1911 – Unlock the Potential in Businesses with Kyle Mealy

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1:06With us right now, Kyle Mealy. Kyle, you are the CEO of Next Level. You are found on the web at readyforthenextlevel.com. Kyle, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh. I'm really, really excited to be here. Absolutely. All the way from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a place where I've spent a little bit of time. Well, Kyle, tell me a bit about what you do with Next Level. Sure. Yeah, I saw this weakness in the B2B and small business space, those under$10 million. They can't really afford a full-time marketing exec or even a high-powered fractional marketing exec. They can't afford a full-time sales exec.

1:42They need both. And there are not many people who can do both. And so I built a formula in some past successes I've had. And now I come as a fractional small business chief revenue officer to do marketing and sales, and that drives new revenue. Wow. Tell me a bit more about the kind of the roles and responsibilities, because usually I think sometimes when we think about the roles of a CRO, sure, kind of mindful of sales, but mostly they're there to make sure that the books work. I don't know. Maybe you could just kind of give us just a bit of an overview of all of the, you know, typically, you know, what a CRO would be concerned with day to day.

2:22Yeah, there's a lot of ways to describe a CRO. And so the place I'm carving out in this little world, in this modern world, is living in the marketing and sales side of the equation. I wrote a really interesting article about, you know, the CRO and the CFO, the new power duo. Normally, your finance people and marketing tend to be at odds because one wants to spend, one wants to save. And so I think of myself as like the profit-oriented revenue leader. So I'm going to really look at margin first and then build a battle plan that's really profitable. So I end up sitting over marketing and sales seats.

2:58But the CFO and I are friendly because I'm not spending money just because I need to build brand. And Kyle, what types of companies do you work with? I keep niching into a very simple lane. They are monthly recurring revenue or they have a high ticket project. You're talking, you know, if it's a monthly recurring revenue, a couple thousand a month or big projects, right? Twenty, thirty, fifty thousand dollars. They're in the professional services space. You know, they have a technical product or some sort of complicated product like people and they're B2B. And so generally they're under 10 million.

3:33So pretty specific little world I live in. And I've kind of built my whole formula around, you know, succeeding in that world and have started to, you know, see a lot of different ways of leveraging it in that space. And it keeps coming up, you know, aces. Yeah. Tell me about the world, because I don't know if you've dabbled in B2C, but tell me about your observations of working in the B2B world. Yeah. When you start getting into the high ticket, right, you're starting to talk thousands a month. You know, those are decisions that are made usually in small business world by CEOs or or at least some other level of executive team, right?

4:08You have a COO or a number two leader and a CEO making decisions. Those folks are hard to crack into, right? It's hard to get a time with them. And they require a ton of trust because the product is so expensive, relative to their size. Whereas B2C, it's more of a knife fight. Like I always think of B2C as a knife fight. Your price, delivery, and then you're trying to do features and benefits. It's more of a marketing approach when it's B2C, especially with the power of digital. When you talk about B2B and these kind of expensive products, you've got to manage a marketing funnel. You've got to create awareness to your product and trust all up here.

4:45And then you've got to carry that message. You've got to carry that simplicity and education of your prospect all the way through sales. And what I keep finding is that most businesses have a leaky funnel or a leaky sales pipeline. And so I just kind of put all those together in one simple way. Because when you're small business, you need simple. You don't need complex. That's true. So in terms of tactics, are there typical things that you ultimately say, okay, we're going to start needing to do more of this? Anything you see, like here we are in the middle of getting toward the middle of 2024, things or activity that seems to be working well for a lot of B2B?

5:28Yeah, B2B, it keeps coming back to, I have like what I would call strategies. And then I always put strategies in front of tactics, right? So the clear tactics that I love and spend a lot of time on is LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is still undervalued tool. And then SEO is still undervalued, right? Because those are both traffic generating into target audience. And you can be really specific with what you're trying to do with both of those tactics. But I think about, you know, when I really think about strategies, the two things that are in my formula, one, it's something unique. I call it the revenue strategy statement.

6:04And so what we do is we're going to write down our unique opinion, and we're going to use that in every sales and marketing decision we make. So we're either achieving this revenue strategy statement or we're not. So one that I really love for one of my clients, now they're more on the B2C side, but whatever, they have to drive visibility to these trail guides that they make. So it's playful, it's cute, but they are not well known in their space. So drive visibility, you know, pushes us towards going up funnel, you know, working through Facebook, which is better for the B2C side. And so once we have this revenue strategy statement, then we can start to pick tactics.

6:42We can start to say, okay, we're going to do LinkedIn, you know, thought leadership, because we can explain this better that way. Or, you know, there's other, like then there's tools of expanding your network really fast on LinkedIn. So it's usually some, like that's my home run is going into LinkedIn about three or four different ways. Yeah. And do you find like when you're working within an organization, you're kind of embedding yourself, obviously, you know, as a fractional leader, what is that transition usually like when you come in? Like how do teams adapt to you? Do you come in and start cracking the whip and some people don't like you?

7:19Or like, what does it usually look like? I would hate to say that people don't like me, but I'm not going to ignore that I'm a change agent, right? Like, and you know, where I come in is I always come in and I start talking about reality. And I talk about reality, not in a subjective way. I talk about it in an objective data analytics way. Again, back to why CFOs tend to love me is because I'm going to look at the numbers and the hard numbers and actually, you know, just ask questions around them. and that's when it gets uncomfortable is when I look at our reality and I say, okay, you know, one of the things I do is a, is a special metric that, you know, I put into place for many of the businesses I work with.

7:54And it's like, our efficiency right now is low. Like that can't change. We're not healthy as a business. You say you, we need more marketing, but we can't afford it until we change this number. So what's the plan to change those numbers? And then I start to get a really good assessment of what kind of skills and know how and experience I have in there. and before I cut, I coach. I always coach because I think everybody shows up to work wanting to do a really good job. Nobody shows up to work trying to be bad. So that usually means there's an education gap or an accountability gap. So before I cut, I coach.

8:27Now the coaching cycle, depending on kind of the risk to the business, you know, shortens and the intensity increases because at the end of the day, I'm a cost. I look at myself as a cost and I have to drive an ROI. And if I'm holding on to someone who isn't going to get there in the timeframe we need. Well, that's when, you know, obviously we have to have those tough conversations, but I think that's the value I bring is a separate set of eyes, you know, that can look at it with numbers versus, you know, sometimes small business owners to a detriment treat their team like family. And at the end of the day, like if you want to go where you want to go, Mr.

9:01CEO or Mrs. CEO, this person isn't going to get you there. How might an organization or a leader know they are ready for a fractional leader? The two that I always run into is, you know, the visionary is or the CEO keeps finding themselves going into the marketing room and like saying, we don't have a marketing strategy. The other is they're still in the sales seat in some way, somehow. Now, sometimes, you know, CEOs like being in the sales seat, but there's also CEOs who have to be in the sales seat. And if you have to be in the sales seat or you have to interrupt or do stuff with marketing, then you call me.

9:42Yeah. And, you know, in terms of like the, you know, the opportunity to now bring in a fractional CRO, I mean, obviously, you know, if you think about the stages of business, right, there's, I'd say, you know, in terms of the money side, you've got your bookkeepers, you got your tax, you know, advisor and, you know, someone that's helping you with taxes, right? And then, you know, accounting. And then there's that jump to bringing in a fractional leader. And then, of course, you know, a full time CRO. I guess, you know, in terms of investment, obviously, you know, there's how expensive is it to bring in a fractional CRO?

10:20Not just you or, you know, you know, just. It's interesting because I don't I've looked there are not many people doing what I'm doing. like truly I've tried to find them in the marketplace you know generally CROs are kind of bucketed into more of a sales seat and more of like a sales ops customer relationships upselling that's not me I like to think of my flavor as a marketing oriented yeah CRO and I kind of work on that front end of the funnel and and there's not many people doing that in small business because small business b2b marketing is just kind of this question mark now you might have a good salesperson who can kind of carry it the rest of the way.

11:00But to more specifically answer your question, I found when I was going in and doing my research into this space, there was fractional chief marketing officers that were 10 to 15K. Well, they only solve half of the revenue problem. I literally think of it as marketing plus sales equals revenue. So they don't solve half. Okay, well, now you need a salesperson, a decent salesperson in B2B and gosh, in 2024, you're paying 120 and that may be before comp or before bonus. And so now we're talking about 25 ,000 just to have two leaders and to have two leaders like that goes well. Two captains on a boat always works.

11:35So I come in at about 10 ,000 a month because I know for most small businesses, that's what they can afford. And the other thing that I do that I don't think most do is if I could show you my hands and they would be dirty, but keyboards don't really carry enough dirt. So I've been there. I love the kind of the fresh business who's like, we kind of have done stuff in marketing, but it's kind of okay. And it's like, okay, I put on my gloves and I get to work. So I do the lifting, which is a little different. So again, I landed that 10K because I know that's what can be afforded. Yeah, right. And obviously, investment in you, if you're a pro growth leader, then you're going to come with inevitable ROI.

12:19Otherwise, there's no point in investing in you. Yep. You just, that's the whole thing. Yeah. I look at myself as a call center on day one, which that means I have to work quick. And so that's one of the things, because in the way I'm going to score myself and present, you know, to the, cause most small business teams don't know what to put in marketing. They're putting like impressions from their websites. Like, that doesn't mean anything. And so I bring metrics that mean something. And it's a measure of our success in the revenue department, marketing, sales, me. And I immediately, you know, every business, when they start with me, they take a hit because I'm a new cost.

12:55And then I've got to get us out of that. You know, I take a step backward. And so it's on me to drive two steps forward quickly. I would imagine any case studies come to mind of someone that you've worked with and kind of what you guys were able to do together? Yeah, two really fun ones. I'll share the first one because they've been a lot of fun. Really well-known player in a community, but disjointed from a marketing and kind of like how to connect it to sales. So they didn't really say, you know, what they did well. And so one of the other things I bring besides the revenue strategy statement is I bring this idea of we have to formulate a unique opinion in business space.

13:30We have to have a unique thing. And what does that really look like? There's a lot of recruiting agencies out there. And they all try and, you know, we understand people, we're good at finding people. It's like, no, no, no, no. What do you do better than everybody else? More than like a feature and a benefit. Let's drill in. And so I spent a lot of time with the CEO and they had a sales leader in that space too, saying, we're going to focus on one thing. We're only going to focus on it. And it's because it's what we're the best at. And so we put together a whole campaign around that. We actually created a day for the executive hire that they're the best at.

14:07And we had about, I don't know, 30 ,000 engagements on it. It was crazy. We kind of had a little viral moment. And what do you know? Their leads have now doubled. Weekly leads have doubled. They went from six to 12, and they're selling a$27 ,000 project. And their close rate is still staying at 30%, even with the new volume of leads. So, I mean, we've added almost a million in bottom line in six months just through adding real strategic marketing and sales. Nice. That's a fun one. Yeah, indeed. Your website, readyforthenextlevel.com. And it looks as though you may have some good resources. I'd recommend connecting with you on LinkedIn.

14:44But, you know, someone's been listening to our conversation and, you know, maybe they'd like to learn more. I don't know if there's any kind of pillar content or maybe a particular article from your blog or, well, how about your book? Which is coming soon. It's so close. I can't even tell you how close it is. I actually had a full manuscript and had to walk it back because it wasn't where I wanted it to be. And so kind of iteration too, but I'm much happier with it. It is the formula. It is the recipe. One of the things that if anybody reaches out and mentions your podcast, I will give them what I call.

15:17It's one of my tools. It's called the Revenue Cascade. And the Revenue Cascade is a way to look at your marketing funnel and sales pipeline in one clear view. Because most of the businesses I work with, the CEO comes back, I've got this tactic I want to try. because I saw it on LinkedIn and then they shove it into the program and then kind of chaos rains. And that's where you get all these kind of random things going on. But this allows us to look at the whole funnel and pipe at the same time and then target actions to fix certain pieces. So I call it the revenue cascade. I've got a PDF and a one-sheeter I can share.

15:50Not a one-sheeter, but a worksheet that you can work through to see your revenue cascade. Yeah. And where is that? So your website, readyforthenextlevel.com? Go to me on LinkedIn or reach out to me on Next Level, correct. Ah, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it. Okay, good. So in terms of like what you see on the horizon, you know, just you do this day in, day out. Any major trends that you would say, yeah, I would really, anybody, whether you're working with me or not, here's what I'd recommend you pay attention to over the next six to 12 months. Two things that are going on. So I'm going to, you know, it's kind of, you know, late or mid or early quarter to 2024.

16:29So I'm going to timestamp this and let my future casting go. We're seeing a slowdown. Like I think across all the clients that my team and I work on, we're seeing kind of a slowdown and extension of sales cycles. So that's one trend I'm seeing. And I expect that to continue into quarter two here. The other one is, is in, it's, it's just starting to boil and I'm trying to push it out there because I believe in it so much, is we've got to stop segmenting sales and marketing and small business. We cannot silo them anymore. The whole world has globalized. We are more interconnected than ever, and marketing and sales need to be interconnected and thought about as one department.

17:05None of us can afford a separate marketing and sales department. We just can't. So if you think the amount is integrated, you're going to increase your efficiency, decrease the friction, and move faster. So stop calling it sales and marketing. Start calling it the revenue department because at the end of the day, they're both trying to do revenue. I like that. I like that. All right, good. Okay. So again, your website, readyforthenextlevel.com. And again, you've got a contact form there and then certainly through LinkedIn as well to get those resources that you shared earlier. And any idea on the book, proposed title or anything like that?

17:41It's the next level formula. Can you tell there's a theme? I'm trying to be really consistent. My And my unique opinion, like, and the fun part for me is I do my own thing, right? So I have a fractional CRO for my business because I'm a small B2B business that's professional service, that's monthly recurring revenue, high ticket sale, right? I do my own stuff. And my unique opinion is this marketing plus sales equals revenue. And the book is literally my process. Like one of my core values is I give more than I get. So I'm literally going to like write down everything I do. And that's what the book is.

18:15my team has put a deadline for me to finish the manuscript at the end of the month. And I think that is very realistic. So, all right. Well, Kyle Mealy, fractional chief revenue officer and founder of Next Level. You're found on the web at readyforthenextlevel.com. Kyle, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Josh. Really appreciate it.

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