Corey Quinn & Josh Nelson - How Scorpion grew from $20M to over $120M with Outbound Sales

We have a special guest, Corey Quinn, um, the man behind marketing at Scorpion when they grew the, the business. I think one of the, one of the largest agencies in the digital marketing space, from $20 million to over $120 million. Um, just a wealth of knowledge in terms of how to position in a vertical, how to grow an agency, how to build an outbound sales process and not be completely reliant on inbound. He's got some great content. He's got a new book coming out, but I'm really excited to have Corey with us. You know, it's very rare you can talk to somebody at this level that has this level of expertise and kind of pick their brain and like see what worked and what's working right now. So Corey, thank you so much for being with us today.

Josh, it's a true honor. I'm super excited for our conversation.

So let's, let's start, and I'd love to start with, you know, how, how did you get started at, at, at Scorpion and kind of what was the, what was the journey, you know, from $20 million to, you know, $120+?

Sure. So I started, I was hired as Scorpion's first Chief Marketing Officer in 2015. And previous to this role, uh, the founder and, uh, CEO of the company, Rustin Kretz, he, he was effectively the head of marketing in addition to running all other aspects of the business. And so I was really the first strategic hire to exclusively focused on growing the agency from a sales and marketing perspective. And when I joined, I, uh, I inherited a 6-person sales team. And this 6-person sales team, gosh, they were, uh, they were very, uh, great guys. They were very well paid. They, uh, they drove nice cars, had a great life. And that was primarily because they had, um, they had really, uh, Scorpion by that time had really built a name for itself with attorneys and, and personal injury attorneys specifically. And as a result of this brand recognition in the, in the, uh, in the market, they had this wonderful flow of inbound leads. Uh, and as a result of that, uh, they would often do these one-call closes. They had this big metallic gong on the sales floor, uh, and it would be like this big kind of, uh, you know, this, this really great culture. The challenge was at the time that the founder was really eager to grow the business beyond that $20 million mark. And so I was brought in as well as Jamie Adams, a couple other folks to really help us to grow from that focus in attorney marketing and $20 million, uh, all the way up to, as you mentioned, $120. We made it actually all the way up to $150 million. Uh, just a little bit about my, the, the growth while I was there. I started in 2015. And, uh, at the time there were 6 salespeople. By the time I left at the end of 2021, there were 100 salespeople. By the, uh, by when I joined, there was 100 employees. By the time I left, there was 1,000 employees. And we had 1,000 clients when I started and 14,000 clients by the time that I left.

Massive, massive growth. Amazing what you guys accomplished there. Um, When you, when you think about like some of the key shifts that you guys made that really helped to propel the growth, um, what were some of the key, you know, salient points in your mind?

Sure. I would say the first one was we, as I mentioned, we had this great inbound machine going based mostly on the fact that, you know, Scorpion had all these attorney websites that were out there that were early in the sort of the website design and SEO space. And so there's a lot of really great inbound from that. However, you can't really control the flow of inbounds when it comes to, uh, when it comes to sales marketing. So the first thing we did is we brought in an outbound sales motion, right? And I could talk about a lot of the specifics there, but what that allowed us to do was complement all of the sales that we were generating already from inbounds and add to those with outbound-driven sales. And That alone, Josh, that actually doubled our business from $20 million to $40 million just by bringing in outbound. The other thing we did was we took what we really did well in attorney marketing and we actually went to another vertical, which at the time was home services, HVAC and plumbers. And I know that you and I, you know, we both serve the same market in that regard. And so that was an additional sort of vertical that we approached. There are some things that we did really well, I think, as it relates to how to grow the business into a new vertical. Uh, and then the third one that I'd, I'd like to share, uh, sort of big kind of win for us or milestone 10x moment was when we went from serving single location local service businesses like attorneys and HVAC and plumbers and whatnot into serving multi-location businesses. And it was, it was really just sort of a natural extension where you work with a franchise business that has 100 locations, and each of those locations are effectively a small local service business. And so that, that, uh, working with those multi-location businesses helped us to scale up the revenue, uh, quite dramatically.

So good. And I remember, because I, you know, you guys started in, in legal, right? And I know a lot of people think Scorpion's this massive multi-vertical business. Even when I said I was interviewing you, like, you 'You only talk about niche stuff. Why are you bringing in the general?' So I was like, not the case. Scorpion was the legal marketing agency, right? I remember studying you guys' websites and how you structured things back in the day, like just really, really top class in terms of your deliverables. Um, and then you made this, the strategic decision to expand into other verticals, but it wasn't like this hop into let's serve everybody. Like, you guys strategically chose home services, and I'm sure a couple others, and went after it in a really big way. Like, and not just, you know, outreach, but you were at the events and you were buying these big booth spaces and really got aggressive to make an impact in that industry.

Correct. And that, and that is a big sort of takeaway that, that I carry forward now having left Scorpion, is that a real— really today, a lot of, uh, a lot of people think, well, I'm gonna niche into an agency, and well, that means I have to have a landing page and I have to have you know, a, you know, maybe I'll go to a conference once in a while. And really what we found a real recipe of success was really leaning into not only, you know, the, you know, targeting these businesses, but also finding a way to build relationship, genuine relationships in those industries, um, and really join them from a, from an empathetic or, you know, from a care perspective. We really cared about not only the clients that we serve, but also, uh, the industry. And so that, That I think helped us to stand apart because we were so committed and so present inside of that vertical market.

I'd love to have you talk a little bit more about that. I know you published an article in Forbes on this, kind of the importance of empathy and niche selection. And it's not just let's choose a random niche and go all in. Like, talk a little bit about your philosophy, you know, behind this, this whole empathy. Sure.

Absolutely. So I think when you're choosing a vertical market, you need 3 things. Number 1, You need a number one to focus, right? You need to find a vertical market that has, that's large enough, that has enough demand, enough spend in it for you to, for it to make sense for your business. Number two is you need a strategy. You need a massive action plan that'll help you to create a distinctive competency and competitive sort of moat in that, in that vertical. So you need a great plan. And the third thing, which I've found is a little bit maybe unique or not talked about as much is What you need is empathy. You really need to care about not only the clients you're serving, but the industry that you are, uh, that you're serving. And so I think I'd love to give the example. I think you, you may know, uh, this gentleman Luke Eggebraten. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So, so I think he's part of your community. And the thing that I love about Luke is that he is— he— so he has a, an agency called Phaser Marketing, and Phaser focuses on working with the businesses in the construction industry. And what's interesting about how Josh— sorry, how, how Luke is doing this is how he's going to market is he has not only focused on these construction businesses, but he has done things like, um, started a nonprofit and also provides scholarships to help raise the awareness and the profile of working in the blue-collar trades. You see, there's a big challenge right now in the trades where a lot of, a lot of people who work in that industry are, are aging out, they're retiring, and there's just not enough supply. And so I think what is again interesting about, uh, what Luke is doing is he is really not only— when you work with him as an agency partner, you're not only working with, you know, someone who will help you get leads, but someone who's really helping to raise the awareness and the profile of working in the trades. And so that's, that's a really interesting way to approach empathy and care. I think I love that.

I think, yeah, not just surface level saying, hey, this is a vertical, they've got a certain revenue threshold, an average transaction that makes financial sense. They're spending money on marketing, which you usually think about when you choose a niche, but actually caring about that industry and going, you know, if you're going to get involved in the associations and the groups, you know, caring about the industry as a whole. And I think it's a really important point.

Yeah. And, and when you, when you think about it from the buyer's perspective, there's effectively an unlimited number of agencies who would love to work with construction businesses. It's those, those agencies who have, uh, really committed themselves to the vertical and, and are doing things beyond just talking about it. They're actually doing amazing things to help support the vertical. That's when you really begin to stand out and differentiate.

Yeah. And Luke's an amazing example of that. Look him up, uh, Fazer Marketing, guys. He's, uh, he's doing great on this, on this front. So, so let's talk a little bit, and I really wanna get into the outbound sales team stuff, but let's talk a little bit about, you know, how and why you guys made the pivot from just legal into other verticals.

So at the time we were, um, led by our founder who has this sort of aggressive appetite for helping more and more people. I think we, we had built in legal was, was, was really working. We'd built a great engine. We had the inbound, we had the outbound, we were doing the conferences and the associations. And so what, We had a great sort of trajectory there and a lot of momentum, but we also saw an opportunity to expand into a new market. And the thing that really helped us to just determine home services as the next area of focus is that they, uh, that they are local service. So if you think about an attorney, it's a local service business that is interested in driving cases from around a specific, you know, office or, you know, a specific geography. Um, and the same is true for a plumber, right? They also are local business and, and they only want to attract jobs in the, in the local area. And so there was a lot of, a lot of similarities in that respect. And, and the, you know, I have to mention that there was also a lot of spend, right? So the way that Scorpion made money, uh, was not only in providing websites and local SEO, but it also in PPC. And, and so we were also prioritizing those verticals that had a tremendous amount of spend potential. Uh, and so for us, it was an obvious choice. Uh, we also had a couple of home services clients already, sort of organically. They would come in through relationships and whatnot. So we had some track record to understand, you know, hey, we, we can see us really leaning into this vertical. The metrics look good. We, we actually have one of the, one of the top sales guys, his dad was a, was a, uh, a roofer, and we had him as a client. So we, we really had a good sense that, hey, if we We focus our energy here. We can really build this out as a new sort of vertical for Scorpion.

Very cool. And I, I think it's important for our viewers and listeners to, to recognize Scorpion was at $20 million plus before they decided they were gonna conquer a bunch of other verticals. Um, I personally, I'd love to know your opinion. I think it's a mistake if you've gone to $1 million or $2 million or even $5 million, you think we've gotta go like conquer more verticals. And when you enter a new vertical, there's all kinds of additional complexity. Um, we'd love to know your thoughts on that.

Yeah, so the way I think about it, Josh, is that, um, I look at it as a percent of, of the market share. So I use the, I use the number 3%. Once you've built up your agency and you own 3% of the market, meaning let's say out of a, out of a, a thousand attorneys in the market, you're working with 30 of them, that to me is an indication that, hey, I could lift my head up and maybe start building a new vertical. I have a lot of momentum here in this existing thing. What we learned when we were doing home services after doing attorneys for so long is that while they are local service businesses, they're not the same beast, if you will, right? They have different preferences. For instance, the story I like to tell is the way that we would send our clients leads is we would, we would, um, uh, filter out all of the sort of spammy calls and all, all the things, all sort of the noise that our attorney clients did not want to deal with. What we learned on the home services side is that while they appreciated only getting high-quality leads, they also liked hearing the phone ring, right? They liked the buzz.

It was a little more important there, right? They, they like the—

yeah. And that was sort of the antithesis of what we believed that, uh, they would, they would prefer based again on our experience with attorneys. And so there was some learnings in that regard on how to approach, how to adjust what we were doing for attorneys for, for home services. And there's one other thing I will, I'll share, Josh, is that we actually didn't have a huge home run in home services until we made one change. Um, and that was on our sales team, which was primarily, which was all legally focused. We actually started having some of the sellers kind of focus on home services and didn't have a complete focus on that. We changed that. And at a certain point we brought in one of our sellers. His name is Travis Carter. He, he was a great sales guy, always kind of the middle, middle of the, uh, middle of the rankings, if you will, you know, in the sales. So the sales floor, always the middle, middle of the rankings. Great guy, really, you know, wonderful personality. We actually moved him over to home services, and the thing that really was the big difference is that he used to own a home service business. And as a result of that, he was able to create a lot more comfort and rapport very early on in the sales conversation because he could say hey, I'm also a home services business owner. I know what it's like to be on the call with someone like Scorpion. And just that subtle, that subtle shift really helped us to learn that the, the benefit of really being an insider to their world really helps to improve the, the sales experience and remove friction from that buying process.

That's a powerful insight. I, I appreciate you sharing that. Um, so back to the, back to the question. Yeah, from 3% kind of is— if you don't have 3% market share, keep your blinders on, stay in that vertical. At about 3%, probably is the time to say, hey, look, we've gone as far as we can go here. We can keep running this niche, but it might be time to— Correct.

That's right. That's right. And, and, um, not to stop what you're doing in the original vertical, but to let that momentum continue to build. And then you take incremental resources, new resources, to build the new vertical. You're not borrowing from the existing one. You're using new, new resources.

Love that. And in, in most verticals, for, for all of you guys watching, that's going to be north of at least $5 million, I would say. So don't feel like you need to tackle 5, 6, 7 different verticals. You can build a $10 to $20 million agency in most of the verticals that you might specialize in.

Correct, correct. I mean, a good example is plumbers. There are enough plumbers in the US today that, uh, assuming you have, let's say, an annual revenue per plumbing client of $10,000, you can easily be over a $10 million agency targeting plumbers alone. So there's, there's a lot of opportunity out there for sure.

100%. Awesome. Guys, if you have questions, post them in the chat. This is live, so you have the opportunity. We will do our best to answer your questions. I want to get into outbound, and I, I really think this is something you're world-class at and what kind of the main topic I want to focus on. You know, why, why outbound versus inbound in your mind?

Sure. Well, I think every agency needs to start with inbound, has to have a good thought leadership content marketing. Uh, today people are doing podcasts and newsletters. All those things are, are, I, I think blocking and tackling. You need to have those things. However, when you are growing and you have that, you have that inbound machine going, outbound is really the next logical thing to build. And the reason why is because you could only influence so much of the market with, with inbound. As they say, I believe only 5% of the market is coming inbound, is shopping for a new agency every quarter. And that 5%, let's say you're targeting plumbers in this example, 5% of plumbers in the US are looking for a new agency every quarter. Well, those, those 5% are going to be shopping a lot of different agencies, so there's no real way for you to control sort of the flow of those opportunities in your direction beyond just doing, again, the blocking and tackling. So the other benefit of doing outbound is if you like a specific type of client, like my, my sales coach and mentor Rory Clark talks about, like if you like donuts, uh, you, you can go out and find all the donuts in the market by doing outbound. You could be very sort of targeted and spear— you use spearfishing, that sort of metaphor. Whereas with inbounds, yeah, you may get some donuts, you'll also get some cookies, maybe some candy, and maybe some fruit as well. You're kind of collecting whatever comes in. And so it's much more of a focused effort, and you can control the type of businesses that you are going outbound to. The challenge with outbound is that it is expensive and it can result in, you know, very little return. Many agencies try it, whether it's, you know, hiring an SDR team or working with a, you know, a lead gen sort of outbound, you know, consultant doing LinkedIn and whatnot. And at best, in most cases, these agencies only get, uh, you know, low qual— low quality leads. You know, those, those, uh, those leads that you get on the call with and you realize that, hey, there's no way this, this person's going to be able to spend money with us, or they're not the right fit. And so the thing that we learned at Scorpion, and, uh, I talk about with my clients now, is taking a different approach, which is something I call gift-based outbound. And gift-based outbound was born out of this time at Scorpion where we had this inbound sales team and we wanted to start getting them to get on the call, get on the phones and start going outbound. And of course, if anyone's ever tried to bring outbound sales cold calling into a sales floor, you, what you realize is that there's gonna be a lot of resistance on the sales floor to pick up the phone. And so one of the ways that we help to disarm that that, uh, the, the friction there with the sales team and asking them to do cold calls was that we would send a gift ahead of time, ahead of them calling, right? That was sort of the very beginning of this idea of gift-based outbound. And what it ended up evolving into is a very, uh, very well-oiled machine where we had, uh, at the end of the day, sales, sales reps who would have a list of about 200 to 300, uh, accounts they were targeting, and that every quarter, me and the marketing team, me and my team of 30 people, we would send them a gift every quarter until they became a client, right? And that was across, you know, many, many salespeople, like 50 to 60 salespeople. Every single one of their 200 leads would get a gift every quarter. So it's very coordinated, very, you know, complex. However, it doesn't need to start there. Um, I'll pause for, for questions because there's more there.

I think, I think that's awesome, right? Kind of like recognizing inbound is awesome and you need to have great content out there and you need to be at the events and you need clients to lean in and kind of enter your world. But if you want to control your destiny and choose the right clients and be able to call your own shots, eventually you're going to have to build a list of targeted prospects and go after them and get their attention. What works for you guys was kind of, you call it a gift. I've always heard it as the Dream 100 initiative, right? Where you tip, you pick these top prospects, you're gonna mail stuff to them. And what you found was it reduced the friction for that inbound sales team to be like, hey, all right, at least we mailed them this nice gift and I can call behind that and have a warm conversation.

Correct.

And that worked obviously, 'cause you guys had to see accelerated growth.

Yeah, and like I said, it helped us to ultimately double our revenue because we were not only dependent on the inbound. So we generated this, we generated this growth based on this outbound approach. The first thing that I talk about when talking about how to adopt this type of strategy is that you really need to focus on the list. The list is the strategy. You talked about the Dream 100. Where people get this idea of gifting wrong is that they may just take a traditional outbound approach, which is more of kind of like a net fishing right? You take a large list and you, you send them emails and you kind of see what comes back. This is very much a spearfishing approach where you have a small list, you qualify the list up front, uh, and once you have that list, you're right. So it is a process of sending them a gift, not just any gift by the way, not just like kind of cheap pens, like logo wear. It has to be very intentional. There's some strategy on that. And you have to be prepared to send them a gift for, you know, 3 years, uh, and once every quarter.

Powerful, powerful stuff. And I hope it didn't get lost what he said. 90% of you listening, when you're doing your outreach, you're trying to play the easy game, buy a big list, send a bunch of spammy emails, and you wonder why it's not working. Like, you're much better served to choose 50 or 100 or whatever the number is and commit and make sure they're good quality. Like these are the companies that are whales that you're like, I definitely know I can help them. I definitely know they've got the money. I definitely know if I can get their attention, they'd probably be interested and probably be a good fit. Have that small group that you go after in a relentless way.

Yeah. Because it is an incremental effort and incremental costs. Like these, you know, we would send them cookies and then—

The bigger the list, you know, the—

Yeah. The bigger the list and it gets, you know, you have to factor things like, you know, cash flow and cost into the cost per acquisition. If you're attracting attracting— if you have a poorly created list, you're going to attract leads that you're never going to close. So to your point, the work is— the work in list building is typically done at the sales team level, where you go out and quickly buy a list and you send a bunch of emails, and whatever comes in, the sales team is kind of filtering out. What I recommend is you do the filtering at the list building level, and you only focus on those businesses that, like you said, it's the whales, the Dream 100. You as the founder need to go through that list and look at every single one of those leads and say, yes, if I can get this— we can get this person on the phone, we have a better than 50% chance of closing them, and we know that we could help them. They would be a great lifetime client. That's the type of business that you want on this gift-based outbound lead list.

So good. So be really strategic with the selection of the list, and don't just do email, you know, mail. You still use email, you still use social media, you hit them from every channel possible, and you pick up the phone as well. Uh, just those reach-outs are a lot easier when you're, you're saying, hey, I'm following up because we sent you this cool gift. A couple questions in here, um, are asking like, what kind of stuff do you send? Like, you know, Home Services is an example. You know, half the battle is figuring out like, what will we spend? How do we source that? How do we get it into their, into their hands?

Well, the thing that was tried and true for us, and I'll use a, I'll use a, uh, an example from the attorney, uh, world because I I have, I have a lot of great stories there. We have great stories in the plumbing world as well. But where we found early days is that when we asked our sales team to call into attorneys, they would have— these attorneys would have these gatekeepers, the people at the front desk whose primary responsibility was making sure that people from Scorpion were not actually getting access to the attorney, right? That was, that was the big deal, right? And so, because of course the attorney had to be in court and so on and so forth. So What we did is, after doing that unsuccessfully for a while, what we, what we started doing was sending these gifts. And what we sent was a tin of amazing gourmet cookies, and we go to the, uh, go to the lead attorney. It would be sent in a FedEx box. FedEx typically skips the mailroom, goes right to the attorney's desk. They would open up this beautiful, this box, and then, and see these beautiful cookies, like, you know, outstanding gourmet cookies. That would always end up in the break room. And then of course the office is enjoying these cookies. Everyone's saying like, who brought these amazing cookies? And of course the word Scorpion was buzzing all around the office. The next time, by the time the salesperson calls, the, the receptionist or the, uh, the gatekeeper go, you know, the energy goes from, you know, very resistant to, oh, you're the ones who send the cookies? Hold on, let me put you through, right? Just changes the whole dynamic. Uh, so cookies are good. Uh, I, I like them. Uh, we've done things like, um, alcohol to, to certain, to certain types of businesses. We have done video brochures in home services. One of the things that we did pre-pandemic was we would send a whole bunch of, uh, plumbers and HVAC businesses coffee and donuts from a local bakery. That would just show up randomly from us. And gosh, so we did a lot of different things along those lines. I could share with you one thing we did during COVID which I thought was really interesting. You know, at the time during COVID as many of us remember, it was a time of uncertainty and every business was sort of, you know, really concerned about, well, what does this mean for my business, the industry, you know, the future and so on and so forth. And instead of sending sort of an edible gift or something along those lines, what we ended up sending was a COVID care package. And what that was was a video box, which is literally a box that you open it up and there's a video screen there. And on that video screen, we'd recorded a 20-minute sort of guide to home service businesses and what to do with your business as it relates to internet marketing during COVID So you would Open up this box, you have this great training. In the box was a book written by someone in the trades, a thought leader in the trades about leading through change. We also included some N95 masks and some gloves and some other things. And so the idea here is that we were reaching out into this community with care and empathy and saying, hey, you know, we understand what you're going through. Let us help you to— let us help guide you through this challenging time. Here's some great resources and we're here if you ever want to talk.

Love it. And I appreciate the specific examples, right? Like be thoughtful with the gift, right? If you send a logoed mug, that's not going to have nearly the same impact as something they can actually consume, something that would have conversation around the office.

Yeah.

And be willing to spend a little bit. Can you give an idea kind of How much was a typical budget for one of these quarterly gifts?

Sure. So I would say, um, typically it was anywhere from between $30 and $100. And kind of the, the, the math that you should, um, be comfortable with is that you need to send 100 gifts to get 3 meetings and 1 sale.

Mm, massive. Amazing that you, you have those metrics. You're willing to share those metrics. So yeah, 100 gifts, 3 meetings, 1 sale. Expectation for your sales team isn't that, you know, the client's gonna call in and say, "Hey, I got your cookies. How do we hire your service?" Right? Obviously there's a follow-up. Correct. Can you talk a little bit about the bridge conversation?

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll give an example of why this is so important. Over the holidays, we just had the holidays, I sent my clients a box of these amazing gourmet cookies and not all of them acknowledged it, you know, because they are busy, right? And the challenge of course is, anytime you, you receive— one of your prospects receives a gift, they're going to have this amazing moment that you've created as a result of this thoughtful, uh, unique gift. But then of course what happens is their cell phone rings or their clients call and they're on to the next thing. And so you've kind of missed that moment unless you find a way to capture it. And so what I call it is it's a, it's a 6-step process to follow up on gifts the day they arrive. So it's, it is that you, you have to do some coordination logistics with the shipping. But you, once you, once you know that the gift has arrived, you need to call that day and follow up. And if you don't get them on the phone— sometimes you will, sometimes you won't— you leave a voicemail and then you follow up with an email. Then you wait a day and then you call again. And if you don't get them on the call, you leave a voicemail and you send an email. You do that basically a total of 6 times. Every other day you do the follow-up. Now, after that 6th time, you're probably over that sort of that honeymoon period that you've created with the gift. They've moved on and they're probably ghosting you, right? They're not going to be responsive until you send them the gift the next quarter, right? The other thing I think you said, which is really insightful, is that because this is your Dream 100, these are your high-quality, uh, high-quality, uh, leads, it's likely that you're also seeing them at conferences, or maybe you're inviting them as a guest on your podcast, or maybe you're sending them other high-quality content along the way in between the gift sends, so that it's not just about the gift, but it's also about, um, taking a multi-channel, sort of multiple-touchpoint approach to these prospects.

Love it. I think something powerful you said there was, you know, we all know about speed to lead, right? Lead comes in, if you don't follow up in 5 minutes or less, it's going somewhere else, right? And you gotta follow up again and again. You wanna apply this same principle to when the gift gets delivered, right? So if you're doing this, maybe as a smaller agency, you're personally sending these gifts and calling.

Yes.

You gotta carve the time out to know like, this is when it's gonna drop and this is when I'm reaching out and or train your sales team that like there's a, there's a, an expiration date on how effective this is gonna be if you don't follow up and follow through assertively.

Absolutely. And I also recommend to not over-engineer this. I would say start with a small list of 20. You as the founder, maybe you do the first round, couple rounds of, of gift sending and the follow-up. Begin to pro— you know, build some process and some systems around it, and then you could really help to extend that to maybe some sales resources who could, you know, take over some of this follow-up for you.

Yeah. So, so good. Can you talk a little bit about how that call goes, because I think some people might get hung up. But if you're just calling and say, hey, I sent you cookies, did you get them? You know, that may not fly. So let's talk a little bit about that.

So the spirit behind this is not a quid pro quo. In other words, I'm not sending you a gift card so that I can, you know, pitch you on my, on my wares. It is very much a gesture of, hey, I genuinely want to build a relationship with you. I'm here to add value to your world. And I care about building that genuine relationship. So the way that the outbound call goes is more of along the lines of, yeah, you know, hey, I sent you a gift, want to make sure you got it. The reason why I'm calling is because I know about your business and I know that, you know, these are the things you do, and we believe that we may be able to help you. It may not be right now, maybe sometime down the road, but I wanted to introduce myself as someone who is, you know, a specialist in your world and wanted to build a relationship. So whenever you're ready, I'm here.

Love it. I think it's really important everybody understand the, the intention on that call. The intention, like you said, is to create that relationship. If it's an opportunity now, great. If it's not, that's okay. Um, but either you or your sales team think about what you'll say on that call when they answer, what you'll leave in the voicemail, what you would say in the personal message on LinkedIn or Facebook, um, to kind of lubricate that gift-to-appointment, you know, process.

Correct. And, and, and, you know, going back to the metrics— 100 gifts equal 3 meetings and 1 sale— um, you're not going to get a, a bunch of meetings necessarily out of sending 1 gift. There is a compounding effect. It's kind of like interest in the bank, where you send the same prospect, a high-quality prospect, a gift quarter after quarter after quarter. There's this, uh, you know, the Robert Cialdini's Six Weapons of Influence, you know, this idea of reciprocity. If they're truly good gifts, like if they are unique and interesting and they're, they're surprising and, um, they leave a positive impression, they're, they're going to at some point get on a call with you, right? And so you know that if you have a large enough pool of prospects you're doing this to, over time you know, let's say a 3-year period, that's what I talk about, you're going to get on a call with pretty much every one of them.

So, so good. Yeah. And really the objective is for these people to go from they don't know you to, you know, they feel like they might have gotten something from you to— right, it feels like these people are constantly, you know, in communication with me in a professional way, so I might as well give them the opportunity to see what they could do for me.

Correct. It's literally just taking a cold call to a warm call. That's really the, the primary value of doing this.

So good. There was a question here from, uh, Rhino Marketers, and they're saying, hey, you know, I published this book, um, and I mail that out sometimes. Do you feel like that would fit into the mix of gifts, or do you feel that's inappropriate? Just—

I love, I love sending out books, um, because it really helps to position you as a thought leader. We've done that a lot where we would create like coffee, coffee-style books that were really beautifully designed, um, and The, the cool thing about books is that they typically end up on the bookshelf, right? So you have this, this longevity of this asset that you sent out. They may not read it, chances are they probably won't read it, but they may put it on their bookshelf, and that's a really good thing. So I, I highly recommend doing that.

So theoretically, you could mail your book, you could mail cookies, you could mail someone else's book, you could mail an interesting care package. You got to get creative, but the goal would be to quarterly be dropping this and not just dropping gifts and hoping, but dropping these gifts and proactively reaching out and making those connections.

That's, that's absolutely correct. And I also love the idea of sending someone else's book because, um, that is a great way to borrow some of their credibility, that author's credibility, by sending it to them. So it's a really high, high-quality touchpoint.

Love it. Love it. So good. So let, let's talk a little bit about building this team. Right? Because ideally, as you go to multiple 7 figures and 8 figures and beyond, you don't want to be the person following up. You want to build a world-class sales team, which obviously you said you guys grew it from 10 guys to, uh, did you say 100 salespeople at the—

it was a 100-person sales organization, which included sales enablement and, you know, some of these things. But it was probably to the scale of like 70 salespeople. Wow.

So can you talk a little bit about some of the, you know, the strategies you guys employed to attract great salespeople that were willing to make these calls and kind of could, could carry the opportunities across the finish line?

Absolutely. So the— there's, there's a couple of different things that I think are important here. The first one is going way back to when I just started at the, at the agency. There was the 6-person sales team. We brought in outbound. Uh, it took a while for that core group of, of sellers to really embrace the idea of outbound again because they had so much success So part of the ways that we, um, we built that was to hire new salespeople and we would train them in the new way of selling, right? So that became part of the standard. One of the things that, um, I find is true and it's based on my experience and I just know generally is that salespeople are typically a little bit competitive, right? And so one of the ways that we would help to encourage people to do things like go outbound is by bringing in a really great salesperson who could help to sort of set the new standard. And so that was, that was an important piece of hiring really great, high-quality salespeople who knew how to run the play. That's number one. Number two is we really had to not only depend on sort of the tried and true salespeople who knew how to do those, uh, close those, those bigger deals and, and, and run the play, we also had to find a way to train up new salespeople. And the best way that we found to do that was by bringing in more sales management layers. You couldn't have the sort of the head of sales, the VP of sales, trying to coach the outbound cold caller, you know, or the, you know, the closer. You really had to bring in those layers of management. So that was really important for us. I also think something was really important for us was when we started leaning into the home services vertical and the franchise vertical, we built an incremental sales team. We weren't asking the legal sellers to all of a sudden start selling to plumbers. We had to hire new people in addition to Travis, as I mentioned earlier, new people who were exclusively focused on building their book of business within home services. So I think the lesson— and we did the same in franchise— and I think the lesson there is The benefit you get out of having a vertical specialist salesperson, i.e., they have the relationships in the vertical, they have the experience, they know the case studies, they go to the conferences, all of those things far outweigh the cost of an incremental salesperson, right? So taking that approach, that truly verticalized, uh, sales team approach, many agencies won't do that, I think, because they're trying to find scale. But, but in my experience, that's a great a great way to build out the sales team.

God, I think a great, great insight there is just recognizing, you know, the, the, you know, the phrase it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks applies in this scenario, right? And if your team has been trained that leads come in and they're closers and they're going to take them to the sales process and ask for the business, and that's worked for them for years and years, and you're trying to shift gears and say, hey, now I need you to start to hunt a little bit, I need you to follow up on these gifts and set these appointments, that's going to be an uphill battle. You'd probably be better served to, you know, hire a new team, if I understand what you're saying, that can focus on doing that. And then as they set the pace, then show the other guys, hey, look, you know, this individual is getting all these deals that he created on his own, not from—

correct, correct. And so, um, you know, when, when management says you need to do certain things, um, uh, it's, it's a little bit of influence, but when you have a salesperson, a new salesperson on the sales floor being very successful running the new play, that's a different sort of quality of influence that the, uh, the sales team, uh, will definitely pay attention to.

Love that. I, I'm sure you can't talk specifics, but can you talk a little bit about, um, you know, how you, how you structure a compensation plan for this type of sales role?

Sure.

So you have to give exact numbers, but just—

yeah, yeah, yeah. So the, the The sellers at Scorpion, I'm not sure exactly what they're doing today, but, um, during my time there, we had seller— we went through a period where we were— we brought in SDRs, which were sort of the people who were doing the initial outreach for the gifts, appointment setters. We ultimately did away with that. We had the salespeople be sort of a full, full-stack, uh, salesperson. They would do the outbound as well as doing the closing. The compensation was based on a 50/50 model, so their, um, they would have an expected quota that they were, that they were assigned, that they would ramp over time, and that quota would, would result in commissions. And so we had this concept of an on-target earnings. So, um, if, if the salesperson is successful, that they should make, let's say, $100,000. Out of that $100,000, 50% of that is salary and 50% of that is performance. That's the 50/50. So we take what we expect from them, a total output, and then we give them half of that in salary. The other half is in performance. And of course, in sales, you don't have a cap on the amount of sort of commissions you make. But when you're meeting expectations, that's where we would take what we call the on-target earnings. Excellent.

Can you talk a little bit about kind of any pre-selection strategy that you guys might have used in terms of, you know, you're, you're putting out ads to attract salespeople and you've got these people coming in. How you identified, okay, this looks like a great fit versus this one we're going to pass on?

I think the thing I'd like to share in this regard is we wanted people who were eager, obviously, uh, were driven, but also who were impressionable, right? Who were willing to adopt our approach to selling. Now, when you came in as a salesperson at Scorpion, there was a whole 2-week sales, um, incubation. There was a lot of support and we gave you a lot of tools. However, the sales folks who didn't adopt those or wanted to use the old way were not really successful. And so we were really screening for was people who were willing to trust us, trust our process, and lean into it because we believed over time that that was going to help them to be successful.

So that coachability trait is the main thing you guys were looking for. Are they willing to take this and say, okay, I'm going to change, versus I've sold this way for a decade and, you know, this is just how I'm going to do it. If you don't like it, right, you know, is what it is, right?

Right. We, we as the agency had to control the process because we had the reps we had, meaning the, the amount of experience that we did, and we understood what success looked like. And we— if we had given that control over to let's say a salesperson who didn't understand those things, we'd be putting our success in jeopardy.

Love it, love it. Great stuff. For, you know, for the, for the agency that, let's say, that's, you know, a million dollars per year, and yeah, right now they've got one salesperson, or maybe they're just selling themselves, um, what are your suggestions on making the leap from having a salesperson to actually building a sales team?

Yeah. So the— there's a couple of ways to approach it. I think, um, if you are a, if you are a founder of an agency, as you said, doing $1 million and you're primarily doing sales, the, the, the natural progression is to bring someone up who's already in the business, who understands the customers, who understands your product, and bring them up into more of a sales role. There's obviously some coaching and some aptitude, and they have to be interested. Another way to grow is if you are a vertical, vertically focused agency, you know, a quick way to kind of shortcut your, your learning and your, uh, your ability to get a salesperson up to speed is to find someone, a salesperson who has already been selling into that market. The benefit there is that they already understand the market itself. They have probably have relationships with other, uh, other businesses that, uh, you want to attract. Um, and they could probably get to work pretty easily.

Love it. So kind of looking for someone that's already been selling into that industry that you can bring right in. Um, and then kind of shifting from just a one-person salesperson to actually deciding, you know, I think the agencies that go to 8 figures and multiple 8 figures shift from having a salesperson to having a true sales team.

Yes. And so the, the way, the way that you could do that is Primarily, you'll have— if you have a single salesperson who is really, really strong, they typically don't need a lot of oversight. But the minute you want to bring in new sort of fresh blood is when you want to start— my opinion— you want to start finding a sales director, someone who could build a sales training program and be responsible for bringing up more junior salespeople. That's really the right time to bring in that sales management, in my experience.

Got it. So kind of building that infrastructure around building the team. I think where a lot of agencies get stuck here is, um, they've got the salesperson that's like an inbound closer. They've got enough deal flow for that person, and to create enough deal flow for a whole nother salesperson where it doesn't eat into that person's income becomes a, uh, like a chasm they have to, to get over. Um, do you feel like the outbound engine there is kind of the, the critical aspect to be able to say, hey, look, We're going to bring this salesperson in, they're going to follow up on these opportunities, and they have to create most of those opportunities as they go, which then gives you the unlimited potential to bring on more and more salespeople and get them up to speed.

I certainly think if you can figure out how to get outbound to work on a consistent basis, that is, that is the key to growth in my experience, because again, you control that. Um, yeah, so I think you, you need to, um, In many cases, based on my experience, a lot of agencies will have a lot of inbound flow. However, they're probably not taking the most advantage of those inbounds, right? Because they have maybe—

are they following up quickly, right?

Exactly. So that would really be the primary focus, is bringing another resource, maximize all the inbound opportunity that you can. At that point, you would bring in some— someone else to focus on outbound. Now in practicality, you want to give even the outbound folks some inbounds, right? You want to give them a couple of the, the easy wins, right?

Just so they're not—

right, right. So they're, so they're not struggling on the side just trying to figure out how to, how to get the outbound working.

So good. Lots of, lots of great insights here, Corey. Thanks so much for sharing and kind of like getting into specific details. Uh, yeah, we've got, we've got 50 or so live, so if you guys have questions post them in. We've still got a few more minutes for any questions you guys might have burning. Um, I want to talk a little bit about industry events and conferences because one thing I noticed as an observer in the same vertical, um, you know, we were at these trade shows and events in the home services space, the plumbing and HVAC specific, and we'd usually get the 10x10 booth and we'd kind of do our thing. And we saw Scorpion come in, you know, and, and take over the entire convention. Um, talk to me a little bit about the strategy behind that and You know, how big do you go without, you know, going too big?

We did kind of go big. So what the strategy behind the conferences is that when you go to a conference, the people that you otherwise are trying to approach from a cold call or a LinkedIn or even a gift-based, you know, phone-based conversation, whatever that is, there are natural kind of barriers to building a relationship. However, when you are in person, That is an amazing opportunity to really build a genuine relationship, right? They could look at you eye to eye. And I know that, you know, industries like home services, they just like doing business sort of belly to belly, right? Meaning they want to look you in the eye, they want to get a sense for you whether or not you're a slick salesperson who's going to sell them a bunch of, you know, uh, stuff that isn't real, or if you are a genuinely good person. And so The way that we approached, uh, events and conferences at Scorpion was based a little bit on a book called The Experience Economy. And there's a, there's a great quote in there. I'm going to butcher it, but it's about if you didn't create a memory, it wasn't, it wasn't an economically, you know, viable experience. So what we wanted to do when we had this opportunity, all the people were trying to sell to in the same place that we're going to be in the same physical location. How do we create an experience that results in a memory that they can carry forward after the conference, right? We've all been to those conferences where we're walking in the exhibit hall and we're going from booth to booth and it's just kind of a big wash of just stuff, right? So what we wanted to do is we wanted to stand out, we wanted to be different. And so one of the things that we would do is I think, uh, for a couple years we gave away a car on the, uh, on the show floor. And, uh, which was different because people weren't doing it back then at the time. And so the purpose of that was obviously come to our booth, we give us— let us scan your badge, and then you may, at the end of this conference, may— you may walk away with keys to this car specifically, right? So it was a different kind of experience. It created a memory. The way we gave away the car was pretty interesting, where you had to physically be present, and then we would literally pull a name out of a hat. So It's still a really great sort of moment for people. We would also do things off campus, meaning if we were in Vegas, we would go to, uh, you know, a Britney Spears concert. We'd buy out the front, the front row of Britney Spears concert and have that experience. We'd go drive exotic cars. However, you know, we were a bigger agency. Not every agency probably can do that. What's important is how do you create a memorable experience with them? It could be going to breakfast with your prospects. It could be having a wonderful meal, bringing in a thought leader or an author to an intimate dinner. You know what, these type of things really do make a lasting impression. For us, it was a key part of our growth.

Yeah, I think it absolutely made an impact even for your competitors just seeing it and like, you went all in. And if you've got the financial resources as an agency to do that, go for it, right? But the key takeaway here, guys, is be sure you plug into these industry events and conferences, right? Something powerful happens live and in person. And, and try and stand out, right? Even if you can only afford the 10x10, you can do something creative with the booth. You can, you know, schedule a dinner. Um, don't just show up and stand at the booth and hope people walk up to you. Be assertive with it.

Yeah, I would, I would add to that one other point which I think could be helpful. Is that the first time you go to an industry conference, you're really not going to know a whole lot of people, and that's okay, right? You want to be present, you want to build relationships. But the next year you go, your people are going to recognize you, and you'll be like, oh yeah, I remember you from last year. By the third time you go, the third year, you've— you know, it's like seeing an old lost friend, right? Because you are continually building those experiences and creating those memories. And that's when, um, you really begin to build the trust and the recognition in the industry.

Yeah, and like you said, it's a compounding effect. Like, you know, the more you go, the more you get known, the better the relationships, the opportunities to present on stage and things like that start to open up. So don't think of it as a one-hit wonder, just like with the gifting strategy. Don't mail one gift to your entire database and expect that to be— um, this takes persistence, it takes time. Do you find that the combination of the thought leadership, the outbound, the being at the events and conferences have a synergistic outcome? Like they start to play off each other and get better results than if you just did one or the other?

1000%. Yes, 100%, Josh. It is, it is a combination of these touchpoints. We would get feedback that, you know, gosh, you guys at Scorpion, you guys are kind of everywhere. You're at the conferences, you're at the associations. We can, we You know, we've been a guest on your podcast. You, you retarget us on the web, like you're really kind of everywhere. And the, the impact we were trying to create was we know that as a business, let's say a plumber that, um, you know, is in this city, does these types of things, we know that you'd be a great client for us. And, and more importantly, we know that we could help you in a very meaningful way. And so yeah, we're being intentional about making sure that we're in front of you so that when you become ready to make a buying decision, that you include us on that shortlist of agencies that you're, that you're reaching out to.

Love it. So, so good. A couple questions here about compensation, and if you can't speak to it, it's fine. Yeah, uh, Justin's asking about, are you paying on a one-time or on a, you know, recurring for, for sales?

Yeah, Justin, so the way that we did it, uh, again evolved over time, but generally the, the process was that a salesperson would make. So we had 3 fees at Scorpion. We had a setup fee, a monthly fee, and then a percent of spend, which we make money on the, on the Google ad spend. Um, they would make a percentage of the setup fee, which obviously incentivized them to keep the setup fee in, in the, uh, in the deal. Um, and then over time they would get a payout of, of a percentage of the revenue that we collected, not just that we you know, we build, we actually collected, they would get a certain percentage of that for the first year, and then it would step down to half of that percentage in the second year. So effectively, every new client gave a Scorpion salesperson a, a bump up front with a, with, you know, percentage of the setup fee, and then a recurring 2-year recurring, uh, income stream for them.

Awesome. Great, great share. I appreciate you sharing that. My recommendation typically, especially if you're inbound at this point in your agency, you pay on the upfront and as little as possible on the recurring, right? I think a big mistake some agencies make is like, oh, go, go sell and I'll give you 10% of the recurring, uh, and that works for 10 clients and then it starts to, you know, just totally kill your margins. So, you know, pay 20, 25, 30% of the first month and 0 or 1% on the residual for the first year. Um, that's going to be much more manageable, at least in the immediate term, for most of us.

Yep. Yeah. And then it does sunset at a certain point. You want to keep these folks motivated to continually, you know, um, you know, get that recurring going. And if it's, if it's perpetual, that can, uh, cause them to be less motivated, I think.

So good. Can you talk a little bit about, um, management rituals for the sales team? You talked about kind of, you know, as you grow, you need someone to manage the closers and, you know, manage those earlier, you know, outbound appointment people. Any, any like strategies you can share on, on meeting rhythms with the sales team as it grows?

The meeting rhythms?

Yeah.

Um, so a daily standup is, is essential in my perspective, and this is an opportunity to get the sales team pumped up and get them focused and talk about committing to what they're going to do. Again, in sales, you're getting— you deal with a lot of rejection. And so that camaraderie, typically if it's in person, it's great. Doesn't have to be, but that opportunity for people to really feel connected and part of a greater thing, as well as be held accountable. Um, you know, I, I believe that the best performers, you know, executives, salespeople, whatever, they like a scale— they like a sale, uh, a scoreboard, excuse me. They like to have something where they can be measured against. They're motivated by that. And so By having a daily standup, it's an opportunity to, again, for people to show up, be accountable, and to commit to what they're going to do that day.

So as you build that sales team, don't think it's set and forget it. Okay, you're hired. Go do your job. It's a tough job, right? So they need to be encouraged. They need to have a scoreboard that they can kind of measure themselves again.

Exactly.

And they need to be coached up, right? You need to be every once in a while role-playing with them and kind of getting feedback.

Yeah, yeah. And there's some great tools for the feedback piece. I think that, uh, the challenge of course is that a lot of people use these tools like Gong and whatnot to record these calls. However, they forget to actually go and review the Gong calls.

Being recorded, but no one's doing anything with it, right?

And so that reinforces the need to have that, that management layer of folks who are exclusively responsible for helping to, as you said, level up, support these salespeople and provide them with a structure that's going to help them to be successful.

You mentioned Gong. This was a question that David asked in advance that he wanted to make sure I brought up. Yeah. Are there any other tools that you find, you know, help, you know, with building the sales team, managing the sales team, managing the outbound process?

Yeah. So tools are interesting when it comes to salespeople because they're not particularly— I'll speak very generally— they're not particularly great at admin. You know, and having managed a large sales and marketing group, having great data is actually really, really important. And so what you want to do is you want to try as hard as possible as a man from the management perspective or the leadership perspective to depend on them to, you know, for things like data, data input and whatnot. Like for instance, logging calls and so on and so forth. You try and minimize that as much as possible because If you expect them to do a lot, then either they'll spend half their day trying to figure out how to do the admin, um, which is not their best and highest use, um, or they just won't do it, uh, which is also a problem. And so, um, when it comes to the tools specifically, we used HubSpot as our sales CRM. It's a great tool, I think, for agencies of pretty much any size. I use it myself even now. Um, and so, uh, but, but regardless of that sort of sales CRM, I would try and make it— try and set it up so that it is the least amount of steps and overhead for that salesperson, at the same time that you as a sort of a leadership can extract the value out of that. So the way to do that is through— there's a lot of automations you can build into that. Um, when it comes to building your outbound process, I'm a big believer of just, you know, just starting with Google Sheets or Excel, not over-engineering it. You're gonna have a list of 20 to 50 businesses that you're going to send gifts to every quarter. There's a 6-step follow-up, just making sure that that is being tracked and you're, you're looking at the results and the impact of those campaigns. That's the place to start. And then over time you could bring that into the CRM to help to integrate that with the other systems you have.

So good. Yeah, lots of, lots of great tools and resources there. Um, Corey, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for the great insights on building a sales team, on dialing in your outbound. I know you have a new book coming up called Anyone, Not Everyone.

Yes.

How can, how can the listeners, you know, connect with you, get that book, learn more about you?

Thanks, Josh. So we, the book is, as you mentioned, Anyone, Not Everyone. It's a book, it's the 5 steps To Escape Founder-Led Sales. And the premise of it is that you escape founder-led sales by becoming a vertical market specialist. And so in the book, it will be, um, is, are those 5 steps. There's a lot of worksheets and videos to things to support that outside the book. It will be available, uh, next month. So we're recording this on February. It'll be available later in March. Place to go to sign up to be notified will be the name of the book is Anyone, Not Everyone. The website is anyonenoteveryone.com. You can go there today, sign up, and I'll notify you when the book comes out.

Fantastic. So guys, get this. It's gonna be a great book. anyonenoteveryone.com. Enter your name and email address. You'll get, you'll get a pre-notification when the book comes live. Corey, how else would you like people to connect with you? They wanna learn more, they wanna engage with you.

I would say go to my website. You can sign up my newsletter. I have a daily newsletter. I also have a podcast that, uh, is where I interview agency founders who have taken a vertical market approach. Many of your clients, Josh, have been, uh, my, my, uh, my guests. And so, um, yeah, that's a great way to, to hear more of these success stories of these vertically focused agencies.

So good. Awesome. Well, Corey, thanks so much for taking the time today. Um, any last piece of wisdom you would share with that agency owner that's looking to go to the next level?

I, yeah, I, you know, I think that we probably are similar of mind when I, when I, when I share this, which is that the, the best way in my mind to scale up an agency is by becoming a specialist in a vertical market. I know you preach that and I'm a big supporter of that idea. And I think that not every agency will start there, but if you want to get the, the success that companies like Scorpion and others have, have achieved, it's through this vertical specialization. So if this is something you're interested in, I would lean into it.

So good, Corey. This has been great, guys. Post your follow-up questions. We'll be looking at your questions. Even if you happen to be watching this on the replay, uh, be sure to reach out to Corey and thank him for, for sharing in his abundance mindset, coming on and sharing all these insights with us today.

Thank you, everyone.

Thanks, everybody.