Why Marketing Agencies Should Forget Deliverables and Deal in Transformations #AgencyVision

Welcome to another episode of Agency Journey and this is a little different type of segment that we're doing. So today it's Andrew and I, we're calling this Agency Vision. So we'll be rolling out a new kind of type of episode where it's Andrew and I going through more kind of agency owner mindset or decisions, the challenges that they face, that type of content in this Agency Vision series. So today we are going to be talking about forgetting deliverables and dealing in transformations instead for your clients. Andrew, you wrote that title. What do you mean by that?

I mean it's time to stop thinking about like all of the activity that you do. Don't pat yourself on the back because you met like the minimum quota on your contract for your clients. But, like, it's time to think about what are we doing for our clients, how are we helping them grow their business, move their bottom line? And there's a disconnect in a lot of agencies between that idea of like delivering real value and the volume, the frequency of the activity that they're cranking out on a day to day basis. So it's kind of like strategy meeting operations right here. And it's going to be a good time. Everyone just had a little tingle going down their neck when they hear that title.

Great.

That's, that's, of course I want to deal in transformations. That's why we're all here.

Yeah, that's awesome. So.

Yeah, it's awesome.

How do you get from selling deliverables to selling transformations?

So let me take a step back. Like the situation that we see all the time working with agency owners, whether it's inside the accelerator program or if it's on a strategy session or on the podcast, is they're in a state where if they've gotten to a point where they're okay at selling, they've got enough clients where there's revenue coming in. Most agency owners or agencies in general are just stuck on the rat wheel of creation. So they're just, they're worried and stressed about meeting all of the deadlines that they have, getting the content shipped out the door. Move on. What's the next thing on my list? Because my red tasks are a mile deep, if I even have a task list out there. And so that's kind of the situation what we want to talk about here. The Agency Vision piece is, okay, timeout, let's take a step back, have a high level view of the agency and say, hey, think about how we position this whole thing for our clients for Our internal team as well. And instead of delivering XYZ services and you think like, agency, website, deliverable menu, like, I want you to have that picture in your head of like the 15,000 different services that are listed on your website right now. Because we think, when we think deliverable, the more options I give a client, the more likely they are to buy. Right. That's the idea that's in our heads. We know that from experience. Instead of thinking about that, we deliver XYZ services. You deliver outcomes for your clients. What are the outcomes that your clients want? That's kind of the big idea we want to unpack here. And before. I, like, I've got. I've got bullets on bullets here, so.

Right. Well, there's two different things. One is that you've got like, I feel like agency websites go one of two ways. Like either a million deliverables like you're mentioning, or it's just really vague like, we help you do this, but internally they are still delivering. That is basically code for whatever you ask for that's tangentially related to marketing. We can probably do that for you. And. And if we don't know how to, we'll still say we can. Either we'll figure it out or we'll farm it out, or we'll be real stressed about it and like it, but they'll have to get through it and solve it. But I guess the other thought that I have is like, how do you go from all these different deliverables? Like, clients come in wanting deliverables. So I realize everyone wants outcomes, but they need to have some sense of how do you deliver that, or else you're just going to look like you don't know what you're doing. So how do you position and communicate that? How do people go there? Obviously you've got bullets on bullets to share with us on how we do that. But that's kind of the number one, I guess, question or hesitation that we hear is like, our clients need to know what we can do and our capabilities in case they come in looking for that one thing.

Yeah.

So when you think about that, when you think about the deliverables as like your positioning, like, here's what we do well, here's what we're world class at. You get on a sales call and you just start like techno babbles just like rolling off your tongue because you're so fired up about how well you can optimize Facebook ads. The challenge there, like, from agency strategy perspective, is your activity based now, like, you're saying, like, we'll crank this stuff out for you. And by definition, that activity is a commodity. Because I now know as the owner, like, okay, they're going to do X number of Facebook ads per month or they're going to do X number of videos per month. I now have a fixed deliverable that I can go and price shop for that.

Can we just point out too that we understand that it's not a commodity, that there is real differences in the way that you deliver something and the quality of it can make a difference. So there's this common pushback of like, but. But it's not a commodity. Because what I do is very different than the way, like when we designed a website at Guava Box, we knew it was gonna be 100 times better than like our three main competitors here. Close. But commodity doesn't mean that the quality is actually the same. Like, jeans are a commodity, but I buy really crappy jeans that tear after six months and other people spend $200 and their jeans come pre torn. But they might be a better quality. Commodity doesn't have to do with the actual quality quality of what it is or even the results that get produced. But it's the perception of the customer that make it a commodity. So yes, like the hesitation but we're not a commodity. Or the common objection, like, we're different. You're not different if your customer doesn't know and value the fact that you're different. If they think you're doing Facebook ads and you're optimizing it and I can pay someone else too, they're not smart. They don't know the difference in the process or the results or anything else. You need to educate them at some point. But it can't just be like, the commodity isn't about your perception of what's commodity. It's about what the customer's perception is.

Yeah.

And can I push into that a little bit? Push back a little bit on that too. I think agencies over estimate how impactful their deliverables actually are.

No, I said I'm astounded.

I think most of this, most of the stuff that people put out is crap because it's rat wheel stuff. And because you try to do anything the client asked for, like, you're not actually that good at it. And so you went and the reason the client left because you went and got that freelance writer off of writer access or off of elance or whatever and you didn't prove the thing. And then when you did prove it, you're like, ah, ship it. And the stuff just sucks because you are deliverable. Focus. Like everything that you said about perception of client, like, I'm having this conversation off of the client's perception of it. That's valid. At the same time, you might be selling crap.

Right, right. Well, both of them are largely or can largely be true. I mean, there's a lot of people who are producing good work. We're not trying to denigrate the work that agencies do on an individual lesson level, but certainly on a mass level. It's leaves a lot of crap out there. And there's also a million agencies who are actually delivering really quality work and they're not making any money off of it because it's still valued to some degree like a commodity. But they're actually putting in the work to differentiate themselves and they're getting referrals, they're getting more business, but it's not, it doesn't cost nearly as much as it ought to cost.

Yeah.

So how do we escape that?

Well, how do we escape this? We need to stop thinking in terms of activity. We need to start thinking in terms of outcome. That's the first step when you stop saying, I do all of these things. Even the idea of full service, like, people grab onto that thing like it's a life vest and it's really a weight. It can sink you if you're not vertically integrated and positioned to be that team. Like a small team can't do that. Like, it's okay to focus on one area when it comes to your transformation side. So how do we start thinking about this? Number one, we need to start thinking about what are the results that our clients are looking for. And if you have a hard time right now even talking with your clients, or if you're working with clients that say, just do it for me, I don't even want to see you. This is going to be a challenge for you because this requires regular communication with clients and it requires a position where you can ask them real questions about how the business is doing and how sales are doing and like what they're doing with their leads and all those types of things, which can be a different shift for a lot of agency owners who are just used to like, cranking out stuff because it's a strategic conversation rather than an activity based conversation. So that's, that's what I would say is the starting point of making that shift, is just understanding that kind of how we deliver the stuff needs to change from the beginning. Would you add anything to that?

I Don't think so, other than you need to have. Like the expectations that you set early are always much easier to reinforce later than to try and shift later. So it's there. Most people start or position around deliverables because that's what clients know to ask for. Clients don't know just because it's like any other thing. You don't know who you can go to and say, other than maybe a counselor where you can go say, here's all my problems, like, and ultimately here's my hazy vision or, you know, cloudy. Goal of where I want to be. You're very specific. Goal of where I want to be. Like, how do I get there? We don't know who to trust. So when I didn't have a car mechanic who I trusted, I wasn't sure who to go to. We moved somewhere new and I didn't know who to go to. I'd try and figure out what my problem was. I'd come in asking for that specific, like I need my oil change or obviously my mufflers broken. Can you break that?

Yeah.

And now I have a mechanic who's a good personal friend and who I trust. And so I bring my car in for an inspection or whatever, say, look it all over like I want a good. I want a car that is going to run reliably. It's going to be safe in the winter and it's going to be safe like all the way around. And I don't need to worry about my family having any incidents. So instead of going in asking for one specific thing, I go in now because it's somebody who I trust and I say I need all these things. I need whatever you find, probably fix it. And if you tell me to do something, I'll probably do it because I. I still want to know. I'm going to still hold you accountable and I want you to be honest with me. I'll still use the Internet and research things, but I'm much more open to it if all you're doing is you're just the shop. And the reason that I trust this mechanic is because our very first interaction when I came in with one specific thing was, I know you have that. I don't know that I'd worry about that thing that you thought was a big deal right now, but you have this other thing and kind of stepped back from just we can do that and it'll be $274. That's something we do need to look at, but we probably also need to look at this more important issue. And so the same thing needs to happen in the agency space. You need to set that expectation early on in the sales process of I know that you're coming to us for a website redesign. What do you want out of that Website redesign? What's the overall goal? And then work your way back to what are the goals? Okay, the website is very important, but right now you have all this traffic and you're not converting any of, like, you're not getting any sales conversations, you're not getting any, anything out of that. What if we put messaging, like, we'll work on the site, but what if first we just go and put drift on the site and we do some messaging and interact with your sales team? Or what if we go throw a content offer on there and can get some emails and see what people are, you know, learn a little bit about your current audience or even just throw up a survey on the site to get feedback on what. What do your users not like Right now, I understand that your CMO doesn't like the color of red that's on the current site, but your users care. Like, what do they care more about? So there's all these things where we can step back, but you got to do it earlier. It's. It's much harder to say, okay, we built the website, now let's go back and look at the strategy.

Yeah.

When there's a good chance that that's going to shift. You needed a website redesign, but what you wound up with isn't what you should have built at the beginning.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think what you said about trust is key. Like, your clients have to trust that you have the best interest at heart.

Right. Yeah. You don't just care about getting paid for one specific thing. Like you're actually trying to solve the problem and along the way you want to get paid. Well, they are absolutely fine to know that. They should know that. I like working with people who I know. Like, I want to pay my mechanic for doing stuff. I don't always want to pay as much as he asked for, but it's. Even though I don't want to, like, it's still worth it to me and I still feel good knowing, okay, here's someone who like, and I'm happy to support someone's business when they're trying to do things the right way.

Yeah. Yeah.

So the idea of trust there, like, trust is key to make the shift from activity based delivery to transformational based activity that has to start in the sales process. Like, that's Building trust, asking questions like, you got to get to know the person that you're trying to help and if you want to actually help them. So I think the paradigm shift here is the lens shifts from, like, me and my team's ability to do this stuff really well to the client. And now where. Where do you want to go? What challenges are you seeing? What obstacles lie in your path that you can't overcome? Why haven't you overcome these things by yourself? You have a deeper conversation with prospects or with current clients to figure out, where are they right now and where do they want to go? And that's the place where the deliverables come in. So it's not to say you just throw out deliverables and what do you do, sprinkle pixie dust on these clients to transform them? Like, no, it's just like, what's the order in which this stuff rolls out? We go deep. We build trust. We understand where they want to go. And now we as tacticians and we as marketing strategists come to the table and say, okay, I know what the goal is now. Like, I'm going to. I'm going to go into my playbook and I'm going to line up my best game plan based on your situation and where you want to go. We're going to crush through that game plan, you know, one deliverable at a time. We're going to track our progress on a small handful of KPIs to make sure we're moving forward, but only focusing on what we know is going to deliver value, rather than this machine of just cranking out content for the sake of checking the box.

Right. And also measuring what we have. And you mentioned trust. Like, trust comes from consistently meeting or exceeding expectations. So. And a lot of times those expectations aren't even consciously or verbally set. Why are we friends with people? I don't know. If we had to go back and figure out, like, why are we friends? And you think of a friend as someone who's, like, always there for you, regardless of someone who's truly your friend. It doesn't matter how bad you screw up or how good things are going, they're there for you either way. It kind of comes down to loyalty. But we never said to each other, we'll be friends as long as. Or, like, however close we are, is how loyal you'll be. But you've always been there for me, for everything. And so that, like, over time, that builds up and builds an incredibly high level of trust, even though that's never been verbalized or said out loud that, listen, I need you to be there for me. And as long as you are, like our friendship will keep growing. We've never had that conversation, but it's continued to happen. And so I've never thought about those expectations and laid that out. But when that happened, that's how trust gets built. And so when you set those expectations early, kind of going back to this needs to start in the sales process, then you need to go through and build that strategy, then you need to start delivering on it. And that's where the deliverables come in. When the expectation is I come to you with deliverables, you deliver those for me. And then you want to say, now I want to come back up and work on this. There's just a misalignment and it doesn't make sense to do things in that order. There's a logical progression. There's a time and a place for everything. And the time and the place for strategy comes first. There's roles for that all the way through the process. We should always be reevaluating and figuring out. But it's really, it doesn't make any sense. It's like the blind hustle approach to just like dive right in and go do something and then try and come back and figure out was that the right thing to do. Doesn't make any sense at all.

None at all.

But the other thing is this is the only way that you're actually going to be fully aligned with unless you have an omniscient, omnipotent client who just happens to know everything and they know exactly the perfect thing to ask for. This is the only way to really have a full alignment between an agency and your clients is to get buy in and agreement around. Here's the same end goal and we both agree that the strategy moving forward makes sense and now we're implementing what it's going to take, like what that strategy calls for. Otherwise it's just such an agency or it tends to be like a client has their own focus and things that they think they're trying to accomplish they don't see as their own things that they're trying. And it's hard to have that alignment until you're agreed on the plan.

So true, dude. So like action steps, like what do you do? What do you take away from this time right now of like thinking about your business? Map out the journey. Like if you were to have that higher level conversation with your ideal fit client tomorrow, if they just showed up like whiteboard this thing out, what would you do for them? And this is like an agency positioning point. But the more tightly defined your target prospect is, the easier this exercise is because it eliminates a lot of variables in the process. Map out that journey, think about where do they want to go and how would I help them get there? It's pretty simple. That's the first step.

I don't think the two things go very well together, if you like, if you don't have both. The two things do go well together. I don't. I think it's hard to do these separately. If you do a strategy and you say, here's what a client needs and you want to earn some of these deals, you want to close some of these deals, it's a pretty narrow for. For you to kind of specialize and have your core set of things that you do. Who that's going to be a right fit for automatically becomes pretty narrow because the danger is we're going to do strategy and we're going to craft a completely unique individual strategy for every single business that comes in and out comes every completely different. And then all of a sudden you can't be good at what you're actually delivering for people anymore. You become good at the strategy. And if you, if that's. You just go be a strategist then and don't do the other stuff. But there's a lot of value in having both. And so you need to kind of scope that down and understand here's what works really well in our experience for people, and that specific set of people is this. Okay, that's who we're marketing to and that's who we're targeting. Like, we kind of need both of those to have this scope down and not have it go back to being. We deliver a thousand different deliverables because that's what all of our unique clients needed. But rather we deliver one main service and there's probably 20 different deliverables inside of that. And that fits this very narrow definition of ideal fit client. And that's exactly who we position to a market to and go after.

Yep.

So that's a shift, guys. That's the vision. So, I mean, we've got more rifts we could do on the positioning piece, gray on ideal fit client piece. And that'll be for another episode. But for the first episode here of agency vision, that's the challenge for you. Map out that journey of where you take your clients, what's the outcome that they're looking for, and how do your deliverables help get them there. So hope you guys enjoyed this episode. If you're listening to this on the podcast feed and you haven't yet gone and joined the Agency Journey Insiders Group on Facebook, you can head over to agencyjourneyinsiders.com and I'll take you to the Facebook group. Join there. We've got a global community of amazing agency owners from all over the place who are on a similar track trying to build their dream business, so we'd love to have you there as a part of the community. This show comes out every Friday here on the podcast feed, shooting for Thursdays in the Facebook group kicking off next week. So we're looking forward to that. Head over to the group and we'll chat with you there.