How Much Time Should Your Agency Spend on a Prospect?

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Welcome back to this week's episode of Inbound Sales Journey. This week, Ryan and I here in episode number 104 are going to be talking about the answer to the question of what's the right amount of time? My agency. Agency. My agency. Let me try this again. There you go. My agency sales reps should be spending with prospects during the sales process. So I have had to try and answer this question before. And typically people ask this question because either what they're realizing is we are spending wildly disproportionate amounts of time with prospects before we get them to close. Like I'll close one in three hours and one's taking 30 hours, or they just feel like they're spending way too much time, which obviously in the agency space, probably any space, we're all looking for ways to do more work, better, faster. So that's a pretty common one. But closing a deal does take time. So we want to kind of address what should you be thinking about, what are some of the guidelines and then specifically how long should some of this be taking based on what we've gone through and experienced over six plus years selling stuff at Guava Box, and then also the conversations we've had with a bunch of other folks who are selling the agency space. And I relate to this topic very well because I've wasted a lot of time with, with bad prospects and asked this question to a lot of, a lot of people. Early on at Guava Box, when I felt like this, it was really just all, all over the board and I'd won horrible prospect. Specifically, I think the second inbound partnership HubSpot client who we ever tried to sign up at Guavabox and over the course of two separate sales kind of stint process segments, one at the very beginning when I first got connected with him, he was a referral and then one, when he came back a year and a half later, probably spent 40 plus hours with one prospect who predictably, as everybody knows, you can fill in the end of the story. Ryan, what do you think happened with that prospect?

I'm gonna guess you Closed them and it was a very profitable experience.

That was said tongue in cheek, obviously. Obviously didn't close as most of those prospects where you just spend a ton of time and never get anything early on as those typically work out and just spent a ton of time, didn't do a good job qualifying and wasted a lot of time. And that led to, I guess, one of the first memories of questioning how much time. I feel like I'm just putting a ton of time and energy into this and it's not working out. So what's the better way? How do we need to be doing this? So let's get into that. Ryan. I want to, I definitely want to give people specifics, but I kind of want to first start with some of the guidelines. So what are some of the things you think about when you're talking to people about how much time is the right amount of time to give their prospects?

So analyzing your story, Gray, I think probably the root of the problem and the root of a lot of people's problem is no clear process or a weak process. You think you have a process, but it's just pretty loose and weak. So a sales process is, I mean, it's very similar to client servicing process and the fact that you really just want to take control of knowing that I have a good plan in place and I'm going to execute it. So.

And people, that's all that your prospects want to.

Right.

Even though it sounds like I'm being really bossy or pushy, at least for some personality types, my personality type, when I started selling, that's all that they. For most prospects, that's what they want is they want you to take control, tell them exactly how it's going to work and lead them through it.

Yeah. I mean, without fail, every time I get on a guava box sales call and I explained to them the game plan and walk them through for from a client servicing side that we have this clear plan. This is exactly how it works. This is what we do. There's just like this sigh of relief on the other side of the phone of like, okay, you were able to communicate with me in 20 minutes. Like, you know, I want to bash any agencies, but like 90% of agencies. Yeah, yeah, you have. You guys obviously have a clear plan. It's proven it works.

Yeah. Because most people listen and say, I, oh, you need this, this and this. You think, okay, we do this, this and this then.

Right.

And it's clear that, okay, you're just kind of feeding back to me what I'M saying instead of saying, here's our process and here's how what I thought I wanted fits into that.

Yeah. When we started doing game plans, that was probably the biggest thing. And hopefully this is going to be really helpful for people that are listening that don't have this figured out yet. But just asking them what they want and then telling them what you do is a horrible approach to selling anything.

Amen.

But being able to say, look, this is what we do as an agency, like, people need straight, like everyone needs strategy. And the way that we do it correctly. And when we focus on that in our sales process and we. And we show them that we have a killer strategy, that's gonna be really helpful for them. They love it. I mean, it's great. This is a really big side tangent, but this is really important for. For people to. To know. And if you're not doing that and you're wondering, like, that's. I mean, that's going to shorten your sales process because people are going to either identify and say, yes, I want that, or no, I don't. And either way it's okay because the people that say, no, I don't are the people that are going to spend 40 hours just asking you the random questions. But the people that say, yes, I do understand the value of actually working with an agency versus just trying to tell someone that they need something done and don't want to hire an employee to do it. So, anyways, that was not where I thought that was gonna go, but I think that that was important.

Having a process is key. Having a strong process that you follow is key.

So what that allows you to do, to tie it back in and set up is I. Three to five hours maximum. If I don't know that they're gonna close in three to five hours. And that. That doesn't necessarily include research time. That's time on the phone chatting with them, broken down into kind of that first. You know, everyone kind of heard this before, right? The connect call. So that's maybe 30 minutes to an hour, you know, depending on how it goes. Then we do a little bit more of a detailed call. So in the connect call, actually a lot of the times now in the connect call, I'll just explain. We have a process. This is it. Is it like, how does this sound to you? And then, hey, this is something we really need. Great. Let's set up a call. We're going to go more in depth into it so that you have a clear understanding. And let's make sure that the right people are on that second call too. Three to five out. So maybe those two calls, maybe we need a third call if someone couldn't make it or something like that. But at that time, I at least know this is worth continuing or not continuing. And it's because I started with a clear process, and I have a clear sales process that I know. Like, for me, the sales calls are so similar. Like, when you get it down to a science of this is what I need to figure out. And this is typically how it goes. There's not really a ton of variation that goes into it. And there. There's like, no. And this is not bashing you, Greg, because this was early on and you didn't have the sales process knocked out. But there is no, no possible chance I would ever spend 40 hours or even like a fourth of that time with someone without having, like, a very clear indication that, like, we're ready to go. Now, if you are a sales rep and you're like, this is the classic, like, bad thing that all sales reps do, and I do this still and need to always check myself, and I call it the yeah, but test. So what the yeah, but test is, is when I'm talking with a prospect on the phone and I start to get, like, a couple red flags. So whether it's they don't want to submit to this process, they're pulling me. They're just asking me a bunch of miscellaneous questions, just trying to get some free information there. I mean, there's a lot of different ways that that sales calls can kind of go bad. But you still have this inkling of like, yeah, but we could really use the revenue. Yeah, but it still might work out, because I heard some good things, too. When you start saying the yeah, buts to yourself over and over again, that's like the big red flags when they start flying for me. Because what that turns into is a third call and a fourth call and a fifth call, and. And you're really not progressing through the sales process. You're getting stuck in this, playing their game of I really just want free information or I want more information or this kind of stuff. Like, at some point, people need to make a decision. So that's what I always try to do is the yeah, but test and making sure that I haven't had to say that to myself more than a couple times. Because when we start going off script too much, that's when people can seem great. But if they're not willing to follow the sales process, that almost never Ends.

Well, yeah, I think that's helpful. Obviously, the big, I guess the big like. But clarification here, contingency on what you were saying about three to five hours is it totally depends on what you're selling and what a prospect is worth to you and what you're doing. So you're talking about a game plan. Honestly, most game plans that those sales that I've been involved in are actually on the short end of that typically like kind of a two call, two to three call average on those sales. And that's kind of capping out usually at about three hours. There'll be some other time involved in sending stuff over. But on the flip side, one episode that we have that I think might be helpful for people we interviewed Kyle Bento from Impact Brand and Design up in Connecticut. And so they're selling, they're not leading off with the game plan in the process that he's talking about specifically on that call where he kind of walks us through their exact process, how they go through the connect explore goal setting and planning and proposal stages. And it takes somebody from an initial connection all the way through the sales process to the point where they've submitted a proposal and closed a deal that for them. And that is kind of for an inbound relationship where there's a longer. Obviously the higher the dollar value, the higher the commitment level initially, the longer the sales process is typically going to be. So in that he says the Impact team averages about 12 to 14 hours of total time per prospect. So that's everything from the research. The actual time on the phone, putting together the proposal, sending emails, all that kind of legwork that you're doing, which obviously you're not factoring into a three.

Right. That's just calls.

So there is a good amount of time off of. Off of calls. And one thing I think that is real important and certainly takes up time, but it's just confirming stuff via a second second method or channel that you talked about on the call. So one of the things that we do, when you jump off of a call with a prospect, you wrap that up into a somewhat templated email to begin with, with, hey, here's what we talked about, here's what the clear next steps were. Here's the homework that I had to get to you, that kind of stuff. But basically just clarify like what I heard you say was this. Make any corrections to my understanding of your situation. And that can be really helpful in a lot of cases. Surprisingly common that prospects will say stuff on the phone. They'll Kind of go along because there's a little bit of pressure on a phone call. For a lot of people, they'll go along with what you were saying. But actually if they had to pull out their checkbook and commit to the same thing that they were saying, that wasn't exactly what they meant. So following that up with an email, following up a phone call with an email, clarifying exactly what you went through and setting, clarifying what the next steps are and just make sure everyone's in on that. You will get people who come back and have corrections even though it was exactly what was said on the call. But just making sure that everyone had the same takeaways, I think it's important. Same thing. If you had an email, sometimes it's helpful to follow up with a phone call and just say, hey, I just sent you an email with this, but wanted to walk through that and make sure that you understood what I was saying. Just helpful sometimes to make sure that you're communicating. So there's certainly a lot of ways that you're going to add in extra time here, but I think somewhere in that range, I'd say if you're selling, if you're selling a huge website, there have been times, kind of a big complex website, which is a common problem for a lot of sales. A lot of agencies doing sales where they're trying to put in a bid for $120,000 website, you're going to be spending a lot of time to understand what's going on with that project. So I think doing some kind of initial discovery project to help scope that out gets you paid for part of that work. And also make sure that the client knows that you're fully invested in that. That's definitely the best way to go. But if you aren't doing that, you're going to be spending a lot more time. You know, it's pretty common for agencies to be spending 25, 30, 40 hours in a sales process to try and. To try and bid that. And if you do the math and build out that versus what you'd be spending, trying to close 10 game plans or whatever, which might be the same revenue numbers, the numbers are going to add up pretty similarly. So I think just understanding what your process is, figuring out what are we willing to spend, how does that map to our sales process and the place to start? That's probably not the. What I just said is probably not the right way to tackle that. You don't want to tackle that with saying, well, I need to have $1,000 in revenue for every hour that I spend on the phone with somebody. That's not the way that you want to think about that. You want to look at what's the process that I need to have to close them and then what's the time and how can we continue improving that process. But then you want to look at the time on the back end and understand and monitor that and try and continuously improve that or just make sure that you're tracking towards that and doing things the right way, following the process, improving it where needed, and hopefully that's going to make you more efficient and shorten up those sales cycles for you, which is ultimately what people are looking for.

Yep.

Anything else you want to throw in there, Ry?

I'm good.

Cool. Well, let's wrap up right there. This is obviously a topic that comes up all the time. If you guys have totally different experiences or stories you want to share, we'd love to hear them, maybe even share them on the podcast. So don't hesitate to reach out to us, have any questions about anything we talked about. Same thing as well. Head to theshownostudioma.com inbound sales journey or you can hit us up on Twitter, email, all those, all the classic platforms. Just go to the website. You know what, go to the website, start a chat using the intercom chat bubble in the bottom right hand corner of the website. That's the easiest way to connect with us directly and then we can, we can take it from there and get it to the right place. So let's wrap up right there. Next week we are going to be talking about. This is a topic I'm kind of surprised is as prevalent as it is. But should I travel or not? So when should you sell remotely and when should you get out and get on the road and go meet with folks to try and close a deal. So we'll talk about some of the approaches. So what goes into making that decision in episode number 106? Number 105, correction, that's going to be. I'm skipping ahead here. I'm trying to remember, trying to keep all these numbers straight. When the numbers get this large, you know, it's kind of hard to stay on top of it. Just kidding. 105 coming up next week we will be talking more and more about sales topics coming up here in the rest of season nine. We got a couple good ones coming up after that as well that I'm pretty excited about. But until then, enjoy the rest of your week. Keep selling and we'll talk to you soon.

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