#AgencyVision: Sell the Solution, Not Services

We are live. Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to the Agency Vision show. You've got Gray here. I'm gonna pull on Andrew in just a second. Today we are continuing our series about the Agency Freedom Manifesto. Our deep dive into what we mean by each of these points here in the manifesto. And I'm very excited today to be diving into flipping your whole mindset around client servicing. We've talked about the importance of focusing on helping one ideal fit client solve a costly pain or overcome that costly pain. And today we're going to be talking about the continuation of that mindset. Selling the solution, not services. So, Andrew, welcome aboard, man.

Thanks, man.

Hey, you've got a different look going on today.

I do. I'm up in Rochester right now. I've got a. I'm in the mobile office today. So I'm actually hanging out in a performance care practice center today, which is a lot of fun. My brother in law is basically a wizard when it comes to treating injured athletes and he's letting me hijack the office today. So we're running from the road right now.

That is awesome. Well good. So let's dive into this next point. So this is for people who don't know, maybe a little brief recap would be helpful here. Today is 0.5 or we're gonna spend most of the time covering the fifth point in our Agency Freedom Manifesto. So the first one is your business works for you, not vice versa. If you haven't heard that one yet, that was a Fun1. Number two, kill your broken agency business model before it kills you. Number three, make the hard decision once. That makes every other decision subsequently easier. The fourth one, help one ideal fit client solve a costly problem. So 3, 4 and 5 are all tied together, but there are distinctions between them. So that hard decision primarily for most agencies, it's not just positioning, but positioning is where we focused that conversation. That's the single hardest decision most agencies need to make to benefit from right away. What does that look like in terms of helping one ideal fit clients solve a costly problem? Is what we talked through last time. And then selling the solution, not services. Give us an overview of the benefits of selling solution. I know this is a whole change which we'll go into here, but kind of break down what you meant by that point.

Yeah. So just from a high level overview, what we're talking about here is basically you stop thinking about what you do for businesses and you start thinking about how you can help businesses. And that sounds super subtle and you may be like Andrew what's the difference? Like when you, when someone asks you, like, what do you do? If your first response is, oh, we're a web design agency, or, oh, we're a Facebook ad agency, or we're an inbound marketing agency, or we're a branding agency, that is you centric. Like, everything that came out of your mouth is all about what you do. It's kind of like the old school advertising methods. Like it was all about them, what they did and everything. But this is a new world. We're in a new era. And Uber and Amazon and Apple and Netflix and Airbnb. Like, all of these companies that have achieved hyper growth the last few years have one thing in common, and that is that they build an experience completely around the customer that not only serves them today, but serves them tomorrow and the next day. Because they spend so much time getting to know that ideal customer that they can predict what the next thing that they're going to want is. And so we talk about selling the solution and not just the service. That's really what's at the heart of it, is let's build an agency that puts our ideal fit client at the center of everything. And the whole experience is crafted not just to do stuff for them, but to help them achieve a transformation. Help them get from the bottom of the mountain where they're kind of stuck in the mud. Like looking up through the clouds, they can see the peak of the mountain, kind of, but they've got no idea how to get there. And maybe the clouds are so dark because they're so stuck in the mud that they can't even see the peak of the mountain. They just have this action aspiration of getting out of their current situation. You come along as their guide, as the people that come alongside of them, and you serve as the usher to the top of that mountain, and you guide them on that journey. And when you think about that, your positioning is now totally different. Like, you've completely killed your competition in this place, because who else does that? Like, you deliver them fully to their outcome, to where they're trying to go. You support them along the way. And from your side, you're learning more and more and more. Every time you walk this same journey, your knife becomes sharper. You become more and more of an expert and help them solve their problems faster. And when you solve problems fast, you deliver value more quickly. And it's all about crafting an amazing client experience. And so the root of this is, let's not put ourselves as agencies at the center of Our worlds. Let's put the customer at the center of the world and build the exact experience that they need to get what they're actually looking for at the end of the day.

Yeah, that's a great point. I do think there's a lot of well meaning agency owners who try to put the customer at the center of what they do by saying like that's one of the most common positioning points is like we'll do whatever you need. Like we understand you're not good at this, we'll serve you by figuring it out for you. It's essentially what they're saying, although they say whatever you need we can do from a digital perspective. So this is just an adjustment. How do you describe the adjustment to that mindset from where they are to what we're saying here?

It's huge. It's a leadership distinction because you're not serving the client when you say whatever you want us to do, we'll do it for you. Like you're enabling the client in that place. If they knew what to do, they wouldn't be here, they wouldn't be stuck. And that's also a filter for you because you might have some clients that they've got a strong in house team, they've got a really tight strategy and they're just looking for cheap labor and that's not the position that you want. So there might be people who know exactly what they want you to do and it's going to get good results. But those are typically the companies that are looking for augmented help until they can have enough capacity to fire you and hire someone full time in house, you're just biding your time right there. That's not where you want to be. If you're trying to build a sustainable business that delivers freedom for you. If you want a business that frees you to work on your business that allows you to build a scalable delivery system without swamping you with overhead, you make this positioning shift and now you focus on solving that costly problem. That's the filter in your marketing and your sales process as well, that we will guide you to this place. And by planting those seeds in marketing and in sales, you're now framing expectations from the beginning. That creates a completely different experience for the client delivery team. Because we talk to agency owners every single day that the team, the morale gets so sucked into the gutter by a bad fit client or by a client that's having a negative experience or that isn't seeing the results that they were expecting at the beginning. That Just drains everyone. And we're in a people business. So whenever your team's drained, that means they're treating your best clients with that same state, that same mindset, that same, like, weightiness. So what we really want to do is we want to lead our clients on a journey. And so instead of going to them and saying, yes, we'll serve you, we'll put you at the center, whatever you ask us to do, we say, great. We see where you are, we understand where you're trying to go. We've walked this journey before, so place your trust in us and we will get you to where you're trying to go. We'll guide you step by step on that path. That's the distinction right there. It is all about leadership. Not taking a backseat to their request, but having the, having the guts and the position and the ability to step forward and ask permission to lead. That's a big part of the agency freedom model. It's baked in at a very critical point because you've gotta train your prospects on how to work with you. And requesting leadership is a big part in that process.

Yeah, so much of leadership comes down to confidence. There's some people who are just born with overconfident, and so they will lead in times when they're not qualified to lead. Often those people are still really effective leaders because you just need somebody to lead at any given point. But there's definitely times where they're just overconfident and the leadership is poor, like. But then there are other people who aren't born as confident, which is the majority of people out there. The confidence come or the leadership ability runs right along with the confidence level to be able to lead effectively through the situation. So your ability to lead your clients well, it comes down to the confidence that you have in. In what, what you do. And confidence obviously comes from mastery and excellence, and excellence comes from intentional practice around a focused subject or area of practice. So this piece definitely makes sense. And you brought up Airbnb and mentioned that example. And in the article that you wrote alongside of this, which we'll post, you can get to it zenpilot.com manifesto and. And then click on point number five, you'll get to the show notes for it. But you talked about how Airbnb has kind of expanded as they've understood their guests needs and become more confident there. Have you used any of the add ons?

I haven't used them yet, but we're like, we're planning trips and like using. Let me start from the beginning. Anyone who hasn't read the post yet, like, when you think about Airbnb, they started out like their origin story is find people who are trying to come to a town for a conference and find people who live in that town who have an extra room so that those new people come into town can just have a place to stay without paying the high hotel rates. And then it kind of expanded out of there to just anyone who's traveling, like, this is a hotel alternative now, and, like, it's starting to gain traction. And then what we saw was that there was a distinction between the rooms that got really, really good reviews or the places that got really, really good reviews and the ones that didn't. And so they started spotting trends there and they started identifying who are the hosts that are doing a really good job at creating the little experiences that their guests love. And they started calling those people superhosts. And so now you can filter Airbnb spots by super host and only find the people that are really, really good at creating an awesome experience for you. But one thing that people. One piece of feedback that clients gave early on to Airbnb was that we love talking with the local and getting the local recommendation and everything. That's why they launched Airbnb Experiences, which you could now on the app, search for different experiences in the area where you're going to be staying and see, like, what are the good restaurants or what are the little tours we could take and try to connect you with different activities in the area that was kind of. They identified what the ideal fit clients were really enjoying about the experience, and then they pushed more into that area. So no longer they just connecting host with guests, they're now saying, guest, you're our ideal fit. Like, what's the full experience that you're looking for here when you book a room through Airbnb? And so they're kind of taking one more step to sell that full solution, not just the service of helping you book your room. And what's happening there is they've just opened up a new line of revenue because they brought someone into the city, they've given them a place to stay, and now they're going to help them find something to do well.

And the, the point there with the added line of revenue is like, they didn't go out and try and tackle a different market. It's just an additional way to provide value and create revenue from your existing.

And it's already a customer. Customers are the easiest people to sell into more service because they've already paid you money once. We've proven that psychologically, even if it's as little as a dollar, they're more likely to become a repeat customer than someone who's not giving you a dollar in the past. So finding that ideal fit and helping them, you just get more delight out of the experience. Like, now that you have this thing solved, you have a room in this city, what's the next thing you're going to want? You're going to want something to do when you're there. That's the next evolution on that journey. And so that's where Airbnb went. And now Airbnb is at the point where they're launching Airbnb Adventures, where they'll do small. They'll take small groups, help you book your place, help you plan your activities, help you find your meals. Those are the three things that you're doing when you're taking a trip. And you don't have to think about any of it now. Think about that evolution. Like, what does Airbnb do? Oh, we help you find a room when you go to a new town. But they zeroed in. They said, okay, what does that ideal fit client really want from this experience? They want a great trip with a small group of friends. That's what they want. Let's help deliver that. And so when you look across industries and you try to find this evolution in service, you'll see it. But in the agency space, it's so hard because we've made it all about ourselves. So that's why flipping that script and putting the customer at the center of everything. And now, as the owner, instead of applying your creative energy to going out and solving each client's unique problem, you get the chance to think about one ideal for the client and say, how do I make this experience great? What are they really looking for? And that's when you unlock the freedom, is when you put yourself in that seat.

I think it's really hard in the service business or the service business struggles with this the most is we got used to getting paid by somebody. Most of the origin stories are, I got. I realized that a skill set, somebody would pay me to create something for them, custom or whatever it was. So what we're really getting at is the key to all this is changing your mindset to where you're delivering. Like, that's why this point is here, to where what you're delivering is not what the client requested. What you're delivering is what the client wants. It's not that, you know, hopefully There's a lot of alignment, but between those two or becomes that alignment. Actually, that's not really true. I mean, most of the time that's not exactly what the client wants. Is not. Or their path to getting there is probably not, in most cases, not the easiest, fastest way to get there or the most sustainable way to get there. And you may have a better way to move them there. I look back at our days at Guavabox and we talked to somebody and they'd want results and they'd come to us wanting SEO. Well, SEO is part of it, but there's these other things as well. And the problem was that it wasn't just focused on the solution. We did a good job of starting out around the solution, but then ultimately got back to selling people a service. Like ultimately got back to saying, you wanted to pay for the deliverable of SEO. Instead you're going to pay us for the deliverables of this website, for the deliverables of this inbound stuff, for the deliverables of SEO that come with it. Here's these different pieces. And it wasn't enough focused around, you know, the whole experience was not focused around what is the solution early on.

Yeah.

And the better that we got at focusing on just the solution, they don't. They just need to know that we can get them there. And then here's the path. We'll guide you through it in terms of how to get there. But your profitability is always going to increase the more you're focused on that and not. But it really. I guess the point is it really requires a full mindset shift. You can't like go part way with this.

Yeah. And this is not to say you need to fully diversify your agency and do everything that a client could potentially need. I think that's one way you can take it. Like, airbnb could say, do you need a car rental? Do you need a trip to the airport? Do you need a limo? You could go all these different places. You need to filter this through the vein of what is the most impactful thing that we can do for the client and how do we sequence that impact? This you take into account and we walk through this in our accelerator process of what is the best fit for this client, what's the best fit for this team? What are skills that we need to bring in house that we don't have in house right now? Who are partners that we need to establish? Because we don't want to get involved in that. But we know the client needs that these are all essential conversations. And you can't have any of them until you're talking about the same group of people. That's why that's the one big decision that you make, that every. That makes every other decision easier because you now you've standardized the inputs into the system. We know who we're trying to help. And that allows us now to just continue to evolve this. It's the vehicle, it's the asset that you're building to get the client to the destination faster and to do it without you needing to get pulled into the operation all the time.

Absolutely. That's the last thing I'll add here. And then if you have anything else before we wrap up, I'll give you a chance to say that too, before I cut you off. But the principle of earning the right, like, you can't deliver everything right now because you haven't earned the right to do that yet. But the more. Just like Airbnb, like, you learn more, you perfect or you get closer to mastery on one thing. Like, then you earn the right to move on to the next thing. And that's been our path as well. Like, we have to earn the right to move to. You know, there's certainly other pieces people. Agency financials is an area that agencies struggle with before we get deep into financials or before we get deep into some additional piece that we could certainly help people with that we've seen inside enough businesses and set up and run enough. Like, there's enough. We could bring enough value today to go add those pieces. But we need to earn the right by mastering what's already in front of us and running that over and over and over. And the same thing applies to every business out there. Agencies aren't excluded from that. You got to earn the right to move on to those additional lines of revenue and additional value, get really good at what you do, make that profitable first, and then move on when the time is right. And evaluate. And have some kind of matrix for how you evaluate when you move something on and when you don't.

Mm. And you gave the example of Guava Box of how we haven't done a good job of this. I'd give the example of Zenpilot to say this is an area where we have done a good job of this because we had that one person who we serve. We serve agency owners that are trapped inside their business and are looking for more freedom from the business that they're building. How do we do that? We started by helping them build processes and systems, and then we expanded that into, we help them with the positioning. So how do we position the agency? So you're only working with the type of people that you love so you know what systems and processes you can document. Then we move that into growth. Like now that you've got this system set up, how do you drive growth through the channels to get there? Like that's the journey that every agency owner needs to walk. And we only know that by being in this space for so long and just focusing all of our attention on solving these problems. And that's what you guys need to do. Whoever your ideal fit client is, get to know them. Get to know their problems, get to know their desires, their goals, their outcomes. Immerse yourself in their world. When you do that, you'll be able to build a business that serves them. And when you help an ideal fit client or you help anyone solve a costly problem, that's a business model that's never going to go out of style. You can, you can put yourself there, be comfortable there and just continue to learn and evolve as the times go by. Because who knows what the tactics are going to be five years from now or 50 years from now. But those people are still going to have problems that need solved. And if you put yourself in the spot of focusing on solving those problems, you're going to have a job, you're going to have a well paying vocation, and you're going to be able to add a lot of value back in the marketplace, both to your clients and to your team. But you can't do that until you focus on the solution and not the service.

Awesome. That's a good place to wrap up. We appreciate you being with us live. If you're listening live here on the podcast, make sure you subscribe to Agency Journey. If you have not yet an insider the opportunity to listen to lives like these and other ones, head to agencyjourneyinsiders.com if you want to catch the show notes for this, the whole article that Andrew wrote up ACcompanying Head to zenpilot.com manifesto. Click on point number five there next time. This is one of my favorite points. Number six. Maybe because it's so it's not easy, but relatively easy for agencies to make it. What we're talking about today is like a bigger mindset shift what we're talking about in point 6. Get paid for what you know, not simply what you can do. That one. We've seen how quick of a turnaround that can be when you just have the right model to find follow. Yep, so yep, I'm excited to really dive into that one. If you want to fast track your journey into that model, get that entire model for you to follow. Go to zenpilot.com freedom book a clarity call with us. We'll walk you through. Really start with, I mean, just like most of your initial calls should be, it's going to be the same exact model. Like what's the situation right now? What's the pain point? What's the goal? And then what's the fastest path to get you there? If you are an agency, there's a good chance, depending on where you are, that we can help you improve. And if you're our ideal fit client, we'll extend that opportunity to you. If not, we'll go back to point number four. Remind ourselves. Sorry, not for you. No fool for you.

Yeah.

All right, awesome. Appreciate you being with us. We'll talk to you next time.