for your clients? Yeah, and so again, you know, I think if I'm talking to the solopreneur, a very small company, I think assessing the natural talent or the natural inclination of the people there on the team in terms of how they want to approach networking and everything like that might impact how I would give advice. Say generally that if you, what we've seen and this is across you know, when I coached realtors, when I coached loan officers, even using automated systems and modern technology and everything else, you can only have any sort of even a superficial relationship with 150 people, maybe 200, and even with automated outreach, automated systems systems, your newsletters, like even when you get all your marketing aligned, like you're just not going to have, you can cast a very wide net, but that's not going to be relationship based, it's going to be kind of getting there on the right time. So, depending on what business you're in, I want to make sure that I'm not wasting time with the world, that I'm going to dial in my dollar marketing efforts and my time-based marketing efforts into finding a way to get in front of the very few people in my community or in my sector or whatever it is that I'm marketing to, and it's different for every product and every situation. I want to make a list of those people and then I want to become obsessed with making sure I find a way to get into those circles, and you would be shocked at the opportunities that present themselves when you start thinking about it in this way.

Speaker 1:

I remember when I first moved to South Carolina, we were in the mortgage industry and someone was like, oh, that realtor, that realtor does all the business. They kept seeing their signs everywhere and I was like cool. I was like I'd love to go work with that person. It's like, oh, they get a million phone calls from mortgage people all the time. You'll never be able to do it.

Speaker 1:

Seven months later I was getting all their deals and I share that because it became something that I was really paying attention to, I was focusing effort into. I started with a comment on their social media, paying attention to what they were doing, what networking events they were going to popping up here and then, by the way, finding ways I could deliver value to that person, where I was never asking for anything, I was just giving, giving, giving right. I was providing value to that person in every interaction and, by the way, as human beings we hate to be in debt. So if somebody is providing us value, we want to provide value back. Almost all people are like this and, by the way, when you work with somebody who's not like that, you don't want to work with them anyway.

Speaker 2:

That's right, that's for sure.

Speaker 1:

So I became obsessed with for my narrow audience. How can I create an environment where every interaction with me has that person walking away, going yeah, that was great, I learned something, they did something for me. And then, by the way, people come back to you, they think of you, they understand the game better than you think in most cases right, and not everybody and you'll have negative experiences that will kind of reverse, train you that this doesn't work. You have to be willing to trust the system, trust your process and realize it will continue to work out, because the reason why most people don't do this is the pain of the rejection that comes along the way, and so you have to be able to gamify it for yourself to get through that. But again, narrow your target audience, narrow your ideal customer profile, figure out what you want to do and who you want to do it with, and then obsess over that. And I promise, if you do that for six months, you spend two hours a day every day thinking about how you can get in front of those 150 people that matter. The business will come.

Speaker 1:

And so, again, it's a little different depending on what industry you're in, but we see it on a regular basis, and I saw it with realtors, I saw it with loan officers, I've seen it with IT sales, I've seen it with fintech sales. It's hyper-focused on the few things that matter and spending creative. What's your most creative time of your workday? Those two hours should be focused on that new business. Right, you think you have problems with this or that, but if you have constantly have new business coming in, you can solve just about anything. When you don't have new business coming in, everything is an emergency, right. So so where how can I really narrow my focus for two hours a day on on who matters and how can I get in front of those people and provide value to them? And if you do that, the rest of it, I think, takes care of itself, and that's that's true in almost every industry mark.

Speaker 2:

I'm loving this conversation because we're getting so much good practical stuff that everybody can really take back to their desk and actually do something with. We've got about four or five more minutes or so here. What would be more important for us to talk about? Sales or technology?

Speaker 1:

Well, I mean, I don't know where. Here's actually what I would say. I think technology, less is more, and I've never met anybody who fixed anything in their business because of this one piece of software.

Speaker 1:

Uh, they, you know they might say it right and and so like, and, and you know I see statistics. You know the average mid-sized company now has 75 different sas products that they're using. They're using less than 30 of of them efficiently or the features of it. And so technology, when I coach people through that is what are the few basic things that you actually need at what stage you're at? That are going to move the needle for you and then clearing out the clutter so that you can focus on getting the data you need to make good decisions. Technology should be there to either save you time or to help you make good decisions, and everything else is kind of noise, and so that's kind of my take on the high-level tech, and then it kind of gets very granular by where you're at. But in terms of sales, yeah, I'd love to talk about that and maybe you can kind of direct me into where you think we can provide the most value.

Speaker 2:

Sure, you know, when it comes to sales, I teach a lot of that and my take on this whole thing is professional sales is all about helping the other person get what they want. It's certainly not about manipulation or coercion or trying to get people to buy something they don't need or want. It's about marrying that solution to the problem these people have, that my prospect has, and then helping them get whatever it is they thought they wanted. I love to tell a story about the guy that walks into Home Depot and says I need a quarter-inch drill bit. And the first guy says it's on aisle 32 in Bay 5. The next guy says a quarter-inch drill bit. Well, what are you drilling into? Well, what are you going to do with that? How are you going to do it? What would you like to do?

Speaker 2:

Come to find out he wants to drill a hole in ceramic tile in his bathroom to hang a towel rack. Well, that's a different kind of a bit. You need a quarter-inch masonry bit. And he takes him over and shows him the thing. Got to figure out what their problem is, what they really want, and help them solve it. That's the way I look at sales. How about you? What? What are your thoughts on sales for for most folks?

Speaker 1:

I'm going to dial it in in this way I'm going to I'm going to go back to the value proposition and say, okay, as human beings, we are actually incredibly good intuitively, and knowing and being able to judge how much value I'm getting from an interaction with somebody. It's like very hardwired into us as human beings, like we know when we spend time with this person, it feels good, we learn something, we get it and like, even when it's not like logic, we're not like thinking through it, we feel it, we, we know it. Okay, it's intuitive. Yeah, bad sales, right, is you're trying to manipulate somebody and push them into something because you think it's the right thing for you and not the right thing for them? The level that you're talking about, which is that next level, which is pretty good, is like okay, we want to ask questions to identify a problem that we can solve for this person, and maybe we can even solve it better than they thought possible. And then I'm providing real value to them and their experience with me. And so not only are they getting the best possible solution and they're going to buy from me, but their experience with me might make them come back to me. If I went in saying I think I need this screw, and the guy at Home Depot was like actually, this one works better for your problem. Guess where I'm going next time I need to buy a screw. Pretty simple, right. Let me take it next level, okay, because I think in 2025, where everybody's walking around with an AI robot in their pocket, they can ask any questions. Now I can take a picture of my wall and a picture of that screw and ask it is this the right thing for this? And then it'll take me to a link where I can buy it. We have to be able to provide next level value in a lot of our sales process and, again, a lot of this depends on what you sell or how complicated it is or where you're trying to go.

Speaker 1:

But the magic words for me in 2025 is if I'm on a call with somebody and we're in our discovery process. By the way, I don't do a long discovery process anymore. My discovery process is to teach and then listen to how they respond to what I'm teaching. But I'm coming in with the value for teaching them about what I've learned in this space from my other competitions with other people, so they're getting value right out of the jump. I don't want it to feel like an interrogation. I want it to feel like they're learning on the call and then I'm going to learn how they respond to what I'm teaching. So we go through that process.

Speaker 1:

If I can get somebody to say, wow, I never thought of it that way before, you're selling that 100 out of 100 times, okay, that is the fact. So a lot of relationship-based salespeople will tell me they'll tell them something. They'll be like you know, that's exactly what I've been saying. Everybody here I completely agree. The relationship salesperson is like isn't this so great? This guy loves me? Well, yeah, but you've not provided any extra value there and that person's now going to still go with whoever's cheapest. Or they're finding agreement with somebody else and like that will feel good, but like it doesn't actually move the needle for people anymore.

Speaker 1:

What moves the needle is when you provide them insight and go hey, I know you think the reason to do X is this, but, by the way, here are the risks of not doing it, which are A, b and C and that you probably haven't even thought of yet. And someone's like oh man, I didn't even realize that I was. So if I'm talking about cybersecurity and someone's worried about getting hacked in one way and I'm like, by the way, if you stay with your current situation, they're actually discontinuing that next year and it's going to end up having to patch it for another $10,000. I didn't know it was coming. Someone's going to be like whoa, I didn't even know that was a thing. You just bought me something I didn't know at all. Now they're getting value from me in this relationship beyond the product. You can buy their product anywhere, but I'm giving them a new way to think about it.

Speaker 1:

It's a very simple way of thinking about it, but a lot of my clients sell very complex products. We have to teach people how to think about what the problems they're having are and what the possible solutions are before we even sell our products. So let me say it this way as a business owner, you have 100 problems at any given time. If we get into a sales conversation and this is problem number 17, it doesn't matter how elegant my solution is, you're not going to buy it. I have to be able to reframe the thing that we solve for you so that it becomes one of your top three things that are either you have to fix or is so easy because of the way I'm presenting it, that you should just take the low-hanging fruit that now becomes a top three priority and now somebody's going to buy, and so where? And this is all.

Speaker 1:

A lot of this is from the book the Challenger Sale.

Speaker 1:

It's a complicated read, but if you spend the time with it I think it's worth it if you're really interested in learning sales, because it talks about these reframes and what it is is presenting some information to somebody in a new way, where they walk away from that and go wow, I now have a new sense of the importance of making this decision, and then, whether you work with me or not, you should really do this thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I agree, we should do this thing. By the way, let me show you why. We're the person you should do the thing with, but I'm not even coming in to talk about what we do, and so I've gotten them to agree that this is a problem that they need to address, and so by doing the reframe that way. So that's kind of my third level of the sales process, which is like, hey, it was not manipulative, but it is actually going like dude, I think there's some you don't have time to know everything on this thing and what's coming down the road and why doing this today is actually more important than you thought, and if we can get them to say, wow, I never thought about it like that before we're going to sell that product.

Speaker 2:

Great thinking man. I love it. I absolutely love it. Mark, how do people get in touch with you If somebody out there would?

Speaker 1:

like to chat with you further and maybe do business with you. How do we find you? Yeah, I mean so. My website is IGTMScom. Integrated go to market solutionscom. You can find me on Instagram, mark D Gordon, or you can find me on LinkedIn, same thing, mark D Gordon. Uh, at IGTMS or integrated go to market solutions, if you Google me, I'm everywhere my phone number's on LinkedIn. You can message me, dm me.

Speaker 1:

Uh, I make it very easy for people to get in touch with me. If, at some point, that becomes a problem, it means I'm winning the game. But we are here to help and I'll have a half-hour conversation with anybody about their business to help with this stuff and if it makes sense for us to continue the conversation from there, great. But I think people are generally underestimating that, even if you're a solopreneur, you're misaligned at your core four, meaning that if your message does not get through to people in terms of what you do and who you help in a meaningful way, you're not going to generate the right leads or any leads and you're not going to get those opportunities. We want to nail your messaging for what you do, narrow your focus to who you should be saying it to and make it easy for you to generate those leads, and then the sales process becomes a breeze from there, and so if you want help with that, you know where to find me.

Speaker 2:

Mark, that's great. Thank you so much for being on the Commission Code today.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for having me, morris, I appreciate it.

Speaker 2:

Well, that does it for this episode of the Commission Code Podcast. This is the place where we want to help you find the commission code to success in your business. Remember, go to morrissimscom for more information and in the meantime, hey, have a great week, get out there and meet somebody new, and we'll see you again next time right here on the Commission Code. Best wishes. I'm Morris Sims.