Why Your Agency Sales Reps Need to Be Involved in Firing Clients

Welcome to Inbound Sales Journey. If you want to hone your sales skills and learn from the leaders on inbound selling, you've come to the right place. This episode of Inbound Sales Journey is brought to you by the Agency Sales System, the online course designed specifically to teach you how to build a rock solid agency sales system inside your HubSpot CRM. Learn more at dotinbound.com salescourse. Now here are your hosts, Ryan and Gray.

Welcome back to Inbound Sales Journey. This is Ryan and this is Gray. Hey, Gray.

Your friendly co host.

There you are.

And your unfriendly host got him.

Episode 103, Season 9 Gray. Over 100 episodes.

That's right.

This, this week we are going to be talking about a topic so chatted with an agency owner recently about this. They had a bad client that needed to be fired. And so we're talking about how like some situations we've had at Guava Box and Graham, I have you share one of those. But just how they went about letting the client go and who should be involved in that process. And I brought up the sales rep could be helpful and useful in that process, which he hadn't thought of before. And so we're going to talk a little bit about why that's important.

For.

Both the sales rep and for the client when it gets to that point. If a client and it could be for a variety of reasons, but if a client's not working out and you need to fire the client. So before we go too much further, Gray, do you want to share a personal story about Guavabox putting you on.

The spot here you are putting me on the spot. We might as well just do a tell all where I spill all the personal details, that person's contact information. No, I don't want to get obviously too far into the details of specific situations, but I think that I think anyone who's had an agency for probably more than six months or a year has probably run into a situation where they've at least known that they had a client that needed to be fired. And we've certainly run into that where we've had clients who had to let go and just say this isn't working out for us. If obviously what you don't want to have happen because we've done it both ways, is you don't want to blindside a client and say this isn't working out for us, we're out of here and good luck with your next agency. I don't think we've ever just given Somebody the boot and not wrap stuff up. But we've definitely kind of blindsided people by saying, well, one specific case I can think of where kind of go in and just say this isn't working out for us and we're going to have to end the relationship thinking the assumption there was, well, clearly they can see that this isn't working out for both sides. They don't seem like they're happy. They're always yelling at us, we're not happy with that. It's not worth it. We're not going to put up with that. But as it turns out, they weren't on the same page. They thought everything was going along okay and we keep rolling together. So that's a definite no. No, obviously we're going to get into specifically kind of what does it look like when should an agency sales rep be involved or what does it look like to fire a bad client? But that's kind of tip number one based on personal experiences, don't blindside them. Even if you think that it's self apparent, self evident and the client should know what the situation is and what the deal is, make sure that you communicate ahead of time and let them know as early and often as possible. And I think that is a rule. We've talked a little bit before about having the agency sales rep, whoever that salesperson is, sometimes in a lot of cases, probably a lot of folks who are listening, that might even be the same. The person who sold it, especially a small agency, might be the owner who's also involved in the servicing side. So they have a good handle. But having that salesperson continue the conversation, check in every two months, three months, whatever it is with the client, see how things are going. We've talked before about how they can help get a feel for what the client's perspective is and kind of be the client advocate. But they can also help to stick up for your team internally and feel out what's going on and kind of help ease the process if it's not a good fit between the agency and the client. So that wasn't nitty gritty of a personal situation, but just hard lesson learned of don't assume that you're on the same page with a client just because there are some people who just kick and scream more than other people kick and scream. And that's normal to them. And that's not a sign that things are going poorly. So a lot of times it's just a personality cultural thing where you guys didn't communicate clearly enough and didn't understand the way that the other. Other side was wired. So there are clients who are just in your face all the time. And that doesn't. That by itself doesn't necessarily make them a bad client, unless that's a terrible fit for your team and your personality. But you need to understand that and communicate through that and try and let them know and help your team understand and have empathy for the way that that client's organization works and the way that help them understand the way your organization works and what's acceptable and not acceptable.

Right.

That's what I got. What tips do you have, Ryan?

So, for me, I think it's really important to have the rep involved. If the relationship's getting to the point where it's looking like it's going to end. Assuming that your sales rep has stayed in touch throughout the process, which we've done an episode on that we think it's so important.

I think that's key. Number one is if your agency sales rep hasn't been involved for the last year and a half or six months or whatever, it's probably not the time to bring them back in to fire somebody.

Right?

Sorry to interrupt.

No, it's fine. That's the assumption. If that hasn't been done, then it doesn't make sense to bring the sales rep back in. But sales rep can really act as a buffer in a tough situation. And the reason is because they should have worked one of the best relationships with the client. Typically throughout the sales process, things always start good, right? Like if it started bad, they wouldn't become a client. So they've got a good relationship, they've been there. And a lot of times a sales rep can act as a buffer. So if a project manager or whoever's servicing the client maybe is clashing with the client and it could be over missed expectations or a variety of different things, their breakdown of communication is common. The sales rep can kind of step in, and if it's a situation, they might actually be able to salvage the relationship. So it might be something that doesn't need to end, the salesperson might be able to come in and help kind of save things, talk to both parties, right? Both sides, and, you know, help help the relationship progress. Now, if it's definitely a case where it's not going to work out and the client's going to be, you know, fired by you guys, Where I think it's important for the sales rep is you can help make that a little bit of a better message and an easier process because of the relationships that is there, or at least should be there and acting as a buffer. So it's not just, hey, this client's been treating our, you know, client servicing team poorly, or, you know, the expectations haven't been met. What's so important is the salesperson is a big part of setting the expectations early. So it's going to help them to see if it's a case where the salesperson set bad expectations and they weren't being met. Okay. This is the result of really what was my fault in the beginning of not setting proper expectations. So it's really like a learning moment for the sales rep. So I think that that's one thing that can be something that's a hard lesson to learn, but something that's valuable to take out of it. But on the flip side, if it's the client really is true of the client's fault, you're going to be able to learn and start to get a feel for what's a good fit client and what's a bad fit client. So by getting involved in the conversation, kind of seeing what's happening here, you're going to start to notice trends in different types of companies and people that you're working with that might send up some red flags earlier in the sales process to say, you know, hey, gray, this isn't worth it in the future. Like if we have a prospect that is like this, or you're seeing signs of them treating us this way or whatever it is, or understanding unrealistic expectations early when it goes unchecked and unaddressed. This is the result of what happens. And because of it, we really don't want clients like this in the future. So it's a big learning opportunity, I think, for sales reps. Yeah.

From the agency owner's perspective, which is obviously how I'm look coming into this. That's one of the reasons that I want sales reps to be involved in the client relationship beyond the close. Obviously not. You know, for the most part, if you have a good salesperson, you want them selling. And a lot of salespeople don't like this because they're coming from organizations where their job is exclusively to make a make a sale. But I think if you're looking to educate your salespeople in the best way possible and help them to know how to bring in the right fit clients, they need to be involved to understand what goes well, why it goes well, and what the types of people who they're working with are that lead to that. But also in these painful situations where they like, no, I'd much rather not be here. Just let me go sell and close a new deal to replace this client. To have them there and have them go through some of that, I think can be a helpful learning lesson. That's not just salespeople. That's kind of everybody having empathy for what the whole cycle looks like. But that's definitely going to help hit home in a more personal way than if they just hear about it from a project manager, what exactly went wrong, why it went wrong, and what it's like to have to deal with that. And so I think that's exactly right. It's just how do you figure out who's the right type of client, who you want to bring in, and how to set better expectations next time?

So on one hand, it could be a great buffer experience and they could help salvage things or at least make the transition a little bit smoother. On the other hand, it's a great learning opportunity for the sales rep to really understand the pros and cons of selling to specific types of people and trying to get a better feel for that early on to avoid situations like that. Cool. Well, that'll wrap us up here, Gray. We will be back next week. We're going to be talking about the amount of time sales rep should be spending with different types of prospects at the agency. So that'll be next week. Until then, good luck selling.

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