The Agency Growth Blog - For Owners Who Want Growth

Here’s A Big Hint – It Should Look A Lot Like Your Old Process, If You Had That Right

I work with a lot of agencies and it's still shocking to me how many don’t have a defined, documented, and optimized sales process.

If that’s the case, then it’s reasonable for many of you to be wondering how you adjust to the new normal when it comes to agency new business.

But if you have built a sales process that works, then the answer is going to be simple. Just do more of the same.

Yes, more people are home and not in the office. Yes, more people are distracted. Yes, you can’t network like you used to before Covid-19. Yes, you’ll have to meet everyone via Zoom. Yes, your conferences and events are not going to be rescheduled.

No matter what happens in the next few months, you’re not going back to the way it was in January.

And How To Ask It On The Very First Call

It’s the middle of June and most of the agencies I’ve talked to are doing surprisingly well. Some are so busy they don’t have time to think. Considering the alternative, this is very positive news.

However, with all this opportunity you still have to be careful about who you choose to work with. In some cases, the recent slew of lay-offs have forced many businesses to seek agencies because they no longer have any in-house marketing resources. All new business opportunities are not created equally.

I’m encouraging you to be more selective now than you might have been in the past. While you might want to say YES more than you say NO, consider this one question and the prospect’s answers as your guiding light on whether to pursue the business or not.

Forget The Jargon, You Want To Help Your Clients Close The Leads You're Getting Them

There are now at least three or four labels for helping companies close leads. The ones in the title and a few more; sales consulting, sales coaching, sales training and maybe a couple of others. 

The bottom line isn’t what we call it or how good we are at confusing the clients but what you do in these engagements and the value you bring to your clients.

The key for me is what we’re including in our sales optimization work for clients, how much we charge for it, the value it delivers and how this translates into lifelong clients. 

With Over 200 HubSpot Customers We Know Something About This

I get it. You want to sell more HubSpot licenses. You want to make your CAM happier, you want to move up in the partner tiers, you want more commissions, and hopefully you want your clients on HubSpot because they get better results.

But how do you actually do this? The basic question is: Do you sell HubSpot? or Do you sell your agency services? Maybe it’s a combination of both, but does that get tricky?

Ask HubSpot and you might not be surprised to hear them recommend selling HubSpot. They even announced a competition at Partner Day in September. It was “Send us your best HubSpot pitch deck.”

But ask some of the top agencies and their answer could be different.

I talk to a lot of agency owners who are handling both sales and client services for their agencies. They might have a couple of marketing consultants who are also working with clients but when it comes to the client engagement, the owners are still very much involved.

The question they ask me is, “Do I need a salesperson?” Or sometimes, “When should I hire a salesperson?”

It’s a good question for growing agencies. But my answer is almost always the same. I ask them, “Do you like sales or taking care of the clients?” This answer usually requires some soul searching. What I mean is, that you can’t do both.  You have to pick either selling your services to new clients or taking care of current clients.”

The answer is important if you're planning on hiring a salesperson.

We got three new clients at Square 2 to help kick start April on the new business side. But it’s not always so easy and over the past six months we’ve been working hard to make our sales process remarkable and an experience for our prospects.

One part of that process is the questions we ask our prospects during out Guided Sales Process. Some of those questions are not so easy to ask but we’ve found that they help us qualify, uncover key issues buried in our prospects’ business and help us have more strategic conversations with our prospects.

Here are the six secret questions that add big value to our sales process and they’ll help you add the same value to your sales process.

New Business Remains The Biggest Obstacle To Growth For Inbound Agency Owners

Anyone even close to the agency life knows that agency new business development, sales and getting new clients is the life blood of the agency. It’s not an inbound marketing agency challenge, it’s a challenge for all agencies everywhere.

I hear it every day.

“We lost a client and we don’t have any new ones coming on.”
“If we could just sign a couple of new retainer clients, we’d be great.”
“I have to cut costs because we can’t sign any new clients.”

What’s going on? We’re the ones who are supposed to be the experts at attracting new eyeballs to our businesses, helping those people get comfortable with our companies and then getting them to sign our agreements. Right? Clearly there appears to be a disconnect. But someone is closing business. At Square 2 Marketing, we close between three and five new clients a month. I’d like to think that qualifies us to know what we’re talking about and if we can do it, you can too.

Three Out Of Four New Clients Said, “We Chose You Because Of Your Sales Process”

On average Square 2 Marketing closes three to five new clients every single month. Granted sometimes they come in bunches, no new clients for three weeks and then three new clients in a single week, but you get the idea.

With all those data points, I’ve been asking our new clients why they chose use over other agencies and the answers are startling. “You took the time to listen to us.” “You and your team demonstrated expertise during the sales process.” “Your recommendations were exactly what we asked for and were aligned perfectly with our stated challenges.”

I want you to notice that not ONE SINGLE new client stated we were the cheapest. Or that we offered the most value for their budget. We got them to trust us and the other agencies didn’t. Let’s be crystal clear. We don’t win every opportunity and sometimes we fail to get them to trust us, but our process produces the right kind of leads and it helps us close the clients who are the best fit for our agency.

I’m Not Being Snobby, I’m Being Smart About Agency New Business Development And You Can Be Smart Too

The response to last week’s article has been fantastic. In case you missed it here’s a link. I’m going to continue to talk about new business development for an inbound marketing agency to keep feeding you the kind of content that supports your biggest challenges.

Today I want to talk about the challenges associated with the small (under $5,000 a month) retainers. I know, they’re hard to pass up when you’re trying to make payroll, grow your agency or you love the gal running the company and you just want to help. Trust me, I get it.

Agency Owners Have Spoken, Getting New Clients Is The Top Priority

I recently asked a bunch of new clients why they chose Square 2 Marketing and the response was very interesting, 68% mentioned the sales process. That was shocking to us. If your agency sales process makes or breaks your chances to get new clients then the experience you deliver to your prospects is critical to closing new clients.

Just to be clear, this is more than practicing Inbound Sales. This is about creating such a differentiated experience that prospects say to themselves, “we have to hire this company.” That should be your goal from the very first touch point all the way through to the experience they have right after they sign your agreement paperwork.