Mia Fileman
Are you tired of empty promises and stolen ideas? Me too. Got. Marketing is a podcast for marketers and small brands who want real talk and clever strategies without the bs. Running an online business is hard, but everything gets easier when your marketing starts performing. I am Mia FileMan, your straight shooting campaign loving friend here to talk marketing, running a business, pop culture, and everything in between.
Let's dive in.
Hello, friend, and welcome to today's guest episode. I have asked back Julia Hewitt because she was one of your favorite guests. In fact, her episode about running discovery calls is in the top three downloaded episodes this quarter. So of course I had to have her back. You couldn't get enough of her. So here she is, sales expert, Julia Ewt.
Julia Ewert
Hi, Mia. Thanks. VE here. I will try harder this time. I'm gonna go for a top one position this time.
Mia
I reckon you'll even get it to be honest. So our topic for today, and we're going to do it in under 20 minutes, is sales versus marketing. How they're the same, how they're different. What's sales, what's marketing? I know you have opinions, so let's just dive straight in.
Julia
If I had a dollar for every time someone said to me, oh, so Julia, you're a sales and marketing manager. Oh, no, no, actually, no, no. I'm not a marketer. I have experience in marketing 'cause I run a business. I do not have any credibility or I. Qualifications. This is not what I do. So they're not the same. And I talk about this an awful lot. So when we are talking about sales and marketing, they, and it's, you know, even, you know, what you just shared now, it's not even sales versus marketing, right? It's sales and marketing. They have to work together.
I use a, uh, like a ratio of communication. So when we talk about marketing, I share that this is a ratio of one too many. One message to many, ideally your target market, right? Ideally, right, ideally. And so we use, uh, and the purpose of this obviously is for brand awareness. It's to drive leads, it's to drive reputation.
It's all the reasons that marketing is a crucial activity, not an optional activity. It's a crucial activity in your business. So it's a ratio of one to many. Sales, on the other hand, is one to one. It's the conversational interaction you need to have with another human to make a purchase. So they are both absolutely necessary, but very confusing to lots of people.
Mia
Why do you think it's so confusing and why do they get lumped together? And this is like a, a real beef of mine. 'cause my dad, he has a factory and it's B2B, so food service and he has just hired a sales and marketing manager. And I've said this to him many times, but I just feel like this person is gonna do these two jobs badly as opposed to being a specialist in one or the other.
Marketing in itself is so big, so broad a role in 2025 that in order to do that, well usually one person, it's too much and then we end up overloading and burning out marketers to then also add a business development and sales role to that.
Julia
Yeah, as you're talking, I'm trying to think of an analogy. It's a bit like saying the doctor that you're seeing is also a dentist, is also a gynecologist and is a podiatrist and a chef.
So, so you can't have one person doing all the things and you know, I know you're a massive advocate Mia, for being, getting a specialist or sticking in your lane. It's not possible for someone to be a sales manager effectively and high performing and a marketing manager effectively and high performing.
It's just not possible. Play in your lane. So people, uh, and, and again, you know, if I bring this back to our audience here, which is a lot of small businesses, right? So in the initial stages where we're, you know, we're bootstrapping it, we're trying to be all things to everybody. Well then yes, that's the exception to this rule.
Yep. I'm sorry. If you're in small business, you gotta suck it up and do everything. And when I started out, no different. I have a CMO now, so now I have a CMO and he's been with me for the last four years and I invest a lot on marketing activity. But in the beginning, you've gotta do it all yourself when you don't have the, um, the cashflow or the revenue to support that.
When we have, uh, a marketing manager, the idea of that is that, is to focus on that brand awareness and, you know, driving those leads and driving that credibility piece. Sales is very, very different. And this is the interaction, as I said before, we need to have with someone in order to make a purchase. And one of the biggest things I hear all the time is from businesses owners.
I'm just gonna get a business development manager. I'm just gonna put a sales person on and my brain and my mouth do very different things. My brain goes, that's dumb. My mouth says Mia. Tell me some more about that. So, yes. So, but yes, my brain is doing very different things. I have seen, uh, businesses, startups, and multi, multi multimillion dollar organizations fail terribly at this. Hiring a sales person is actually not a solution. Now, if you're in small business, we need to learn to do sales ourself first.
Mia
I loved what you said. Couldn't agree more so. I work with small businesses. I completely agree that we need to do everything ourselves first and learn these skills until we can afford to get a CMO like you. But I think it's important to have a distinction between these are my marketing tasks and these are my sales tasks. Because we tend to lump them in together and we think, oh, I'm creating a sales page. So I've ticked the sales box today. Yes. And so the sales, uh, conversation Mia can go in different avenues.
Julia
Right? So again, I can tell you this conversation for people in small business who are selling. Widgets online who never in need to interact with another human. If you don't mind, can we make a conversation today about when we do need to interact with another human? Because if you don't need to interact with another human, that is definitely more of a marketing function with some sales sprinkled in there. No question. But what I specialise in helping people with is when you need to talk to another human to get 'em to buy. I'll talk about why it's important for us to learn how to do this ourselves first. If your plan down the track is, well, I'm gonna get a sales person in, and you have no experience as to what they're going to say or do, and you recruit someone because they seem to know what they're talking about at the interview, I can tell you now what you should do. I'm gonna save you the trouble. Go and take a hundred thousand dollars that you probably don't have. Just do it now. Get a match and just light it up on a pile of smoke now. And what you'll do is you'll save yourself the heartache.
You'll still burn the same amount of money. I'm just gonna stop you, the heartache. So hiring a sales person is a terrible idea if you don't know what to do yourself first. And loads of businesses get burnt with this because they hire someone. This person dazzles them with, with a great resume and they, in more cases, they not deliver nothing.
Why though? Why does it go so badly? Mo, if you were to interview 10 potential salespeople or business development people, I'm gonna hazard a guess. Eight of them, you're gonna go, oh wow. They were really good. Actually those, those 10 people were great, but eight, nine of them, like they were all really, really great.
Our customers would love those. Yeah. These people should never be talking to customers. They should only ever be talking to prospects and they need to find prospects for you. So they should be, uh, having skills to help you find prospects they should be having and demonstrating skills to help you move opportunities forward so you can convert them.
Why this is also a terrible idea if we haven't done the process ourselves first, Mia, is because if you just put a sales person on, what I've seen happen more times than I can count is the, the business owners is right. If I'm hiring you, Mia is my sales person, right? Mia, go and go and do your thing. Well, I just need, I need lots of product knowledge first, says Mia.
Okay, so Julia gives Mia all the product knowledge. So Mia, go, go and go and make some sales now. Oh, Julia. Well, it's very hard because, and so you need to have done this yourself and developed a process first. Hmm, because this is no different to me. And, you know, in a real share, this is, uh, me struggling with my financials over a few years early on and not understanding the financial machine of my business and digging my head in the sand and then putting our CFO on, which I now have an as, an outsourced CFO to help me.
And me not knowing what to ask them or how to guide them. You cannot be in a position where it's the blind leg in the blind. Doing sales yourself first will help you understand what your customers say. What can your customers do? How long does it take people to buy from you? How do you use your CRM to track these opportunities?
So that when you do have a sales person in your business, it is important that we can actually then measure their performance and see how accurately they're performing and we can forecast our, our business accurately as well.
Mia
Yeah. I also feel like the reason why this fails for all the, the reasons that you said, which is super valid, is that often they hire a sales salesperson because they don't have marketing working well, and so then it becomes. What we started this chat, the sales person becomes the marketing person by default.
Julia
Yes. Yeah. And the phrase that I use all the time is, if you're in business today, if you're not talking to people and you're not meeting people, you're not doing business. When I started my business seven odd years ago, I had no budget, I had no revenue, and I left corporate.I'd worked corporate, big corporate for two plus decades. So I left corporate and I had no network. Because when you wear corporate you don't need it. So I left corporate and started my own business and realized, oh man, I know nobody. So I reckon for a solid 18 months I had a coffee Mia with anyone that had a heartbeat. If you had a pulse, I would have coffee with you. I didn't care who you were, who you worked for, what you wanted to talk about. I would just get myself out there.
Mia
You know what that is so interesting you say that because I am starting over with Ripple Festival. And that's what I'm doing. I'm flying to Melbourne and I have coffees lined up because I am, I'm back to hustling, right Julia? Like I don't have the clout and the social proof and the beautiful landing page with all the testimonials and all the case studies of all the wonderful campaigns that I have in campaign Delmar. I'm starting over and so I have boots on the ground and I love it.
Julia
That's great. I have good news. So for everyone who's listening today, Mia, that's sitting there going, oh my God, I don't wanna do sales. I hate sales. I have great news for you. You don't have to do sales. In fact, in replace of doing sales, all you need is a $1 million marketing budget. It's so good. There's good news for all of you sitting out there today going, oh, I'm so glad Julia's telling me I don't have to do sales. You don't. So if you have a massive marketing budget, you do not need to do sales.
In the absence of having that massive and continuous marketing budget. Strap yourself in people you need to do sales.
Mia
So do you know what's so interesting is that there's this really dangerous narrative in the online business space, particularly when we are talking about selling online courses, digital products and memberships, the Amy Porterfield of the world, and they have this narrative of you don't need to do sales. It's all about using your marketing and your funnels and your social media and your kajabi's to be your sales engine. They don't talk about the fact that they do have a million dollar marketing budget. Amy Porterfield has more than a million dollar marketing budget fascinating every single year. And also, can we just say loudly and proudly that the online course Gold Rush of 2018, 2019, 2020, when we were all locked down because of Covid, is now over.
Julia
Yeah, so sales is so important. So, you know, and I, and I, you know, my, my, my second language other than English is sarcasm. So when I say that, um, you know, people don't need to do sales. We absolutely have to. And if you're in business and you need to communicate with a human to purchase, we need to learn.
It's not just as simple as do sales, it's learning how to do sales. This is a skill and a discipline. Much like someone might say, well, I'd love to learn how to use chopsticks. You don't have to say to someone, use chopsticks. Totally. You have to practice over and over again. So, and know what elements it takes to get it right.
Mia
Alright, so let's break it down. What to you is marketing?
Julia
What to you is sales? So for me, uh, in my, uh, when I work with my clients, marketing is all the parts where you don't have to talk to another human. And it's the part of the business. Mia, as you know, I don't have expertise in that space. I just have experience. 'cause I, I run a business, but I don't have any expertise in it. So I'll talk about sales. What is sales? Sales is talking to people and meeting people. Sales is explaining what you do in a way that helps people buy sales is being able to ask exceptionally good questions to uncover what your prospects need.
So sales is also knowing when you, uh, another phrase that I use is, we don't do the show up and throw up. The sharp and throw up is when you turn up in front of your prospect and you vomit your greatness all over them. So this is the equivalent of, uh, if I was, you know, running Ripple Festival. This is Mia saying to Julia, you and, Hey Julia, come and meet with me and tell me about Ripple Festival.This is me sitting down and saying, well. Mia, I'm here today to at Ripple Festival. It's so amazing. We're gonna get this community together. We're gonna have artists there. This is the show up and throw up. This is not how to sell. What we need to do is we need to change the position of this and come asking questions.
So if I was selling Ripple Festival, I turn up with my conversation with Mia and I'm gonna ask her, Hey Mia, what got your interest to meet with me today at Ripple Festival? Oh Juliet. It's because you know, we are Squarespace and you know, we also support small business as well, and we have the same people we talk to.
Oh, why do you think a festival like Ripple. Ripple, you know, what do you see? The upside could be, oh, well I think it would be great, Julia, that you get people together. Yeah. Cool. You know, what other things have you been involved in like this? So we start from the position when we're selling to be curious and we ask really, really good quality questions.
So that's one of the skills or the components of the skills that we need to sell. We need to be able to apply strategic silence, which means when we ask a question. We stop talking and um, and I see this every day and it's, it can be a nervous habit. Many people think they're being helpful when they're prompting someone with answers.
ou're not being helpful. It's a bit annoying, but it's not as simple as saying, just don't talk much like the chopstick analogy. This is a skill we have to learn to, we have to be able to learn to ask a question. Then stop.
Mia
I've been doing it since our last chat, gold Star. I haven't been doing it in discovery calls yet, but I've been doing it in my membership marketing circle.
Because our sessions are quite collaborative. Usually I will run 10 or 15 minutes of training on a particular topic, and then I throw it over to people for discussion. And there are days when the conversation's really lively and everyone's had coffee, and I can't get people to stop talking. And then there are days where everyone is just really, really, really quiet, and I tend to fill in that silence. So I've been doing what you taught me, Julia, and asking them a question and then just shutting my gob and listening to them, and it's been really, really interesting.
Julia
Hey, I'm looking at my second screen now, so you can see I'm disconnected for a sec. I'm gonna show you, a li give you, I'm not gonna show you. I talked to you about a live example one week ago. Someone, uh, sends me a message and the message is, this is the flavor. Now I get this all the time. This is someone who knows me. Okay. And they said, I wanna get your view on something, Julia. I'm, I'm developing a program, I wanna sell it to corporates. It's on this specific topic and I would appreciate you helping me on, on an approach.
And I said, could you please gimme some context first before I agree, you know, agree to catching up with you. Okay, the context is I've observed this gap in the market, uh, which leads to this problem that I've, this solution that I found. And the question is, Julia, with your experience, can you see the value in bringing this to workplaces?
And will executives or organizations be receptive to this? Especially with your experience in sales, how do I best pitch this to leaders of organizations? This was a week ago, so I said, right, I can already provide you some commentary. I said, first of all, you're entering a highly competitive industry with infinite competitors, both with credentials and without.
Second thing, leaders will buy anything if they can see the value and return on the investment. Personal experience. I've said no company has ever put aside a budget to implement a sales process. Many of them don't even know it's a thing, but yet they meet me and they can find six figures for my program.
Third thing, your question around how to pitch it, that's a marketing question. How to sell it is a sales question.
Mia
Ooh, so good. So good. So yeah, you said, but you told me what is sales, what is marketing? And you said that you know, you've got the expertise in the sales. So you talk about sales. So let me talk about the marketing. So I see it as two things. Our first job in marketing is to identify an audience for our products or our services. And if we can't find an audience for our products or our services, we need to create products on services for an audience. Mm-hmm. So it needs to go one of which way we either identify a need or we create a need.
Yes. But we can't sell anything without any demand and Correct. So. The first job of marketing is to identify, demand, and find an audience, and then the second job of marketing is to build a brand because no one likes buying from corporations. No one. You know, NRMA is owned by IAG. I don't know who IAG are.
They are some conglomerate, but we know NRMA, they've got great campaigns. We feel feelings. Yes. Towards NRMA. We have a perception of this brand. I have no idea who IAG is and nor should I. So the second role of marketing is to. Build equity and brand love and like we have that in the Julia Utt brand. We have that in the campaign.
Delmar brand. We also have brand loathing in the campaign, Delmar brand. There are people who cannot stand me, do not agree with my position, then that's okay. I'm not trying to be for everybody. And so then if I was to have a sales conversation with someone. There is an existing recognition of the campaign Delmar brand, which makes that conversation easier.
] So the way that I see it is that it is my job to help the sales function in my business by creating brand equity, brand affinity, brand loyalty, and brand awareness in order to make those sales conversations go my way. More times than not, and it's my job in the sales arena to help you convert those opportunities so you get a very strong ROI on every dollar you put into marketing. So good. It's so much easier to walk into a sales conversation if you've got great social proof that you've collected. If you've got a trade presenter or a trunk show or a beautifully designed pitch deck like we have for Ripple Festival, and then you can facilitate those sales conversations, right. So it's really about coming at it from two different directions and then meeting in the middle.
Julia
Yeah, absolutely. I agree and I do wanna reiterate that it is necessary. So, you know, in my business, as I said, I didn't have a marketing function to begin with. I just was talking to people and meeting people. I would have a coffee with anybody. Now it's the very, it's very opposite. I'm, um, I get, I get, can I pick your brain quite a few times a month?
Approaches. And, you know, sometimes I say yes, most times I, I don't have the capacity, but these are sales conversations and every, every week I have got in my calendar, I market, I, I color code my calendar with, with red opportunities that I'm talking to people who are potentially looking at to engage my services.
And these, what I call, there's a sales meetings or sales conversations. And every week, week on week, I had new prospects that I'm talking to, which come as a result of all the marketing efforts I put in over the years.
Mia
So good. I love that. Can we just end this podcast talking about disastrous sales conversations? Are you game? Ah, I guess why I hesitate Mia is because I don't think I've had a disastrous one. Oh, really? That's awesome. I have, can I tell you about it? It was an absolute shemozzle. An absolute shemozzle. And I wanna use this as an example of why it's so important to have these conversations. So she booked a discovery call for me. I market it as a discovery call, not as a pick your brain session. There's a little bit of like inference there that we are gonna talk about how we're gonna work together. And we get on the call and I run it like I was running it before the Julia Utt special, which is tell me everything about your marketing, how's it going?
It was all bad. All of it was bad. And then I do my a Mia special and I say, you've got a website, but there's almost no words on it. It's all images. And this particular business owner was in a graphic designer. She was in the design space. Oh, I love this person already. Yes. And so, and I said to her, I understand.
Understand why as a designer, it is all visuals. However, the practicality of this is that Google can't even really index your website because there's not enough words on it. There's not enough SEO built into this website. And also, I can't instantly tell what it is that you do 'cause you haven't told me in words, you're just using images and it went so downhill from there.
You have no idea. Because she disagreed with me on every point and then got quite. Visibly angry and very dismissive, and it was becoming quite combative and I'm trying to explain it and stay calm. And you know me, I'm so fiery and I get so loud and I talk with my hands and I'm trying to explain that like I get it, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then by the end it was like no one had any words left to say. It was just a mutual agreement that.
Because we just do not view business in the same way. And she was like, um, obviously I need to showcase my work. My website is a brochure. And I'm like, the fact that you think that your website is a brochure and not a high, not a powerful marketing tool is the problem here. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it was so worth having that conversation to realize.
I don't wanna work with her. Imagine if I had instant purchase and she got yeah. Convinced by my sales page to join Marketing Circle and I was stuck with this chick for six months and Yes, exactly. And this is the thing, we can never have the wrong conversation with the right person. Exactly. Anyway, that's the reason why you should have these conversations, just to see whether you wanna work with this person.
Julia
Yeah, there's a whole lot more Mayor. I could talk about this topic for, for seven hours straight without taking a breath, but yeah, qualifying and happy to have another conversation another day. Qualifying who you wanna work with. I run a module specifically on that, and it's exactly part of it. Part of that does come down to.
Mia
Amazing. Thank you so much for your time today, Julia. Any last wisdom bombs you wanna share with the got marketing audience? It's necessary. People strap yourselves in and and, and it's okay to be in sales, right? Sales is revenue. So you want revenue, you gotta talk about sales.
Julia
Please connect with me on LinkedIn. I do have a website that does describe what I do. I point people towards LinkedIn though, so if I'm you on LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm Julia Hewitt, E-W-E-R-T. Say hello. Tell me you've heard the episode. I'd love to hear something that resonated with you and you know, thanks for having me today, Mia.
Mia
My absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining me once again. I will put all the details in the show notes and just a reminder, 'cause Julia keeps forgetting she's written a book. Oh my God. I've written a book, Mia, from Pitch to Profit. It's sensational if you are. Somebody that would like to work with Julia and doesn't have six figures to invest in her training, but wants to learn from her.Brilliant Mind, please go and get a copy of From Pitch to Profit is. Get the book. Get the book. Well worth it. Thanks, Mia.
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