Jason Mlicki (00:03.086)
So Jeff, I’m gonna give you three things and I want you to try to tell me what they have in common.

Jason Mlicki (00:14.636)
You ready? don’t know if, things might be the wrong word, but they’re three, well, okay, I’ll just name them. I want you to tell me what these three things have in common. Billie Eilish.

Jeff McKay (00:28.893)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Mlicki (00:29.737)
Wicked.

Jason Mlicki (00:33.718)
And the Michigan Wolverines, what do these three things have in common?

Jeff McKay (00:42.28)
They’re not very popular in your world.

Jason Mlicki (00:45.358)
Basically correct. There are three things that are overrated. So in my humble opinion, so three things are overrated. I find Billie Eilish, Wicked and Michigan Wolverines all to be extremely overrated. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to talk about things that are overrated.

Jeff McKay (01:08.872)
So.

Jeff McKay (01:12.306)
Why, why I get the Michigan thing because of your psychological issues, but we won’t get into those. I can’t say that I know a lot about Billy Eilish. Huh?

Jason Mlicki (01:23.053)
Hahaha

Jason Mlicki (01:27.426)
We don’t have that kind of time, Jeff. We don’t have that kind of time. What did you say about Billy Eilish? I interrupted you.

Jeff McKay (01:35.678)
I don’t know her that well. It is a she, isn’t it?

Jason Mlicki (01:40.876)
Actually, I don’t really know much about her. I just know that every time I hear her music on the radio, I can’t take it. I have to turn it off. It drives me crazy. And I don’t understand why this is on any… I don’t know why anybody plays this. It doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s depressing and just awful. And…

Jeff McKay (01:42.525)
Hahaha!

Jeff McKay (01:56.894)
And I definitely get the wicked because I tried to watch that. I couldn’t even get halfway through. That turned it off.

Jason Mlicki (02:02.958)
Well, it’s funny because I loved the book when it came out 20-ish years ago. It was just a really interesting read and how they sort of help the author just sort of bent what you thought of as good and evil was really cool. But then the Broadway show was kind of, I was like kind of underwhelmed. I didn’t really find it all that great. And that I haven’t even bothered with the movie because I just can’t, I can’t take it. I’m like, how are they?

suffered through the Broadway show once or twice. I’m like, I’m not gonna like, you know, suffer through the movie as well. So, and then Michigan Wolverines, I even need to say anything? mean, mean, seriously, do need to say anything? You know, the only thing they’ve ever done in 25 years is cheat. And that’s, that’s the only thing they’ve accomplished. you know, over it. So, okay. But to the point, to put it to the point, overrated marketing metrics. This was, this was the, actually you suggested this topic and I like it. So,

We’re going to talk about the most overrated marketing metrics today. And then you put me on the spot and said, we have to talk about what you should actually be measuring, which is going to be a lot harder for me. It’s easy for me to say things that are overrated. It’s hard for me to come back to what you should be doing instead. That’s hard.

Jeff McKay (03:13.352)
Typical Buckeye fan. Always the critic, never the builder.

Jason Mlicki (03:17.742)
Yeah, the builder, the builder. Interesting. Yeah, just win. Yeah, it’s called winning.

Jeff McKay (03:21.352)
Tear down, not build up.

Jeff McKay (03:27.582)
You know, I’ve got to, I really have got to be more prepared for these cold opens of yours. I got to develop a game face.

Jason Mlicki (03:29.088)
Okay, okay.

Jason Mlicki (03:39.63)
How’d you ever say a game player?

Jeff McKay (03:42.982)
And a game plan, game face and a game plan for where are we going? Whatever comes after. So Jeff, I just never know where it’s going. anyway, all right, let’s talk about these overrated metrics.

Jason Mlicki (03:50.158)
What?

OK, you go first. You go first. You’re better at this stuff than I am. So you start us off. What’s the most overrated marketing metric? Not going have to the most, but one of them. Yeah.

Jeff McKay (04:06.791)
Well, hey, before I give you my first one, let me say why I think this is important.

because metrics are important, right? Everybody knows metrics are important. What you measure is get done, all of that stuff. I get that. That makes a lot of sense to me. But for me, and this is really born out of my thinking around the productivity school and the growth school, and what are you measuring?

And is it really having an impact? And I think there are a lot of easy metrics that are activity-based. How many white papers did you produce? how many downloads did you get or whatever? Those are activity-based. I think those have their place. But what we really want to look at is

Are we having a impact? And most metrics look at activities or they look at throughputs. They’re not really looking at impact. And what I’d like to do is we go into the next year is get people thinking about other ways that we should be thinking and measuring how we’re growing as firms.

And just because you can measure something doesn’t mean that you necessarily should. And because it’s easy to measure doesn’t necessarily make it right. So I hope when we’re done talking here, we give a new context for how marketing, sales, growth should be measured in a firm beyond obvious things like revenue.

Jason Mlicki (06:09.464)
Yeah. Well, it’s funny because, know, for years, I’ve always wanted to find a better, better answer to this question of what should you measure? And and when I say better, simpler, I think is what I’ve always been looking for. That idea of like if if there’s just one thing you measure, what’s that one thing? If you could just measure that one thing, you know that everything else would be taken care of. And I just.

I’ve just found that to sort of be very difficult because every time you sit down with this, it’s really hard to say that there’s really just one thing that you should pay attention to. And, and I always end up with, with at least a handful, if not more. and every time you try to build a dashboard, everybody wants a dashboard, right? You try to build a dashboard, you end up with just so many things on one page and it’s like, well, are you going to take action on any of these things? because they’re in front of you, right? I mean,

I had a call, it’s funny, one of our guests, as a matter of fact, I was talking to the CFO of that particular firm about measuring some of our project client profitability, like how we should go about this. in my head, I wanted this dashboard and I could see it kind of real time. He’s like, why would you want to measure that real time? He’s like, you don’t need that real time. He’s like, the work you’re going to go through to get that real time is not valuable. He’s like, it’s something you might want to measure once a year.

just to see where you stand. And I’m like, It was really eye-opening to me. Sometimes your desire to have a dashboard may not be necessary. sorry, that’s sideways. OK, so let’s start with really what the marketing metrics that are overrated. I know we both made some quick lists. And so let’s talk about that. And then let’s try to get to your point. What can we measure?

to determine if we’re having an impact or not.

Jeff McKay (08:07.857)
Well, my list was not quick. Mine was thoughtful and discerning.

Jason Mlicki (08:12.046)
That’s like everything you do. I would describe everything you do as thoughtful and discerning, my friend. I had another hand sometimes more quick and off the top of my head, right? So off the top of my head, here’s my opinion.

Jeff McKay (08:29.981)
All right, let’s jump in. Number one, overrated marketing qualified leads. Everyone uses it and it is in my mind, essentially worthless.

Maybe that’s overstated. Yeah, for drama. It’s worthless.

Jason Mlicki (08:57.408)
It’s, it’s, it’s funny. It’s on my list too. Oddly enough, it’s the one crossover that we have between our two lists and we did lists of three, but conceptually, I like marketing, well-defined leads. love this idea of paying attention to, how many people have given you permission to market to them that meet the criteria of the types of client relationships you’re trying to build. I love that idea.

The problem I find with MQLs is that there’s not often very good agreement on that. like marketing will just basically count every single person that’s in, that’s completed a form as an MQL just because they completed a form. And so it sort of loses its luster when it’s like, if anybody can come through a form or anybody can be in a database, they’re an MQL, then it doesn’t really mean anything. know? So if you’re not

actually qualifying the leads at all, then it doesn’t really have any value. And then more importantly, I think the other big issue with MQLs is outside of marketing, nobody cares. I have never met a firm leader in my entire life that knows what an MQL is and can give two iota’s about it. And so I think when you’re trying to measure this and report it, excuse me, if you’re trying to measure this and report it,

think you’re just kind of wasting your breath because the people that you report to don’t care about it as a market. So that’s why I put it there.

Jeff McKay (10:37.362)
Yeah, it’s, it definitely falls in that realm of it’s easy. And you described why it’s easy. You fill out a form, you give somebody a business card. you show up at an event. These are leads. They’re not qualified in any way other than they express some interest in a

issue potentially, but you can’t gauge that. And that may be one of 20 people in a buying decision. That’s the other thing that’s really difficult about marketing qualified leads is you’re just a blind man feeling an elephant. You feel a tail and somebody else feels a trunk. You don’t know what the thing is because there’s so many other buyers

Jason Mlicki (11:15.992)
Well, that’s the end of the talk.

Jason Mlicki (11:26.19)
You

Jeff McKay (11:37.414)
and influencers affecting the decision.

Jason Mlicki (11:41.134)
Sorry, the visual in my head was fabulous. I’m sorry. no, no, I really, that’s a great point about it as well. I hadn’t even connected those dots as well. And as we’ve heard, we’ve had Gartner on this call. mean, the average decision-making group ballooned over the last 10 years from four or five people to 10 or 11, right? So if you’re, there’s no.

single straight line between MQL and revenue most in most cases, if there ever was.

Jeff McKay (12:19.026)
You know, I think MQLs are a SaaS or software based concept that trickled into professional services because they’re knowledge businesses. But being able to score a lead on SaaS products is a lot different than scoring a lead for a consulting project.

You know, in, in, in SAS, right? We look at, Hey, they went to the product page. They went to the features page. They went to the pricing page. You know, they downloaded a free evaluation, you know, blah, blah, blah. Right. And you can wait and score those and you have enough volume and enough, causation and correlation to actually formulate what a marketing qualified lead there.

You cannot do that in professional services.

Jason Mlicki (13:20.408)
It’s exceptionally hard and we’ll talk more about this later. With how marketing is changing as a result of AI, I don’t even know how realistic it is anymore. So that’s the other piece of this story. Real quick, I think the backstory at MQLs is they sort of came out of that predictable revenue movement, which was a software movement.

I attended a conference with one of my clients once on this and it was pretty fascinating. There’s just like this room of SDRs, sales development reps, whose job it is to just basically pound the phones and pound the emails to get conversations started for software companies. And that’s really kind of MQL. And really in that world, a lot of SaaS marketers, they didn’t really, I mean, you look at HubSpot, right? I mean, they talk about MQLs, they talk about this stuff.

But I mean, if you are breathing and you submitted your email on a form, they are going to barrage you until you buy or walk away. That’s the model. And I don’t think it’s changed. I’m not sure, but I doubt it’s changed. On my list, I also had likes, just social media likes in general. I’m just not a fan.

And there’s a couple of reasons. One, just feel like it’s a vanity metric. It’s like, they liked our post. And it’s like, that’s sort of meaningless. It doesn’t mean anything about any of the things you’re trying to accomplish in marketing, as you always talk about. If the number one goal of marketing is brand preference, I’d have no idea how likes really relates to that. I also find that when you look at the stuff, the content that gets liked the most,

It’s actually not really congruent with the stuff that drives business. It’s more congruent with stuff around culture and people moving on in careers or life stories. That’s the stuff that really drives likes the most. And that’s really not congruent with what’s going to move the needle for growing the firm.

Jason Mlicki (15:25.986)
And then the other reason actually enough, yesterday, oddly enough, I was on LinkedIn and I saw a post from really thoughtful post from an agency owner talking about how LinkedIn had changed its algorithm to de-prioritize likes and de-prioritize even comments and prioritize saves. So essentially if someone is saving a post, that’s a stronger indicator of its value than someone liking it or commenting on it, oddly enough.

And so really in kind of kind of world right now, I think the value of likes is even going to go down for marketers. So not a fan of likes, dislike likes.

Jeff McKay (16:09.008)
Hmm. Well, how do you feel about dislikes?

Jason Mlicki (16:13.59)
Are they even an option anymore? mean, had them when Facebook first showed up and they rapidly disappeared because for obvious reasons, right?

Jeff McKay (16:15.516)
You

Jeff McKay (16:23.23)
Yeah, yeah, I agree with you on likes. They are a vanity metric. And they really are a manipulation, right? That’s the psychological manipulation of social media at its best. And why would you want that as a core metric? I just, I don’t understand it, but I get it.

I get it, but for the business we’re in, that’s not really important.

Jason Mlicki (17:00.846)
Well, I mean to your point it’s it’s easy and accessible, right? So that’s why it gets measured and gets tossed out a lot. So but give me another one. What’s other what’s another one that’s overrated?

Jeff McKay (17:14.77)
website traffic.

Jeff McKay (17:18.878)
Again, I think this is part of the inbound…

you know, phenomenon. And I’m not saying it’s not important. I’m saying it’s overrated and it’s overrated because I don’t think it gives you the depth of understanding you need in order to effectively drive revenue. Let me give you a case in point. My web traffic was up a thousand percent.

last month.

You know, my regular posting and everything, blogs and what have you. but I had a spike of a thousand percent. I’m like, wow, a blog, blog post must have really resonated.

Well, so much of that traffic when I looked at the website traffic, right? It’s coming from India and China. Right. These are not potential clients. For Prudent Petal. But it’s by.

Jason Mlicki (18:27.31)
Okay.

Jeff McKay (18:38.578)
website traffic. I gave you two more examples. Two of the most popular posts on my website is a post on prudence and prudent decision-making and prudent leadership, which is important to the brand. But the people that are looking that up are not looking that up.

Jason Mlicki (18:56.43)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff McKay (19:07.034)
in order to find, you know, fractional CMO or marketing strategists, right? They’re looking for a totally different search intent. And then the second one, this one is really cute. I had an intern a couple of years ago and when she finished, I asked her that she needed to write a blog post on advice to other interns.

Jason Mlicki (19:20.206)
that.

Jeff McKay (19:36.094)
It is one of the most popular posts on my site because there’s lots of kids out there looking for advice on internships. But I don’t think any of that’s ever going to turn into business.

Jason Mlicki (19:47.533)
Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (19:53.742)
Yeah, it’s interesting because I would have argued tooth and nail that website traffic was a very important metric.

years ago. But I just think the whole kind of change in buyer behavior driven by generative AI search, it’s just not a good indicator anymore of someone connecting with your thinking or, or, because to me it was always about early indications. It was that, you know, the more people that are searching and finding your thinking and your expertise,

the higher likelihood that you’re going to get inbound leads over time, right? And you could draw a direct correlation between traffic and conversion rate and inbound leads and opportunities, right? You could draw that, I could draw that out for every client between 2000 and, you know, I don’t know, 15 and 2022 for seven to 10 years, I could draw that out, but you can’t draw that out.

but even then it was questionable to your point because let’s say you were converting 3 % of traffic in the leads. It sounds awesome. And you said, what’s this put more traffic on this thing? So you go buy a bunch of ads. Well, what instantly happens? Well, the conversion rate plummets to 0.01 % instantly, right? Because that organic traffic people that are actively searching for something that really hungry for that insight behaves differently than the people who are just getting interrupted in their day.

And so it was a blunt metric at best, even when it was at its best. But I would agree that its useful life is really over. Another one I had was media impressions. for me, media impressions always pop up whenever we have a client that has a PR agency where we’re kind of all in partnership together. There’s a PR firm in there, and we’re in there.

Jason Mlicki (21:57.102)
And I just think that what I see out of media impressions when I see this number get reported is it just, I don’t think anybody beyond the PR people would really know what it means. And so it’s just kind of like super opaque. So it’s like, yeah, you got X-mod impressions this month. And I can just see our clients kind of like their eyes glazing over and rolling back in their heads and being like, okay, sounds great. Like they don’t, but they don’t have any idea what the number means. And I also feel like it’s hard to reconcile because a lot of times it’s like, well, if you think about a good, I we had

just we’ve had a guest on about media relations, right? And you think about a good media relations program, it’s doing a bunch of stuff, right? It’s getting you full length article placements or full length interviews on podcasts. It might also be getting you just some quotes. So maybe you get quoted by the journal about the topic, right? You’re an expert, you know, voice. But it can also just be, you know, a press release for a new hire or a client win or something, right? And so

None of those things are remotely equal, but media impressions kind of rolls them together into one kind of blunt number that doesn’t make a ton of sense. And I sell that full on knowing that I don’t understand it myself. So I can tell you right away that someone really understands media relations. Jason, you’re talking about it wrong. That’s kind of the point. anyway, so that’s one that’s on my list of things that I just don’t see value.

Jeff McKay (23:24.424)
Yeah, that’s, that’s like a pseudo, that’s a pseudo may not be the right word. advertising metric, how many people have seen the ad, how many people can recall the ad? those things, you know, are important. but they’re also very expensive. You know, I I’ve been bemoaning the fact with my son as we’ve been watching football.

Jason Mlicki (23:33.612)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff McKay (23:53.181)
I don’t know how many Liberty Mutual and State Farm commercials I’ve seen. I’m so sick of them. I’m sick of them. And I’m sick of the Modelo commercials. They’re just over and over and over and over. And I actually would not buy any of those products. So.

Jason Mlicki (23:57.08)
Yes.

Jason Mlicki (24:19.15)
You’re not going to buy Liberty Mutual Insurance because of the Limo Imo? Come on.

Jeff McKay (24:24.722)
no, or the Geico Gecko. That’s the other one. Man, all of those, you have to stay top of mind. And man, I can’t imagine what their advertising budgets are. It’s unbelievable.

Jason Mlicki (24:36.374)
It’s massive. It’s massive. All right. Well, should we switch gears? Should we switch gears and talk about what you should be looking at? you have one more?

Jeff McKay (24:45.426)
Hey, I have one more. I have one more that I think is gonna annoy people.

Jason Mlicki (24:50.574)
Oh good, oh good. Are you me or annoying people?

Jeff McKay (24:53.522)
Yeah, I think one of the overrated ones, and we’ve even had the creator of this one on our podcast, and that is NPS, Net Promoter Score. So many firms use it. They ask that magic question, you know, how likely are you to recommend our firm on a zero to 10 scale?

Jason Mlicki (25:02.739)
yeah.

Jeff McKay (25:24.368)
And lots of people take pride in that number, what their net promoters are. I think.

Jeff McKay (25:34.719)
I have mixed emotions about this one, because I could easily argue it’s a great one for understanding brand preference. But the way most firms implement it, it’s not. Because they just ask the question, and there’s no substance underneath it to build on the success or to repair whatever’s caused the low score.

And, you know, this is one of the things that came out of our conversation with Fred Reichelt is you can’t just put the question out. You have to operationally change the way your firm operates. And most firms just aren’t willing to do that. Given the BS and PS, right? The structural and cultural issues that exist within a firm. It just doesn’t lend itself.

well to that unless you really have a very strong culture. So I love MPS, but I hate MPS when it’s not implemented properly.

Jason Mlicki (26:44.342)
Well, it’s interesting. I mean, I think that was the essence of his voice on the show, which is that, you know, he recognizes that NPS was implemented incorrectly by just about every organization on the planet. And he’s been trying to sort of reconcile that as time has moved on. would argue, I think it’s also dated from a functional use. I mean, I think we’re just a shout out to our friends at Monewell.

the known well score is going to be a far superior metric to be paying attention to than an NPS score. Because NPS score is based on a survey of what happened in the past. So you’re looking backwards instead of looking forwards. So it’s very structure is actually not very effective for where things are now and the things you could do. So it’s going to take a long time for to, for NPS to kind of fade into.

into history. But I don’t think that means that Reichelt’s work fades into history. I think his work is still phenomenal. And I just think it’s going to be an evolution of how you measure client loyalty. But I agree with you 100%. Love it and hate it at the same time. Hate it every time I’m at the auto dealership, getting service on the car, that’s for sure. If you can’t give me a five, oh, good Lord.

Anyway, okay, so what should we be looking at? What should we be measuring?

Jeff McKay (28:18.238)
You want me to go first?

Jason Mlicki (28:19.512)
Adieu.

Jason Mlicki (28:23.212)
I’m gonna in fact what I want you I want you to take the lead and I’m gonna sort of like fill in the gaps a little bit because I think that there’s a real real thoughtfulness to the things you suggested and some of the things I suggested are a little more blunt and they kind of but they kind of go together so.

Jeff McKay (28:23.452)
ideal client.

Jeff McKay (28:37.63)
All right, so I’ll share my thoughtful and discerning list and you add your ad hoc Buckeye perspective.

Jason Mlicki (28:46.318)
Champions, champions.

Jeff McKay (28:49.718)
as I, as I started to say, ideal client, momentum, are we attracting and capturing our identified ideal client profile? that is our goal is to have more and more. can’t have all ideal clients. That’s just not realistic from a business perspective, but to be able to.

clearly define what the ideal is to pursue it and measure how many of those we are getting and feeding that feedback about what we’re learning back into our pursuits of the ideal client. Maybe we’ve got the wrong ideal client, maybe our message is wrong, maybe our solutions are wrong.

But I think when you look at ideal clients and whether or not you’re attracting and capturing them is a major, major overlooked metric that firms could use.

Jason Mlicki (29:54.414)
Now you’re saying that this is a one client, not necessarily because I would argue, isn’t that what an MQL was supposed to be about? As opposed to be about measuring the ideal clients we attracted. I you’re saying, no, no, no, you’re saying these are, these are clients that you’ve attracted and turned into business or just ones you’ve attracted.

Jeff McKay (30:20.006)
ones we’ve turned into business. Again, the two points on that one. One, marketing qualified lead implies that there are some qualification criteria. Ideal client could be one of those qualification criteria.

Jason Mlicki (30:27.982)
Thank

Jason Mlicki (30:45.006)
Correct. I think I follow you. I always felt like, and this is not entirely true, but I always felt like a marketing qualified lead was all about understanding the firmographics and the demographics of the types of clients you do business with. So it’s like, was like something that was easily discernible from the outside looking in. You could say these are the types of clients we usually work with. Whereas ideal client tends to get into more psychographics and values and stuff that you’d need conversations to discern.

Right. you can’t, you can’t tell this from the outside, look at it, most likely. Um, maybe with AI you can’t, but hopefully you probably can’t. Um, so, and, and so, but you say momentum means change, right? So it’s change in the number change in over time. Is that what you’re implying?

Jeff McKay (31:34.546)
Yeah, yeah. Looking at capturing, attracting more, capturing more and retaining more.

Jason Mlicki (31:35.67)
Okay. Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (31:45.166)
Okay, yeah, I like that. Okay.

Jeff McKay (31:46.674)
Yeah. Next one.

Demand for our point of view. This one is pure, not purely qualitative. There’s some quantitative to it, but are C-level execs or the buyers of our solutions seeking out our perspective? Are they inviting us to the table in the decision-making process ahead of that decision-making process?

Are they seeking us out? What are your thoughts on this subject? Because I think most buyers look to professional services for those opinions because they make the assumption that those are really smart people. They’re working with a lot of different clients. I want to know what their perspective is. Is your perspective the one in demand or is it not? Is it just one of many?

very hard to measure. What?

Jason Mlicki (32:52.92)
How do you actually, yeah, that was my question. How do you do it? How would you do that? I like it a lot. I’m just more questioning how do I put that into action?

Jeff McKay (33:03.24)
Well, I think this is really subjective, but I think close knit firms as part of the sales process would say, hey, the source of the opportunity was a reach out to come in and talk about X. Right. So for me, could be a very simple metric as source of lead.

Jeff McKay (33:33.502)
I don’t know if you would want to create your own, but what’s the catalyst behind a call? What’s the need? But I think that source of lead is probably the easiest way to kind of get your arms around that.

Jason Mlicki (33:51.458)
You don’t mean lead source. mean that you’re implying something different.

Jeff McKay (33:54.481)
Lead, yes, lead source would be the industry nomenclature for it.

Jason Mlicki (34:00.78)
Where it, you’re saying where it came from?

Jeff McKay (34:04.38)
Yes. Yes.

Jason Mlicki (34:05.398)
OK, OK. And I think here you’re sort of implying inbound versus outbound. You’re saying that the client’s coming to us, not us chasing them down. OK.

Jeff McKay (34:10.662)
Yes, very much so.

Jeff McKay (34:15.762)
Yes. Yes.

Jason Mlicki (34:18.53)
Yeah, no, I think that’s a good one. There’s probably some, you know, there’s probably some custom mechanism you would create to really measure this. Cause I think some of it could also be search trends to some extent. If your, if your point of view is pervasive enough, right. Is, you know, is it trending up over time? There’s probably something to that. you know, back, we were talking about lead scoring earlier and something I used to do, I haven’t done this.

I’m just saying more, but back in the, automation was, was burgeoning and lead scoring was huge and your point inbound movement was big. One of the things that we would do is we would look at every once in a while, I would look at, the opportunities that we won, the clients that we wanted, the clients we didn’t win and how engaged they were with our stuff. And what we found was the ones we won were inevitably more engaged with our.

sight and our thinking, which is sort like an engagement metric. But it was sort of like, again, demand for our point of view. Clearly, the one that worked with us is leaning in, nodding their head, reading stuff, saying this is really interesting. We like these people. Let’s talk to them. And the ones that maybe burst on the scenes through a Google search or an ad or something and rammed their way through a forum and had a quick conversation never went anywhere, right? Because they’re not. We’re just one of many.

and your kind of brand model that you talk about. So keep going, give us another one. I think you’ve got more.

Jeff McKay (35:54.334)
The next one, I have to look at my list. What’s that?

Jason Mlicki (35:55.022)
Sorry, I took you off your game there.

I said I took you off your game. I was moving too fast on you.

Jeff McKay (36:04.522)
yeah. Well, I was going to say just to round out that conversation and tie it back to the marketing qualified leads. I think the best way to measure marketing qualified lead is to have a form on your website that says, hey, I want somebody to call me. I want to set a meeting. Right. That to me is the only real measure for most firms of a marketing qualified lead.

Somebody who’s raising their hand and saying, I want to talk to somebody.

Jason Mlicki (36:37.922)
Yeah. See, I don’t want to get too cemented. I would call that a sales ready lead. I talked about that recall. So someone who’s saying they want to talk with you, that’s a sales ready lead. They’re ready for a conversation. it’s very feasible that there’s like potential client that is qualified. They’re the right fit for us, but they’re not ready for a conversation with us necessarily. That would be, and that would be going back to when I said, I don’t like MQLs as a metric. think they’re overrated. It’s because I do think that they’re just misapplied.

And to me, that’s the key there is that difference between qualification and sales ready. I think they’re two different things. So if you’ve got a holistic lead model where you’re looking at the leads we generate, are they qualified? Are they sales ready? And you’re looking at all those things. That’s a really great way to think about this. I have not met too many firms that do that very well. Because it’s hard. That’s not a criticism. It’s just really hard.

easy for me to say that that’s the right way to do it in practice a lot harder than than saying it.

Jeff McKay (37:43.487)
Well, that’s a good segue into my next one, because my next one is sales velocity. How fast are we qualifying leads, right? If somebody’s sales ready, they’re coming in, we’re qualifying them for Bant, and then moving them through a sales process to close and implementation. And what we want

Jason Mlicki (37:58.392)
So.

Jeff McKay (38:11.32)
is to be shortening that sales cycle because that’s faster time to revenue. But it also means that the work that we’ve been doing educating clients up to that point is much more effective. That our sales process is much more effective. That we’re not having to spend weeks educating a client on the firm or our methodologies, but that we’re getting down to brass tacks.

about what the issue is and our approach to solving it proposal rock and roll, you know, and I don’t know anybody who doesn’t want sales cycles to be faster.

Jason Mlicki (38:56.546)
Well, I love that one, by the way, because when I said what should you be measuring, I lumped in a bunch of stuff that I always think about opportunities, pipeline, win rate, revenue, like all that stuff. But really, sales velocity captures all of that in one kind of metric where you’re looking at all of that. And I do think, you know, a lot of marketers that probably listen to this show, they may not have like

business development responsibility or like kind of that type of role. Whereas like you and I do because we’re small business owners, right? At the end of the day. And so you and I are the, often one of the, not the first, the key point of contact throughout the sale for a prospective client. And I can tell you with full honesty that there’s a, there is a clear correlation between sales velocity and a win rate and success. Right? I mean like,

faster someone moves through that journey, the more likely they are to go ahead and move forward with you as a firm. so paying attention to that makes a ton of sense because, and it’s not about rushing the client. I I always say, can’t sell professional services. You just have to enable clients to buy. But to your point, the way you framed it is really good is we’re doing a really good job of enabling them to buy if they’re moving through that process faster.

Jeff McKay (40:31.806)
Two more, and then we can wrap up. Client penetration. Are you landing and expanding? And if you’re expanding, bringing new capabilities, solving new issues, that to me says that the client trusts you, that you’ve proven yourself, that you’re bringing.

those brand preference drivers, right? You have the expertise, you’re demonstrating impact and results. And clearly you’re easy to do business with and you’re in sync from a Simpatico perspective that they’re like, yeah, let’s keep working with these guys. They’re good people. So I think client penetration is really important.

Jason Mlicki (41:25.038)
And here you’re talking more about expand, right? The idea that maybe a client is working with your firm for more of your broad suite of capabilities, right? A lot of times it’s, if you have a multi-practice firm, they’re working with multiple practices, perhaps they’re working with the tax team and the audit team and the technology consultancies, and they’re working with the value creation guys. It’s much more involved, right?

Is that essentially what you’re kind of saying? OK. Yeah, no, I like that a lot. In the agency world, I remember years ago seeing a consultant to this industry that I work in and saying basically that one of your goals, to your point, is your most healthy relationships are using more of your services, right? Super simple concept of way of looking at it. If they’re just using one service, well, then how can you

Jeff McKay (41:56.594)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (42:22.358)
you know, broaden the relationship so you can increase stickiness and create more value and all those things that are involved into your point. You you’ve earned more trust. So I like that a lot. So, okay.

Jeff McKay (42:35.922)
And then the last one, this one goes without saying, I’d save the best to last, guess, is you have to be measuring brand preference. That’s the outcome we’re trying to achieve. Those brand preferences driven by expertise results in Simpatico. Is your firm delivering those in a way that clients are saying, yes, you stand out in these areas?

And those get measured in some of the things that we’ve already talked about. You know, the demand for the point of view, NPS measuring, you know, perhaps outcomes and relationship management. But you need to be looking in the ideal clients as well. Are we capturing more of those? But this concept of the goal is to be the preferred

brand, right, to be the choice. Will we ever achieve it? Probably not, but that’s the pursuit nonetheless.

Jason Mlicki (43:44.684)
Yeah, and so you’re saying this is not a survey instrument or a blunt instrument where we’re measuring, you know, consideration and awareness and preference. You’re saying it’s sort of a combination of all the prior metrics sort of rolled together in one almost index, if you will. It says, you know, this is how we’re accomplishing, how we’re performing in all these areas.

Jeff McKay (44:11.41)
Yes.

Jason Mlicki (44:12.524)
OK, yeah, I like that. Yeah, as you know, I really like this notion that you talk about that the number one goal of marketing is to drive brand preference, marketing with a big And I’ve thought a lot about that since you first said that. But I’ve struggled with how to articulate how to measure it, right? Because my initial thought was, you run a survey on some

relative frequency the same way you do NPS, right? And you’re asking clients about, and prospects about, you know, are they aware of you and certain, your services across certain areas? would they consider you? Would they prefer you? Those types of questions. And we’ve actually done that once or twice with clients. And it’s been interesting. But it’s only as good as the point in time as the survey, right? And the quality of the respondents and whether or not they took the time to respond and

you know, kind of full circle on your NPS comment when we’ve done them for ourselves. One of the things I’ve noticed is that they’re always a little inflated because the clients that I know are disengaged don’t even bother to respond. So clearly the NPS number is going to be higher because they didn’t they weren’t there, you know, and I know who they are. It’s not like I were, you know, it’s not a giant organization here. So it’s easier to kind of say, I don’t think that client’s really engaged with us right now. I don’t seem real happy. So yeah.

Jeff McKay (45:20.228)
Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (45:38.028)
interesting. All right. Well, I guess maybe let’s wrap it up with closing thoughts. What would you do differently going into 2026 if you were a managing partner or a marketing leader in a firm and you’re thinking about how you measure your impact? What’s maybe the best place to start?

Jeff McKay (46:03.538)
think be very clear on what the ultimate outcome is. And most people are going to say it’s revenue, revenue increase. Revenue comes from a lot of different places. It doesn’t just come from marketing qualified leads, but marketing qualified leads are overemphasized again, because it’s simple and it’s measurable. Expand your thinking about

what really matters in driving long-term revenue and brand preference and start looking at some of those impact metrics that are harder to get to, that are a little more qualitative than quantitative, but are every bit as relevant to moving the ball.

Jason Mlicki (47:01.816)
so I don’t need a 25 point dashboard.

Jeff McKay (47:09.104)
I’m not saying neglect looking at your website traffic or impressions. These things are important. They aren’t the most important.

Jason Mlicki (47:19.278)
Fair point. All right, well, thanks. This was a great topic. Thanks for talking.

Jeff McKay (47:28.35)
All right, see you buddy.