Creating a Robust Digital Game Plan to Help You Hit Your Sales Goals

Curt Anderson  00:01

Hey, Damon. Good morning, my friend. Good afternoon. Happy Wednesday. How are you?

Damon Pistulka  00:07

I’m doing great Curt and ready to go.

Curt Anderson  00:09

Alright, let’s dive in. And eight. This is awesome, man. So super excited to be here. Hey, we’re having we’re trying to connect with your LinkedIn what’s going on there?

Damon Pistulka  00:18

Yeah, I don’t know. I’m gonna try it again here. But we’ll give it we’ll give it a go.

Curt Anderson  00:22

You know, we’ll just fire through, you know what we are on. LinkedIn issue today is going to you. Hey, there we go. Hey, how about that now here? Hey, Damon Let’s try that again. Happy Wednesday. Good morning. Good afternoon. Hey, how are you? I’m

Damon Pistulka  00:42

doing great, man. I’m ready to go. I’m excited to talk about the digital game plan today. I think it’s going to be something that people can learn a little bit about.

Curt Anderson  00:50

Let’s let’s do it. So let’s go on. Let’s dive in. So a digital game plan Damon would what are we talking about here? What is a digital game plan? What do you what do you think of when you hear that?

Damon Pistulka  01:04

I don’t really know. No, no, seriously. I mean, when you think a digital game plan, you always think a game plan. It’s like, you know, how are we going to approach something I you know, you and I baseball fans, sports fans in general. But you got to have a game plan if you’re gonna go out and win. And and really the digital game plan allows you to really align or get your thoughts in order around what the heck do I want to try sales and marketing wise to really get in front of the right people say the right things, and you know, show up the right way?

Curt Anderson  01:40

Yeah, I totally agree. I love what you’re saying there, you know, just kind of getting your thoughts in order. You know, a lot of times it’s just, you know, we get into that, you know, I think a dear friend of ours, Michelle, Michelle Jones was on the show, she caught it the tactics sprint, you know, you know, hey, let’s throw things in a wall. Let’s do this. As we get more strategic, we have an opportunity to drive success kind of narrow that focus, right. And sometimes you just need to, you know, I’m you know, you and I are at an age and stage I’m trying to get rid of I’m trying to get away from paper, you know, my goal is I, you know, my E commerce business. 100 years ago, we went paperless. And it was that was like 2008, nine, that was like so cutting edge. And here I am 15 years later, and I’m still living on paper. So I’m trying to go more digital practice what I preach in all the time I’m sitting, I’m writing something down. And I’m like, Well, if I write it here, am I going to find that? Like, I’m going to lose this card somewhere? Right? Yeah. Put it on somewhere digital if I have a marketing hub, kind of that source of truth that one spot where like, now Hey, Damon, remember, we’re talking about something three months? Yeah. Kurt just go to the digital gameplan it lives right there. Right. So the intention, that’s the spirit is like, how do you get everything? All your information collected in one place? Right, yeah,

Damon Pistulka  02:56

it’s a place where you can drop thoughts and ideas that that you may or may not use now, but they could help you later. Or it could be a part, you know, main part of your strategy right now. It’s really to flush them out and, and get into the things that are going to make a difference. It’s your GPS,

Curt Anderson  03:10

right? It’s your North wire and it’s you know, what direction are we going? So hey, let’s dive right in. Damon. So hey, we’ve got a little program here that we’ve got a fun, man, I got you ready for this? Dude, are you ready?

Damon Pistulka  03:23

I’m ready for it.

Curt Anderson  03:24

Let’s rock and roll. So hey, you know, our dear friend, Jojo put this together. This has been a work in progress. We’ve been building this with our clients for years. And so a dear friend of ours, our coach, our mentor Jojo, she’s probably half our age. But she’s been just doing a wonderful job helping us build this out, of course, the rest of our team, Amy tree basin, you know, all sorts of input plus all of our clients. So we have a digital game plan right here that we’d love to just, you know, go over with folks. And again, it’s just that guide that Northstar to dive in. Now, demon word I love a place I love to start. I’m a little bit of a geek here. You know when you hear that SWOT analysis, right? I remember the day do you remember when you were introduced to a SWOT? Do you remember? Can you do? Yeah. When was the first time you heard SWOT?

Damon Pistulka  04:13

I don’t know. I wasn’t 25 Probably.

Curt Anderson  04:16

Right. So I was actually a little bit older. I was probably like later 20s. And I had a buddy that was working in corporate I had this little tiny, disastrous business. And my buddy calls me he was like, hey, what you know, and I went to business school and stuff. And he was like, Hey, what’s your SWOT? And I’m like, What do you mean? Is that a TV show? Like, what do you talk about the SWOT, you know? And he’s like, No, it’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And it’s just such a game changer, right? Just such a game changer to fully understand. Do you want to share a little bit? Why do you feel understanding your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats? Why are those so important? Well,

Damon Pistulka  04:51

I think it really you need to understand where your strengths are. You need to understand where your your opportunities are. because that’s where you want to focus your time, right? Yes. Every now slot has weaknesses in it. Right? Yeah, I really think that and I, you can talk to a lot of people, and they’ll agree with this. And there’s people that will disagree, obviously. But your weaknesses as long as they’re not killing you, you know, you can’t make take a weakness and go from 10%, good to 70%. Good, right? And you work on your strengths, you work on your opportunities, and just mitigate the risk from your weaknesses, you’re going to be alright with that. But really understand your strengths. And I liked the question that we asked in the digital game plan. How does your business beat the competition? Right now? That’s, that’s a great way to think about how do you beat the competition? Are we faster? Are we more efficient? Do we work with them better? You know, there’s just a lot of different ways that you do that you provide more experience, you help them create better results with what you do, you know, there’s just a lot of things. And then the opportunities, they can be a plethora of thing, it could be outwardly, where you go outwardly we we just aren’t as prominent in our community and our industry, in our region, whatever it might be, and inwardly, what are our opportunities inwardly? That will help us be better out towards our customers as well like operational things? Or do we really need to look at things like lead time? Do we really need to look at things like customer service? I mean, there’s, there’s those kinds of things that we can change inward, and outwardly, that will help us in our opportunities

Curt Anderson  06:32

to well said absolutely love everything. And so what we’ve done is I hate when you hang out with Damon and myself, we’d like to say, hey, there are no weaknesses, there are no threats, we just have the sole, right. So well, that the so versus the so what so just laser focus on your core strengths? What are you absolutely best at what were you put on God’s green earth to do your passion? How do you help people move the needle, whether it’s a product service solution, whatever it might be? So what’s your core strength? So what we love to do is this, you know, it’s a little bit of a bright party, we’d like to say, Damon, put in your core strengths. Okay, what are we best at? And we’re like, what truly separates us if we interviewed our customers, what are those separators the opportunities, you know, gosh, I wish I had a crystal ball mindset, the mindset the repair shop, how’s your crystal ball doing?

Damon Pistulka  07:21

Yeah, it’s not working.

Curt Anderson  07:24

So no, trying to have some foresight, but the more that you laser focus on what you’re best at, you know, I call it like, you know, say your local favorite, legendary traditional restaurant, you know, like, you know, when, you know, people go away, we got to come back to get this, you know, your favorite pizza, your favorite, whatever it is, right? It’s, you know, focused on those core strengths. And then that helps you guide those opportunities. Is there are there tech changes? Is there something with AI? Do you have a secret sauce? What are the opportunities? And how can we just really focus in exploit those? Now the so what is that’s where those weaknesses come in, right? Yeah, it’s like, so what is so special about you? Are there things on your website that you just wish that would go away? Daymond I love for you to chime in here. We had somebody on our show. And we asked what’s the best business advice that she ever received? That was shared drones? And she said, her and mentor told her you need to know your resentment dollars, remember? Yeah, we’ll just share a little bit. What do we mean by so what? And how can we discipline ourselves to get out of that? So what box? Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  08:32

you know, a lot of this is part of we’ll talk about it, maybe, but it’s talking about yourself a lot in your website, talking about things that really don’t matter, right? Because you can you can say, hey, we’ve got the nicest trucks in the world to deliver our products to you, and your customer doesn’t care. All your customer cares about, are they going to get the right product they need this is going to do a really good work for them. They don’t care about the truck, right? The truck as long as it’s functional laws, yeah, it’s not going to hurt anybody getting there, they just want to make sure you got a good truck doesn’t have to be new. Those are some things that people don’t care about they and this is this is incredible, when you start talking to manufacturing to write, because what do you first see when you see a a metal fabrication, place a CNC machining company, you see a huge list of all their equipment. And while that is important, to some, it’s not front page material. You know, Ricky has, what’s more important to someone that’s going to buy a CNC machine part is I machine, this kind of part out of this kind of material for these kinds of customers this size or something like that not I have this maze that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, thing that that’s, you know, maybe it’s $2 million, you know, they really don’t care about that. Right?

Curt Anderson  09:57

And so it’s just really identify it. Just speak into the solution, right, just dive into the solution of the problem that you solve, and just executing that. And a lot of times it’s having the discipline of, you know, having certain customers like, we just don’t, we’re not a good fit for you, you know, you know, I always use this example if they’re, you know, there’s a planet fitness in about every community right there. It’s like McDonald’s of, you know, so if you walk into Planet Fitness, they have a big sign right on their wall, describing a person, a specific person who they really you’re not invited to work out at Planet Fitness, they call them a lunk. Like, if you’re a monk, and it’s, they actually have a name like the I guess I can’t remember, you know, it’s like, you know, Jimmy is has his tank top, and he has his gallon jug of water. And he’s grunting and slamming weights, and they have an alarm. If there’s somebody that slams weights, somebody behind the desk hits the button, and this alarm goes off kind of embarrassing the lunk of like, dropping or Simon awaits, because it’s just, it’s not welcome at Planet Fitness. So my point is, I every time, I was just started this morning, and the look alarm goes off. And I’m like, I don’t know if I have the discipline to put on my website. Nothing personal, but I’m not a good fit for you. But you know, just just think of eliminate those resentment dollars. Yes. Customers that you know, not only do they regret coming to you, you probably regret them knocking on your door. And so if we focus on our strengths and opportunities, it helps us eliminate that those so what opportunity? Yes,

Damon Pistulka  11:32

yes, it’s a there’s a great point to be made there is, by reducing the amount of people that find you for the wrong reasons, helps you an awful lot and helps them. Yeah, they don’t want to waste their time. Yeah, they may be the end, even people that are, you know, shooting shooting a long shot, they don’t want to waste their time, right, they may not realize it, but they don’t want to. And if you certainly don’t want to, they don’t want to, it’s good for you to weed them out ahead of time. And

Curt Anderson  12:02

we heard that from many companies that we work with, we’re like, you know, gee, this particular lead or this particular client, you know, if we can just have that language. And the other thing is, you know, have that strong referral network to find someone that is a better fit for them, you know, so, alright, so let’s dive in. So Damon on this next one, we’re going to talk about, hey, we’re talking baseball fans, we’re going to talk about rounding the bases. What on earth? Are we talking about here?

Damon Pistulka  12:29

Yeah, no, this is a great place. I mean, I love the baseball and an analogy here, I can’t speak yet only one cup of coffee, me. But we, we really liked this, because you can go through this to help organize, current and existing our current and potential customers into are these, you know, the customers that are going to just absolutely blow you away, if you get them that can be a homerun, are you going to have these singles that are going to be a customer that they’re nice, they come and go, but they’re they’re just come back once in a while they’re good, you know, your doubles, your triples, it’s just they get a little better, a little more frequent, little better fit all the way into those home runs where man, if I had four or five of those homeruns, I would have the business on my dreams. And and it’s just that’s the way it works. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  13:25

that’s right. And, you know, it’s really comes down to preference, right? Yeah. Well, you know, if you’ve had a business where, you know, say, 80 90% of your business, are coming into your, you know, what you call your home runs, and you’re like, Man, this is awesome, but I have three home runs that represent 90% of my business. And if I lose one of them, I’m in deep trouble. You know, so that can create a huge vulnerability. On the flip side, if your business you know, you’re like, Man, I just love those singles, you know, batting for average, you know, you and I could rattle off some, you know, Hall of Famers that just, you know, maybe they didn’t have a lot of homeruns. But they were always right. And so, you know, maybe I love singles, when I can get that home run it just, you know, that just makes my business even better. You know, it takes a lot of resources, a lot of energy. But what we’d love to do is we’d love to encourage that have our clients have our, you know, folks that we’re working with, is how do you put some of these clients in buckets? And so who’s that single and what we’ve talked about demons, like putting them with dollar amounts, right? Yeah. We have a client wonderful client, Chicago, they’re single is half a million dollars and under, you know, their doubles are half a million to a million, their triples are million to 2 million and their homeruns are 2 million and up. Well, I had a business owner years ago, guess what my single was $500. It was a very small business, maybe a double, you know, so it’s like setting dollar amounts of like, what are these customers and then putting them in buckets? And how do you it’s just understanding that ideal customer each of those buckets

Damon Pistulka  14:56

and really then you begin this is where you be going to look at, you know, because it’s not just the, the identifying the company, but then it’s also identifying the person within the company that you’re you’re going to need to reach out to in those those situations to really make that connection, build that relationship. 100%.

Curt Anderson  15:16

So then the next step, what we’d like to do is by understanding our singles, doubles, triples, home runs, we’ve gone through our strengths and opportunities, we focus on our rounding the bases, now we can come in and like really identify that buyer persona. And again, you know, a dear friend of ours put together this little worksheet that we love taking our clients through where they can create their own buyer persona, and it can fall in that bucket of like, hey, this, this customer is a single, I’ll take these singles all day long, they’re wonderful. If I lose one or two, doesn’t devastate my business, I’m going to go back out and replace them with more singles. You know, maybe we could put in a who’s our triple, put our triple in here and really understand, you know, hey, they’re a buyer at a larger corporation, or what that might look like. Damon, why do you feel that a buyer you really understand that buyer persona, the you know, the intimate details? Why is that just so critical?

Damon Pistulka  16:09

Well, the Okay, so the people change, right? So if I’m if, if my singles are, you know, more solopreneur, or 10 person or less kind of businesses, and then I go into my doubles, and triples and homeruns, with my home run is, is a large corporation, I’m going to be talking to a buyer in a large corporation in this small singles, I’m probably talking to the owner or the next in charge or something like that. And really, you need to be able to understand that because that person is going to have dramatically different pain points, contact the preferences, what they’re really goals in life and business are and you have to you have to take that into consideration and how you think about your products and services and how they might help them. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  16:58

completely. So, so good. Okay, so now we’re going step by step, understanding your your core strengths and opportunities, diving into your, you know, understanding your buyer that, you know, we’ve identified those buyers in different buckets of running the basis, our little fun baseball analogy, creating that buyer’s persona. Now, Damon, we are huge, huge advocates, we practice what we preach on creating that vibrant referral network. We like to call it that soulmate. 100 Can you please describe for our friends out there? What is the soulmate? 100 Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  17:33

those are really your friends, family, current customers, business associates, that, that you really feel may have one to many relationships or be a real advocate for you that that you want to stay in contact with help reach out, you know, whatever you can to help develop them as that referral partner for your business

Curt Anderson  17:58

100% So, you know, you always use that line that one too many, you know, how can I create a relationship? So, you know, maybe it’s your local chamber of commerce, maybe it’s a trade association. You know, we I always like to kick around I’ve got a lamp around here somewhere, you know, if you have a lamp, and you’re selling lamps, well, who would be a great referral network? Well, I bought the person that sells the light bulbs, right? The person who makes the lamp shade you know, how about the person makes the nightstand you know? So again, you know, I’m being a little bit of Captain Obvious, but we want to think about who could be that vibrant referral network that you know, we’re just we’re sending business their way with no expectations just being that ultimate Go Giver and man when there’s a when there’s a problem needs to be solved or product needs to be purchased that you provide they your first front and center front of mind. Yep. And that’s the way it works. Right exactly. So again, what we’d love to do is get our clients to just really you know, get intentional get very specific in here on like, who can be that soulmate 100 Demon we won’t go through the whole thing today let’s go through let’s dive into how about Rick’s man How about our Rick’s let’s dive into what on earth? What is a Rick is that a? Is that your cousin your uncle who’s Rick

Damon Pistulka  19:12

I don’t have a Rick and my family but it’s really important when we talk about the digital game plan because we have to let’s all face it right that Google is king of search we need to know what our soulmate customers are searching for and we need to then create content around that and that’s that’s what this is about. It’s Stonie ridiculously important keywords Rick’s it’s the it’s the keyword phrases that your soulmate customers are typing into Google when they need your solution or product. And it’s it’s critical to know so not always easy to find, but it’s worth it to take the time to get get to it.

Curt Anderson  19:56

Absolutely. You know, we’re still you know, not sure What you know what, exactly what direction where AI is going, as of you know, this today’s recording, but as of right now, search is still forefront on the horizon. And so it is just mission critical to understand your core keywords, and just really what is your ideal customer typing? Right, what is the problem that they have today? And you know, and maybe, you know, some SEO experts might say, you know, Hey, your keywords aren’t quite as important as they used to be. And I don’t dispute that. But you still have to have that keyword in the phrase or part of the solution or the question that somebody’s going to ask. Yeah, I don’t know about you, Damon, like I’m finding my searches are getting longer and longer, you know, my typical searches by like, 10 words now, you know,

Damon Pistulka  20:40

it gets a lot longer because now that we have, and this is something and I was just recently reading something about, you know, generative AI is starting to try to answer questions more on Google searches, right answer. So your content really needs to go past a topic base and into an answer base kind of thing to help people if you can, because that’s what the AI is looking for, as answers, give people the best answers. And it’s, it’s a wonderful thing to do to take the time to do it. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  21:10

And that segues right into the next tab here. The next step of our digital game plan is what are those soulmate questions? You know, I know one of your favorite books that you always love the references what they ask you answer, they ask you answer for Marcus shared in just a phenomenal marketing book, strongly encourage, you know, grab that book if you’re in marketing. But Damon, let’s talk about it. You know, somebody’s out there, like, hey, I need you know, I’m best placed for lunch near me best smoothies near me best, you know, Jim, you know, whatever, looking for that retail service provider in a b2b space, you know, I’m looking for this specific parts, or I’m looking for this type of machinery or this solution or whatever it might be. Why is it so important to really be answering those questions? Well, it’s,

Damon Pistulka  21:59

your customers want to answer these questions. They’re searching for these questions, the better you can answer them, the more you’re going to present yourself as knowledgeable about that subject. And that service that or product you’re going to provide. I mean, it’s just really important. So like, if you’re, if you’re making skateboard wheels, you better be able to tell your customers everything about skateboard wheels, because they want to go and say, Hey, there’s this Can I do this with your skateboard wheels? Sure you can or no, you can’t. And here’s how you can get them. And if you really want to look at these people that are using them that way. I mean, it’s you The better you answer the questions, the more you’re going to, as we talked about before, you’re going to get the right people to you. And the wrong people are going to go someplace else.

Curt Anderson  22:45

Amen. Brother, I couldn’t agree more. Now Daymond, there’s a little phrase that you’ve coined, because the more that you answer, the more that you build that word, trust. Now it’s lunchtime here on the East Coast. Are there are we talking eats what are Google eats?

Damon Pistulka  23:04

Well, I don’t even remember the the acronyms that we’re talking about. But the Google eats bucket I love when you fill that up by just keep giving this information, share your knowledge, keep doing it on on your website, in blog, in video format on YouTube, on social media, what Google does is it starts to recognize you that it says Kurt, he is the foremost expert in tattoo art, because he posts about it, he write blogs about it, he shows videos about it. He does all these things about tattoo art. And he’s he he just knows what he’s talking about. Right? Right. You know, and that’s how you do this when it doesn’t matter if you’re in manufacturing, car sales, or whatever the heck you’re doing. By getting your content out there. Google is aggregating all of the suppose a knowledge you have with the content. And the more you feel there. The watch and you know, the acronym I don’t know. It’s

Curt Anderson  24:08

so it’s eats it’s double E experience, expertise, authority, and trust. So you want you know, that’s what Google was looking for, you know, just google google eats bucket a love and you’ll see Damon coming up right? But you know, I bestline of 2024 right there is Google leads bucket a love, but you know, you know, understanding those questions and so on. So let’s come back to the digital game plan. We’ll start writing it down here is what we encourage is like, Alright, let’s get into the shoes of our buyer of our soulmate. And what questions would they potentially be asking? Okay, so, you know, live streaming Daymond like, what were what would be some questions? You know, what equipment should I use? What microphone should I use? What day should I go live? How do I find Yes, what are some other questions? that you will be asked,

Damon Pistulka  25:00

How can I name my live stream show? What are some tools I can use to to live? Go live on different platforms? What platforms are the best platforms to go live on? How do I live stream to my website? How do I build the live streaming community, there’s just all kinds of things that you can talk about around a given topic or questions that you can be answering. Right?

Curt Anderson  25:22

How do I automate this? How do I make it efficient? You know, so. So our intention is, you know, how do you get as many questions as possible, think about your ideal customer, your buyer, what challenges are they facing today? What problems do they have? What are they potentially typing? And so men, you know, the the old skate where the puck is right? Meet them. That is, you know, how do you answer those questions, get them on your website, get them out on content, get a video, do live stream, whatever it might be, but just answer those questions. And that’s how you stop being the best kept secret to get found. So we’re going to write it down on time. We’ve got a few tabs up, you know what, we’ll save it for next time? How’s that? Yes,

Damon Pistulka  26:02

you will,

Curt Anderson  26:03

we’ll have people come back to us. And I’m going to stop sharing. So again, guys, this is the digital game plan. This is just a wonderful tool, incredible resource that we’ve been using and building with our clients over Daymond has been like a little little fun project that we’ve been doing for years now. Yeah, absolutely love this. If you are interested in this, we just we’re just dishing it out for free, we would love feedback. So if you want to check this out, drop either Damon or myself a note, we would love this, pass this along to you completely, and just innate and rip it apart. If there’s anything if you have any feedback, any suggestions on how this can be better? What can be better about it? We would absolutely welcome and cherish that opportunity. So yes, Damon, let’s close out words of wisdom parting thoughts, what do you what are your thoughts here as far as digital gameplan and going that direction?

Damon Pistulka  26:54

Well, you know, it’s you have to organize your thoughts in your sales and marketing. And really, this, I think, is just an effective tool. It just helps you do what you didn’t do what you need to do and, and put your thoughts in order so that you can focus in on what you think and, and what you believe your customers will value the most or potential customers will, like we said get the right people to you.

Curt Anderson  27:16

Yep, love it. So you know, again, just it’s creating a marketing hub. And what it does, Damon, it prevents, you know, a damage of that email from six months ago, because I’m not organized. And I’m kind of lazy and I can’t find it. So let me bother you to go find something that I’m not capable of finding? Well, he could just go the digital gameplan while you do it. And so the intention is how can we just beat make our lives as efficient as possible, effective, get all that information in one spot, and you know, and just go out and keep crushing it. So okay, we’re gonna close out that was our little jam session today about the digital gameplan. Again, if you have questions, reach out to Damon reach out to myself, we’d love to have a chat with you about it. And you please have an amazing incredible rest of your day Damon please.

Damon Pistulka  28:03

Well, and and if people want to learn how to livestream that’s one of the things that we’ve been having a lot of fun with. Recently, we do. We just are releasing a our first round of our live streaming course. So we got if people are interested in live streaming like we do, you want to see the tools, you want to figure out how to set up a show you want to see the scripts, then the automation and the systems behind it, that allow you to get your own live stream started for business development. You can drop a note in our in the chat here or reach out to one of us directly because this is something we feel so passionate about that have affected our businesses that we want to teach others how to do it. Amen,

Curt Anderson  28:43

brother, so yeah, that’s dude, we’re kicking her maiden voyage tomorrow. Wonderful livestream course. All sorts of information covers a lot of the digital gameplan we would love to have you join us. And so until then you have an amazing rest of your week and we will see you on Friday. The everyone