How To Build Sales Systems To Speed Agency Growth

[00:00:00] Stephanie Liu: Over the next five years, marketing and advertising agencies are expected to recover from the lowest experience due to the pandemic. Growth will come as more and more tablets, smartphones, flood markets, providing new revenue streams, and increased demand for digital advertising services. And so many digital advertising tactics have yet to be fully used, such as mobile and location-based advertising, really just creating tons of opportunities for agencies.

The accelerated adoption of e-commerce platforms and other online services will create a lasting higher level of demand for digital advertising services as well. What does that really mean? Well, all of that means that there’ll be a lot more demand and work for marketing agencies over the next few years.

So, are you ready? Do you have sales systems and processes in place to compete with other agencies and win the deals you’ll need to grow and scale your business? That’s what we’re digging into in today’s episode of Agency Accelerated.

Welcome back to Agency Accelerated where we explore ways to grow and scale your agency with some of the most trusted brands and experts in the industry. I’m Stephanie Liu and we’re live every other Wednesday at 2:00 PM eastern time. 11:00 AM Pacific time on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and on LinkedIn. So make sure you head on over to agorapulse.com/calendar and subscribe. So you don’t miss any episodes and stay until the very end because you know what, you’ll get a chance to get your hands on an easy way to add more revenue to your marketing agency.

Hey, listen friend, with a $60 billion and growing industry on the line. Being able to successfully and authentically sell your agency services to prospects has never been more critical and the truth is 99 firms reports that 60% of salespeople believe that selling is getting tougher than before. Fortunately, according to Square 2, people, sales people who receive continuous training achieve at least 50% better results on average. That’s actually a really good point because how many of you are actually getting sales training?

So you’re in the right place. Today’s guest is a former multimillion dollar agency owner who now leverages his years of experience in the marketing agency space to help other agency owners, like you and like me, achieve success. And we’re going to have a blast talking to him today. Lee Goff started his first agency Gets You Wired in 2003 in his upstairs bedroom with absolutely nothing.

After growing Get You Wired into a multi-million dollar agency, winning awards from Infusionsoft, Entrepreneur Magazine and others, he decided to step out and retire. In 2016, we decided to pursue his passion of mentoring small businesses by combining timeless old school philosophies with automation and the cloud, Lee and his team at marketingagencycoach.com have created a complete roadmap for agency success that we’re going to dive into today.

So having said that, Lee, welcome to the show.

[00:03:23] Lee Goff: Thank you so much for having me. Nice to meet you.

[00:03:26] Stephanie Liu: How you doing?

[00:03:27] Lee Goff: I’m doing good. I wish I was that there at sunny San Diego. It’s so nice out there.

[00:03:41] Stephanie Liu: It’s good. So, hey, let’s start by talking about the work that you’re doing right now. What makes an agency a great fit for the type of coaching that you and your agency has to offer?

[00:03:53] Lee Goff: We’ve actually broken this down into four different agency categories. Most of the people who come at me when they’re in a transition point between these four different stages.

First one being, I think everybody’s kind of familiar with it. The freelancer phase that typically is zero to a hundred thousand in revenue. It’s the freelancer himself or herself and a friend or two, a couple of freelancers elsewhere working together. From there, they have a hard time getting to the next stage was what I would call the successful freelancer, that’s to where you get from the hundred thousand up to about a quarter million, maybe 300,000 mark.

It’s the freelancer evolving into the solopreneur. And that solopreneur typically has a small stable of freelancers they can outsource stuff to. And then from there you go to the small agency and then from the small agency to the small, to medium agency. Most people come at me whenever they are at their wits’ end on the freelancer phase, trying to get into that solopreneur and give some basic systems and processes, hiring products, competitive advantages, positioning elements, things like that.

By far, the most common phase is whenever they’re in that it’s about 600,000 to a $1 million revenue and you’re starting to run into what’s called the glass ceiling and the glass ceiling is in effect basically the system and processes that it takes to replace the dynamic entrepreneur in their business. And that’s also where most businesses, most smaller agencies have a fail point to get to that next level. So whenthe pain point gets high enough, they’ll typically reach out to me in one of those transition phases.

[00:05:20] Stephanie Liu: I love that you mentioned the pain point, because isn’t that so funny that most entrepreneurs, we’re kind of like, you know what I think growing my business and it’s been doing this and we reached this, but I’m doing the same thing. But for some reason I’m not getting to where it is that I need to be. And so they wait until things get so, so, so bad. And they’re like, ah, this is when I need to reach out to Lee and his team.

So then Lee, I think the best question to ask then is how will they know when they’re ready to find a coach? Do they need to wait until they fall into the pits of despair or wins, like what are some red flags that they need to be like, Hey, you know what, now’s the time.

[00:05:57] Lee Goff: I hate to admit it. But usually it’s only as a result of the pain getting so high.

And so let me kind of give an example. Entrepreneurs are by far the, some of the most gifted, the most brilliant people on the planet. They can literally do just about anything. That’s also the problem with this, that they can do anything that they set their mind to. So they think that they should do everything that pops into their mind. And so eventually to the point where you realize that’s bad and the pain of trying to break through that mindset and then glass ceiling will literally cause you like where in my case, I had a heart attack. So stress, you start to feel tugging on your heart, your wife, or your spouse, or your partner will start asking how come I never see you?

Or you wonder why you didn’t know that your child was playing soccer. And they’ve been playing soccer for two years. You know, things like that are the reasons where people come start to realize, I’ve gotten myself into a hole here and I need to get out, and this is over my head. And so whenever you kind of get to a point where a lot of things in your personal life are becoming dramatically difficult, because you just don’t have the time or energy to put into those, because you’re just so stressed out at work, or you’ve been stuck at a revenue model.

Like a 600,000, just can’t quite break through that 600,000 mark or you can’t quite scale past that million dollar mark. Those are typically pretty telltale signs that you need to reach out to a coach. And I wouldn’t love to be your coach. If you’re out there looking for

one.

[00:07:17] Stephanie Liu: There’s a saying where most problems in business, usually arise for you to confront them because they’re usually a problem that’s arising. I think our poking the bear with our listeners right now.

[00:07:33] Lee Goff: That’s true, because I mean, as a matter of fact, in my coaching calls, the very first question I asked him, I have detailed discovery phase and people are a lot of times shocked at the very first question that I ask in that phase. And basically that question is just, what do you want to be when you grow up? Okay. And so that is you want a quality of life business, or do you want to go big? Okay. Because every decision we make from that point forward is going to be dictated by that, the niche, and your title.

Starting with what do you want to be when we grow up? And so don’t underestimate the power of house, right? It should be your sanctuary. It should be everything. It dictates everything in your life. And so if it’s happening at the house, you better listen to it because it’s not going to go away. Okay. If anything, it’ll get worse.

And so just listen to it and make sure you know what you’re going to be when you grow up.

[00:08:19] Stephanie Liu: They’re silent. The silent listeners.

I love that you bring all of that up, especially when you said quality of life. Business. I think even when I speak to my clients, we call it like, what kind of lifestyle do you want? Right. Cause yeah, you could have a successful business, but are you now not taking vacations? Do you have to get permission?

[00:08:53] Lee Goff: I would love to elaborate on that. You know, everybody is kind of a different definition of about everything now. Nowadays kind of say, when I say quality, like this is what it means to me. That’s also why I put together four different definitions of agency growth. Because again, everybody, all of us marketing guys are coaches and gurus, try to come up with their own terms.

Next thing you know everybody’s confused because nobody knows what the hell. At the end of the day, here’s what this means. Okay. Quality of life business means this. That you build a half a million dollar agency. The goal is to never work any more than 40 hours a week and the profit is very high. Okay.

Meaning, that in that half a million dollar business, we squeeze profits to get you to making, to what you’re putting in your bank account. 200,000 a year, the other 300,000 goes towards taxes, labor, and just all the operational costs. Now, if you’re going to go big, that formula is completely different.

Okay. So let’s say you get to the half million dollar mark, but you’re willing to go big. Now it’s going to make 200,000 you’d be making about 75,000 because at 125,000 has to go back into the business. Okay. Diversify lead sources to partnerships, continuing education, a million, trust me, you’ll always have something to spend money on.

And you will, if you’re trying to go big. So it’s just a strategic decision you have to make upfront. Do I really want to go big and be the next Bill Gates or do I want to live on the side of a mountain at Costa Rica making a good living? Most of the time, the answer is I want to live on a side of a mountain in Costa Rica and make a good living, most of the time because people have a tendency.

My experience is more in the US so when I say that it comes from here, especially in the US where the cowboy mentality go big or go home. Right. And I personally did go big and I didn’t like it. So I went home. I sold it the minute that I got to, you know, I had 40 plus employees, 17 countries, 43 states, Entrepreneur, Forbes, magazine, you name it.

I mean, I think by most people’s standards, I very much achieved success. I got there and I never got to talk to my clients anymore, which is what makes me tick. I love helping other entrepreneurs. All I was doing with my leadership team, my project managers, my attorneys and CPAs and referral partners. Don’t get me wrong.

I love working with them as well, but it’s just not as fun for me personally. Like what I will do when I grow up, what I enjoy doing is actually being in the trenches with entrepreneurs and helping. I actually love it. It’s what makes us what makes me tick. So you have to make that decision, you know, do I want quality of life, don’t want to be stressed out, I don’t want to do what Lee did and get divorced and have a heart attack just to be candid. Okay. I want to relax a little bit. Life, make a living. I’m not trying to conquer the world. So make that decision up front and you’ll see that a lot of the decisions after that become a lot easier.

[00:11:39] Stephanie Liu: See, that’s real talk there. That’s real, great advice because more often than not people’s definition of success is because they saw someone else do it.

And they think that that’s the quality of life that they want to have. And really when you sit down with them and you say, okay, well, what would that do for you? For what purpose? They’re like, well, I don’t know. If I have that much money, what would I really do with that? Would I really travel? Would I do this with my family and whatnot.

And a lot of times it’s like, what values are most important to you in the context of your career in this business, in this agency that you’re building. So I love that you start with that first.

[00:12:20] Lee Goff: That’s what we learned in a leadership style at my agency is called group leadership style. Okay. That’s kind of a hybrid Simon Sinek, Jim Collins and the now what used to be the future self leadership pool. So kind of a hybrid of all that is what we built and it’s called a group leadership style. And I’m telling you it works wonders.

[00:12:37] Stephanie Liu: I think having your team aligned with you as an agency owner, what your values are and making sure that that’s in line in the vision that you’re building is going to be super helpful as well.

So I love that you’re bringing that into your practice. Wait, what are some other big challenges? Do you see that agencies are running into that a coach like you and your firm can really help them with?

[00:12:57] Lee Goff: Right now, the top of the list, it’s almost always, diversify leads and drive more leads, but in this climate, the number one problem that I’m facing, at least the number one problem that I’m working with directly with my students is hiring. We’ve had a very difficult time finding the good talent and that in my opinion is as a result of what I kind of coined as the third digital gold rush. Actually, I wrote an article for Forbes magazine about this, and COVID kind of kicked off the third digital gold rush.

The first one was 2002, back when the internet was all kind of websites were coming out of the gate. The second one was the social media revolution, 2008, 7, 8, 9, 10, right there. And then as a result of having forced to go virtual, I don’t know what the name of it might be. It might the Zoom rush or whatever, because everybody uses Zoom.

Right. But it definitely kicked off the third gold rush. So when it comes to driving revenue and profits, my students are just crushing it right now, we’re constantly jumping on prices up and adding positioning elements to increase it and adding products to increase that. But the number one problem we’re facing right now is finding reliable and skilled talent.

That has been a challenge. Now we are overcoming a great little hiring process. We’re overcoming it, but I guess a good way to validate that, there some basic numbers pre-COVID, whenever we would use my hiring process and we would run a few ads, wherever we’ve got the candidates. Yeah, it typically take about a week or two and a couple of hundred dollars to get, I don’t know, 50 to 75 pretty strong candidates.

And then out of that, we would whittle them down through my own process of elimination and we’d eventually get top 3 to 5. Well now, it’s taking about a month and a half to get 50 to 60 mid-level candidates. And after we go through the process of elimination, a lot of times we’re down to like, there’s only one left and we have to go through it again and bring out another five or $600. One of my agencies spend around $1,500 just trying to get three to four top-tier candidates.

Right. And so that has been a major hurdle that we are, we have been working on aggressively.

The second one is almost always lead sourcing, lead diversification, supply and demand dictates everything. So the more leads you have, the more in control you are of your business. And so we’ve been working aggressively on that. We’re always testing out really cool lead sources and things like that.

We’ve got some really cool stuff coming down the pike on that. Those are probably at the top two. A third one right next to it, like a three and a four. We’re going to be tied for number three.

[00:15:28] Stephanie Liu: Yeah.

[00:15:29] Lee Goff: Not having a sales system or not having a project management system they’re getting killed on scope creep or they’re losing, or they’re leaving seven figures a year in revenue on the table because they don’t have basic follow-up for, and I mean, basic. I am not talking about a hardcore sales floor $50,000 process. I’m talking about a few grand to put in some emails and follow-up systems super simple, but over time, it’s an additional seven figures a year in your account. Right? So, you know, those two are always right there at the top as well.

[00:15:59] Stephanie Liu: So yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And the fact it sounds like this is something that you’ve been working with clients on for a very long time.

I’m fascinated by the trying to hire new talent and the struggle with that. What do you think it’s harder to find top-tier talent? Is it because of remote work preferences or benefits, or just people figuring, hey, if I can consult, I could make more?

[00:16:22] Lee Goff: Actually, it’s a little bit of combination, not put all of those in there. If I was gonna put them in an order, priority one and the number one by far is demand, right? I mean, you could literally be about anybody right now. Quit your job, do about anything. Go take a course on content writing or, or whatever it might be. Get out to Upwork and Fiverr or wherever it might be and get jobs. Right. So, I mean, it’s not terribly difficult to break into the digital marketing space right now.

And of course the people with experience the ones who are going to be looking for, or in extremely high demand. And so they’re definitely going to Jack their prices up because of supply and demand. Right. And I don’t mind them at all, but that is a portion of it. My circle size is too small to give exact percentages here, but I’m also going to guess that’s 25, 30% of it.

Another 30%, or maybe even more is actually the paradigm shift in workforce expectation, levels and mentality as a result of COVID. Meaning, they have become extremely complacent and like sitting at home where they’re predominant and they don’t want to give them. At all. No, no, no, no. This has been a part of the interview process, like as if refusing to come or not come into the office, even though I live two miles down the street, I will

[00:17:37] Stephanie Liu: Yeah. Values have shifted.

Yeah. It’s now I feel like my time and efforts sitting in traffic, if I could find something else where I don’t have to subscribe to that, then I’m more open to that. So it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Values have definitely been impacted by what’s happened.

[00:17:53] Lee Goff: Definitely, definitely been shifted. And I think that’s a double-edged sword.

I think it’s great that we’re leaning towards quality of life and maximizing our time. I also think that the double-edged sword will net you sacrifice teamwork, interoffice communications. There’s no substitute leaning over and say, Hey Stephanie, remember that time you did that on that campaign? How did you do that at home?

Gotcha. Oh, great. That’s super easy, right? If not, it’s like, hey yeah, I try to explain that on Slack. There’s 15 minutes

Or hey, can you do a Loom video or hop into Zoom? The next thing you know, it’s this 20 minutes later, we still haven’t gotten it done. We do eventually get it done, but what would have taken literally 60 seconds in an office, just 20 minutes. So in reality, it feels like you’re saving time, but the reality is you’re really not saving time.

You’re just more comfortable. So there in lies, kind of a catch 22, that whole scenario. Again, we’ll see how this plays out long-term, but you know, I’m working on my house and I love it. But when you’re a little bit earlier in your career, sometimes, it is definitely better to surround yourself with very high-skilled, high integrity people.

And you can only do that and sitting next to them in a workplace environment. So don’t underestimate the value of doing that. Now, I don’t say we go back to that full-time, but don’t underestimate the value of that.

[00:19:08] Stephanie Liu: That’s something that I would say I really appreciated when I was in the trenches of the agency life is because you do get a firsthand look at how your colleagues, your peers, structures, their process.

What’s the mindset that they’re in because sometimes even if you have a SOP of like, this is how I do it, sometimes there’s certain nuances of this is why I do it, but I didn’t document it. And so you have to ask them, what are these unconscious patterns that they’re doing, because you’re noticing it with your own eyes.

And when they’re right next to you, it’s much easier for you to call it out.

[00:19:40] Lee Goff: That’s what a piece or wonderful as it pertains to a checklist, but there’s no way for them to substitute tribal knowledge and tribal knowledge represent 60 to 80% of all of our skillsets. So for example, let’s just unbelievably simple example would be okay.

Well, great. These two people. Let’s call them twins, identical twins, as it pertains to intellect, everything. There is absolutely zero difference between these two employees. One of them can produce work. What would normally take someone two hours can do it in 45 minutes and the other person produces it in two hours.

What the hell is the difference? Right? Both checklists, everything’s identical. Then you just see their desk and the next thing you know, is the one that does it in 45 minutes have three huge monitors, has a keyboard for the other one has a 12-inch monitor and a little bit of doing this and you can’t even see the screen.

Yeah, it’s not rocket science and you only get that by sitting there. Oh, damn. Look at that set up. That’s bad ass. She’s got three monitors.

That’s a killer setup. So a lot of the time, it’s just tools that you’re using. You don’t see that when you’re sitting at home.

[00:20:48] Stephanie Liu: Yeah, I love this conversation. It’s really bringing me back to the agency days. I remember that was the first time I discovered standup desk.

So last year, in the middle of a global pandemic, which was pretty much like an extremely challenging time for every business. You sat down with Brenden Bliss, who’s the owner of Pixel Cut Lab about how he had to get out of his own way. Oh my gosh. I feel like I hear this all the time. You need to get out of your own way.

Can you share that story with us?

[00:21:22] Lee Goff: Definitely. Actually Brendan came to me before the pandemic hit. It was about two years before the pandemic hit at the same exact situation though. He just couldn’t get out of his own way. And Brendan is an absolute rockstar. I get credit for, in my opinion, and gives me a little bit too much credit because the guys unbelievable.

Back to the being the entrepreneur. He can do anything. He’s brilliant. He genuinely is brilliant. Works as hard. If not harder than anybody I’ve ever met, just a great guy. I called him a kid, but he’s a young man at the time he hired me. I think he was 18 now I think when 21 or 22 or whatever, but he didn’t have his own way.

So he’d sell something and then he would hand it to somebody and they see that they would do, oh my God, it’s not perfect. And here we are leaning into it and all that fun stuff. It was actually pretty simple. I come in and tell him to stop interjecting himself into the service cycle. He had a phenomenal project manager already over there.

And he was just not empowering her with the ownership of these projects. And so that’s what we did. We empowered his service department that he had already to a large rebuilt. We had to kind of tick a few minor things in it, but for the most part, he had already built. And then at that point, he felt comfortable not having to dive in over there all the time and then allowed him to focus on driving revenue.

And that’s how we went from 190,000 to 800,000, is that we cleaned up his house. I think his best year prior to that was about 180,000. Or actually, I think it’s a little bit less than that. I think. And then within 18 months he was at 800,000 in revenue and was going to break the seven figure mark. So yeah, we basically just cleaned up some very simple project management processes, putting what’s called a sales handoff, or a project ownership process.

Very simple to do that helps to remove the thought leader, owner, entrepreneur, founder. It makes them feel more, much more comfortable about getting out of their own way. And as a result of doing that, he wasn’t constantly being pulled back in the project. It really freed him up to go out and nurture key partners for grabbing leads, joining large business networking groups, going to conferences facing grabbing profit driving revenue.

And boy, did he knock it out of the park. Again, I’m willing to take some credit for it, but the reality is, Brenden is just a straight up rockstar and I gave him the tools and a couple little nudges, and he

did the rest.

[00:23:26] Stephanie Liu: He changed his life. He changed his business. I love that you call it a project ownership process, because even when you were describing the stages of building and scaling and growing your agency, there’s so many of us where we’re like, I’m a great practitioner. I should start my own agency. And then you’re like, but I’m still in the weeds.

And it’s one of those things where you’re like, well, how many times do you have to see someone else do it for you to be confident enough to finally get out of your own way.

[00:23:53] Lee Goff: Yeah, definitely. And I don’t want to ramble on this too much, but the best analogy I can think of is it’s in the sales cycle. It’s kind of like dating, basically.

Okay. So everybody’s working out, everybody’s doing their hair. She put on that tight black dress. He’s cleaned his car. He is looking sharp. Everybody’s looking good. Looking real good. Okay. I’ll suddenly get married and in plain old flip flops, picking up trash, which by the way is actually the good stuff.

Don’t get me wrong. That’s the good stuff. Okay, but you got to get there. It’s just a paradigm shift in the relationship and it will never go back to the dating thing. You are now married or you’re not right. Okay. So, under that context, it’s very similar. Okay. So in the sales world, sales reps are doing proposals.

That document is a sales document. It makes everything sound really, really good. Okay. What do you guys want a proposal does. Okay. Everything’s fluffy, you know? Oh my gosh. I love this. You’re awesome. How about we do this? You’re talking about this. You’re brainstorming about this. Problem is, if you take all that head trash into the marriage. What happens to the marriage?

Probably going to have some issues. Okay. Now, if you take it and you clean that out, and so you have a project handoff like a of ownership and in that, you actually get them to go through the scope document that all it does is reinforce the proposal. It just goes does and it looks more legal and kind of sterile kind of environment.

Right? Very kind of pragmatic. And it shows them what’s going to happen if they do good. What happens if they do bad? What happens if we do good, we do bad escalation, refund, policies, everything. So now there’s kind of a calibration moment or kind of snap into reality kind of moment. Okay, great. Now we’re married. Now 50% and sometimes even more when it’s required, but hold up the other person.

But in dating, you used to always get that option on you. Okay.

Yeah.

But in marriage, you don’t, right? And so that’s very, very much exactly how it happens in a sales handoff process to the project management team. And you, haven’t got to make a big deal out of it that one hour that you’re handing that off is by far the most critical hour of the entire relationship. Guaranteed.

You don’t show up for your wedding, what happens?

[00:25:54] Stephanie Liu: Yeah, nothing’s gonna happen. The way that you explain things, the expectations, the process, and the different mindset and paradigm shifts that are happening, these are things I will definitely help you or your agency accelerate into where you want it to be. So then, Lee, I wanna take a moment to focus on the challenge of achieving growth through sales because you recently, you’re a great writer or contributor and whatnot. So you’re teaching everyone and you wrote about the four components to closing more leads. Can you walk us through those and why each one is significant? Because you know, at some point you have proposals and whatnot, but if you’re not closing the leads, you got to figure out where’s the leaks.

So what would you share with our audience?

[00:26:34] Lee Goff: These four kind of buckets or categories or larger kind of broader topics? I actually have systems from the agency sales system. And I have like a workshop we do. And then we also do a done-for-you version of it, but it’s broken down into these four major categories or buckets.

Okay. These are the four key components to closing more leads. It all starts with having more leads. Okay. So you have to lead harvest. Okay. And I don’t know why other people never use this type of terminology or always talking about the traffic source, but the never talking about the leads. I don’t give a damn how much you pay for traffic, or how much traffic it is.

What I give a damn about was how many leads that I get. Period. I don’t care if I pay for a hundred people to click my link and I’m getting a hundred leads. I am. I couldn’t be happier. Right. The goal is the lead, not how sexy the traffic sources or whatever up periods. The goal is the lead. So understanding that, why is it that 95% of agencies don’t even have call-to-actions or lead magnets on their website?

All they have is a contact us link or an if they’re really savvy, a free consultation button. Now you are a marketing agency, which is supposed to know better than that. But obviously sometimes we get in our own way. Let me give you an example. When you go to the doctor, do you go to the doctor for the same reason?

When you go to your CPA, do you go to them for the same reason? When you go to any other professional services industry or you go to them for the same reason, every time. You go when you’re sick, you go, when you get a letter from the IRS, you go, when somebody sends you a legal, whatever, you got to talk to somebody about something.

So the point is this, when your pain is high enough, you will seek out a solution. When you get cut and you will go get a band-aid. So, when someone comes to your agency’s website, diversify your lead magnets around the top pain points that’s your target audience experiences.

But seriously, think about this for a second. What makes this so powerful is the fact this is a simple math. This was taught to me by my marketing mentor, Jay Conrad Levinson. And this was taught to him by Procter and Gamble USA. Okay. So 93% of your target audience, they’re just kicking tires. Okay. That’s the one who just started an agency and he, or she thinks she’s gonna be able to afford a Tesla and we’ll, hopefully we’ll be in the next year or two, but can’t afford it now.

And they know that. That does not stop them at 9:30 at night may have had a glass of wine from going to tesla.com and building out their green card. You get married. You’re talking about having kids, but both of you want to start your careers. So why don’t gonna have kids for four or five years? That does not stop them from researching most popular baby names.

So my point is this. When people are in the pattern-picking phase, when you diversify your lead magnets, you can harvest their name and email, willy nilly freely. We all give up our name and email under that context. No problem. We don’t care. Because we know we’re not going to talk to anybody. We know that. We do it all the time.

We do it all the time. Component number two, vetting. So obviously if you’re harvesting all these targets, the very first question is, I don’t want to talk to all these idiots. And I’m like, I agree. I don’t want to either, which is why you have to have a vetting process. We have a lot of different vetting process systems.

The most popular one is they opt-in for the lead magnet, name and email. It bounces them over to a thank you page. We call it thank you page marketing. It’s got a quiz on there and it says, hey, you’re leaving nuggets on this way. My little automation will take exactly 48.2 seconds. Just enough time for you to answer four questions, click, click, click, and then it gets to the last page and it has a little video.

Thank you so much. You should leave. Maybe it should be over there right now, but we have found most people who actually answer those four questions, a lot of you have specific questions you’d like to talk. If so, put your phone number right now. The ones who put their phone numbers in right there, they’re all into what called the top 8%.

I don’t have time to get into break that. It’s actually broken down into two 4%s. It’s got in-depth research and buy mode. The in-depth research starts about six months. The buy mode starts between 30 to 90 days before they actually give you a credit card or sign a check. If they put their phone number in there. At that point, it will notify the system.

It’ll notify you saying, hey, you got a hot lead. Here’s the phone number and email it to you, text it to you. You just click the button, boom, call them and close it down. Super easy, super simple. But you’re not wasting your time with the 92%. Guys, through their actions, by the way, prospects lie, if you haven’t noticed. Prospects lie.

So through their actions they showed you, they are actually a legitimate prospect, ready to sign a check. So you get on the phone and do it. And then step number three is going to be obviously the followup. Eliminate follow up failure. And that’s broken down into basically what’s done in an automated follow-up process.

Once they raise their hand, whether it be putting the phone number in right there, or six months down the road, they click a link that is what’s called a buy now, not like an e-commerce buy now. You can tag them in lead sourcing, and it can show you whether or not they’re in the buy mode or in-depth research phase, right. So when they do that six months down the road, the system will do it again.

The system will be like, Hey, yo, one guy that I put in a year ago finally got there and he’s raised his hand or she raised her hand. Call them, close them down. So you do that with automated follow-up and what’s called personal rapport building. That’s your automated system and your sales pipeline management.

So that’s number three. Okay. Number one, lead harvesting, diversify your lead magnets, number two, prospect vetting, number three, eliminate follow-up failure and personal rapport building. Number four, your numbers, KPIs. If you don’t know where your money’s coming from, you don’t know where to go get your money. If you don’t know that the money came from the bank, you don’t know to go to the bank to get money.

If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know what lead sources that you paid a lot of money for that actually generated money. I don’t remember the name of the company. This is actually a real case study, but you know, there was a marketing department that got into a lead source and paid X amount of dollars and gotten this thousands of leads.

And they thought for real that they just hit a home run. Well, they wait six months and almost no real revenue came out of it. And then an arbitrary lead generated four leads, closed double the amount of revenue, but they would never have known that. If you didn’t have your numbers on, what’s called a closed loop sales system over here that correlates the dollar spit back to the origination point.

Okay. Not the close point, the origination point. Then at that point, you don’t know where to go spend your money on. And so you’re kind of repeating a very dangerous cycle.

[00:32:59] Stephanie Liu: This is gold. I feel like if you’re listening to the podcast right now. Yeah. There’s the mic drop right there.

Yeah. You gotta, you gotta take notes on this. Everything that you’ve said is completely gold. I love the follow up process that you had to cause now when you’re asking them, are you in the research phase or you’re in the buying phase, right? Because if someone is still researching, it’s like, you don’t have to chase them down.

They’re going to do whatever it is that they have to do to get through their decision-making process. And when they’re ready to sign on the dotted line or sign the check, as you say, that’s, you know, that’s when you got to show up and be like, here it is. I’ve got all my processes and my systems in place.

Let’s get this through. So this is so good. I’m so happy when we have these types of interviews, because I get to learn so much from it too, as well as our audience. So, if you’re just tuning in, we’re talking about the kinds of systems and best practices that marketing agencies are leveraging and putting into place to grow and scale faster.

But first, I want to give you a quick story because this wouldn’t be very helpful for you unless we were able to really share with you what’s going on in our environment. And so, Power Serve is a strategic digital media agency specializing in paid ads and like other smart agencies, Power Serve runs unpublished post ads also called dark posts on Facebook.

Maybe you know this and these posts would actually rack up a good number of comments, but Power Serve’s earlier social media management software didn’t give Mace’s team a way to view and respond to those comments. And that’s the thing is that knowing that you’re able to communicate with your customers faster and answer their questions is going to be really, really helpful because if you just let those comments fester, I mean, that’s the kiss of death in the world of community management. So that was an opportunity when Mace took to Google to look for a tool that he knew the importance of monitoring ad comments would be very helpful.

And that was the moment friends, when he had discovered Agorapulse. And like, you know what? Agorapulse might just fit the bill. And so Mace decided to learn more and after browsing the site and doing all the different things, right, he was impressed with Agorapulse’s user interface, the cost, its functionality, but most importantly, his biggest pain point was the ad monitoring piece.

And it was at that moment that Mace had said, you know what? Community management has become a substantial portion of our offered services. And they estimated that Agorapulse saves them over 15 hours of community management time a month. Right. So think about that friends about how much time you are spending for that. Mace also pointed to Agorapulse’s sensibility to monitor keywords and hide inappropriate content as both a time-saver and a great help for online reputation management.

If you’d like to learn more about how Agorapulse helps thousands of agencies increase and diversify revenue streams, head on over to bit.ly/AdAgencyRevenue for a free webinar. And having said that, let’s get back to the sales system, because like I said, everything that Lee was sharing with us was absolute, pure.

Cool. Come back. You’re so good. So let’s go back to that other challenge that you had mentioned before that agency’s fees, which is that dreaded scope creep, right? We outline a proposal for the client. We say, this is the framework. This is the timeline. They accept it. And then, you know, we have the hours included, but then new requests started sneaking in and that starts to chip away at our time and our resources.

So, what’s your best advice on how to deal with that?

[00:36:36] Lee Goff: The first thing is having overarching system. SOPs reside within a framework. SOP is, do not work standalone. Okay. So I don’t know about SOP or a checklist that does not govern the checklist. Okay. So that’s first.

Okay. Now I’ve got three actual tactics that will help. The very first one is going to be what’s called the scope document. A lot of you have heard this, some of you are using it. Some of you are not. That scope document is absolutely critical. So all of you out there are stating yeah, it’s a lot of extra work on like yes it is.

I’m not even arguing. Yeah, for that additional one to two hours of which you put into that scope document right there. And we’ll say you at a minimum 20, 30, 40, 50 hours over the life cycle of that project. So, it’s all about working smarter, not harder. Getting a scope document in place that explained in detail, the communications, the escalations, the refunds, SLAs, all the legal stuff.

That’s number one. Number two, begin with the end in mind. I actually cut my teeth in the productization arena around blocks of hours. And that’s where most of the digital agency space is currently are selling blocks of hours as a product line. And that is definitely better than doing one-off custom bespoke projects.

At least you do have an expectation level. So if you get to that hundred hours and you can build up over a hundred hours, you’re going to run into a situation to where like, wait a second. Those two hours shouldn’t have been put here. That was 20 hours should have put here. So you don’t, you’re gonna run into that.

But again, it’s better than just having a custom project with almost no end in sight. The right solution and what the entire industry is going towards. And just to be candid, all other industries have already been there for hundreds of years. We just haven’t gotten there yet for a lot of different reasons, primarily the entire industry was too new or to work.

Productization is the solution to eliminating scope creep once and for all. Meaning that if you have a predefined product line with exactly the deliverables, how long is it going to take, what it costs complete 100% transparency around your product line.

Then it’s not difficult to hold them to those expectation levels because they begin with the end in mind and they were oh, okay. First one is a scope document. The second one is productization. We get a very detailed product line in place. The third one, I like to call them a padlock document. So this is how you train your clients.

Okay. For any of you out there that have a dog or a kid or any kind of furbaby or maybe that you’re taking care of, and you’re trying to keep it from being a non-heathen meaning, a little double run around all over the place. You have to put in boundaries. So one example would be, I have a 13 year old little girl and I’ve been in my kitchen doing this.

You’ve gotta be past that as a little girl. Let’s say there’s some candy on, in the kitchen or whatever. That’s a little candy jar. And she goes over there and I hear him. So I turned around a little hands right there. She looks at me all cute and smiles. And at that moment, if I say, sure, go ahead, baby.

At that moment, she’s like, woo it’s okay. So tomorrow she’ll come back. She ain’t gonna look, she don’t read the whole damn candy jar. She’d go into her room. It’s what kids do. Okay. So what about client goes to reach in and grab a piece of candy out of your agency and you don’t go, whoa, hold up. Tomorrow, they’re going to come back and take the whole jar.

Early and often you hit them with what’s called a change order for entrepreneurs. Pain is money and time. There’s only two ways you can really get through to an entrepreneur’s mindset. One, is to force them to give you their time or to force them to give you their money. Okay. So what you do? The answer is whenever you sign on a new project, then almost in the almost a hundred percent of the time, it happens.

There will be one thing that’s just been thrown in their side. My last provider said, he’s going to set up Google Analytics. It’s not on there. Will you please set it up? My ex husband, wife, partner is on the website. Please get them off. That page has been up there. Please take it down.

But there’s always one little bitty thing, almost inevitably, there’s one little thing that they just want to get fixed quickly. Because it’s annoying the hell out of them. When that happens, instead of going, yeah, sure. No problem. Because you just trained your daughter to take the whole damn candy yard. Remember their perception of us is that we just click a little button any dang way. They don’t actually think we put 10 hours to building a page.

Clone it and magically hit a button and it all works perfectly. That’s what they think, right or wrong, when they got one piece of candy and there’s no repercussions there. Why not take the whole damn candy jar? What happens this time with, when they ask you to take that picture down or install Google Analytics? You pull up your change order document and in there, it says, set up Google Analytics. It’s going to take us an hour or two to get the log in and explain the process.

And then it’s going to say there’s an option, like pay online, whatever it might be. And you’ve got other, we’re going to get this to you for free, because we love you and thank you so much for signing up with us. So I’m not even going to charge them any money. Why the hell would I make them sign a change order document like that? Stephanie, why would that be so important?

[00:41:35] Stephanie Liu: Train them, how to be a good client, that this is out of our typical scope of work. This is from the goodness of our hearts are basically like we’re building rapport by doing something for you.

Yeah.

[00:41:47] Lee Goff: And the next time they put their hand in the candy jar, they’re gonna do this. Hey dad, can I have a piece of candy? As opposed to just taking the whole damn thing. You want them asking dad for permission, not filling all of them caviar right now. They’re still in your agency’s candy door.

[00:42:04] Stephanie Liu: That’s right. Yeah. And I love that you talk about the pain because I’ve always had this joke of the pain in the ass tax or the Pete attacks.

I’m like, this particular client always needs. It’s always like pulling teeth to get them to turn something in on time or respect deadlines and all the different things. So that the change order. Yeah. That should be a standard. I never thought about doing a change order, but saying I’m giving you this at no extra cost.

Kind of like planting the seeds to further grow their relationships.

[00:42:40] Lee Goff: Okay. Thanks man. And actually you’re the hero. That’s so cool. So cool. The next time I go to ask you something, and by the way, these entrepreneurs know that they’re not paying for this stuff. They just think it’s easy.

That’s why we asked you. And when you validate it by doing it for free. But I see, I knew it. Okay. So just confirm and document it to do Google Analytics. We have to go get your Google ID. You gotta get your login credentials. It’s almost always a two factor authentication and I understand it takes 30 seconds to put the damn code on the page.

I don’t really want to hear it. Okay. The reality is the client relationship takes an hour to hour and a half to get to that point. Okay. You have to get the log in and credentials for their website. Good luck. Okay. You have to get log-in credentials for Google Analytics, two factor authentication. So we all know how this works, guaranteed an hour to get that done average overtime, just to make sure that they understand that what you’re doing is helping them when you don’t have a problem doing it for free.

But if you ask, if you continue to ask me for stuff that falls outside of scope, you will pay.

[00:43:33] Stephanie Liu: I see, we’re all learning today, friends, we’re all learning today. I love that. You may not have noticed this, but when you’re off screen, I actually have my little post-it and I found a receipt and I was like, I need to write this down and all the different things.

Cause I’m learning too. This is why I love being the host of the podcast and the show in and of itself. So another fun consideration for agencies is marketing automation, both for themselves as well as their clients. So in your experience, what do you recommend agencies should automate from their own marketing?

[00:44:04] Lee Goff: Everything, seriously.

I mean. A lot of people go crazy. Just for the record, the agency also was the world’s largest, cheat done for you certified partner on the planet. So by the time that I sold. My expertise is in marketing automation, CRM management, and all that bunch stuff. I got 20 plus years doing it at that time.

I don’t know now, but at that time there was not even a competitor. That was a third of our size. We absolutely just crushed it. Okay. And so the number one thing that every single agency out together must do immediately, and this will sound like duh, to some of you, and it’s going to sound like rocket science for the other half of you.

Okay. Is it eliminate follow-up failure. A medium sales is by definition, a trust-building process, meaning through education, you build trust through trust, you earn respect, and respect, you get their money, period. I don’t care what you’re selling. I don’t care what it is. Now that process can go from zero to respect about three seconds.

If it’s a 50 cent piece of gum or whatever, but that process for a $50,000 project, that’s going to probably take 2, 3, 4 months, unless you’ve already been doing the trust building and education phase through marketing automation. So, if you go to my website right now, or you join my Facebook group, they’ll ask you if you want a lead magnet of some sorts on my website.

When that happens, I hope so. I hope you got to hope all of you do, but if for when that happens, it’s going to put you into a 45-day educational campaign. Okay. So we taught 5 ways I can help your agency. And then I’ll send you five emails over. I think it’s like 30. It’s not a lot. I think it’s actually over the 45 days, it’s like five emails, one every like Mondays there’s eight or nine days or something.

We don’t blow them up. Don’t be rude, but educate them in a very polite handout and do that whole process. I’m giving you links to free stock, right? So go over and watch the webinar. All the agency, you don’t even have to buy anything from me. You’re still getting a lot of kickass value, but what’s really happening, or what I know what’s happening, is I’m imprinting my brand and my name into your short-term memory.

There’s a physical mechanism in your mind. Okay. In short term memory that if it is high enough emotionally-packed, which is why they pay for world series commercials and Superbowl commercials because of the emotion behind it is so high it instantly transfers to long-term. As marketers, we don’t want that high of emotion.

We want slow, consistent touch points, but there’s a physical mechanism in your brain that when it gets to that point, most people say seven to nine times, your brain recognizes that your heart and your body has put yourself into that situation. Remember the heart tells the mind where to go.

If you don’t, you got a long way to go to understanding marketing. Marketing is an emotional game. It’s got emotional hooks and a psychological hurdle. Gotta overcome those hurdles, to earn the trust and respect. When they see my brand, even in a subject line, one every nine days to 45 days, the brain will physically transition it from short-term to long-term.

And when they go to look to hire a coach, they will look up into the left. They will recall from their long-term memory, because that’s the trusted source, my name. And they don’t even know why. Then they would go into their inbox, type my name or whatever they recalled at a long-term memory, boom. Pop it. Click Calendly and schedule and appointment, and then I call them back.

Eliminate follow up immediately.

[00:47:25] Stephanie Liu: Eliminate follow up failure, have your 45 day educational campaign and all the things you want to imprint your branding on them. So that way you are top of mind and tip of tongue, whenever it is that they need you. Because if you could open up their hearts, they’ll open up their wallets and that’ll get you to the fast track to success.

That is money right there.

[00:47:46] Lee Goff: You said it so much better than I did.

[00:47:54] Stephanie Liu: No.

Everything that you were dropping as far as I can visually recall and all of that, I was like, yup. Yup, yup, yup, yup. Yup. Yup. It’s all there. My goodness. I try not to say this after every episode, but this is probably one of my favorite episodes up there also with Allen Kay. I learned so much. My notes are now like back to back at this point. I’m like, take me off the screen so I can take some notes.

This is so good. Seriously. It’s so good. I mean, the first time I saw you at the Agency Summit hosted by Agorapulse, I was like, this is one of my favorite sessions. And so when I heard that we were going to have you on the show is like, Ooh, yes. Can I not be the host, so I could be the one taking the notes and I’ll just produce it?

Cause this is really good. All right. So Agency Accelerated fam, you know, we’re getting close to wrapping this up. I know it’s such a great episode. Lee has been absolutely amazing. He’s been dropping so many knowledge bombs. I don’t think we’ve had that many sound effects in one episode. One last question, Lee, that I want to ask you, because you’ve been blowing our minds as far as sales systems, automation and other strategies for growing marketing agencies.

My question, my last question would be like, well, how do we know when we’re achieving success? Right? What should KPIs really look like?

[00:49:09] Lee Goff: I want to get us back to the quality of life equation. So if you choose to go to quality of life, the KPIs actually get pretty damn simple. Okay. I mean the bank account, time, you know, honestly, I mean, there’s more to it than that, but I know we’re running a little bit short on shots about all the details.

How do you know when you are successful is actually such an individual choice. Most of us, again, started out with a goal or a vision or something they wanted to achieve. And so if you’ve reached that, then I would consider that a success.

Now, if you’re going to go big, then it gets very complex and the KPIs, and I’ve actually got it on a notebook right over there, you really see that’s full of hundreds of different KPIs that will define your success or your failure in great detail. And you’ve got to have that. It’s going to go big, but I’m going to spend the last minute here on the quality of life and success, how I would define it. And that’s basically how I define it now because my coaching business is a quality of life.

I don’t care about going big again, care about moving the needle for individuals. Okay. So working, one-on-one, only work with about 12 people at a time. Outside of my workshops and things like that, but one with my one-on-one coaching and then gold areas to really make an impact on their life.

So for me, success is not defined by how much money I make in the coaching or how much money I’m making in workshops and things like that. It’s how much of an impact did I make on that entrepreneur’s life because I’m an entrepreneur. And what it took for me to get here was 10 times harder than it should have been.

Predominantly because it was brand new. There was no roadmap. Nobody had a roadmap. At that time, it was called web marketing and then went to internet marketing. And now it’s digital marketing and it’s going to stick there, but it won’t mean the same damn industry. It’s a completely different industry at that time.

And so that is how I know again how hard it is and all I want to do, as a matter of fact on my website, my tagline is we make your life easier. That’s all I do. And so when I get to make an entrepreneur specifically, an agency owner’s life easier, you have more time with your friends, families, or whatever the hell they want to do, and have really made an impact in quality their quality of life.

That to me is how I define success for me in this coaching business. The reason I tell you that is not for any other reason than your purpose is your purpose. It’s not mine. It’s not Stephanie. It’s not Mike’s. Nobody else’s. It’s yours. And when you just heard my purpose, it is probably contradictory to most hell 90% of all of the coaches’ purposes.

They all do what’s called the multiplier. The one demeaning. You hardly ever talk to them one-on-one okay. There’s nothing wrong with it. More power to you. They make a lot more money than me, too. And I don’t care. So back to success. That is my purpose. That is how I defined success. So for you as an individual, think about that. Is it so you can stop working at the age of 50 because your parents are going to have some health issues and you’ll take care of them?

Is it because you have a special needs child that you know you’re going to have to put a lot of money back because they’re not gonna be able to get out and perform in the workplace like other people without special needs and you have to really financially support them for the rest of their lives? Is it that you don’t care about any of that? You’re never going to have any kids. And all you want to do is surf 80 hours a day, a week, and work 20 hours a week. So whatever that is for you. Okay. That is how, in my opinion, you define success and a good coach will help you achieve whatever your definition of success is.

[00:52:35] Stephanie Liu: I am so damn happy that I met you.

I am so damn happy that we had this episode too, because that is brilliant. I love that. As a coach, we’re able to take our stumbling blocks and turn them into stepping stones for the next wave of entrepreneurs and our definition of success. Like you said, it’s very different. And I even love that.

How you even future paced it as far as like where you are right now, your day to day, your a day in the life of you right now is going to be very different down the line 5, 10, 15 years. And so you have to start thinking about who will you be taking care of, who will be taking care of you? And all the different things that you want to have, because if there’s one thing that we can be certain, right?

They always say it’s death and taxes.

As I said, it’s been an absolute joy in just talking to you, geeking out with you. For those folks that were just like me, scribbling down everything that you had to say, let’s give him a little moments to breathe. Can you tell them where they could find you what’s the best place to find you?

Well, I’ll try to make things very, very difficult.

[00:53:37] Lee Goff: Okay. So MarketingAgencyCoach.com. It should be pretty easy to remember. Hopefully there. My email is Lee@leegoff.com and so making things very difficult there, but I think a lot of people start with my Facebook group. And so if you are on Facebook, do a search for Agency Nomads. And that is exactly what we do is we build successful agency owners, so that can kind of roam around and do what they want on their timeframe with their amount of money.

[00:54:03] Stephanie Liu: I love it. You probably heard a pause cause I was looking at it or just right now. It’s like, I need to be in this Agency Nomads group. That’s what I gotta do right now. All right. So friends, that’s all that we have today, but don’t worry. We have even more incredible shows and amazing guests just likely coming up.

And our next episode, we’ll be talking to the amazing performance coach and motivator Jerrick Robbins followed by Kelly Noble Mirabella on chat marketing, and then Kate Skavish on video content. She’s from a Wave.Video. As always, remember to subscribe to the calendar at agorapulse.com/calendar.

If you want to be sure to catch any of our live episodes. PS. And by the way, you know, if you are doing all the amazing things, you know, wearing multiple hats, doing whatever it is that you have to do, and you want to listen to us on the go, you can always enjoy Agency Accelerated pretty much on any podcasting platform at this point.

So you’ve got Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon. Subscribe, leave a review, let us know what you think. I would love to learn more about what you want to learn about. The timing of this episode is absolutely perfect for where we are right now and PS by the way, take advantage of our free webinar on how to add agency revenue by adding social media services at bit.ly/AdAgencyRevenue.

And so I’ll see you. And your agency accelerating to the next show.