Transcript:

00:00:00 Casey: In this episode, I’m going to tell you why your recent fractional CMO deal didn’t close, and why it might not be your fault, and also why it might be your fault. Let’s get into it.

00:00:14 Casey: Marketers of the world, why do we work hard to solve small problems? Why do we reinvent ourselves and our clients over and over? And why are we giving away marketing strategy for free? With advancements in AI, we’re all seeing the marketing department shrink from the bottom up. And companies need you to serve them as their fractional Chief Marketing Officer. It’s time to solve bigger problems and bring home a bigger paycheck. It’s time to create the lifestyle we deserve, and to make a greater impact.

00:00:45 Casey: This is the Fractional CMO Show, and I’m Casey Stanton. Join me as we explore this growing industry and learn to solve bigger problems as marketing leaders. The Fractional CMO Show is sponsored by CMOx, the number one company to teach you how to attract, convert, and serve high-paying fractional CMO clients on your terms.

00:01:09 Casey: Hey, welcome back. This is Casey, and today I want to talk to you about deal closing and what deal closing really means, right? Like what are the components of closing a deal? And what does it mean about you? What does it mean about the prospect? What does it mean about their readiness? What does it mean about your persuasion, your offer, that kind of stuff? That’s what I want to talk about. So if a deal didn’t close for you recently, I’ve got some thoughts on why it didn’t close. And I want to share those thoughts with you on this episode.

00:01:35 Casey: All right, so the first thing is there’s a great book in marketing called Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz. My friend Brian Kurtz owns the rights to that book and sells copies of it. And it’s an awesome book. It’s totally worth a read. It’s worth owning it. If I’d like downsize my bookshelf and had just a few books, Breakthrough Advertising would definitely be one of the few books I would keep. And in it, the author, Eugene Schwartz, talks about the levels of awareness that a prospect must have before they buy something.

00:02:07 Casey: And think about you and your life. When you’re going to buy something, first you have to know you have a problem, know that a solution exists, know that there’s a solution that a company has, know all the prices and everything about it, and then finally you can buy it. And when you start thinking through that kind of Eugene Schwartz’s lens, it’s going to allow you to understand why prospects said no to you.

00:02:34 Casey: So recently this happened with one of my CMOs who’s very talented, very smart CMO, just a great guy. And he had a great prospect, kind of get dropped in his lap, and met with the person, and the guy was very eager to move forward. So they started moving forward, and they started kind of talking about kind of what it would include to work together with the CMO being their fractional CMO, and everything sounded good. And then they talked about price, and then everything kind of fell apart. And the question is, was the price too high?

00:03:04 Casey: The gut reaction is yes, the price is too high. I visually saw his shoulders slump when I shared the price. And maybe the price is too high, right? I’m not in that prospect’s mind, but I think there’s more to it than that. So let’s talk about what those individual pieces are and then how you can overcome those individual problems.

00:03:25 Casey: So the first thing is that you can sometimes talk to prospects that are uninterested. They have no interest in what you’re offering. And the reason they have no interest despite having a need, they have no interest, it’s because they are problem unaware. That is they don’t know what problem they actually have. They don’t know that they have a marketing problem. They think, “Oh, well, this agency can do it” or “My nephew runs our marketing. He can do it” or well, “We send a newsletter every month and when we send our next newsletter, it’ll probably fix it” or whatever, right?

00:03:56 Casey: They don’t even know they have a problem. It’s just, they’re living in the state of probably lack of data, lack of an understanding, and no amount of convincing from you is gonna change their mind. It’s like, they just don’t need it. I saw this recently. So someone said a business owner was like, well, I built my first location. Let’s just say they have some kind of local service business, like a plumbing business. I built my first business here, word-of-mouth. And we built it up to whatever, $5 million a year.

00:04:30 Casey: Now we’re going to do it in a new city, a new state. And we’re going to build that one the same way. I know what to do. Well, I don’t know about you guys, but word-of-mouth can build a business. But how long does that take? Like years to do it. And when you want to start in a new city or a new state, like you don’t want it to take years. So from the outside, CMO sees that and we’re like, “Dude, like that’s a crazy idea”.

00:04:53 Casey: You think that you can go from word-of-mouth from going to trade school, and then starting and then riding along on the back of your dad’s HVAC truck, and working and building your business. Maybe taking over his book of business, slowly building it up over the years, five million a year, you think because you did it once, you can do it another time. It doesn’t happen that way. We know that to create demand, we need to, I mean, really just like identify where people are.

00:05:19 Casey: So we have to use the Google search ads and maybe Performance Max and Google LSA, and we got to dominate the map pack, we’re gonna have good on page conversion, right? We have to do all that stuff. But that business owner doesn’t know that they have a problem. To them, their only problem is, “I don’t have enough time yet to focus because the business hasn’t started”. So those people, there’s no convincing. Like you can lay out all this stuff. They’re like, “Yeah, I mean, you might be right. But I’m going to give it a shot on my own first.” To me, those people, you let them go. You say, “Hey, totally get it. Go give it a solid try. I believe in you. If it doesn’t work out, if you want to talk about marketing, give me a call. We can chat later”. All those people, they’re done. I’m not in the business of convincing anyone of anything. I don’t convince.

00:06:00 Casey: The next is, they can be uninterested because they’re problem unaware because their marketing channels are drying up. And the sale is a lagging indicator. So they talk to you, you meet them at a business event or someone introduces you, VCV, whatever. You start talking to this business owner. And they’re like, “Yeah, I mean, numbers are great right now”. You’re like, “Yeah,” but, as you dig in, you identify like their channels are starting to fail. So they’re sending emails out, but they’re like, “Yeah, I don’t know if people are getting them” and like you sign up for the newsletter and it goes to your spam box. You’re like, “Well, that feels weird.” They’re not ranked on Google. Their ads haven’t been updated in eight months. You know, they have a PPC agency that’s not giving them new creative, whatever the thing is.

00:06:45 Casey: They think that things are fine because sales are good, but sales are a lagging indicator. So it might take six months for marketing to generate a sale. Right now sales look good, but marketing’s failing. Give them six months, and they’re going to be in a crisis. Those people are unaware. And it’s not like we can say to them like, hey, you’re about to be in a world of hurt. They’re like, “Nah.” That’s it. That’s like their response to. It’s like, “I don’t think so. I think you’re wrong. I got a gut feeling on this one. I have an intuition that things are okay.”

00:07:19 Casey: To those people, what do we do? We gotta let them go. There’s nothing we can do fundamentally to help someone who is unwilling to see the data or to understand really how their business works and then work on the kind of predictive metrics of success. The leading indicators, which would be lead flow, MQLs, sales calls booked, demos booked, appointments attended, close rate, cost per acquisition, cost per MQL, cost per SQL, those things are the leading indicators. Sales are the lagging indicators.

00:07:49 Casey: I’ve talked to plenty of these businesses when I’ve needed the money and when I haven’t needed the money, and there’s no amount of convincing I can do to make them change their mind. They must run that race on their own. They gotta go get the scars. They gotta go find out that I was right. And like, maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong, but either way, they’re not paying me any money for us to move forward. So these people who are uninterested, you can’t convince them. That’s it, you just can’t convince them.

00:08:16 Casey: Then there are people who are problem-aware. Okay, they know they have a problem. This is a good stage to be in, right? You wanna find people who know they have a problem. You don’t wanna be the person educating them of the problem. The education of the problem is typically quite expensive. So if they are pre-educated that they have a problem, then they just need to know that solutions exist, they need to know about your solution, cost details, etc, etc, right? But at least they know they have a problem. So if you talk to someone who’s problem aware, and you don’t close it, I’m going to bet you go to a place in your brain, in your body, or you say, “They don’t like me, I screwed this up. I’m a failure, I’m no good, I’m bad at sales.” Whatever. Okay? And maybe all those things are true. Maybe you’re a total loser. Okay, I don’t know.

00:09:07 Casey: But I think there is some nuance to this where the definition or the reason that they didn’t work with you is not because you’re a total loser, not because they think you’re ugly, but because of something else, and that’s something that I think we can work on. So if they’re problem-aware, your first thing is are they motivated or unmotivated? Let’s talk about the folks that are problem-aware and unmotivated. Like they know they have a problem. Right? Like someone has a leak in their roof. They’re like, “Oh yeah, we don’t use that bedroom anymore because the water does the drippy thing when it rains.” Right? They know they have a problem. And you’re like, “Cool, can we get the guys up and like check on the roof?” They’re like, “Not now. No, it’s not a good day for me.” Right? Like maybe in your life that feels like a crisis and you would tackle it quickly. But for them, for whatever reason, they’re unmotivated. Tough to get people motivated.

00:10:00 Casey: So if I try to sell, and I think that’s kind of a weird term, but we’ll use it kind of just in conversation. If I try to sell someone fractional CMO services, that’s problem-aware, but unmotivated, what am I doing? What am I doing? Like, it’s like impossible to work that deal. I want to break down some deal stuff for you. 20% of people that… like, opportunities that you work will never close 20% forever never, they will never close no matter what you do. Price, time, whatever, they’ll never close.

00:10:31 Casey: 20% of sales are lay downs. You get on with them, they’re like, “Yeah, can you just take my money and start on Monday?” You’re like, “Sure,” right? Those make you feel like a rock star. You think, “Hey, I just got this lay down sale. I’m the best there is. I’m gonna grow this business. I’m gonna make so much money.” I definitely lived in that space for a minute. I closed like two deals back to back, and I was like, “I am the MVP, I’m the GOAT. I’m gonna make all the money in the world.” And then I had a spell where I couldn’t close the deal for like six more months. Pretty scary, right?

00:11:02 Casey: When you think you have it, you think you have like some magic sauce, and then you realize that maybe you don’t. It’s very interesting. So 20% of sales never close, 20% of sales are lay downs, and then 60% of sales are going to take considerable follow-up. 60% of sales will take considerable follow-up. Just internalize that: 20% of sales, they’re just going to hand you the money, 20% will never close, 60% you got to work hard to close them. Okay?

00:11:28 Casey: What I see happens here is we’re talking really about that 60%, right? ‘Cause this is not a lay down, and I think it will close. It has the possibility of closing because they’re problem-aware, but they’re unmotivated. So you have to then just kind of like stay on them until they have a level of motivation. The failure I see some CMOs make is they just try to push the deal forward. And the client’s like, “I’m not really interested. I get the problem but like, I don’t know, I got other stuff going on.”

00:12:03 Casey: And that’s an interesting place to be. And this isn’t because they’re flipping like the business owners flipping. I talked to a business owner recently, and they were like, “Listen, we got problems with product. We got problems with service. We got problems with marketing. We know that, right? We’re very aware of our three big problems. We just don’t know what we’re going to do next year. Are we going to focus on product, service, or marketing? We could probably focus on two of those, but not all three, right?” So they could be problem-aware that marketing is the problem, but they’re not motivated to fix it because their budget’s all tied up in other stuff. Does that mean that I am inherently bad at selling because I can’t show them the reason that marketing is more important than these other things? No, it’s a very diplomatic democratic process that they’re going through to think through what they need to do in their business to plan for the year ahead.

00:12:50 Casey: And it just might be that marketing doesn’t make the cut. As a marketer, do I think that’s wrong? Yeah. Would I voice that? Yes. But also, I’m not going to take it as an issue with me. I’m not good enough. That’s why I didn’t close. It’s, no, they made a formal decision to not focus on marketing. So if I don’t win that deal, I don’t feel bad. It’s just like, okay, that makes sense. Like knowing what you guys know, and knowing where your business is, and where your cash flow is, and the problems you think you have in the business and the recent appointment of your CEO and all this stuff, you think it’s like product and service right now and not marketing. And then marketing might come 12 months later or 18 months later. Okay, cool. Great. Thanks for letting me know.

00:13:37 Casey: So I start looking at that as, will I even make an offer to work together? I might do like a trial offer like, “Hey, you want me to tell you what this might look like if we work together?”. And we kind of play it out and stuff. And I kind of get a sense. But if they’re not interested, I’m not gonna pitch them. I’m not gonna write an agreement and send it their way. I’m gonna say, “Cool, when do you guys think you’ll be ready to make a decision?” And they go into that 60% slot, which is I’ll probably close them, but it might take me a year or two. And honestly, I might move on past them by that point. I might want to charge more than they can afford or work with a different industry or whatever. So they’re still in that 60% of closeable, I just may choose to close them or not later. This is a really big nuance. This isn’t that I made an offer and someone said no, it’s that they weren’t even ready for the offer because they were unmotivated.

00:14:27 Casey: Okay, let’s talk about this third set of folks, which are problem-aware and motivated. Problem-aware and motivated. They know they have a problem, and they want to get it solved. Great. So why do they want to get it solved? They probably have some deadlines, like a self-imposed deadline. I love these people. These are my favorite. I worked with the company a while back and I was like, Hey guys, like “What’s your why on this?” Like we kind of talked about all that stuff, did the whole [inaudible] thing. And they were like, “I don’t know, we just want to go hard and make a lot of money”. So cool. Why now? They’re like, “‘Cause it’s the right time to do it for us. Just like works out in our life”. It’s like, “Okay, great.”

00:15:03 Casey: I’m looking for like some big – because you know, I learned this thing. And now I want to do this and give back to the community and whatever. They’re like, “No, we just want to make a lot of money.” Oh, okay. That’s like morally neutral. That’s not bad. It’s not good. It’s just morally neutral. It’s fine. Great. That was it. They were motivated. Why were they motivated? Because they were motivated. They just chose to do it. That was it. And I said, we’re gonna do it right now. We’re gonna pull together the dream team. And we’re looking for a CMO that’s going to join the dream team is you. So like, that’s a very different conversation than, “I don’t even know why I’m talking to you. Why would I want marketing stuff? We have someone that runs our Facebook social posts already, you know?”

00:15:43 Casey: Right. You also have someone who set a deadline that’s externally imposed. So what is an externally imposed deadline, the market shifting? Real estate is a boom and bust cycle, right? Shithouse to penthouse to shithouse to penthouse. That’s how they live. If you work with them during that boom, they know, “Hey, this boom is only going to last until the Fed does this with the interest rate or until this COVID money dries up or whatever. They’re going to focus hard, and they’re going to know like now’s the time. That’s motivated. I love that.

00:16:12 Casey: Politics can do it too. Maybe there’s something with politics. Maybe there’s something with regulation that changes. Maybe they just had an investment and now’s the time. So the investor gave him a bunch of money and they have to use it. Remember this, no investor wants to give a company for ease $10 million, and have that company just sit on it for the next five years. They want them to spend it quickly to get a positive result so that that $10 million can turn into more money coming back to them. You really don’t like businesses going slow. So if you see an investment coming, generally speaking, that business is going to move quickly to push that capital out and hire great people and buy media and build product or service or whatever.

00:16:49 Casey: Okay, so motivated folks that are problem-aware are great. These are the ones that you really want, and ultimately the ones that you should be talking to on your calls in-depth. I don’t want to spend time talking to someone who is uninterested or unmotivated. I want to talk to problem-aware, motivated folks. Then as we talk about that, what are the things that matter? Well, are they interested in the solution that you have? They know they have a problem, but are they even interested in the solution? Are they even aware of the solution?

00:17:20 Casey: Sometimes we talk to folks, and they’re spending good money on marketing, and they’re spending it really sloppily. Too much on this agency, too much on that agency, a bunch of money on tools. Some AI person got them to jam up their P&L with a bunch of AI tools that aren’t being utilized. It’s just dumb, but you look at it you’re… that’s a pretty healthy budget. That’s 30 grand a month in budget or 50 grand or a hundred grand a month in budget. You’re like “Okay cool, you guys have a problem. You guys are motivated to solve it. But the solution that you’re using is an adequate solution. Cool. I’ll propose a better solution.”

00:17:56 Casey: And that’s the kind of person that I can kind of campaign, I’m not going to say convince, but like showcase what they’re doing wrong. Right? Like agencies, what’s wrong with agencies? Well, agencies should take a 30 to 40% margin. So you’re already kind of paying a lot of money. If you’re paying a lot to an agency, you’re paying a lot to their profit line. Why not just have a fractional CMO that kind of covers in a lot of ways the fractional CMO’s fees, plus other ways to like simplify, and get a better work product?

00:18:24 Casey: I like working with problem-aware and motivated folks. Sometimes I have to teach them about the solution. Fractional CMO is new, they don’t know about this thing. So then they become solution aware. Solution aware is a killer place to be. You want the people who know they have a problem, know that there is a solution, and know about your solution uniquely. And they want to be motivated. You want them motivated to actually get the problem solved.

00:18:49 Casey: When you talk to those people, this is when maybe you didn’t do a good job describing things well enough or painting a big enough, clear enough picture for them, or your rates were off for a specific reason and they didn’t like it or they didn’t like you. They didn’t like the way you dressed. They thought you were ugly. They thought you were dumb, whatever, right? That’s when that stuff actually matters. Every sales call or conversation before that point, it doesn’t matter about you because it’s all about them. Only at the very end when they have a problem that they’re aware of, they know of a solution, they know about you, they’re motivated, and then they don’t like you, that’s the only time that comes up, right? That’s the only time that that’s like valid information.

00:19:30 Casey: And I’ve never, ever thinking through all of my CMOs, right? I’ve trained hundreds, almost 500 CMOs. I’ve never heard anyone say someone didn’t like me for a specific reason. They might not have believed you though, or thought you could help, or maybe that your price was too high. So here’s a line that I like to have when I go talk about price. I go pitch my price when I talk to a prospect. And when I get to that point in the conversation of what it costs to work with me. Obviously, I want a yes, right? Like, “Yes, I’ll pay you all of the money that you want and more, and I’ll be the easiest client.” That is what I ultimately want, but there are precursor steps to it.

00:20:13 Casey: One is all the things I said, they have a problem. They’re aware of it. They know that I’m a good solution. They’re motivated, and they’re interested in working with me. Those are really good precursor steps, critical. All the stuff that I have to cover before I even talk about price. And then when I talk about price and share it with them, I don’t care if they can pay for it or not. The only thing out of their mouth I want to hear when I share my price is, “Oh yeah, that makes sense.” It makes sense that someone of your caliber would cost that much to do the things that you described for businesses like mine. If you get there, that is a home run. That’s it.

00:20:52 Casey: To me, it’s not as good as cash in hand, like a financial close, but it’s pretty damn close because what’s stopping that person from that point of like, “Yeah, I think you could help me. Your prices make sense. Yeah, that all sounds great.” They’ll just say, “It’s just that it’s the wrong time. I don’t have the authority. I don’t have the money.” It’s those things. That’s it. It’s the wrong time. You’re talking to me in June, and we discussed this stuff in December. So can you wait like six months? Come back and we can talk later then. That could be something they say.

00:21:29 Casey: Or they say, “I don’t know. I just don’t think it’s the right time because we’re doing these other initiatives, and we want to see how they play out first before we think about bringing in a CMO. I want to give my team one more shot.” I talked to a company that I never closed. They liked me. They liked my offer. They liked my price. They were just like, Hey, we’ve got a gal on marketing. She’s been here for 15 years, and we just can’t fire her. We have a loyalty thing here. So we’re going to keep her in, and when she retires, we’ll give you a call. I don’t know if she’s retired. I don’t know if they moved on from that. I didn’t follow up with them. I can’t even remember. It’s like a manufacturing company or something. But I remember this woman only did collateral. She just did like brochures for the salespeople. Never actually did any marketing stuff of value that I thought. So we didn’t move forward.

00:22:19 Casey: But everything was a yes for them, except for some reason they said no, and it was outside of my control. And there’s no amount of convincing or pressure or whatever that I could create to get them to say yes, it’s a win. You want people to say yes to all those things, and then ultimately you want the financial piece to make sense too. But there are all these steps along the way, and budget is critical.

00:22:44 Casey: I wager that you’re not very good at describing how you as a fractional CMO can transform a business. I think it’s something that you’re probably not good at articulating, and there’s like a formula for it. We talk about inside the accelerator, how to say it in a way that feels like you’re singing a song, and people get it and they kind of vibe with it. And they’re like, “Yes, that’s what I need. That’s what I’ve been missing. Oh my God, that’s the difference. This is revolutionary,” right? You want to be in that place, and if you’re not there, you’re just kind of forcing it, and it feels weird and they’re not getting it, and it doesn’t make sense to them. So there’s an elegance to how you kind of present the offer ultimately to them.

00:23:21 Casey: But also at the end of the day, I have bad days and I present offers when they’re not very good and I can still get yeses. That’s because I walked the person through logically every single step along the way. If I was to go and talk to someone who is problem-aware, solution-aware, they liked me and everything, but ultimately they didn’t hire me, and they hired another CMO. After I hear the news of that, I’m going to be bummed. I let myself be bummed for a while, whatever, an hour, right? Just mope around for a little bit, “My god, this sucks.” And then I reach out to them and say, “Thanks for letting me know. Can I get on a call for five minutes? I’m not going to try to sell you or anything. Just tell me why? What happened? What didn’t I do that you wanted me to do? What did this other person have? What was their experience? Whatever. Tell me what they had that I didn’t have so I can get better for the next round.”

00:24:07 Casey: I do that. I find that stuff out, and I figured it out. And oftentimes it’s crazy. It’s like, “Oh, like we really liked you and everything. But this other person came in at half your price.” “Oh, cool. Yeah, great. Good luck,” right? They’re probably not very good if they’re at half my price. That’s how I feel. I’m going to be more gracious than that. But, at least I have the data of what happened. Or they said, “It was between you and someone else. And that person has more experience selling direct to the healthcare space, and you don’t. So we thought we would just go with that person because they seem like a better bet.” Okay, alright. I mean, that’s legitimate. I can appreciate where they came from.

00:24:47 Casey: Maybe they say, “Oh, our CEOs at EO, and this person works with another business owner in EO, and they kind of shared some notes, and we went with them just because they’re in our neighborhood, and we have like another party that’s like vouching for them.” Okay, those things happen. I’m gonna lose that deal sometimes. Sometimes, right? But that’s the idea. I have to know the detail of what happened. If I go all the way up to the top of this podcast, and I go to someone who is problem-unaware and they don’t move forward with me, I’m not going to take that personal because I was never a fit in the first place.

00:25:27 Casey: And also if that person who was problem-unaware and uninterested ran through all the steps with me, and I got them in state and they were vibing with me and they were feeling really good. And they were like, “Man, Casey, I think you got it. Like, this sounds great. Let me go talk to the team. Let me come back to you.” And then they ghost on me. What happened was I kind of got them caught up in this world that wasn’t maybe based on their reality. And the reality might be that they just don’t have the budget for it or the time for it or they don’t want this fractional CMO thing for whatever reason. We hired a fractional sales leader, and they failed, and now we just want to use this agency that everyone else uses or whatever.

00:26:01 Casey: Sometimes you’re on a call with someone, and it feels like you get off that call you’re like, “Damn, that was a good one. I think I’m going to close it.” And then you talk to them again, and you kind of realize you almost got them in a drunken spell where you were like manipulating them. And you wouldn’t mean to. It’s like they were just like, “Oh my god, this is new. This is novel. All the dopamine. I’m feeling it. I want to learn more about this. This sounds great. Cool. Yeah. Let me talk to the team.” That feeling doesn’t turn into someone who is then motivated. They might not be motivated. It’s happened to me recently.

00:26:38 Casey: Someone sent a lead my way, and I reached out to the person immediately, and I found him on Facebook and called him on Facebook Messenger. First time I ever did it. And he answered, “I think I got the lead.” Let’s say at one o’clock and by like 1:05. I’m on the call with the guy. I was like, “Hey, dude.” He’s like, “Hi, who are you?” And I was like, “Hey, I’m Casey. You did this thing. This person passed the information.” He’s like, “Okay, cool.” I was like, “You got five?” He’s like, “Okay, sure.” And we chatted, and man, it was a 30-minute kind of ad hoc call. Super fun, high energy. He was loving it. He’s like, “This sounds awesome. Let me talk to the team,” whatever, whatever. And then he’s like, “Yeah, let’s move forward with the fractional CMO.” And then he just ghosted me.

00:27:16 Casey: And I thought about it, I was like, why did he ghost me? Why did he do that? And it’s because he was never ready. I forced him to think he was ready to make a decision, and he wasn’t ready. He didn’t go through the precursor stages of identifying the problem that he really had, understanding the cost of not getting that problem solved, thinking through the different ways to solve the problem, identifying that a fractional CMO was a good fit, talking to me, knowing that I’d help him find the right CMO. He didn’t go through that process, and I went from zero to a hundred and he needed to go through each step along the way, and it was just too much for him.

00:27:51 Casey: And he was like, “Hey, we’re just pausing this for right now.” It’s not a no, but he’s just pausing it, and it makes sense. So I can’t take that as I did something necessarily wrong. I could have taken it slower, but also in that situation, I didn’t have the patience for it. I kind of wanted to do it one shot and see if we could help him get a CMO. And he wants more time, fine. To send him a copy of my book, send him a bunch of resources, whatever he can consume that stuff when he wants, and reach back out if and when he’s ready. I went fast and hard when I could, and when it didn’t make sense to go hard anymore, I backed off. And we’ll just nurture him, and maybe he’ll be in that 60% that can close. I think he could.

00:28:30 Casey: Let me tell you about another one. One of our CMOs pitched a company that they thought was a perfect fit for them. They were super excited. It’s in the medical space. Doctors are kind of weird. Doctors are really smart, well educated, make a lot of money. But also depending on the size of their practice, kind of regardless of the practice type, being a doctor is like you want to take most of that money home. If the practice is a million dollars, you kind of want to take home three quarters of that if you can, $600,000 of that if you can, you don’t want to take home less than that. So for them adding in a fractional CMO can feel like someone taking their money, which might make sense. They went to med school, they were told you go be a doctor in the US and you can make a million dollars a year. And they’re like, “Not if I’m paying a fractional CMO $120,000 to $180,000 a year.”

00:29:16 Casey: So one of our CMOs was talking to someone, a doctor and that doctor was like vibing again, great conversation. I heard, you know, secondhand here, but it sounded like everything was going really well, and then the deal stalled. And the doctor, the CEO reached back out to the CMO and said, “Hey, I found a $500 a month AI that can do all of this stuff that you said that you do.” “Oh, that’s where you are. Okay, all right, cool. Great, good luck.” I’m not gonna convince you for one second that you’re right or wrong. Just like, “All right, see ya, bye”.

00:29:54 Casey: Like I don’t have the time to show you why a $500 a month AI tool doesn’t solve your problem. Like your problem is a staffing problem, it’s a follow up problem, it’s a lead gen problem, it’s a lead quality problem. It’s a services proposed to accepted problem. It’s a follow up post-services pitched problem. It’s a winning back old clients problem. It’s a bunch of problems, and AI doesn’t do that. Sure, a custom GPT or something could come up with all these ideas. But there’s a difference between the idea and the implementation. It’s like the difference between me watching YouTube, and seeing how to pull a tooth, and a dentist going to school to learn how to do it and then doing it. Right? Like very different.

00:30:42 Casey: So that CMO was like bummed about it. I lost this really great deal. What did I do wrong? The answer is like nothing. It’s just that the prospect, the doctor was just so early on in their decision-making process that they didn’t really consider all the options. And when you propose one that was necessarily expensive, they thought they could solve it in a cheap way with an AI tool. It’s like, “It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s like that person’s never going to be sold. It’s fine.” It’s a bummer. Be bummed for an hour. Set your watch, set your phone’s timer for an hour, and just sulk for an hour, and just be like, this sucks. And then get over it and go get the next client. That’s all.

00:31:25 Casey: And that’s how you got to think of this stuff. Your goal is to be steady along the way. Imagine what happens when we have a market downturn, and you’ve got a high end jewelry store, you’ve got a high-end, like luxury car dealer. They’re not really cutting their prices. They might really some lower-level models that people can get when they have less capital to invest in a nice watch or a nice car but they’re not gonna take the flagship models and reduce the price. That’s how you gotta be steady.

00:31:58 Casey: Your prices are the same as they were or they’re more, they’re never less. You’re just continuing to go steady. I’m gonna add in my next client if they come in, they’ll charge more. For me right now, if I added another client on top of my current workload, which is heavy for me right now, heaviest it’s been in all year, I would charge an obscene amount of money for it because I don’t really have the desire to do the work. So necessarily, I’m gonna increase my price to compensate me for the time that I don’t really wanna spend.

00:32:28 Casey: If someone’s gonna take me away from my kids, and hanging out with my wife – and we just got a new kitten yesterday, and just like hanging out with this little cat, her name is Elizabeth Spaghetti, Betty Spaghetti. If I’m not gonna hang out with my family and do that stuff, you gotta pay me a lot of money. It’s gotta really be worth it for me. So I’m gonna increase that rate.

00:32:48 Casey: So just steadiness here. Hit the client, win the client, serve the client, long-term, multi-year contracts, right? All of my contracts, multi-year, right? That’s what I’m locked into. It just makes everything simple, and just like low stress. Be steady with the people that you’re talking to. You’re not there desperate to sell them. Even when you’re desperate to sell them, you cannot show yourself as desperate to sell them. I’ve been desperate before. Life sucks. Life is hard. It’s also a lot of fun when you’re broke. If you play it that way, right? It’s hard. It’s hard. Like, how am going to juggle the payments to whatever?

00:33:24 Casey: I mean, if you don’t know my story, we moved to Philadelphia. I lost almost all of my business pretty much overnight. It was in the span of one or two weeks. We had a Dodge Durango that we had purchased. We had still had payments on it, and I drove that until the last day before our next monthly payment was due, and I sold it on Carvana. I’m just like playing that game. Then we lived for, I don’t know, 18 months without a car. And then we got a car because my wife was pregnant and we had to take our son to the hospital, and go for checkups and that kind of stuff. Had to take my wife there. So, I was desperate for a minute there.

00:34:03 Casey: I was desperate, and I could never come across as desperate to the prospect. I could never show them that I was desperate. I always had to have this air of, “Cool. Yeah, no, now does it work for you? Yeah, that’s fine. When do want me to follow up? Yeah, great. What about this thing happening? Okay, cool. Great. All right. I’ll reach out then. See ya.” You got to be that person. You got to be chill. You got to be supportive and confident and know your value and not drop your rates. It’s not a big one. I see folks do is just drop their rates. So to that be steady.

00:34:33 Casey: Number two is be relentless. What is relentless? To me, it means you’re not going to go sell 10 different things. You’re going to be steady. You’re going to sell two things, engaged or have to consult. In the accelerator, we do a little bit different, but that’s still good belief there. Just sell engaged or have to consult. That’s it. That’s your front end offer. You have your prices for it. You go after the clients, you sell them, you win them, you serve them, you do the same damn thing every single time.

00:35:02 Casey: Here’s the steadiness. I show up to calls with clients, and they get 100% of me for that time. You spend more money with me, you get more time with me. Say, “Hey, Casey, that’s like time for money.” It’s like, “Yes, it is. But I’ll tell you, my hourly rate is crazy high,” and it works really well for me. Yours can be too, with enough time under tension, you can develop the muscle to be as good, likely better than me in your industry and charge top rates.

00:35:30 Casey: Being relentless is like being a fractional CMO and not giving up, not selling AI services, not being an agency, doing agency work, not saying like, “Oh, you guys need a designer? Let me find one on Upwork and you pay me and I give it to the designer.” None of that garbage. Fractional CMOs, just be the fractional CMO. If you have an agency, cool, bring them in as the agency, have them do agency work, have them leave, treat them as you would treat any other agency. Yeah, you’re going to make a couple bucks on it, cool. But that’s not the game here. The game isn’t to bring in your own talent and have them do the work. It’s for you to be the CMO to chief the work.

00:36:05 Casey: Next is you gotta get yeses and nos. Nobody is allowed to tell you maybe. Nobody is allowed to ghost you. If you have a good quality prospect and they’re ghosting you, show up at their door, figuratively or literally, just go there. I had a guy ghost me once years ago when I was at the agency, and he was an hour outside of my drive when I was driving home to see my folks in Michigan. He’s in Royal Oak or something, something like that. Maybe Livonia, whatever in Michigan. And I went to his studio. I went to his martial arts studio, and I knocked on the door and he wasn’t there.

00:36:40 Casey: So I took a selfie and I texted it to him. That dude followed up with me because I was at his doorstep. He says, “Hey man, thanks so much. Now’s not a good time. I might reach out to you in the New Year.” It’s like, “Great, cool. See ya, bye.” I don’t need anything more than that. Just tell me no. No is a fine answer. I’ll take a no every single day. ‘Cause I know every no gets me closer to a yes. It’s the maybes or the ghosting that’ll kill me because I don’t know what to expect, and I can’t plan my time well.

00:37:06 Casey: We’ve got a CMO in the accelerator who’s got like three or four really great deals that are all kind of on the cusp of closing, and for whatever reason, they’re all kind of like a little bit delayed. That’s tough. It’s tough to plan that. Because all four of those potentially could close. There’s a decent chance that they could all close for him. That happens. He’s going to be crushed. What’s he gonna tell his family? “Hey, guys, I’m going to go check into a hotel for the next month, and work my butt off, but I’ll be making us a lot of money.” Yeah, but that’s a hard thing to do. I’m willing to do that for my family. Not often. But I do that and be like, “Hey, guys, I’m going to just work my butt off here for the next month, really, really hard heads down.” And that’s it. And I won’t do it again, hopefully for a long time, because these clients will then be long term contracts with me, and it’ll be a lot easier after the first month.

00:37:52 Casey: So you want those yeses, you want those nos, no one gives you a maybe it is not acceptable, you go after them, you close that gap, you get in front of them, you do whatever it takes, you text them, you find their phone number and text them, you email them, you call the front desk and you ask for the [inaudible] through multiple times a day – whatever you have to do. Quit hiding, quit being like weak at this. Just go get the damn yes or the no and be fine with the no. In my mind, I get a no, and I’m like, “Okay, cool, next.” And I move forward. It’s those maybes that’ll crush you. Oh, they’re the worst.

00:38:26 Casey: All right, listen to this, nothing I said in here has anything to do with your skills. Isn’t that interesting? Rarely, I would say, does the business talk to multiple fractional CMOs. It happens, but it doesn’t really happen often right now, it’ll happen more in the future. But it doesn’t happen much right now. Businesses don’t talk to like 10 fractional CMOs, HR doesn’t set up 10 fractional CMOs for an interview. It’s… they’re going to reach out to you or they come to the CMOx accelerator and say, “Hey, who do you guys have that would be good for my business,” and we pull together like three folks, you guys do a video pitch out to them and they get to choose who they want to talk to and then interview and possibly hire directly. It’s a great setup.

00:39:07 Casey: So this isn’t about your skills. It’s probably not about the way that you look. Probably has most to do with where they are in the buying process. And I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff that happens behind closed doors that I don’t hear about. But I’ve never heard any business owner talk out loud about not wanting to hire a woman, or not wanting to hire someone who is gay, or not wanting to hire someone who is of a certain race or ethnicity. I’ve never heard that out loud. Every business that owner that I’ve ever worked with always talks about meritocracy, either in that name or just kind of the general idea of it. That’s what they’re looking for.

00:39:45 Casey: So if you’re not closing deals, is it because you’re not talking to people at the right stage of their awareness, and their conviction into solving a problem with a fractional CMO? Maybe, probably. The next one is, are you talking to people that understand that they have a problem and that a fractional CMO could be a solution, but they don’t really get what you’re offering, because you’re kind of sloppy with how you present it, and they just don’t get it. They’re like, “You’re smart, but this seems disorganized,” or “You’re smart. But like, how does this apply to my business,” or whatever. That’s a problem too, that’s going to break down trust.

00:40:22 Casey: Three, your prices just higher than they can afford. Which is not a representation of your prices being too high. It’s a representation of their budget being too small. And that’s it. There are plenty of businesses that can afford top dollar for a fractional CMO. Maybe you’re just in the wrong niche. That could be. I doubt it. I think you’re just talking to the wrong businesses. I mean, there are some niches, they’re going to be difficult just because there’s not a lot of buying power in it, and your fees can be pretty expensive. Also, sometimes your fees relative to other people’s fees can be high, and that can throw folks off. I mean, that’s another conversation. Like kind of how to disarm that objection.

00:41:01 Casey: But by and large, the problem is probably more than anything, you’re talking to the wrong people, or at the wrong time, or who don’t have the budget, regardless of how magical you are. If you’re the best version of the fractional CMO that could be for them, they would still say no to that person because they’re not convinced that that’s the solution for them or they don’t have the money, or now’s not the right time or whatever. That’s probably a lot of it.

00:41:23 Casey: So I live in a world where I can always get better. I can always work harder. I can always get better outcomes for my clients. I can always learn and improve. I live in that space. I believe that, and also I have to look out and see that I even make an offer. Like what percentage of my offers were actually given to someone who deserved it versus what percentage of my offers are people who didn’t deserve it, and then of that percentage that did deserve it? Was it a “them” thing or was it a “me” thing? That’s it. That’s going to help you really understand this market better.

00:42:01 Casey: So much more I can say in this, but I think I should wrap it there. If you want my help, if you want to join Boardroom, let me just read this. So I have the Boardroom WhatsApp. Someone said a message that says, “Love seeing this thread. Also, my biggest client needed another project over the weekend, not in the scope of the retainer, and I was able to push my biggest month yet to go over $50,000 as well. Now I’m thinking I have a week left. How much more can I get?” This person did $50,000 in collections in November, and it’s the 24th.

00:42:36 Casey: We also had a notice from a member. I posted about this in the Facebook group. She said, “Just gotta thank this group once again. I am terrible at sending in my revenue,” – just so you know, I asked for everyone’s revenue every month just so we kind of know where they are. Just to kind of give us a number. She says, “I’m terrible at sending in my revenue, but just did the math for this month, and I’m at 50 grand. No wonder I’m scrambling all over the place. I’ve been saying yes to more than I can handle, but it feels amazing at the same time. Just need to work on better systems. And I just looked at the numbers of unique individuals I directed, advised or consulted this week, and it’s 30 people across seven clients.”

00:43:20 Casey: Think of that, 30 people across seven clients. If you’re leading 30 people across seven different businesses, is it reasonable to think that you could charge $50,000 in that month, collect 50 grand in that month? I think it’s absolutely reasonable. We’re not talking about anything here around manipulating people, tricking them into paying you more, whatever. Managing 30 people is real. And when we talk about small teams, so it’s seven, it’s like four people on average per company. So four people per client that you’re leading, seven clients, that’s a lot. I say three to five clients. I think seven’s a little crazy, but also I think there’s some short-term work in there, which is cool, and it’ll get you some cashflow for the holidays. I like three to five clients. Personally, I like three clients. Three clients gives me a great quality of life, and as long as I just keep increasing the rate at those three clients, you know, every time I get a new client, the rate goes up and I like exchange the lowest paying client with a new higher paying client. Three clients, I can do that in, you know, 20, 25 hours a week and make really good money.

00:44:25 Casey: So if you want that process, you want to understand how we’re doing it, you want to get my coaching like today, I hopped on Zoom with a couple members who had some deal questions around like inking some deals. Or Friday last week, I just hopped on with a couple members and we just had ad hoc calls about the problems they were facing, and how to overcome them. One of our members is in an awesome position right now to close a killer deal with some really significant upside, which I think will get him 50% to 100% more than his initial asking fee because it’s a great opportunity and the client wants him to put some skin in the game, not equity, but skin in the game that’ll get paid out. Let’s say quarterly, really killer opportunities. And these are big ops, I mean that deal alone could pay him a quarter million dollars a year. It’s crazy. One deal working what 10 hours a week for that. It’s nuts.

00:45:14 Casey: So if you want my help, if you want to be in the game, if you want to play, if you want to have fun, you want to be a fractional CMO that actually gets results, delivers great work to clients, has a lot of fun, makes a lot of money gets to have a lifestyle that you want to do the things that you want, come book in a call with the CMOx accelerator. You’ll book talk to my team for like 15 minutes, we’ll qualify you to see if we can even help you. And if we can, we’ll book a long call. And we’ll dive deep and really see what we can do to help you and answer any questions you have and share what we’re doing and see if you want to come in or not. No pressure, right? It’s my whole ethos here. It’s like, “Are we the right fit for you or not?” And if we are, we’ll share what that looks like. And if we’re not, we’ll say, “Cool, here’s a free copy of my book. Take care.” That’s it. Pretty simple. So I’d love to see you, book in a call.

00:45:54 Casey: This is the time right now to be prepped for 2026. I mean really, you can still grab that Q4, Q1 energy, which is the best time to win business. This is it, right? This is when you want to be taking it seriously. So come on in. Booking a call, cmox.co/call. I’ll see you on the call soon. All right, take care. Bye.

00:46:13 Casey: Thank you for sticking around for the full episode. As you know, learners are earners, but you’ve got to take action on what you heard today. For more information and show notes, visit fractionalcmoshow.com. If you’d like me to answer your questions on an upcoming episode, you can share your question at fractionalcmoshow.com. And last, please hit the like and subscribe button so that I know that this content is helpful to you. All right, go get them.