Episode Transcript
Adam O'Leary (00:01.934)
If you're a business owner struggling to create predictable and scalable revenue systems without relying on guesswork, then our guest, Jan Menzwell, is about to give you a simple win you can implement today. Jan Menzwell is the CEO of My Lean Consulting, where she builds revenue architectures that help companies turn marketing into a measurable driver of growth.
She's known for cutting through complexity with clarity, storytelling, and strategy that actually moves numbers, not just narratives. Jen, so excited to have you here, really looking forward to this.
Jen Manswell (00:35.096)
So happy to be here. Thank you so much, Adam.
Adam O'Leary (00:37.91)
Absolutely. So I've heard you discuss how growth isn't guesswork and that many businesses struggle with unpredictable revenue. Can you explain why having a structured system is so crucial for achieving consistent growth?
Jen Manswell (00:51.214)
Sure. So the thing is that without structure, revenue becomes emotional. know, one good month feels like hope, one bad month feels like panic. You go into feast and famine mode and the business can't survive on boot swings. A structured system removes the guesswork. It aligns marketing, sales, operation and finance around one clear revenue path.
And every part of the business knows how revenue comes in, how leads move, what the next step is, and where the bottlenecks are. That is, consistency becomes the natural outcome, not the exception. Predictable growth only happens when a business shifts from effort-driven to system-driven processes.
Adam O'Leary (01:35.98)
I love that. So this is very fascinating to me because I mean one thing that happens with business owners all the time is that it seems like there is that mood swings that you're talking about. It's like all of a sudden there's not enough leads where like once a client leaves there's not enough leads and then all of a sudden now they're too full and it's just this constant roller coaster that they're on. And so one thing I want to talk about with you is a trackable system. What would you say would be the key steps to set up marketing activities that clearly lead to sales opportunities?
Jen Manswell (02:06.03)
It starts with treating marketing like a pipeline, not a collection of activities, which is typically the way businesses see marketing, right? And there are four steps to doing so. First, you need to define one clear audience and one clear problem that you can solve. If your messaging is broad, your pipeline is weak.
Secondly, you build two to three consistent marketing rhythms, is activities that are reflective of who that audience is and where they assemble. Things you do every week, not random tactics. Then you tie everything together, every marketing activity to a measurable point in the pipeline. So every action should lead to awareness, interest, engagement and opportunity. And finally, you use data to decide what continues
and what you leave behind. If it doesn't create movement towards a sales conversion, it's noise and therefore you let it go. When marketing is trackable in that way, it stops being busy work and becomes a repeatable lead engine.
Adam O'Leary (03:14.751)
Absolutely and one thing I want to ask about the data side there because that's really interesting what you just said So what about like metrics for example in the top of the funnel that don't directly lead to that? Conversion or that you might not know leads to the conversion. How do you make sure that you're not shutting off good top of funnel?
Jen Manswell (03:32.77)
by vetting, by absolutely properly vetting those top of funnel opportunities, right? So oftentimes we have this glut of a pipeline of leads that come into it. And sometimes people gauge, well, that may not work or this may not work. But there are simple things like questions that you can ask as the lead is coming into the pipeline that signal readiness. There are also additional vetting activities that you can implement like
engaging with an account-based marketing organization that can make calls on your behalf to vet and validate those leads. That way you are only engaging with the ones that are ready to buy and inclined to buy. And the ones that are not, you don't discard them. You nurture them into the sales relationship with you.
Adam O'Leary (04:25.633)
I love that and I think that is so important. So what you're referring to there is you're talking about more like a pre-qualification. Is that correct? Awesome. I totally agree with that. I think that is one of the most overlooked thing in sales because it skews sales numbers, right? If the leads that you're coming aren't pre-qualified, how do you know that it is good to sell or that it's worth giving it to the sales rep, right? So that's very important. I'm so glad that you're bringing that up and this is now starting to make me start thinking about marketing and sales, right? How do we make sure that
Jen Manswell (04:31.214)
Yes.
Adam O'Leary (04:55.567)
there's a smooth transition from prospect to customer. So when we're looking at the marketing team, when they're passing off that lead to sales, how can we make sure that there is that smooth transition there?
Jen Manswell (05:06.7)
Well, the bridge is a handoff, right? And most companies lose revenue right there. That handoff works when three things are clear. Number one, there's a shared definition of a qualified opportunity. Marketing and sales should absolutely agree on what's worth pursuing. The second is that vetting process that we talked about, right? It doesn't have to be complicated. Like I said, you have a form or you do a telequalification call and that ensures that ready
But at the same time those that aren't ready you continue to talk to them until they're ready and third a Documented path from interest to conversion to close when both teams know those steps Prospects don't fall through the cracks vetting matters because it protects the sales teams time and raises close rates so strong handoff which is the marriage between and the the agreement between sales and marketing
is what every opportunity enters into the pipeline with clarity and expectation.
Adam O'Leary (06:14.453)
Absolutely and this is the second time I've heard you say this you've been talking about nurturing the leads that aren't sales qualified right now What do you mean by nurturing? How do you typically go about and nurture those leads?
Jen Manswell (06:25.656)
through content that is relevant to who those prospects are and continually peppering them with that content, periodically touching them individually to see, are you ready? And you then watch their digital behavior or their digital activity within your digital environment because if they're engaging in certain.
aspects or assets or videos or any sort of tactics that signal that they're further down the
let's say pipeline in making a decision, then you become proactive in your outreach at that point. So oftentimes people find themselves interested in you because there's some level of relevance to what they do every day, but perhaps they're six months away from a project or a year away from a project. You go about the process of keeping yourself top of mind.
that customer, feeding them the information that they're looking for so that it deepens the consideration pool.
Adam O'Leary (07:27.895)
For sure. And so what type of message would you send to that prospect then? Would you send them a message like, hey, I was creeping on you and saw that you watched my video. I'm just joking.
Jen Manswell (07:40.296)
That's a career ender right there, right? That is definitely a no. What you would fundamentally do is serve them with value-based content. And by value-based content, I mean content that they can use, content that they would need for their everyday activities within the journey of them being the professionals that they are. So for example,
Adam O'Leary (07:42.593)
Hahaha!
Jen Manswell (08:05.806)
Let's say your end customer is a plumber and within the customer value stream, that plumber is pulling the sale from a distributor who you are transacting business with. Perhaps you begin by peppering that plumber with insights into how to solve a particular problem that is universally known. Maybe you give them pieces of content that provides them with the ability to solve that problem for free, let them engage, let them download. Then perhaps you invite them to
webinar later on so that they can sit through the step-by-step process. All of that is content that's delivered to them, that's relevant to them, that drives your credibility and your ability to deliver the services that they're looking for. And as they continue to engage with you, you monitor that engagement across the time of nurture. And if you see that there's consistency over time, perhaps that person is deeply considering a relationship with you.
Adam O'Leary (09:06.25)
love that. That's really really interesting and so I want to take a little turn here and I know how important this is. So it comes down to you. You love talking about financing and how important it is in your approach and I think a lot of entrepreneurs miss this fact. So I just before I kind of go into some of these financing questions, I want to ask you why is financing so important when it comes to marketing and sales?
Jen Manswell (09:30.87)
It's the finances, finance organization's job to ensure that the budgets and the income of the company is being utilized optimally so that it maximizes profitability, right? And oftentimes within organizational frameworks, finance teams and marketing teams and sales teams have adversarial relationships, which makes the working dynamic really.
If you operate on the level of transparency with a focus towards making sure that every tactic and every activity that you do from a marketing perspective delivers the ROI to the organization, then finance will become your friend.
and it creates the opportunity and positions it as, you know, finance can support the things that are powering the revenue that's coming in and cut away the noise and cut away the waste. And that waste can then be reinvested into the things that are more powerful.
So my recommendations would be bring finance into the revenue conversation monthly. should not, marketing and sales should never be spending in isolation. Finance will track the cost per opportunity, not just the cost per click. So oftentimes people see a click and they go, we've arrived. No, the click is the starting point to building the relationship with that particular customer, right? So they would identify where the revenue is really coming from because the
opportunity has been delivered into the sales organizations' hands. And then they will fund, as I said before, what converts and cut what's emotional. It ensures that you're making decisions that are
Jen Manswell (11:17.548)
data driven, not drama driven as I have said in the past. And then they are allowed to then forecast for you based on pipeline stages. So finance should know the volume and velocity of the opportunities so that they can create a realistic budget for you. And by realistic, you're gonna then go from having your budgets cut because they're not seeing the value to having your budgets funded because they're seeing the revenue coming through.
the activity that you are doing.
Adam O'Leary (11:50.177)
I love that. And how do we go about making sure that our finance team and our marketing team and our sales team is all on the same page? Like how do we actually get them in the room together? Because we want to make sure that the marketing team doesn't feel like they're stepping on finance and finance doesn't feel like it's stepping on marketing's toes. Have you had any good processes to make sure that that happens smoothly?
Jen Manswell (12:10.722)
To be honest, I developed those processes.
over time with trial and error. And I found that the best way to build those relationships is to, to your point, bring everybody into the room from the minute you decide that you've identified a revenue path that you want to pursue, involving all parties, helping them understand that you are working towards creating a system that is predictable, repeatable,
and scalable rather than emotional because it's based on what someone likes engenders folks to want to work together with you because now the sales organization can say, okay, the leads that I'm getting from the marketing organization, they're actually going to be powerful leads, leads I can pay attention to. And the finance organization can say marketing isn't just randomly spending, they're being thoughtful about what spend works and what spend is not.
So if you bring everybody into the room from the minute you decide you want to pursue a revenue path you are more likely to be successful in gaining mindshare and support from all functions.
Adam O'Leary (13:28.236)
That's awesome. And what would be one simple win? Obviously, our show is called Simple Wins. So what would be one simple win our listeners could implement today to start building a more predictable revenue system and start seeing immediate improvements in their pipeline?
Jen Manswell (13:41.145)
Well, they can go ahead and do a quick revenue alignment check, right? And ask themselves a simple question. Where are you relying on effort instead of structure? Where you see effort, things like chasing leads, inconsistent messaging, unclear steps, if any of those or anything else emerges as a lot of effort or a lot of blocking and tackling, you have found your roadblock.
Fixing even one of those areas will show immediate improvement in the quality of your pipeline and predictability.
Adam O'Leary (14:18.06)
That's awesome. And what sort of results have you seen from your clients implementing this?
Jen Manswell (14:22.446)
So every time a business adopts a revenue architecture, the same things happen, right? Clarity increases, stress decreases, and opportunities become more consistent. For example, I worked with a company that lost share of wallet with its dealer base, right? So we worked together to identify a tactic that made sense. And what we did was we decided to revitalize their rewards program with one of my signature partners. And we saw within eight months of the release of the program, a 27 % increase
in new revenue within eight months of the deployment of the program. The way it works is worked is that we created the system of the program, instructed the sales organization as to what their activities should be out of that program and our distributor base as well because the distributors were allowed to leverage that program for their purposes and wouldn't you know it
our dealers responded and reacted accordingly. There was another process that I implemented, which was really simple. That organization was receiving countless engagements on their website, but they were not responding to the customers. So we just put a manual system in place, right? Because we didn't have the resources and no one had the bandwidth.
to put an automated system in place, we put a manual system in place to respond to the requests that came through on the website. And wouldn't you know it, within two years, we found $10 million in opportunities just by doing that. So whenever you put that systemic process in place, whatever that system is, whatever that engine is, whatever that predictable process is, it definitely yields results.
Adam O'Leary (16:07.372)
Amazing. Jen, where can people go to learn more about you?
Jen Manswell (16:10.242)
Well, anyone that may be interested in having a chat with me can go to myline.com, that is M-I-E-I-L-E-E-N dot com and reach out to me via the contact platform on the site.
Adam O'Leary (16:24.254)
Amazing. Thank you so much, Jen. It was such a pleasure to have you on.
Jen Manswell (16:27.66)
It was so awesome talking to you, Adam. Thank you so much for having me.
Adam O'Leary (16:31.531)
Absolutely will. Thank you all for listening and I will see you on the next episode of Simple Wins.
