Mastering Agency Sales: Ben Potter's 3 Pillars of Success

Hey everybody and welcome to this week's Agency Accelerator Podcast. Now this week we are talking all things sales with my guest, Ben Potter. And this is another super practical, pragmatic episode where you will walk away with an action plan of things to start doing. And also you'll be thinking about your sales process in a slightly different way. We are digging into three core pillars of sales. Starting off by talking about why positioning underpins everything you do do. And if you don't have your position right, then everything else is going to fail. Then we're going to talk about your lead generation system. So this is your business development plan and your marketing plan. And finally we're going to talk about your sales process. And, and process is the important word here because you don't just want to be doing random sales, but you want to have a process that is replicatable and scalable. So a super practical episode and let's jump into today's episode. Rob. I'm Rob Da Costa and this is the Agency Accelerator Podcast. As someone who has stood in your shoes, having started, grown and sold my own agency, I know just how it feels in the ups and downs of agency life. So this podcast aims to ease your journey just a little by sharing mine and my guests experiences and advice as you navigate your way to growing a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable business. Okay, great. Good afternoon everybody and welcome to this week's Agency Accelerator Podcast. I'm really excited to have with me a guest this week that is an expert in agency sales and that is Ben Potter. So Ben, welcome to the podcast. We're going to talk about everything from generating leads to closing the deal today. So welcome to the podcast and why don't you just quickly tell us a little bit about who you are in your journey in the agency world.

Yeah, sure. No, first of all, thanks for having me on, Rob. Very much appreciated. Yeah, I spent 13 or 14 years working in agencies, predominantly down in Brighton. Kind of earned my agency stripes down on the south coast, helping to kind of set up and run an agency called Leapfrog there. Over that period, for better or worse, I was the first face that somebody tended to see when they wanted or interested in working with the agency. So over that period learned a huge amount about business development. The good, the bad and the ugly. Made many, many mistakes over that time, but that's how you learn, right? And then we kind of exited that agency in 2016. We sold off a portion of it to another agency in Brighton and then that was a good time for me to kind of step back and Think about my next move. And at that point, I questioned whether other agencies face some of the same challenges we did from a new business point of view. And it turns out they do. It's continuously cited as the sort of number one or number two challenge that agencies tend to face. So my work now is to try and make that, that whole process of winning new business just a little bit easier for the agencies that I work with.

Yeah, fantastic. And I definitely agree with that. Most of the conversations I'm having with clients are around generating enough new business so they don't lurch from feast to famine or finding a way of getting work off their plate so they can, you know, step off the client service hamster wheel of doom and actually focus on the future of their agency. Now, you, you talk about the three pillars of sales, so why don't you just quickly tell us what they are, why they're important, and then we'll dive into each of those three in a bit more detail.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. This probably sounds overly sort of simplistic, and obviously within each of these pillars there's an awful lot of detail and sort of nuance to each of them. But in the work that I do with clients, we're kind of looking at kind of three, three key areas, and they kind of stack on top of one another. And actually they become somewhat easier if you get the, you know, the foundations right. And those foundations are really around positioning. We, we, we, we call it positioning in agency land. But what we're really talking about is the, the strategy of the agency. So what they do, who they do it for, would be kind of classic kind of market positioning and so on. So I'm sure we'll dig into the detail of that a lot more because it's a, a topic I'm very passionate about because I firmly believe if you get that layer right, then all the other things we'll talk about today become a lot clearer. There's a lot more clarity around the second pillar, for example, which would be around lead generation. So once you're very kind of clear in who it is you are trying to target, it becomes a lot easier to start making decisions around where you spend your time and money in order to create opportunity. So the second pillar is really building that kind of business development marketing plan and then executing against that on a consistent basis of which there are lots of challenges in and around that, which I'm sure, again, we'll, we'll talk about. And the third pillar is the sales process. It's actually what happens Once you actually get a lead, come in from the very first conversation, which tends to be a sort of a qualifying type conversation, if it's an inbound lead all the way through to hopefully onboarding that lovely new client, you've won. And all the steps and the conversations that happen from point A to point B. So it's really those kind of three key areas that I usually advise clients in and around. And there's kind of a layer of a sort of almost cultural piece that kind of sits in and around that as well. In terms of how do you build that kind of new business culture around having people involved, wanting to get involved, feeding back, reporting all of that kind of stuff that kind of sits alongside all of that.

Yeah, a good shout really, because everybody's got a business development responsibility of some kind, even if they're the office manager that talks to a client every now and again. So it is, culture's definitely an important part. And I think no one can be thinking that's not my job, it's someone else's job. But let's, let's go to the beginning here. Now let me just put a pause.

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So let's talk about positioning in a bit more detail and tell us why that is. I mean, it's obvious really, but tell us why that is the first thing people should do and perhaps some tips and advice around agencies trying to find their kind of unique position in the marketplace. And if you've got any kind of thoughts around what happens if you skip that step and you go straight into the lead gen and the sales process. So maybe that's lots of questions there, but I'll hand it over to you.

I'll start with the last one actually first because I think it kind of helps in highlighting, I suppose the problem here first and foremost. And I suppose the problem here is that first of all, there are an Awful lot of agencies just in the UK alone of various different sizes and guises. But you know, something like 30 to 35,000 agencies in and around the UK and some of those will be kind of micro businesses of one or two people all the way up to the big kind of global agencies. And the one thing that is fairly consistent across the board, particularly at the sort of the smaller end of the scale, is that most agencies look pretty much the same both visually and also in terms of their messaging. And I think we've fallen into a bit of trap of assuming that what we consider to be USPs, they're not really USPs at all. So when you go to a typical agency website, they talk about transparency, they talk about honesty, they talk about passion, they talk about being results focused, they, they speak about being award winning. And you know, you could, you could cherry pick 20 web, you know, 20 agency websites at random and you would see these words and phrases dotted about fairly consistently, I would say across the board. And the problem is that kind of masquerades as positioning and it's not really positioning. These are kind of table stakes really. I mean, if you, if you're turning up to an agency and they're, they're not honest or, you know, they're not passionate about wanting to work with your business, if they haven't won an award or two, then you know, they, they would be very much the exception. So all of these things I think kind of masquerade as positioning are not positioning at all. So that, that's, that's the first problem. And what that means is, for an agency is it is, it means the, the, the, the competitive landscape for the typical agency is very broad. They are effectively competing against hundreds, thousands of other agencies. Whereas the goal of positioning, I suppose, or business strategy is try and reduce that, that competitive landscape down to, you know, 20, 30, 40 agencies rather than potentially four or 500 agencies who all look very, very similar. So that's, that's the problem on where we're trying to get to. In answer to your last question, the, the issue that has, from a lead gen point of view, that second pillar is, is, is, is it doesn't provide the clarity around where we should be spending our time and money. Because if you're trying to target everyone, then try and build a business development marketing plan out of that. It's very, very difficult. Whereas if we're saying, right, this is, this is our target audience, this is our sort of discreetly defined target audience, this is what we do for them, this is the problem we solve. It makes it a lot easier in terms of the decision making around where you should be spending that, that time and money.

And what would you say to the agency owner that intellectually understands what you've just said but is really fearful about narrowing down their market? They're scared about having a clear niche because they think they will lose opportunities or they'll find it harder to win business or, I don't know, whatever these other beliefs that they run in their head that keeps them in the kind of more generalist space.

Yeah, and you're absolutely right to highlight that. I think, you know, the number one barrier or reason why an agency owner won't want to go down the, the, the sort of, the specialization or the niche route is often that fear of what they're going to miss out on. You know, I think if we look at, if we look at the typical agency owner, they tend to be quite entrepreneurial and they tend to be the kind of people that look at an opportunity even if it's slightly outside of their, their area of expertise and think kind of, yeah, we could, we could do that, we could do that. Let's, let's bring that in and we'll design a new service offering around it and we'll give it a go type approach. So there is this kind of fear of when you narrow your focus, fundamentally what you've got to start doing is saying no a lot more often. And I think often we're quite fearful of that because it might create a certain degree of scarcity and we might not be able to build our businesses in the way that we want to. I would kind of take the opposite view that actually narrowing your focus, being more specialized in many ways should create greater, better quality opportunity over time. But I think another reason why people don't tend to want to go down that route is maybe an assumption that when we talk about, people like you and I talk about specialization or niching, I think the default assumption is, well, that means we need to narrow right down to maybe a specific sector. And that can feel quite limiting, I think for a lot of people, and I think particularly coming out the back end of COVID for example, where if you were a specialist within certain sectors, potentially that meant the end to some agencies. If they were travel focused or hospitality focused, for example, that was a tough old ride to get through that. So I absolutely understand the fears and the concerns that people have, but I think it's thinking about this in a slightly broader sense that specialization or niching doesn't just mean a sector. There are actually numerous different ways in which you can position an agency in some quite creative ways as well, which allow you to experience all the benefits that come with specialization, but without maybe narrowing the focus too much.

Yeah, and I completely agree with that. I would wholeheartedly say to my audience that the more specialist you are, the easier it becomes to find your ideal target client. And perhaps more importantly, the easier it becomes for your ideal target client to find you because they're looking for the specific service that you offer. Let's assume now that all our listeners have done this work on their, their position, they've got really good clarity around, you know, who they serve and what they offer and all the rest of it. Let's move on to the second pillar that you talked about, which is all about lead generation. So this is that business development and marketing plan. Tell us, tell us about that.

Yeah, well, I think, I think first and foremost, as, you know, as you rightly reinforce the point there, you know, what, what good positioning should do, one of, one of many benefits, but certainly from a lead gen point of view, the first thing that it should do is provide that greater degree of clarity over where and how you should be spending your time. There are certain activities which are, which are almost kind of a given, for example, that regardless of your positioning, you should be doing. So a good example of that is having a sort of proactive referral strategy in place. So rather than just waiting for people to refer you, is actually having a system in place where those referral requests are practically built into your processes and you are identifying those happy clients and you are going and asking them to be referred. And of course there are many different types of referrals, but that's just one example. So that's an activity that regardless of your positioning, of course it works more effectively if you're well positioned, but that's an example of an activity that you should be doing regardless. But in terms of everything else, in terms of, you know, what you should be writing about, what you should be talking about, which events you should be going along to, to, you know, to network, all of that, all of that kind of stuff, once you've got your tightly defined target audience nailed down, I call it an ideal client profile. And it's one of the outputs of a, of a positioning project. And it, it talks about, you know, maybe the sectors you operate in. It talks about things like culture and mindset and, and certain traits be that kind of size and spend and all of that kind of stuff. So you're really, really kind of clear in, in who it is you're trying to reach out to. Once you've got that down on paper, all the things that I'm talking about there just become that little bit easier. Right. We should go to that event because we know there are going to be people there that we want to speak to. We don't go to that event because it's too broad, it's too generalist. It doesn't make sense to go and exhibit that big, that big exhibition when, when actually our audience are not necessarily going to be there. So the big, the tighter positioning is that clarity in where and how you spend your time. Now what those specific activities look like are going to vary from agency to agency and it's going to come down to things like your budget, your level of in house resource. But fundamentally it has to come back to that target audience piece and understanding who your audience is and where they spend their time and what are their key problems, what are their challenges. That influences the sort of stuff that we're doing that we're writing about, the webinars we're hosting, the things we're speaking about when hopefully we're, we're standing in front of a room of prospects. So as I say, it bring, it brings a great deal of clarity to all of that stuff. Whereas I think the opposite is true when you're talking about we work with everyone from one man bands to multinationals. Well, try, try and build a marketing plan out of that. It's, it's, it's nigh on nigh and impossible in my view.

Yeah, it is. I mean in a scenario like that you would end up needing to have a ton of money to throw down the drain to try and reach some of these people. But I think we can all agree that that's a very poor strategy.

Yeah, it's that classic kind of throwing off, throw enough mud at the wall and you know, hopefully some of this is going to stick type approach. And I think, I think that's the problem that agencies, agencies more generalist agencies sometimes find their, themselves in is that they almost kind of try a little bit of everything and then they go, well, that didn't work so we won't do that again. Whereas actually those activities can work if they're more focused and targeted and given, and given the right amount of time. But often I find agency owners will, you know, try something for three months like, you know, outsource lead gen and go, well, that didn't work. We're never going to do that again or they'll bring in a bdm. And you know, if the strategy and positioning isn't right, then the BDM is almost starting with a blank canvas. They're given three months to close the deal. They don't do it. Well, let's, let's bin them out. And actually you've got to get, you've got to get the foundations right to make any of these things more effective.

Yeah. So there's a couple of points I wanted to pick up on there. One is that all the really robust business development and marketing strategies deliver in the medium to long term and yet we are seduced by shiny new objects in the world that we live in at the moment. So people get, don't get, they want immediate gratification, they don't get it and they move on to the next thing and then they wonder why things don't work. So that's one piece I wanted to say. The second thing you kind of started answering my next question, which is what is your view on outsourcing the business development function to somebody else? Like, it's almost like I've got a problem, I don't have enough new leads or new, new business. Let me give this problem to somebody else. What's your advice to the audience, if that's what they're thinking?

Yeah, I think, I think first and foremost in terms of that kind of proactive, you know, some people call it prospecting or outbound. But in terms of that activity, I do believe it should always be a part of an agency's kind of business development marketing plan. You need, you need to be out there building nurturing relationships in a proactive way. You can't just sit there and rely on kind of inbound and what comes into you. Now some agencies can, if their marketing is absolutely exceptional and is driving a good, you know, a good number of high quality leads on a consistent basis month in, month out, then perhaps you don't need to do as much of that kind of outbound type activity. But I don't find there are many agencies where that is the case. You need to be doing that kind of proactive activity first and foremost. So I'm a big believer that that should be part of the remit, as it were, first and foremost. The problem is agencies don't often have the resource or skill sets to be doing that kind of activity internally. It needs probably a dedicated person and that person is unlikely to be the agency owner because again, going back to the point earlier, they tend to be more creative, entrepreneurial I know that's a massive, you know, sort of a bit of a stigma in describing the typical agency owner but they're probably not the detail person that's going to get down in the weeds and do the research and do the crafting of the messaging and send those messaging out on a consistent basis. So it needs that type of person. So coming back to your original question, should you outsource it? Yes and no. If your positioning is good, if you've got the right assets, if your expectations are there in terms of, as you were alluding to earlier around, how long it's going to take to start to see some results from this kind of activity, then I do think know, potentially outsourcing it or working very, very closely with an, with an outsourced lead gen agency or partner can, can work. But in all the conversations I've had, I would say nine times out of 10 when I speak to an agency owner and they talk about past activity and the fact they have farmed it out and I say, well, how did you get on? They say something like, well, I gave it three to six months, it didn't work so, so we got rid of them. Now it'd be very easy to then blame the lead gen agency and say, well, they didn't do a very good job. But a lot of these lead agencies have been around for a very long time. You know, they've got to be doing something right, they've got to be delivering results, meetings ultimately and I suppose, you know, new business wins for their, for their clients otherwise they wouldn't be around. So I think often what tends to happen is the agency, as in the client of the lead gen agency, isn't quite ready. They're not at that metaphorical start line to make their outbound activity as effective as it could be. So it goes back to the fundamentals of getting the positioning right, making sure we're really clear with the audience, making sure that we have something of value to offer when we're reaching out to people. That's a really critical component of good outbound. If you're just reaching out to people and saying hi, it's us, we're brilliant, we have a creds meeting. All that information is on your website. If I want to have a look at you, I'll go to your website and I'll see your clients, your case studies, your awards, etc. You've got to be providing or promising more value with respect to people giving up their time to meet you than just a credit meeting. You've got to have assets in place and you've got to have patience. And if you've got all of those things, then there are some really good examples of where outbound and I'm seeing at the moment with one or two of my clients that are working with outbound partners that it does deliver. But if you haven't got all of those things in place, then you're not at the start line and you should really take a step back and get those foundations in place first.

Yeah, and I completely agree with that. I think also I'd almost take it one step further and say you have to have demonstrated that you can sell your proposition. It's a valuable proposition that people are interested in. Then you can, then you can scale it up by outsourcing it. What you can't do is have a problem that I don't have enough leads but don't have any of those foundations you just outlined in place and then try and give that problem to somebody else. I guess a good outbound agency would probably kind of put the stop sign up and say, hang on a second, if you want us to be truly successful, you need these things. Unfortunately, there'll also be quite a few outbound agencies that will just take on the work. And I. So I think the other thing I'd say say about this is that you need to do your due diligence with the partner that you're looking for. Let's, let's move through that. I just want to ask you one really quick question. You have to see if you can answer this in one minute because I'm conscious of time and I want to make sure we do. Pillar three, what's your view on cold calling in 2024?

Oh, interesting. It seemed to have a bit of resurgence during COVID I think, because people were at home and alone and probably quite bored in many ways. My, my, what I saw quite a lot were people reporting back that actually cold calling worked pretty well during, during the height of the pandemic. People were quite happy to kind of, you know, to take, to take those phone calls there, there, there are a couple of schools of thoughts here. And you know, I've, I've seen, I've seen arguments and counterarguments around whether, whether it's part of the armory, as it were. I almost prefer the idea of kind of, rather than cold calling, warm calling. And we have all these great ways in which you can always kind of pre engage a prospect before you actually pick up the phone. You know, LinkedIn is a great example of where you can follow somebody. You don't even necessarily have to connect with them. You might just follow them. That might be enough to put you on their radar. You can, you can, you can comment on, on their content. You can, you can, if you wanted to maybe tag them in a piece of content you're sharing to kind of put it in front of their, their eyes. So there are, there are ways in which you can almost kind of create, I think you, you've called the micro commitments in our conversations previously where you start to build up a bit of a picture of, of somebody's level of engagement. And through automation tools you can, you can do lead scoring and that type of thing. But you know, you don't necessarily have to go to that level of complexity just to start to build a picture of how engaged or otherwise somebody is with your agency. So when you do pick up the phone, they are perhaps already aware of you and therefore more likely to take the call. But I do think if you're literally going from, I've never had any correspondence with you, you're not going to know me from Adam. Cold calling might work, but I think you're more likely to get some resistance and you've got to be really. I used to hate doing cold calling in my agency days and I really resisted it because I wasn't sharp enough on my feet to be able to kind of counter the objection and keep people on the phone. There are others that are really, really, really good at that. And if you are really, really good at that, then you should utilize that as part of your, as part of your kind of tool set, as it were. But I certainly wasn't back in, back in my 80 days.

Yeah, I think my view on this is a bit more black and white than yours because I, anybody says they want to go down that route, I say it's a really, really, really bad idea because it kind of the face of everything we've been saying. You have to build know like and trust with someone before they're going to buy from you. I always use the example of two bottles of water. So you can buy a bottle of this unbranded water from a corner store or you. And next to that is a bottle of Evian. And the Evian is twice the price as the unbranded one. And a lot of people are going to pick the Evian over the unbranded one because Evian, through their brand and their advertising and their sponsorship have built no like and trust with their audience. Whether it's any better is is relevant in a way so people will spend more money buying the branded bottle because they've made the effort to do build that, know like and trust. We have to do that with the audience. So social selling that you were just describing where you're connecting with your ideal target contacts, you're commenting on their posts, you're building some kind of relationship with them so that when you are reaching out to them to make the ask to phone them up, it is a warm sale. So I'm completely, I completely think that's a smart thing to do. I think cold calling is a really bad thing to do. People ask me that. I'm a massive fan of email marketing. It's how I get most of my business. And people say to me, rob, I don't have a list, can I buy a cold list? And I'm like, yeah, you can buy a cold list, but you are. It's hard work. It seems like an easy fix, but you're actually in danger of damaging your brand by cold emailing people because they're going, I didn't give you permission to email me. And who the hell are you? This is spam and I'm going to report you and all the rest of it. It's not the smartest thing to do. But you know what, it comes back to what we've been saying earlier. Buying a cold list seems like a really easy fix. I can spend, you know, £500 and buy a thousand contacts and my God, you know, it's going to take me five years to build an organic list of a thousand. So I'm going to shortcut the, the thing. But the truth of it is, of those thousand people, there might only be two on that list that are any of any interest. Whereas if you're building the list yourself, anyway, that's me off my hobby horse.

About.

Let'S move on to pillar. Pillar 3 and 3 is all about the sales process. So talk us, talk us through that. We've got oppos, right? We started to generate consistent leads. What's, what's the next stage of pillar three?

Well, I think, I think, you know, getting those other two things right offers the opportunity to kind of change how you go about selling fundamentally. So, I suppose when, when you're a generalist and you're kind of almost fishing after everything and you're almost willing and, you know, a caveat to that is when you first start out as an agency, that probably is how you're going to be. You're going to do lots of different things. There's almost this kind of period of a few years where it's kind of, you know, trialing different service offerings and working with different types of clients, etc, and that, and that's perfectly fine. But I think for most agencies, there comes a point in their, in their journey where they begin to realize there are downsides to working across lots of different types of clients, doing lots of different types of services, etc. Etc. And in terms of things like profitability and, and as a part of that, being able to kind of charge a premium, those things are much more difficult as a generalist. So I think once you get the foundations right in terms of positioning and taking kind of an expert position in terms of generating good policy opportunities that kind of fit that ideal client profile, you have a lot more opportunity to pick and choose which opportunities you start to pursue. And what should be happening at the beginning of the process is you should start to find yourself saying no a lot more often because, okay, thanks for the inquiry, but you're not quite the right fit. But here's an agency that might be better. What I tend to find happens irrespective of whether you're well positioned or in my view, perhaps not as well positioned, is that there does seem to be this mad dash to get towards writing a proposal. This is an exaggerated example for kind of not, not quite comedy effect. But this is, this is often what an agency process looks like. The lead comes in half an hour, phone call, get very excited, gather some information. Yes, we'll have a proposal, Mr. Prospect to your desk by Friday. Get the team in, write a proposal. There's a lot of second guessing that goes into that. Maybe there's a shopping list for different options and ideas in there. Zip the proposal over via email and then never hear from the prospect again. As I say, there is this kind of mad rush to get to proposal and almost use that document to do the selling rather than actually slow the whole thing down. Start to introduce a few more steps and key conversations into our process so that when we get to the point of writing a proposal, and this is the fundamental rule that I teach my clients to adopt in their sales process, is that your proposal or presentation, whatever format it takes, should be confirmation of what you have broadly agreed verbally already earlier in the process. Now, if I challenge my clients to just apply that rule and do nothing else, I would set them a task of, you know, tell me about how you would change your process if you had to adopt that philosophy or that rule. How would it change your approach to the sales process and there's a bit of arming and arring, but eventually everybody gets to the point where it's like, yeah, we'd, we'd slow down, we'd. We'd converse more with the prospect, we'd involve them more in how we're coming up with our ideas or our solutions. But we would, we wouldn't rush, you know, we wouldn't, we wouldn't commit to writing a proposal until much later in the process. So, you know, for me, for me, a good sales process is slow, not fast. And it's more steps and fundamentally, it's more conversations above anything else.

Yeah, I so agree that. I've got a feeling that a lot of listeners will be nodding their head to the scenario that you shared, because I think we've all been there, right? We get, like you say, we get excited that this brand that we'd love to work with has contacted us. They've given us this ridiculously short timescale. We don't really know why, but we drop everything, work long hours, get this thing done, send it off, and then never hear from them again. So I think, as the listeners will know, slow down to speed up is one of my favorite expressions, and it applies super, super well to this particular scenario. You just want to. I always say to people when you're pitching or you're writing a proposal, you need to learn as much about the client as you can, and you need to learn about what they haven't put in the pitch or the proposal brief, because that's the real juicy stuff that's going to help you win. And also, if you're being very consultative at the very beginning of a relationship, then it sort of sets the tone of how your relationship will be with a client. If you win them as a client as an equal partner and not as an imbalanced kind of customer supp where the customer beats the supplier up because, yeah, you know, it's easy to do that.

Absolutely. And all of that, that kind of advice and counsel and sort of, you know, consultative approach that you described there. I think, I think agencies are very good at kind of talking about being consultative. But actually when you look at what consultative really, really means, and I lean into books like the Challenger Sale, for example, you know, if you really lean into what that kind of means and what that looks like, it's not order taker. It's actually not taking the brief at face value. It's often challenging that brief. It's often having clients think in new and different ways. It's Understanding that what they think they want and what they actually need can often be very, very different things. And as an advisor, as an expert, which is born out of everything we've spoken about already today around positioning, is you shouldn't be taking those things at face value. You should be willing to kind of right from the offset set, the, almost set the tone for the relationship with regards to how you look at that brief and how you challenge it and how you question it. And I love what you refer to there in terms of going deeper than what is written down in that brief, because all of those things are normally about the business. And actually what we should be doing is thinking about, okay, what individuals are we speaking to here? What are they trying to do? What are their little micro challenges they're facing? And those are the sorts of things that aren't going to be in that brief. And they might not even be things that you reflect back in your written proposal because they might be quite personal to those stakeholders, but they're definitely things you could be talking about, you know, in and around your commentary with respect to that proposal or presentation. A really crude example. You find out that, you know, your key contact is, is looking at a promotion. Well, now, how, how can you as an agency help them realize their personal ambition or goal? Again, you won't talk about that in the proposal, but you can absolutely be talking about that separately in your conversations with that person. But that's only going to come out through conversation. It's not going to come out through taking a brief at face value, writing a proposal, firing it over and hoping that you get the win off the back of it. Yeah.

Okay, great. I'm conscious of time, so I want to sort of wrap things up now. I know you and I could carry on talking for another hour, but have you got any parting tips? Have you got any, like, what's the piece of advice that everybody should take away from today's episode? What's the one thing they should go and do?

Oh, the one thing. The one thing. It's going to depend on where they are on their journey. But I think, you know, I think, I think as we've kind of alluded to today, I think often people jump into Legion, for example, they are looking for those silver bullets. And unfortunately, in my, in my many years, probably 20 years or so now, in kind of agency business development, both in an agency and externally advising others that I'm really sorry, but there are no silver bullets. There is not one single thing that I can say to you today that you Go away and do that's going to fundamentally transform your ability to win new business and win the right new business. And I think that, that's a word that I use a lot is it's the right new business for your, for your agency. If you don't know what that right new business looks like, what that right client, that ideal client looks like for you, I think you need to start there. I think you need to define that and get that right. And that is wrapped up in that kind of broader positioning piece. I think you've got to start there, as we said earlier, that will then bring clarity to everything else that we've spoken about today with regards to how you generate opportunity, how you take greater control and ownership over the sales process. Rather than being that order taker, you can start to be that more sort of consultative advisor, which that is. That is modern selling. So I think, I think I'll probably wrap up and say, unfortunately, no silver bullets. Go back to the basics, get the strategic elements right first, and then in my experience, everything else then becomes a great deal easier. That follows.

Yeah, and I, I completely agree with that. And I just had two things, really. One is make sure when it comes to pillar. Two, that you actually have a plan. You're not just doing random things, but you actually have a marketing plan and business development plan that you're delivering. And when it comes to the sales process, again, make sure you have a sales process. You're not just reacting to opportunities and jumping because the prospect saying jump, but you've actually got a process that you follow, which means that you can put the brakes on a little bit and dig a bit deeper. So let me ask you the, Let me ask you the question. Ask all of my guests when they come on the podcast if you could give, go back in time and give your younger self just starting out at Leapfrog or wherever your first job was or when you started your own business. A piece of advice. What would it be?

Good question. I think, I think if I was going to, if I was to put my sort of business development and sales hat on and think about the very early kind of stages of my career, I, like most people in business development, sales fell into it. It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't designed. I didn't, I didn't come out of university and say, right, I'm going to go into a career in business development and sales. It just, it just didn't happen. I kind of fell into it. But the one, the one, the one mistake I did Make. And this is, this is true of if you're an agency owner who, who looks after the business development or if you're a dedicated, you know, business developer or salesperson in the agency. This is, this is the one thing I didn't do. So when all, all of the reading that I did tended to be about the, the industries that we were targeting and, and about the services that we were selling. So if we were, if we were selling ppc, I wanted trusted adviser. I didn't need to be an absolute expert in that area, but I needed to be able to kind of talk about that in broad terms and be able to provide that top line advice as part of the sales process. I was really not being big headed, but I thought I was quite good at that. I knew enough where I could be that advisor. What I didn't do enough of was actually read about my core role, which was business development and sales. I didn't re. I had a couple of mentors along the way which were fantastic. So I'd thoroughly advise, you know, seeking mentorship. But when I look back, I didn't read nearly enough books and there weren't as many podcasts and so on and things like that. There weren't as many resources, you know, 15, 15 years ago than there are now. But now there are an abundance of brilliant books, there are brilliant podcasts. All of this information is, is out there. So if you, if you, if you do work specifically in business development or you're the agency owner and you look after that and you know you want to improve, please read about your actual subject matter because I, I didn't do nearly enough of it. And ironically I've learned more about business development and sales in the last six or seven years of being an advisor than I actually did when I was doing the job. So that's the one piece of advice I always offer to people. Go and actually swat up what is.

Good is sure, yeah, it's good advice. Not for someone who's starting out, but for anybody that's anywhere in their career. Yeah, you know, I, I find, Find your medium. Like, I like listening to podcasts, I like listening to podcasts. When I walk the dog or go to the gym, I listen to my favorite business podcast then so that you know. But if that's not your, if YouTube's the place or reading is the place, then find that and go, go look at it. Ben. Unconscious of time. So if people wanted to find out more about you, where would they go?

LinkedIn is probably the place to go. So yeah. Find me on LinkedIn. I, I try my best to publish as much advisory type content as I possibly can and sort of give, give that stuff away as you know, for, you know, for free. So LinkedIn's a good spot. My website, ben-potter.co.uk that, that's good for getting a bit more kind of insight of sort of typically how I, how I work with agencies. But LinkedIn is probably the place to go. So yeah, come, come and connect.

All right, great with me there, we'll, we'll share both those links in the show notes. Just want to say a big, big thank you for giving up your time today to share your sales wisdom with the audience. I know that people will have got a few golden nuggets from that and hopefully thinking a little bit differently about the sales process and also have a little bit of an action plan. So that's always a good outcome from the podcast.

Yeah, absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me to, to come on.

Sam.