#AgencyVision: Train Better Clients With Your Sales Process

Hello.

Happy Wednesday to everybody. Welcome into yet another Agency Journey Live video here. Agency Vision show Gray here jumping in on the intro. I've got dimmer AKA Andrew Demski, who I'll pull in in just a second. But today we are tackling the seventh point in the Agency Freedom Manifesto. And that point is train better clients with your sales process. So let me split screen us here so you guys can see both of our faces. There you go. Got us now. Andrew, how are you, sir?

I'm doing well. How are you today, buddy?

I'm doing great. It is Wednesday morning here as we're recording this for us. Wednesday morning. If you're watching this from afar, it may not be Wednesday morning, but strong morning so far. Not a lot of sleep with the kids. That could explain the jitters here today as we're rocking and rolling. Hey, I'm excited about this point, though. Let's. Let's maybe recap real quickly. To me, this point, what we're tackling today is all these points in the Agency Freedom Manifesto all go together. It's pretty hard to separate out any one of them and take it. I mean, they're all kind of meant to be their own statements. They would stand on their own, but they're much stronger when all pulled together. And number seven here, training better clients with your sales process. This is directly tied to point number six, which we talked about last time all around. Getting paid for what you know, not just what you can do. Yeah, you wrote a bunch of notes there. Do you see a connection between those two?

Absolutely. Because the key to getting paid for what you know rather than what you do is expectations from the client. And so we can't take a client that expects a to do what exactly what they ask us to do and then say, no, we're going to do this instead. Like, it doesn't work out very well in the relationship. And so how do we work with the right type of people that are stuck in the. In the pain that we're trying to solve? We've got to attract them through our marketing and educate them and train them on how to work with us through our sales process. And so we want to leverage the sales process not just to get their money, but to make sure that they understand and we set their expectations about what the experience is going to be like together. So they're hand in glove.

Yeah. I was realizing too, as I was thinking about this, how tied in these are to our points 3, 4, and 5, which are largely around positioning and the business model piece.

Yeah.

That if you want to get paid for your expertise, if you don't get paid for what you know, not just what you can do, and you want to have that reflected in your sales process and started in your sales process, then you've got to have some expertise worth paying for. And that comes from the position. And not just worth paying for, but also that can be communicated like it's worth paying for, which is what the position piece is all about. It's not that you, there's plenty of people who have plenty of expertise and are just really poorly positioned. You can't get paid for it. So anyways, let's talk about the sales process and maybe the place to start is what do we see as the common trends in the agency scene? So I'm going to play out an example of what I've seen super commonly curious to compare notes with you, see how different that is from what you're seeing here with other types of agencies, specifically among inbound agencies. But this is kind of extended over into a bunch of different types. So I'm going to give you an overview of what we've seen for years now in inbound space and beyond is you get a lead. That lead could be the normal places are an event, some type of networking that you've done, someone who is in your network already or it's a referral or they fill out a form on the web, you know, through the contact form or through a form somewhere and ultimately get onto a call with you. And the flow can often be some variation of like a quick connect call, understand who they are. Basically a quick ideally a screening call, but really that often turns into the prospect telling you a bunch about their situation and you learn stuff and scheduling a deeper discovery call to go deep into the current situation. What obstacles are in the way like what assets they have to work with. Jumping into a goal setting call, this one comes from HubSpot, like what are the goals that you have? And then us mapping out. You go back, do a bunch of research, put together a proposal, maybe a couple options for them, come back, do a solution presentation call. Often that then leads to some type of negotiation or back and forth before you actually get to a close. But I'm seeing super commonly like a 4 to 6 call sales process to bring somebody in. And that's specifically that's primarily retainer based. I'm seeing website design projects or SEO projects. That sales process go a little bit quicker but it's still like a lot of the same general flow, maybe not as broken down into as many different calls, but the same general flow of a lot of information gathering, strategizing, researching, and then putting together. Here's what this is, or at least acting like we're researching before giving them a proposal. Does that map to what you're seeing? Pretty commonly?

Yeah, 100%. And it's LED by the client. And what do you want? What do you want us to do? What are you looking for? And it's the sad part is a lot of it is deliverable based or it's activity based, when you get down to the solution piece of it. And that's because most of these agencies are positioned around what they the services that they offer rather than the problems that they solve. And so that's why the sales process is so critical. If we flip it on its head and we use it as a training vehicle rather than an order taking vehicle, we can really control the client experience. And if you're struggling right now with unpredictability in your business, this is the place to address. First is how do we standardize the type of business that we attract? Who is that ideal fit client? What's the problem that they're stuck in? How do we solve that problem? Three foundational questions that you need clarity on, and those are the first things that we tackle inside the accelerator is to get absolute clarity on who that person is so that you know. Now how do we use the sales process to set their expectations up to be a good fit through our process rather than walking them through and trying to figure out what exactly do they want, like nitpicking it. Let me use an analogy here. Instead of taking them to the grocery store and having them pick out the ingredients for the dinner, you seat them at the table, you give them the menu for the courses that night, and you deliver a fantastic experience. That's a five star experience right there. That's kind of what we're talking about here is you sell that journey rather than the one off pieces that would flow into it.

Yeah, I see, I mean, at the end of that sales process, I see a couple of flaws. In addition to what you were pointing out is that it's very we want it to be prospect centric, but we don't want it to be prospect defining what's going to happen centric. So you get to the end of that sales process, they either decline, say no, which is a great answer. That's Ryan and I did an episode about how that's the second best answer in sales is just a straight up no, or they go dark or Drag their feet, they negotiate. They want to change the scope of whatever your proposal was, another sign that they're driving things, or they agree and want to know how soon you can get started. And what I want to point out is there's a. There's. There's a problem with all of those. One is, if you're investing all this time in the sales process, there is a degree to where that's the cost of doing business. But you gotta realize that's all time that's going away, that's being taken away from your other clients, and that cost is then either getting passed on to you or it's getting passed on to your clients who do come on board. So you're spending an awful lot of time, unpaid time with people before you get in. The earlier your agency is and the weaker your positioning is, the more the reality of that time spent is gonna hit you. But there's also a key phrase that comes up super often when people actually close deals out of this process, which is, I'm on board. Like, how soon can we get started? I love the strategy that you put together. Like, how soon can we get started? And what that reveals is the truth of the relationship, which is like, they don't view you as already having started. You've already put in all this work. You've got, in many cases, 10, 15 hours into a deal by this point. It's not like you're about to get started. You're into it. You've done a bunch of the heavy lifting already, and you're training them subconsciously that when we get started when we're working is when we're actually making things and producing stuff for you.

That's when value is created. Yeah.

What we know, that's not like there's no value to that. You haven't communicated any of that. This leads into a really rough loop that can. A vicious cycle that can develop here, which is where you didn't charge for your expertise at the beginning. They appreciate the time that you've put in, but it's not. It's not valued the way that it would be if they had paid for it. So when they want to do something that differs from your expertise, a, they think they should just do it because they were part of coming up with it before. But when you push back, it's less valued than if they hired you for what you know. Even if it is valued, though, they view it as it should be free because it was free before.

Yep.

So if it's free and you're not getting paid for it. What's your motivation to keep doing it? Obviously, you want better client results, but you've got more friction for them to accept your advice because it's less valued and you're not getting paid for it. So it's free. So as a result, what happens is agencies start to compromise. And the compromise is, you know what? We really shouldn't make that logo larger, but we're gonna go do it because it's not worth fighting with them about. Like, we're not gonna get paid for that time, and they're gonna argue with us. And when they want to have their messaging be completely selfishly, selfishly centered. Like, it's all focused on their business or their team or their value proposition. It's not focused on who their prospects are and their needs and pains and situations. You know, because you're the right person to be doing this. You have the expertise that that's not the best thing. But it's such a battle to get to that point, and you're not getting paid for any of that time. Why bother? So you start to make those compromises and give in and not tell people the truth because you're not getting paid for. They're not. I mean, I don't think that's like a wrong thing to not tell people. There's plenty of situations where you don't tell people the truth. You don't always tell your cousin about all the life choices they're making that they're the wrong thing to do. There's certain times because you're not paid, you're not in a position where you are the expert. Well, that obviously then compounds onto itself into worse results than you'd initially projected and had hoped for. And then those worst results come back at some point to wind up with you getting fired because the client's not going to let themselves go. They'll let you go, even though that was. And you can point to it being their strategy, and they'll say, well, why didn't you? You tell us and say, well, we didn't get paid for it, and we tried to tell you and you didn't want to listen. And then ultimately you're done with that client and you move on to the next one and the cycle continues. So you've got to find a way to fix this. And that is this cycle is what we're trying to shortcut in this point in the manifesto, which is if you want better clients, the way that you get those is by training them the right way, which is the Value. Exactly.

Yep.

So what have you seen as the way to get to train better clients? I'm thinking of so many examples of like there's no such thing as a bad fill in the blank. I think this phrase has been used all over the place. It all comes down to how you train these people to be, you know, whether it's our kids and the way that we raise them. Like are there. Certainly there's degrees of natural inclination and proclivity towards certain avenues. But how do we train better clients and what does that look like in the sales process?

It's kind of a two step process. The first thing is a magnetic offer that they're, that they are attracted to. And a well crafted offer is going to attract ideal fits and it's going to reject bad fits baked into the inherent nature of the offer is going to be the value proposition that your ideal fit prospect searching for. You want to create that offer that your ideal fit client says, where have you been my whole life? This is the thing that I've been looking for all along. That's the critical first step. So they're framed to come to you looking for that.

Yeah. We can't, we can't skip past though what you just said about how it's magnetic to the right fit and it's off putting to the wrong fit type of people. Because that's the scariest thing. I mean, we've already talked about this. I don't want to belabor the point, but so many agency owners who we deal with are so scared of saying anything that would turn any potential business away.

Yep.

And what you're saying is that's what we ought to do is people who aren't the right fit should be turned away.

Exactly. So they should be filtered out from the beginning. And really you want to think about your sales process in terms of how can I get someone out of this process? Because your greatest risk as an agency is saying yes to a client, bringing that client into your world. Because now you're committing to deliver results for them and you're exposing the team to that client relationship. And those are your two, that is your revenue and your, your biggest cog is your team and their ability to deliver results for your client. So you're the one taking on the risk as the agency here. So as you walk someone through a sales process, you shouldn't be trying to say how can I get all these people to say yes? You should be looking at it from a position of strength and saying, how do I say no so that I know, I'm only attracting the right fits into the agency and that's, that's a scary decision for a lot of people. But when you get to that spot and you have this magnetic offer in place that's bringing the right type of people in and allowing you to filter out the bad fits, that's when you can really take some control over your sales process and then lead them through a discovery project that trains them on how to work with you. That instills in them your, the strength of your proven process that gets them to verbally, verbally hand over the reins to you and give you permission to lead. That's structured into that discovery process is the retraining of the relationship that's necessary in order for you to see success long term.

What does that discovery project look like is question number one.

Yeah.

Question number two is maybe this will come out of a description of the discovery project. But why as a client would I pay you for that when there's all these other agencies who are willing to do it for free? That's the most common objection is I'm afraid if I try and charge for that. I thought that was just the cost of doing business.

Yep. First thing is like what goes into it. It is a premium price strategy. So someone's going to pay thousands of dollars, thousands of pounds in order to walk through this process with you. That price point can vary, but you want it to be a standard setting price for the value of your strategy, of what you're walking people through. How is it structured? That can vary based on the agency, but a typical structure is two half day sessions back to back where you're together with the client leadership team. Not just marketing, not just sales, but client facing the C suite. The key stakeholders are in the room having a conversation about where the business is going as a whole. What are the obstacles holding them back? What are the assets that we have that we're underutilizing at this moment? And by facilitating that high level conversation and opening up that core group of people within your client's organization to speak with one another. You're giving them an opportunity that they don't have in the day to day. And right there, right out of the gate, you've given them something that no other agency has ever given them before. No other agency that's responded to an RFP that's just given them 75 pages of creative strategy has ever given them a chance to dialogue with each other and facilitate that constructive relationship internally. And that is so important to do that first because you're leading that conversation. And so subtly they're looking at you as the leader, the facilitator, the authority in that space. And you've just flipped the script at that point and you've gained a level of leverage that you could never accomplish in the native sales process. And it gives you an opportunity to really get to know the business really well behind the scenes. You want to put escape hatches into your delivery process. And selling a discovery project upfront is a short term commitment. And so it's a built in escape hatch. If it's a bad fit client, you pull the escape hatch, you give them the strategy, you say, good luck implementing it, we're not a good fit for these reasons, have a nice day and you move on because again, your greatest risk is saying yes to a client and bringing them into your world. So you build these escape hatches into your discovery project, into your build out project, and then into your 90 day ongoing retainer work so that if a client becomes toxic, if it becomes a bad fit, you can pull the lever, get out of it. And that expectation is baked in from the beginning. Does that answer the question on like what, what goes into this?

Yeah, there's so much that goes into that. And the question, the common question that comes up then is how do I, like how do I, how do I as an agency owner justify charging for this when other people are doing a worse version of this? But how does the client see this as a value?

Yeah, it, it needs to flow downstream from that magnetic offer and the sales process because that's, we've got to talk to people in the right frame. This is, this, this process is how we get to the information that's going to make this plan work. A doctor can't just write a prescription, he's got to do a physical first. And did you know that doctors charge for physical scratch?

No, I don't believe it's kidding.

Yeah, it's true. So that's a simple analogy, but it makes sense. And before you start building a building, you've got to hire an architect to put the plans together. Did you know that architects charge for their work?

They do the same thing. This is mind blowing.

It's kind of crazy, right? So it's, it's very popular. It's very prevalent in other industries. But again, much like picking one ideal fit person to serve for some reason in the agency space, we're counterintuitive to this principle.

Now it's, it's the same, I think it's the same thing. And probably everything except for doctors, because they're in demand. But you've got plenty of contractors out there in the building industry who are giving away like really crappy blueprints or something that they found like they'll, or they'll work with no blueprint and just kind of make it and follow your orders and go. But yeah, you're exactly right. The folks who are getting paid for their expertise, like, who are experts, they find a way to monetize that and set the standard and the expectation of the relationship from the beginning that this is the process we need to go through if you want to ultimately build your dream house. Like, we don't just start building stuff today. We have to go through a process. And to go through a process that's actually going to get you to where you want to go, that needs to be a serious process. And that serious process actually costs money.

Go figure. What do you know? So that whole it all stacks together. The magnetic offer to the ideal fit client who you understand and know their pain, who you've mapped a solution, you've developed a proven process to solve that pain, to then walk them through the discovery project where you request to lead and you train them on how to, how to work with you, how to follow your process. That's actually going to get them to where they're trying to go. That can be accomplished when you run this type of a sales process. And what's cool is instead of three to six calls, you can knock this thing out and one to two calls because it's a lower commitment offer.

Yeah. All right, well, there's a lot more we can get into at some point. If you have questions, drop them in the comments here or go to the website, contact us through the website, let us know. We're happy to do another training, diving deep into this one, but we'll go ahead and wrap it up here. If you want to see how the better agency sales process that we're describing here fits into the best agency business model, you can head over to zenpilot.com model and see the entire model illustrated out for you there to see where this fits in and how this works.

Yep.

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