The Agency Sales Process | Seven Figure Agency

What's up, digital marketing agency owners? On today's training, I wanna talk a little bit about the ultimate agency sales process and what you can do in order to confidently offer your services to clients, get them to say yes, get them signed up on retainer-based services. And so this is a master skill, right? Knowing how to present your services and get prospects to say yes is one of the key determinants as to whether your agency will succeed or fail. And so if you're looking for some ideas, strategies, and techniques to generate better conversion on your sales opportunities, you're gonna wanna watch this video. So, uh, as part of your growth system, as you think about growing and scaling your digital marketing agency, we need to fill our funnel, we need to land clients, we gotta deliver great results. The benchmark I like to shoot for when it comes to, uh, landing clients and, and converting clients is we want our sales process to close at least 30%, right? If you're not closing at least 30%, there's probably something that can be done in the way that you're positioning yourself and getting prospects to show up for your appointments, or your actual sales process as it sits. And so I wanted to walk you through the sales process we use in our agency that, again, has helped us grow to multiple 7 figures, landing, you know, hundreds and hundreds of agency clients, and has worked really well for the agencies we work with. And so this I call the consultative sales process, or the, the agency sales process. First things first, right? In our marketing, we've gotta get the prospect to raise their hand, whether that's through our cold outreach, through our webinars, through our podcast, through joint venture opportunities. They need to raise their hand and express some level of interest. From there, you wanna have a discovery call where you learn a little bit more about them, little bit more about their business, Are they a good fit? Is there a problem that you can solve? Just kinda get the lay of the land. Me personally, I tend to combine the discovery call and the strategy session into one call. We've got agencies in the 7 Figure Agency that do these as completely distinct calls. I really think it's gonna depend upon how they're entering into your world. If they're raising their hand on a cold email, right, you cold emailed them and said, "Hey, I can help you generate 5 additional X projects this month," and they wrote back, "Yeah, I'm interested," that's probably gonna wanna have its own discovery call. Be like, "Hey, let me get to know you a little bit, what your goals are, what your struggles are, where you're at as an organization, and if it's a good fit, we'll schedule you in for a strategy session." If, however, they came in and they raised their hand because they're already on your list, and maybe they sat through one of your webinars, they were referred by one of the coaches that you aligned with in the industry, then you could probably say, "Let's use some time getting to understand you first, and then we'll pivot to strategy session." That's the distinction there. You want to spend a little bit of time getting to know, like, their company, what their goals are, what they're looking to accomplish in their, in their business, what they've tried in the past, and do some due diligence, right? And so usually what we're doing is they're scheduling in and our team is going to do some due diligence. We're going to pull up their website, we're going to run a ranking report, we're going to do some analysis of where they sit today so that when we do pivot from discovery to offering our services, we can show them where there's room for improvement. And so just understand it's not about presenting your, your, your agency service, right? It's got to be around understanding them at the beginning, and then it's got to be around making sure that they want to solve that problem, and then getting their buy-in to make a transition to you showing them where there's deficiencies in their current strategy and how you can help them hit their goal. Quick Cliff Notes version, right, and I've got a deep dive training that we give to our 7 Figure Agency members on this entire process. How to prep for the meeting, questions to ask, the kind of, not the script, but the flow of the conversation, and the inflection points where you wanna engage for feedback. But Cliff Notes version here, on the building rapport side of the equation, you wanna say, hey, thanks so much, Mr. Prospects, for taking the time to get together today. You know, on today's session, really what I want to do is get an understanding of you, your organization, where you're looking to go, and kind of what some of the gaps are. And then if it makes sense, I'll show you what our team found, and when we looked at your website, we looked at your online rankings, where we think there might be room for improvement. And if it makes sense, we'll talk about how it would look like to do business together. Does that make sense for you? Does that work for today's call? And they usually are going to say yes. And so don't start by presenting. Start by saying, "Hey, so let me know a little bit about your business. Like, I did some research on the front end, but what are the key services you offer? Approximately how much revenue are you guys doing today? What's the goal over the next 12 to 24 months? Where are you looking to get in the business?" Right? And if you've got some authority and you've got some confidence, they'll have no problem answering those questions. And it's important not just to breeze past the questions, especially "Where are you today?" What's the goal? You want to connect that gap to why it's important for them. So let's just say they said, um, you know, right now we're at $1 million per year and we're trying to get to $5 million over the next 12 to 24 months. Awesome, super ambitious goal. Tell me, you know, why is that important for you guys? Why is that important for you specifically? And you want them to state it, right? Because you want them to be psychologically selling themselves throughout this process. So they might say, oh, it's so that I can you know, hire 3 additional trucks and so that I can employ some more people, or maybe I'm trying to buy a house, or, you know, I want to create more freedom in my life. You want to connect that reason to their subconscious desire and why that's important for them. The better you connect those 2 gaps, the better. Now, you know, you also want to kind of create the urgency around this as well. So if you're like, hey, so the goal is to get to $5 million. What have you tried in the past? And they might say, hey, you know, I hired, you know, Scorpion, or I was with ReachLocal, or the kid across the street did it for me. Okay, great, and how's that working for you today? Right, and they might say, it's going great, or I think there's room for improvement, or it's struggling. Excellent, why is it important for you to solve for this right now? And they're gonna give you some reasons. Oh, it's because it's not working and we really need more leads in order to keep the trucks running, or I just hired this new technician, if you're using a home service example. I just hired this new technician and he's not getting enough leads and so we're gonna lose him if we don't get something going relatively quickly. Awesome. Just so I know, like, why not just stay where you're at? Why not just stay with the current company? Right? And you want them to overtly say, because I can't afford to be in this place anymore. I need to get— generate better results. So you're connecting the gaps between where they are, where they wanna go, why that's important to them, what they're doing today, why it's not working, and why they need to make a change. Because the number one reason they're not going to convert typically is because they decide to stay with the status quo. Right, I'm just gonna leave things the way that they are. So, ask them some questions about their goals, ask them questions about the team, ask them questions about what they're doing today, get clarity on why that's important, how important it is for them to solve that problem, and then usually you're gonna try and pivot to, awesome, thanks so much for giving me that information, it's great to understand kinda where you're at, "Where you're looking to go, our team did do some due diligence leading up to this appointment. Would it be okay if I show you where I see some room for improvement and how we can help kind of speed you from that $1 million to that $5 million spot?" And you want them to overtly say, "Yes, absolutely." So you're getting buy-in throughout this process. Don't just shift straight to your findings. I think it's important that this be done on a Zoom-based meeting. You don't have to show your screen at the beginning. You're not in presentation like clicker mode. But you're talking. You can see them, they can see you, you can have a conversation. But then when it is time to say, "Hey, let me show you what we found," you want to be prepared, not with slides, but with tabs open where you can say, "Hey, so this is the website. We really believe your whole marketing strategy starts with the website. If your website isn't built to convert, we can drive as much traffic as we want, it's still not going to generate the results that we're after." Here's what we're seeing with the website. Good, better, and different. You're pointing out these are some issues. Does that make sense? Do you see how like, you know, changing that up would make some difference in how it converts? Yes? Okay, great. And some of the key things we tend to point to would be, look, you know, there's no personality or authenticity here. All I see is stock imagery. That doesn't resonate really well. You know, I noticed you don't have a phone number prominently here on the top right-hand corner. I only see phone number as the conversion mechanism. We're finding that most of your customers would prefer to schedule directly online, start a chat. Neither of those conversion factors are in place. Here's what I would recommend is putting that in place. Does that make sense? So come armed with some things that you can point out on their website that are gonna be, like, producing lower conversion opportunities. And then we say, look, we really believe that your highest value prospect and your lowest cost lead is gonna come from organic, right? So when I ran a couple searches on Google for your services in your local market, you're not coming up in the first couple of spots. We know that 60% of the clicks go right to the first 3 positions. You're not there. As a matter of fact, I ran this report for the most important keywords. We did some research. We found the top 100 keywords your prospects are typing, and here's how you rank. We show them the ranking report, and this usually comes right out of BrightLocal, and we'll say, hey, look, you know, You've got these keywords that are doing great, but all of these other keywords you're not ranking for. Did you realize that? You know, if the goal is to go from a million to 5 million, do you feel like if we could get the rankings dialed in, that would generate better results? Like that would help you get to that next level? Yes. Okay, cool. And then we talk a little bit about paid search. Usually we talk a little bit about marketing automation. I don't want to use this entire thing to walk you through the sales process. I have some deep dive training on this if you're interested in accessing it. The point is, you spent a little bit of time getting to know them, what their goals are, then you spent a little bit of time connecting to why it's important. You got their buy-in to show them, hey, here's where I think there's room for improvement in your strategy. They're gonna get value from that either way, but it's also creating a gap that says, hey, here's where I wanna be, I'm not there yet. The challenge is this stuff, right? My conversion, my rankings, my paid search, the way I'm converting the leads that I generate into booked jobs. And then you have the conversation. Look, I really think that we could do a lot of this for you. It would have a big impact on your conversion rates. Would you like me to walk you through our service offering, kind of how it works? Right? And they're usually gonna say, yeah, absolutely. And then you can pivot directly into your program overview. This could be a whole conversation in and of itself, but you should be able to say, hey, here's what we do, right? We're gonna do this, this, this. We're gonna build a website, we're gonna get it ranked organically, we're gonna drive paid traffic, we're gonna put this tracking in place, We're gonna have this automation in order to follow up on your leads, and getting their buy-in through every one of those steps, walking them through your model, and getting them to say, "Do you feel like if we did that for you, it would generate better results?" "Yes." "Would you like me to show you what we've done for some other clients?" And this is where you can really get them excited and show them, "Hey, here's one of the clients we work with just like you. Here's what's going on with their website. You see how this converts really well. Here's some conversion ranking data that we have." Here's where they're coming up organically. And most importantly, let me show you the tracking. Here's how many leads they get per month. Here's their average cost per lead. Like, if we could do that for you, would that be a win? You're showing them now that you can actually generate the results. And you're getting them to nod and be like, yes, I see how this is going to help. You kind of ask them, do you have any other questions before you make a decision? Yes, no, maybe so? Awesome. Does this feel like a fit? Like, do you feel like we could help you take things to that next level? Yes, absolutely. And then you're gonna ask for the business. You're gonna say, look, the program is this amount. We get started today, it's gonna be this amount on credit card. Would you rather use Visa or MasterCard? What would be your preference? Right? And you know, in some cases you're gonna get the yes and they're gonna say, hey, here's my credit card data, and you're off to the races. In other cases they're gonna say, hey, can you send me an overview of what we talked about? Right? And you wanna answer questions, you wanna try and get through the objections on that initial conversation, What we find is a lot of times they just need to sit on it for a little bit, and those prospects do tend to be, to be great clients. Like, if you're totally stuck on first call close, you're gonna miss a lot of opportunity that comes in the follow-up after the fact. And so I really think you want to engineer what we call a hot lead follow-up. I explain this in the Ultimate Agency Funnel Process, but it's just a sequence of communications after that conversation that moves them from "I was interested" to "I'm sold." And that might be putting a shock and awe box that goes in the mail to them. It might be having testimonials and case studies that drip on them, next steps. And of course, make sure that you calendarize that next meeting right on that call. "Hey listen, understood. I'll send you a document that explains everything. Let's go ahead and schedule our next call now so that we can get back together and get this party started. Right? Next Thursday at 3 o'clock, does that work for you?" Perfect, that gave you enough time to kind of review everything, discuss it with your team. Excellent. Bam. You make sure you calendarize that, and then you have this hot lead follow-up that's constantly nudging those prospects forward. You will have no problem getting your 30%+ close ratio. So this is just a high-level overview of the agency sales process. If you want more details on this, and you want like some more ideas on how you can really implement this, in the real world, I've got a training called the 7-Figure Agency Roadmap Implementation Training that I'm offering completely free. It's a recording of a 2-day event that really walks you through this entire process. And you can grab that for free by going to 7figureagency.com/roadmap. Enter your contact details, you'll get access to all the training that you can access right now. So go check that out and let me know. Let me know if this is how you're approaching your sales process or maybe if you do something different. Um, if you got value from this video, please hit the like button. Make sure you hit the subscribe button so you get other videos like this as we roll them out. Um, and be sure to check out the 7-Figure Agency Implementation Roadmap. That's it for now. Thanks so much for watching. Let's get those close ratios up. Let's position ourselves as the experts and let's make sure that we sell in a way that leads to retention, where there's clear expectations, there's clear buy-in to the long-term nature of the relationship. And let's take our agencies to the next level. I'll talk to you guys soon.