Business Development with Lucy Snell

In today's episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast, I'm really excited to have this week's guest, Lucy Snell with me and we're talking everything to do with business development and some of the do's and don'ts of things you should be doing in your agency and shouldn't be doing in 2021. So this is a value packed episode and let's get on with today's show.

Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency, own owner and coach, Rob DaCosta.

So today I am really excited to have Lucy Snell on the podcast with me. Now, Lucy and I's paths have crossed many times and so I thought it'd be great to have her on today's podcast. Lucy runs Cherry, which is a new business consultancy founded back in 2004. And I know you do a bunch of other things, Lucy, so welcome to the podcast and why don't you give us a little bit of. Of probably a better description of your background than I just did.

Oh, thank you Rob. Thanks so much as well for inviting me on your podcast. It's a real honor. Our paths have crossed quite a few times in different agency communities, so it's great to be here. My background, yeah, as you said, I co founded Cherry, a specialist new business consultancy in 2004. So yeah, quite some time ago now. Yes, young and very fresh faced and Cherry's just. We specialize in working with agencies across all disciplines, so across branding, design, pr, comms and digital. And we've worked with agencies of all shapes and sizes. So from startups through to big independents like Iris and through to global networks like wpp, Omnicom and you know, at sharing, we basically act as an agency's kind of an extension to their new business and marketing team, or if they don't have one, we are their new business and marketing team and we work across strategy and also implementation and we execute all of the new business activity for them. And then alongside that I also coach and mentor and train agencies. I help them, specifically kind of agencies that can't afford to hire somebody. I help them and I show them how to do new business themselves. So that's kind of like my bit of my passion project, as it were.

Fantastic. So it sounds like both of these keep you really busy.

Yes, in between that and my two kids, fortunately one is at home and he's under strict destructions not to disrupt me and the other one is at school thankfully. So yeah, we're, I'm quite Lucky in that sense that I'm not interrupted too much.

You're not doing too much homeschooling?

No, no, my. The one that's at home, he has online schooling. So back to back lessons.

So we'll talk a little bit more about online in a moment because I know you and I both work in the online space as well.

Yes.

But when you go into an agency for either of those businesses and they talk to you about saying, well, look, I need more business, can you come and help? What's the sort of process that you go through to diagnose what they need and where they're at and recommendations that you make?

Yeah, I mean, we often, we do need to push back a little bit with them because often agencies will come to us and they say, right, we need to get. Often we have agencies that say, we just need some leads. We just need you to get us some appointments. We just need some business. And even more alarmingly, when they say, we need business really quickly, we need it fast. Because new business, as you probably appreciate, Rob, for agencies, isn't usually a fast, fast track thing. It takes time. So we often start at that point where we like to really dig deep into the agency and what they've done in the past, you know, what's worked, what hasn't worked, what their track record is. And then we look at, okay, well, if we need to. If we're looking to work with you and you want to work with us, then what are your overall objectives for the year? Financial objectives, not number of meetings. You know, for us, we always, Our goal is always to win business and not just make introductions. And so we look at that, and then we make sure that what they can allocate in terms of budget and spend marries up to what we think we can deliver for them. And so it marries up to their expectations as well. And part of that process is understanding what their value proposition is, you know, what makes them special, what makes them different. You know, no agency is in itself completely unique, unfortunately. But it's about finding those kind of real nuggets of gold that will make one agency stand out above another agency. And then we dig deep into, okay, well, who do we want to target? What kinds of. Are we going to target a particular sector or brands with a particular audience, and what is that overall message going to be? And then how are we going to target those companies? It's all part of relationship building. So for some companies, we might be doing a bigger broadcast email campaign. For others, we might be looking to get the agency to host a series of webinars or events. And for others it might be sending some content and thought leadership. But it's about, I think gone are the days where you can just ring up a company and ask to meet with them or to have a conversation with them. That first step, it's got to be quite baby steps. And the first step is just trying to generate and create awareness around the agency, leading with value and then following up with those companies that are engaging with some of the content that we're putting out there. So we use different technologies, tech stacks and different tools to find those brands and those people that are engaged.

Yeah, brilliant. You and I are singing off the same hymn sheet. When you talk about business development being a medium to long term game and not a short term. And of course people, I always say to people that the only short term strategy that I can ever think of that genuinely might deliver you some work is reaching out to past clients and past prospects and your network and saying, look, we're taking on new business, new clients. Do you know anybody that we should talk to? But otherwise there aren't. I don't know if you agree with that, but otherwise there aren't any magic bullets, are there? As much as people would like to believe there are, they are. And as much as people see ads on Facebook and so on claiming that there are.

Yeah, I love that you say that actually, because you're asking me in that first question, you know, how do we get started and what's our first kind of port of call? And actually we do always say to agencies, before we start with that cold piece, let's have a look at your existing network. You know, where there are there any low hanging fruits? Let's make sure that you've exhausted kind of, you know, all of your LinkedIn contacts, people that you've worked with in the past, past clients, suppliers, and just really leverage that network first and ask for referrals. And we need to do all of that as well as targeting companies from cold, because that's where you know. And often when you do maybe a post pitch questionnaire or an audit for an agency to understand, often the questions might be how did you shortlist the agencies to be on that pitch? I've often heard that it's been, oh, well, I had a quick ask around the office. No, not ask around the office, but ask my team if they knew an agency that they could recommend or if they'd worked with somebody in the past or knew somebody or I asked some of my peers if they had an agency that they could recommend. So often that pitch list is through recommendations. And so the more that you can leverage your own existing network and you can get onto pitches from cold, you know, they often will have a third or fourth agency on there that they don't know. Kind of an unknown, but you're starting a bit behind than other agencies on that pitch. So it's always good to leverage your existing network. And it's about, as you know, it's about relationship building, isn't it? New business.

Yeah.

And yeah, just last week, one of my clients, we were delighted to hear that we'd won a project. And then when I looked at the database to kind of dig a little bit, to remind myself, you know, when I started that conversation with this person, you know, it was about. It was about four years ago that we'd first been in contact with them and kept in touch and did a cred and just a bit more, sent through some ideas and then had another conversation. And then finally, you know, a few years later, they actually have a project and they were ready to brief us and award it.

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I often ask my clients to work out how long their typical sales cycle is and actually go back and do some analysis. Because a lot of people, me included, when I did this, before we went online, I was just telling Lucy that I'm part of a mastermind group coaching program myself. And one of the activities that this program made me do was analyze my customers just in the way you just described Lucy. And I was really surprised to find out that the average length of time it takes from someone coming into my world to buying from me is between 12 and 13 months.

Oh, wow.

And that just goes to show that the sales and marketing, the business development strategies that you put in place, have to cover that length of time. And that's why it's so difficult to win business just by doing one thing once. Because people have to be nurtured until they're ready to buy from you. So I was really surprised at that.

It's because they need to start. They need to like. Well, it's that know, like and trust, isn't it? So they've got to know you first and then they also have to like you and also have to trust you. And then there's also lots of stats about, you know, that people have to see the same message eight times before they're ready to buy.

Yeah.

And if you think about, some agencies will say, oh, well, we send out emails and, you know, we targeted the telecom sector and sent out an email. Nothing happened. And it's like, well, you sent out one email or maybe two, probably, maybe you might have got 20, 30, maybe even 40% open rates. But that doesn't mean all of those people read that email. So suddenly your list is much shorter. And actually, you need to think about not just how many emails you're sending, but how actually how many people are reading them. And, yeah, it does take time.

Let's talk about email marketing in a minute because I think that's, yes, probably quite an important part of yours and my strategy and probably what we tell our clients to do as well. But when you look back to 2020, which, you know, we're recording this episode at the beginning of 2021, what did you see? What trends did you see happening for agencies in 2020, which was obviously a very different year to a normal year where we weren't seeing people face to face like we used to at networking events and so on. So what did you see different in 2020 to other years? And what were you recommending your clients to do?

Well, yeah, well, back when the pandemic started and we, you know, that horrifying day when we heard that, you know, we were going into lockdown, and it was just felt like, yeah, just very alarming. I think back then, a lot of agencies, understandably and rightfully so, put their new business campaigns on hold. They certainly did with us. And I noticed at the time that a lot of our competitors were being quite out there and saying, oh, no, you know, you've got to keep going. You've got to keep going. I just got a brief, the stuff there. But actually for a lot of companies and a lot of brands that they were kind of not really sure how to navigate it, everything. So we did, for many of our clients, put things on hold, but it didn't go on hold for very long. It was almost just like four to six weeks of, okay, let's just take a breath and see what's happening here. And let's see, spend this time, and this is what we recommended to the, to our agencies, is spend that time really getting to understand your clients, the sectors that you operate in and what the challenges that they're facing right at that time. Because it's certainly very different to how it was back in February or January when, you know, the pandemic was unknown. And that's how. That's what we were. We were advising and recommending to all of our agency clients. And, you know, we did, you know, I Had a lot less work all of a sudden because my clients put everything on hold. But in retrospect, it was a blessing in disguise because I could homeschool my kids. They were both at home then. I don't think I would have survived otherwise. And then quite quickly, agencies, you know, our agency clients pivoted. I have one client, and they specialize in their brilliant agency, and they specialize in creating sustainable and incredible trade show stands, so stands for trade shows and booths for trade shows. They work with some very big aerospace and pharmaceutical companies. And you can only imagine that their business would have totally kind of plummeted. But they are very, very, we're very fortunate in their very stable agency. And they pivoted very quickly into developing an incredibly strong hybrid and virtual offer for trade shows. And so I think those agencies that have been able to pivot have, you know, come through a bit stronger.

Yeah. And I was going to ask you the question which you sort of started answering in a way, which was, what's the difference between an agency that really succeeded last year and an agency that has sort of stumbled or even failed?

I think actually there are often, you know, a lot of agencies tread that very fine line anyway. A lot of agencies don't have high profits. They have very high overheads. And they are constantly trying to win new clients all the time. And, you know, a lot of the time they will have their resource according to the projects that they have. So they'll win a big project and then they'll hire staff and then they lose a client and they have to get rid of staff. And it's a very risky situation to be in. And I think so those agencies that were in that risky situation to start with probably would have found it difficult to carry on throughout this pandemic. And I think it's those agencies that have a strong financial status and agencies who have already built a strong brand and invested in their marketing and new business prior to the, you know, the pandemic would have. Are those ones that would have emerged stronger?

Yeah, absolutely. And I guess a big part of business development is client retention. Right. You know, we don't want to be having the, as I always talk about, this sort of revolving door of mobile phone provider business model of focusing on winning new clients but not taking care of existing clients. And that's just a very expensive way of running an agency.

Yeah. And it's about being proactive. It's about thinking, okay, well, this is our client now and things have changed massively for them. How can we help Them now, how can we work with them in a better way? How can we make sure that their budget is used in the best possible way and just being as efficient as possible?

Yeah. And, you know, I don't know whether you saw this as well, but I think in the sort of strange, disconnected world of 2020, a lot of agencies saw those who relied predominantly on referrals and word of mouth for their new business suddenly saw those referrals drying up. And we're thinking, oh, my God, now what are we going to do? And I think a lot of agencies learned that they had to take a much more proactive approach to their new business. Whilst referrals and word of mouth are amazing and good and they should be encouraged, they can't rely on them for sustainable growth and for winning the right kind of clients. Did you see that as well?

Yeah, yes, definitely. And I think what the outcome has been from that is that now I think suddenly agencies are scrabbling around trying to do what they can do to get new clients. And a big part of that is buying in lists of data, sending out loads of automated email campaigns, or even worse, way worse, I hate is LinkedIn automation, you know, using platforms just to kind of spam people on LinkedIn. And those, you know, methods don't really work. You can use automation for sure in a really good way, but the way that you use automation in a good way is that it's got to look like it's personal, personal and personalized, and not look like it's automated. You know, just. I get so many emails, sorry, inmails on LinkedIn saying, you know, I see you're responsible for new business. Would you like to have some. Would you like to have someone help you with new business? It's like, no. Well, if you looked at my profile, you'd see that. Actually, I do.

New business drives me crazy. I always talk about the. The fact when you get a generic connection request on LinkedIn and you look at them and you think, okay, well, they might be a good fit, so you accept them and then the next minute you get a sales message from them and then all I do is go and unconnect from them. I mean, to be honest, I very rarely accept generic connection requests these days because I think if you can't be bothered to spend 30 seconds looking at my profile and sending somewhat of a customized personalized message, then I can't be bothered to connect with you. So it's just, it's interesting because I wrote down here earlier one of the things to discuss with you about cold email, but you obviously have the same thoughts on that as I do, which is it's just a big no, no and it's a big waste of time and actually can be damaging your brand. I don't know whether you agree with that.

It depends what you mean by cold email. I have used email really, really effectively and it's a difficult balance because the best emails that work are the ones that are quite short. But then you also need to lead with value and also need to make sure the email looks like it's been written one to one rather than one to many.

Yeah, I suppose what I meant was buying in a list of target clients and then just sending them an email when they don't know about you.

Yeah, they don't really work and I think they can work. And my, my thing is is that you might buy in a list of 500 or even worse, thousands of, of names and email them and then get a couple of leads off that. But then the damage to your agency brand and the fact that you've, you know, just spammed a load of other people is quite shocking. But email marketing can work really well. But I think it's it, you need to be sharing some content or thought, or thought leadership, inviting them to join a, a session, you know, zoom session, networking session or a webinar or something that's really going to add value to their day rather than just an email that says, hi, it's Lucy from this agency. Can we have a chat?

Sure. No, I mean, I'm a, I'm a massive fan of email marketing. I tell all my clients that they should be building their list and they should be focused on growing their list. But the best kind of emails to have are the ones that have subscribed to your list.

Exactly.

Downloaded something and they have given permission to, for you to email them.

But you know what, Rob? Do you know, do you know many agencies that do that? Well, because I don't.

No. I mean, I think most, I think probably most people will smile as we talk about this, but it is definitely the cobbler's shoes because you know how many web design agencies have really bad websites?

Yeah. And you go website and it's like, sign up to our agency newsletter. Enter your name and your email address. No, thanks. Actually, I don't know if you've come across Dan and Loise Knowlton.

Oh, yes, yes.

So their agency, the Knowlton Agency, they've created quite a cute and nice landing page for their agency newsletter that they've Just started at the beginning of this year. It's called the Friday Club. And that, you know, if you go onto that landing page, you can see, we know there's personality. You can see what you'll get out of it if you subscribe to it. You know, they put some thought into it. So I think that can work really well. Yeah, I'm in the process as well of helping one of my digital agencies to. They've created a series of five videos and we're going to have some kind of opt in. We're creating like a landing page where people can opt in and get those series of five videos which is all about web performance. But agencies need to do that. They need to have on their website, you know, a really clear call to action in terms of is it book a call, is it, you know, getting in contact or is it download this piece of really interesting and helpful thought leadership?

I feel like that's why subscribe to my newsletter just doesn't work. Because most people read a newsletter, I know, and if I see that on someone's website, I always ask if they like a prospect. I'll always ask them, how many leads do you get from that? And the answer is almost zero.

They probably don't even know whether it's connected to their email platform.

No, absolutely. So listen, I think we're both a big fan of email marketing, but you've got to provide value to your list and you've got to nurture those people so that you're encouraging them to take the next step, whatever that be like.

You know, on my website I have a free download, but I even now I'm thinking, do you know What? It's a PDF. Do people really want to read PDFs anymore? At the time I created something of real value, but now is it something that's just there to try and get someone's email address? You know, if I'm completely honest and you know, start 2021, I'm thinking, okay, I need to revamp this. I need to up my game a bit. Something that I can really give away, something that my audience really needs rather than just something that's there for the sake of it so we can all improve and all do better things.

Yeah, I guess the thing, the problem is for a lot of agencies, I use this term a lot and I think I need to kind of trademark this. But too many agencies are stuck on the client service hamster wheel of doom and they have no time to breathe. They have no time to think about marketing and think about Business development because they may have relied on referrals, they're probably overservicing their clients. So they're just running 100 miles an hour to keep up. And I think that's why so many agencies, rather than saying, well actually I only have this much time to service my clients because I've ring fenced this much time to focus on the future of my agency. So business development and marketing and sales and so on. But they just don't do that.

That's so true. I mean I've worked with some massive agency brands and they just had zero time for new business. You know, they would, they would hire me and they had maybe an in house new business person. But whenever we would put in requests for to the design team to help us, you know, create some beautifully designed case studies or mailing campaigns, I remember week in, week out my requests getting denied because the designers didn't have time. And the thing is, is that I think the problem is that so many of these agencies are just so expensive in their overheads, in their, you know, amazing offices and their teams and actually their margins of what they make on clients is just so low that they're having to really work really hard to service those clients because they don't have room or margin to hire people who aren't revenue generating. Well, new business people are revenue generating, but not revenue generating as in timesheets on timesheets.

So let's just move on to a couple of other topics I wanted to ask your views on if we to look forward to 2021 and beyond. What do you think agencies should be doing this year from a business development perspective? And what are the things that you think they absolutely must do? Is three questions in one here. What are some of the. No nos as well?

Yeah, I mean I think agencies need to be, need to take a good look at themselves and be really clear that what their proposition is. Really. Yeah, be really clear of what their proposition is. Because often I go onto an agency's website and they're trying to do too many things for too many people. There's a great copywriter, I don't know if you know him, Roland Ronan Gurney from Treacle Copy and he has some fantastic.

Yeah, he's been on the, he's been on the podcast before.

Yeah. And you know, he always says about having kind of a really strong agency proposition. So I think agencies need to be really clear on who their audience is and what problems that they. What are the problems that they solve? Who are they for and how do they do it and then just be more strategic about new business, have a plan, obviously, I mean, often we work with agencies and we will put into place a 12 month new business and marketing plan. I think now, I mean, how, how on earth are we going to plan for the next 12 months? Who knows, who knows what's going to happen? So maybe 90 day plans might be a little bit better in terms of, you know, what can we do for the next 90 days? Because who knows what's happening after that. But I think agencies just need to be more strategic about what they're doing. They definitely, I mean, I talk about this a lot as well in all of my content, need to be consistent. And I think this is where a lot of agencies struggle is that they'll suddenly win a, they'll win a client and they'll be really busy servicing that client and they won't focus on building that pipeline as well. And then as soon as that project finishes, they're then like, oh, okay, we need some, we need another client now. But actually you've got to keep that new business machine, that new business engine going all the time. You've got to keep focusing on building that pipeline. But I don't think it's necessary. Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure 2021 is necessarily any, any different than any other year. Obviously it is in terms of lockdown and all of this other stuff that's going on. But I still think agencies need to get more intelligent about their new business approaches. Lead with value, focus on building those relationships and also not just rely on outreach, you know, so don't just rely on contacting your database in all these different ways. You know, for example, if you're looking to target, you know, the beauty sector, for example, so you can get a list of beauty brands that you can build those relationships with. You can also look at other kind of industry networks that you can start making sure that you are front of mind with, making sure that you're appearing in the right magazines, that the beauty brands will be reading and build relationships with all of the trade associations. Look at other brands that are maybe coming from the US or coming from Europe, that are launching in the uk. So it's not just about, you know, buying in a list and targeting them. It's about how can you build your profile as much as possible within that sector and all the different kind of subsectors within.

Yeah, absolutely. Good advice. Yeah. I always say to my clients, and this is something, I have to take this medicine myself as well, is find a few Things that really work, both in terms of you being good at doing them and you enjoy doing them so you can do them consistently, but also in terms of these are things that will engage with your target audience and then just work on doing them consistently. I think we're all. There's too much noise out there. There's too many shiny new objects that we all get distracted by. I'll give you an example of this. A couple of weeks ago, I got an invite to join Clubhouse.

Oh, yes.

And so I joined. I was like, that's good. I joined and then luckily it was a Saturday and then I just went down a black hole of listening to all these discussions in Clubhouse and then I joined a room where they were explaining how to use it. And I thought, rob, you've got. You can't. Although it's quite good to get into something like this early because there's opportunities there. It's just another distraction. And so I sort of parked it and thought, well, I'm at some point.

In the future because I texted my business partner earlier and I was like, I think we need to get into Clubhouse. But only I hear what you're saying, and it's because I joined Clubhouse as well a couple of weeks ago ago, and I haven't actually spent any time on it yet.

Well, it might be brilliant platform. Someone said it's like a live podcast. Yeah.

And I can see how it, how it can totally suck up your time. But again, with something like that, if you were to just go, oh, okay, I'm going to. For the next eight weeks, I'm going to host. Is it called a room? I'm going to host a room or discussion on Clubhouse every week at this time for the next eight weeks. And I'm going to be sharing content all around. Agency, new business, or you do it for all around. Building a strong brand within the retail sector.

Yeah.

I'm not going to spend time going in there and listening to discussions and following people. I'm just going to share my, you know, have host those rooms myself and have those conversations myself and do it for eight weeks and then review and see where we've got to after that. You know, I think that could be a good strategy or. Yeah, you know, I'm going to go on LinkedIn Live and do a LinkedIn Live Talk every week for eight weeks and then see what happens.

I think it's. I think it's about finding the right platform for you, because, like, for you and I, LinkedIn probably is a very important platform, whereas instagram probably is a less important platform and Facebook is probably a little bit more than Instagram, but not as good as LinkedIn. So it's a case of like focusing and doing.

Yeah, definitely. And you can see some people sharing some really good content on LinkedIn and having some, some really good conversations on LinkedIn.

Have you got any sort of no's to like? No, no. Sort of examples of things that you've seen not through your clients, but through other people thinking, no, that was not a good thing to do or I wouldn't advise you to do this. Have you got. I don't know, I'm putting you on the spot.

We've spoken about LinkedIn automation so I won't mention that one again. But before the, and this could, could almost be the same with webinars, but I'm talking about events. So before we couldn't have in person events, we used to help our agency clients run events. And for us we would always advocate having a small breakfast, roundtable type event or it could be more of an evening dinner something or lunch or something. But basically where you would have maybe 20 people around a table to kind of discuss a particular topic. You might have some client, a client key speaker, which is a good draw. But it's quite an exclusive event. And the reason why we advocated and would push for that is because if you can get 20 marketing directors all around a table talking about their challenges, asking you questions, you can really get to understand their business more and build those relationships. Whereas sometimes we would work with an agency and they would say, yes, we want you to run an event, we'll help you, we'll do this. And then they, they kind of get carried away with it. And instead of it being a small event, they want it to be, oh, we've hired this big space, we've got to fill it. We need like 100 people or 200 people. We're going to put it on Eventbrite, we're going to do this, we're going to film it and it's like, okay, this looks great and we can get, you know, loads of people will be turning up because they've shared it all over social and it's all on Eventbrite and other things where anyone can turn up. But when you actually dig into who's turning up, you know, it might not be necessarily the right caliber of people. Sometimes a lot of the time there is a good mix, you know, some good contacts there. But the kind of format of those events tend to be people showing up, listening to the Talk, maybe mingling for a little bit and then leaving. But you can't really get into those nitty gritty conversations that you would have done if you just had 20 people around a table for an hour and a half.

Yeah, sure.

So for that, I kind of. We call that kind of vanity over sanity. It's like, yeah, it looks great because you can share your videos on it on Instagram and on. On YouTube, but actually off the back of that, A, it costs way more money to produce, and B, does it actually get you the. Those. Those meaty conversations? I'm not. I'm not. I'm not quite sure. I haven't. I've yet to be convinced.

Yeah. So it's definitely a quality, not quantity conversation, which is true in everything, really.

Yeah. And I think the other mistake, I think, is agencies just not really allowing enough time and not following up on stuff and not pushing it enough. Again, when it comes to webinars or.

Anything like that, follow up is such. That's so frustrating, isn't it? I always say to people, look, you need to be like a rock filer. If you have invested the time generating this lead or getting this person to come to your event or replying or whatever it is, then. Then you need to be tenacious enough to follow it up to its natural conclusion.

Exactly.

And its natural conclusion is either, yes, let me buy from you, no, get lost, or no, not at the moment, but maybe in the future.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And do stuff that other people aren't doing as well. I mean, so last week you mentioned at the beginning of our call that you'd noticed that I'd run a new business, Bootcamp, that was last week, and I had nearly 200 agencies registered for that. So it was a free event all week running all week long. So I had 190 people in the end. And it's not that hard to get people to sign up, is it, these days to sign up to webinars and to sign up to stuff online? I mean, how often? I do it all the time. I'm like, oh, that looks interesting. I'll sign up. And then. But do I actually listen? No. So the hard bit is making sure people show up live and getting them to listen. And so what I did is I recorded individual messages on video using a platform called Bonjoro, and I recorded one for every single person. So it was like 195 video messages I did to everybody to make sure they would show up and listen. They didn't all show up, obviously, but I think on the first call I got, about 70 or 80 people show up live. I think I've had over 100 people watch the recording.

Brilliant. An interesting idea. I'm running a webinar tomorrow, so maybe I should go and do that this afternoon.

It's a really easy app, you know. Have you come across it, Bonjoro?

I have come across it, yeah. And there's. Yeah, there's a couple of others. Isn't that similar to that? But that is such a good idea. And again, that's all about personal interaction.

Exactly. And it's not a polished video. It's like leaving, you know, I say it's like leaving a voicemail. You're just going, oh, Lucy, here, I just want to check. You got this and you're going to show, you know, turn up and listen to me here. And this is where you'll get loads out of it. Any questions, let me know type of thing.

Yeah, brilliant. Well, good idea. So, on the subject of your events that you ran last week, let's just really quickly touch upon the idea of the Mastermind group coaching program. Because you and I both run a group coaching program and I just wondered whether you had any views on the value of agencies working with other agency owners in a group setting like that.

Yeah, I mean, I think if you talk to a lot of agency owners, the ones that are going somewhere are in some kind of mastermind or group coaching. And I think particularly now when we're all working remotely and working from home, you know, it can be quite tough for agency leaders because they're not out and about networking and chatting to people. So I think having a, you know, whether it's a formal or informal coaching program or whether it's more of a networking or group that they can bounce ideas off, I think is super helpful. I mean, my one is slightly different because it's. It is for agency owners, but it's for small agencies who can't afford to hire a new business person. And it's kind of teaching them step by step, new business strategies. But alongside it, there is that live coaching and accountability part of it. But definitely, I think that there are quite a few different programs out there or quite a few different groups out there where you can just stay accountable and just have someone. Other agency owners that you can share ideas and bounce ideas off.

I think there's just a huge value in agencies realizing that they're not alone with the challenges that they face and hearing from other agencies who are either saying, oh my God, that's exactly what's going on for me. Or they're saying, look, I can really relate to you because when I was there, this is what we did. And I know in my program that the we do a fortnightly group call. And the value in that is huge. And I think if you asked all the members, one of the biggest pieces of value, it's that just because they can be surrounded by other agency owners who are in a similar space but not necessarily competing and are there to support each other and learn. And I think there's huge value in that.

Definitely. Definitely. I totally, totally agree. In terms of not feeling. Not feeling like you're the only one going through three difficult things. And I think actually you can get a sense of that from LinkedIn because like the posts, the posts on LinkedIn that perform really well and that get a lot of engagement are the more raw and honest ones where they're talking about how things aren't always that great.

Sure.

As opposed to those ones that are just, you know, life's amazing type posts.

Yeah. Authenticity is so important, isn't it?

Yeah.

So let's just conscious of time, let's just wrap this up and let me ask the question that I ask all my guests, which is if you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of business advice, what would it be?

I think it would just be just to go for it, as in the old kind of Nike slogan, just do it.

Yeah.

Because, you know, I first had my idea for, you know, my online teaching in the agency Growth Academy years ago, and I even started it years ago but never finished it. And what was holding me back, if I'm honest with myself, it was kind of fear. Fear of putting myself out there. Whereas actually, if you. And I think now a lot of businesses are moving this way, aren't they, in terms of if they're looking to launch something, they will look just to launch an MVP rather than get something really polished just to test it. And I definitely just think that don't be afraid to take those little leaps because there's no harm in failing. I mean, we can only learn from our mistakes that we make along the way. You know, as long as you're not forking out thousands of pounds of investment into something. I'm not saying do that. But, you know, Richard Branson says that, doesn't he? He says, I never say no.

Yeah, it's. It's a good bit of advice to give your younger self. And actually, in the year and a bit, I've been running the podcast, I Don't think anyone has said that. So that's good.

I think we're all scared of failure. And actually, when you. If you look back on anything that you have, you've tried and you have really failed, was it really that bad?

Well, you learned, you know, you learned so much, don't you?

Exactly. You learn from it so much.

Yeah. Okay, good, Good advice. Now, Lucy, if the listeners want to get hold of you and find out more about you and your business, where would they go? What would be the best links?

I would probably just say LinkedIn, because there's all sorts of links from there, which is my LinkedIn is just Lucy Snell.

Okay.

I do have my Cherry website, which IsCherry Business Consulting.com. and then if you want loads of free content on how to win new business for agencies, you can check out www.lucysnelonline.com.

Great. Okay, so we'll put all the links in the show notes to that so people can find that. But just really appreciate your time today and getting your insights into the agency world in 2021.

Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate it. It's been great chatting with you, Rob.

So I hope you found today's episode really useful and enlightening. Perhaps enforced that some of the things you're doing are right. Or perhaps it made you realise that you need to carve out more time to focus on your business development. But regardless, I hope you found it useful as ever. Please make sure you hit that subscribe button, share the episode with your colleagues and please consider leaving a review and otherwise join me next Thursday for the next episode of the Agency Accelerator Pod.