How much time can I expect to invest in They Ask, You Answer Mastery each week?

The They Ask, You Ansswer Mastery program is truly a collaborative process between your team and ours. IMPACT’s coaches and trainers serve largely in a consultative role, teaching you how to develop mastery and take ownership of your content marketing.

As is often the case with such things, the more you put into the program, the more you will get out of it. IMPACT’s team will hold you accountable, but in the end, it is up to you to put the effort in that assures your success. 

But what exactly will be expected of you?

Here’s the time you should expect to invest in your Mastery program. 

Why businesses need to do it themselves

At IMPACT, we believe fundamentally that businesses can and should take control of their content marketing efforts.

All too often, we talk with businesses who are paying handsomely to agencies to complete their content marketing tasks: producing videos, scheduling emails, and monitoring their HubSpot portal. Worst of all, thousands and thousands of businesses are letting agencies write their content — which we believe to be the very soul of a business. 

Rather than paying an agency in perpetuity, we train you to take ownership of your digital sales and marketing. In 12 to 24 months, you will have achieved mastery and independence. 

Our goal is to train you so you no longer need our services. Our goal is your independence. 

To truly achieve independence and mastery, however, you need to put in the effort to learn. This is why training and homework are essential aspects of the Mastery program.  

🔎Related reading:

• The consequences of not insourcing content creation

Meeting cadence and attendance expectations

You will engage in frequent meetings with your coach, your account manager, and subject matter experts that are specifically suited to your needs. 

You can expect to have the following recurring sessions during your program:

1. Annual planning session (once a year, 2-4 hours)

Who you should bring: Your leadership team, head of sales, head of marketing

Who we bring: Your coach and account manager, and subject matter experts

What to expect: Your annual planning sessions will be a deep dive into your company’s health and goals. Your IMPACT team will utilize the digital sales and marketing scorecard to help set priorities, develop your one page strategic plan (OPSP), work on goal setting, and build a quarterly plan.

2. Leadership coaching sessions (twice a month, 45-90 minutes)

Who you should bring: Your leadership team

Who we bring: Your coach

What to expect: Your leadership coaching sessions will focus on detailed strategic work with your IMPACT coach. You can expect to review progress on quarterly priorities, initiatives, and learning objectives. This will also be a time to address impediments and decisions your company has made.

3. Subject matter expert coaching sessions (30-45 minutes)

Note: the frequency of these meetings depends on the duration of your program. 12 months: three meetings per week; 18 months: two meetings per week; 24 months: one meeting per week.

Who you should bring: Your HubSpot manager, content manager, videographer, or other staff as needed

Who we bring: IMPACT subject matter experts 

What to expect: These highly tactical training sessions will help your internal team develop mastery of core skills related to all aspects of digital sales and marketing. Your subject matter expert coaches will review your team’s progress and task completion, and assign lessons to ensure further skill development.

4. Quarterly planning sessions (once per quarter, 1.5-2 hours)

Who you should bring: Your leadership team, head of sales, head of marketing

Who we bring: Your IMPACT coach and member success manager

What to expect: Your quarterly planning sessions will utilize both scorecard review and priority review to help you plan for your upcoming goals. You will also brainstorm priorities as you develop your quarterly plan.

Each of these sessions will require your full attention — and may give you homework as well.

Why homework? And how much

According to Chris Duprey, IMPACT’s chief strategy officer, the homework associated with They Ask, You Answer Mastery seeks to extend the learning of the coaching and training sessions.

Often, you will be asked to read a certain article or book, or to watch a keynote presentation from our IMPACT+ archives.  At other times, your assignment will be to practice a task directly related to your training. This could be recording a 1:1 video, building a workflow in HubSpot, or brainstorming content topics. You will then go over what you’ve done with your trainers.

Homework will depend on your role

Your workload will depend on your role in the company.

If you are a senior leader, you will be attending different coaching sessions than a sales rep. If you are a content manager, you might be wearing several different hats that would bring you to several different training sessions. For example, if you also oversee HubSpot, you might attend both content training and HubSpot training, and your workload would increase commensurately.  

Chris stresses that “there is no syllabus.” Instead, “each engagement is unique, as we help each client toward mastery in ten different categories. Company A and company B are sure to have different needs, and their homework will reflect that.”

To generalize, you should expect at least an hour or two of homework each week — in addition to the time you spend in coaching or training sessions.

In the beginning of the program, there will typically be more work, as we strive to establish a shared library of terminology and understandings on which to build your learning.

The homework will never be busy work. Everything will either be content based or activity based. 

🔎Related reading:

• What's included in IMPACT's They Ask, You Answer Mastery program?

Ownership is not easy, but you can do it

Just as business ownership brings with it outside work and unforeseen challenges, taking ownership of your digital sales and marketing also takes work. The more time and effort you put in, the quicker you will learn and the faster you will progress.

Mastery depends on you and your team bringing energy, enthusiasm, and diligence to your work with your coaches and trainers — as well as to the homework you are assigned.

If you have questions about your and your team’s ability to put in the necessary time and effort, you might not be ready to get started on the road to They Ask, You Answer Mastery. You should think twice about investing fully in the program at this time.

If you are willing to work and learn, Mastery will transform your business and usher in phenomenal success.