Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] People don't always know what they truly need, they only know what they think they need or they know what they want. And your job isn't to fight that, it's to meet them where they are and guide them to a better solution. There's a great saying in marketing circles that says you need to tell them what they want to hear so you can then sell them what they need.
[00:00:19] Welcome to the Agency Hour podcast where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams and their communities. This week we're breaking down why having a simple, easy to understand and offer helps you close more deals, while long term success comes from providing unique value beyond the first sale and how growth plans keeps clients invested for years. So if you're looking to make your agency services easier to sell, create a clear roadmap that keeps clients engaged, and build a business that grows without constantly chasing new leads, then this episode is for you.
[00:00:59] Many business owners believe that a website is the key to growing their business. And as a digital agency, this works in your favour. Because selling a website on the front end is one of the smartest entry points you can use, even if you specialize in SEO, paid ads, content marketing or other growth services. Why? Because it's what most clients think they need and it gets them in the door talking to you about their real goals. Which is usually more leads, more sales, more growth, more donors, more applicants, whatever they want more.
[00:01:31] Think of it like a car dealership. Most people walk in thinking they just need a reliable car to get from point A to point B. But once they start talking to the salesperson, they realize that they also want better fuel efficiency, a premium sound system, and advanced safety features. The car itself is just the starting point. The real value is in the additional features that improve the driving experience, or in my case, the fact that it's a fully electric car. Websites work the same way. Clients come to you thinking that they just need a website, but what they actually need is a way to generate leads and grow revenue or get more of the thing that they want more of. So if you start with a website, you open the door to bigger conversations down the track, like how are you driving traffic? You can offer SEO or paid ads to help them with that. What's your conversion rate? You can offer them business analytics and conversion rate optimization. How are you nurturing leads? You can offer them email marketing and automation. So by leading with a website, you position yourself as the expert who knows what they're talking about and who doesn't just build things but actually helps your clients achieve their growth targets. It's a low resistance way to start a relationship and once trust is built, it's easy to transition them into your long term growth plan. The real takeaway here is that people don't always know what they truly need. They only know what they think they need or they know what they want. And your job isn't to fight that, it's to meet them where they are and guide them to a better solution. There's a great saying in marketing circles that says you need to tell them what they want to hear so you can then sell them what they need.
[00:03:06] This principle applies across tons of industries and services. Dentists advertise teeth whitening or free cleaning, but once you're in the chair, they educate you on the deeper issues like gum, health or alignment. Gyms sell memberships because people think they just need access to equipment. Then they introduce personal training and nutrition coaching to help them see the real results. Car dealerships market the base model to bring customers in and then upsell premium features that enhance the driving experience. And you've all seen that car starting from this price point that's the base level, doesn't include the alloy wheels or the climate control or the AI sound system. What happens if you don't make websites or if you don't want to make websites? Well, if a website isn't the best entry point for your agency, there are plenty of other front end services that act as door openers while leading into higher value long term engagements. The key is to sell what the clients already believe they need and then guide them toward real growth solutions. So let's look at a few examples of what we would call fire starters or accelerators. A fire starter is a product that highlights to a client where the fire is in the business that needs putting out but doesn't actually fix anything. And an accelerator is a product that solves one specific part of the business or one specific problem. So an SEO audit is a classic example. Now why this works is because many business owners know that they need SEO, but they don't understand how to improve their rankings. So you can offer an SEO audit which is just a Firestarter product. It doesn't actually get them more rankings, it just audits their current situation and highlights the amount of work that needs to be done. One of our Mavericks club members Practice Edge do this really well. Simon sits with a client and he looks at where the competitors are, he looks at where the client is and he identifies the gap between where they are and where their competitors are and then literally writes out a list of things that need to be done in order to close that gap between where they're ranking and where their competitors are ranking. And the upsell opportunity here of course is ongoing SEO services, content strategy, link building, retainers, you name it. Paid ad campaign setup is also another great audit based Firestarter product. And why this works is because businesses want quick wins with Meta or Google Ads, but they don't really understand how it works or what they're currently doing wrong. And so if you do an audit of their ad campaign or their ad account, you'll find lots of low hanging fruit straight away. You'll find they've made lots of mistakes. And then the upsell opportunity here is ongoing ad management, landing page optimization, retargeting campaigns, even email card abandon and marketing automation solutions. Another example is branding and logo design. Now a brand audit would be a Firestarter and that's where you audit a client's brand in terms of how they look and feel and sound and their tone of voice on their website, their emails, their social media. Put together a Miro board and show them all the gaps or all the inconsistencies in their brand communication. If you do that by the way, and show a client a mirror board of of the inconsistency straight away, they'll realize how much work needs to be done. Branding and logo design or branding strategy is an accelerator. It fixes one part of the problem or it fixes one aspect of the client's business. Now why this works is because new businesses often focus on their visual identity first. And existing businesses might think that a brand refreshes what they need to instill more trust with the marketplace and grow their revenue or grow their sales. And of course the upsell opportunity here is once you've done branding and logo design is website design, messaging strategy, social media content packages again, brand books, brand style guides. Social media content packs are also a great accelerator product. They fix one specific problem for a client. They don't address all of the issues. And a social media content pack is good because businesses know they need social media, but they don't have time to create the posts. So you can put together a content pack and then another accelerator could be a social media template pack where you can load the social media templates into their calendar or into Canva and empower the client to create their own posts moving forward. The upsell opportunity here of course is full social media management engagement strategies and social media ad campaigns. A lead generation funnel setup is again another Great accelerator. A funnel audit could be a fire starter. So again, a Firestarter just shows the client, hey, there's a fire over there in the corner and we need to put it out. All right? Or it starts a fire by showing the client what's broken. So a lead generation funnel audit is a fire starter. A lead generation funnel build out could be a accelerator that again, fixes one part of the problem. So we're just going to build the funnel here. We're not running ads, we're not doing the email automation, we're just doing the funnel. Businesses want leads, but they don't know how to set up an optimized working funnel. And so this is why a lead generation funnel could be a great door opener or a great wedge product. I'll come back to the definition of a wedge product in a moment. The upsell opportunity here is obviously email marketing automation and ongoing conversion optimization of that funnel once you've set it up and launched it. I want to talk about wedge products for a moment because everything we're talking about here is really a category of a wedge product, whether it's a Firestarter or an accelerator. It's just designed to get your foot in the door. So back in the day when I was a traveling sales rep in the hairdressing industry. That's right, just open that closet and watch another skeleton fall out. I used to drive around town trying to sell, you know, shampoo and hairspray and hair color to hairdressing salons. And the recurring revenue business model for hair care companies is getting the color into the back room of a salon. So coloring clients hair is the highest profit service that a salon offers. And they're very protective over the color that they use. Once they've found a color product, whether it's Goldwell or Redken or Joico or whatever they're using. I can't believe I still remember the names of these companies. Once they've found a product that they like, they're not going to change, because if they change and they mess color up once, that client will never come back. And that client will tell all of their friends, don't go back, because they've changed their product and they're not as good as they used to be. And so color is the most protected product that a salon buys. Once they have a good relationship with the color company and they understand how the color product works to get the right tones that they want in the client's hair, it's very unlikely they're going to change. So the Point is to infiltrate the back room and get the color business in a hairdressing salon takes an enormous amount of trust between you, the salesperson, and the salon owner. And so the way to build that trust is to turn up every month on time, at the same time, by appointment, and be helpful. And one of the things that you can do is identify all of the other products that the salon uses. For example, perming rods, color combs, foils, the shampoo and the conditioner they use at the Basin, all of the accessories that they use in the salon, and offer them a massive discount on those products to save them some money so that you've got a reason to come back next month. So we call them wedge products. What we really want to sell is the color. But right now, I'm just going to sell you foils or perm rods or. Or color combs or whatever I can at a ridiculous price. I'm not making any profit out of this whatsoever. But guess what? Now my foot's in the door. I've wedged the door open. We've opened an account. You've bought something from me, we've delivered it, turned up on time. I come back next month, I replace those and replenish your order with whatever you know you've used. And by the way, consumables in that world are a great wedge product. If, particularly if I'm selling foils or any, like, cotton balls or anything that they're consuming on a daily basis, I have a reason to go back next month and top up the order. And that consistency of behavior of me just turning up and being helpful every month, eventually I can have a conversation with them about the color in the. In the back room. One of the best wedge products you can sell them is the shampoo and the conditioner they use at the Basin, because the cheaper that is, the better for them because they use a lot of it and they don't charge the customer for it. Right. And so we had a particular line, a specialized line of basin shampoo and conditioner, which was based on our main product, our flagship product, but it was just a cheaper version. And the salon, it's also a consumable. So the salon uses it every day. Gives me a reason to go back next month, take another order, build the relationship, build trust, and then I can have a conversation about the color, which is the recurring revenue. Okay, so that's what a wedge product is and how it works. Now back to the digital agency model. Email marketing campaigns are also a great wedge product. If a business has an email list, but they're not using it effectively. So the lowest hanging fruit, by the way, is to get a business, whether it's a local business or an online business or a professional service provider, to email their list with a campaign with either a database reactivation discount coupon, a seasonal voucher, whatever it is, to re engage their list and make them some fast money. And the upsell opportunity here, of course, is ongoing nurture, sequences, automation, CRM management, CRM integration. And then once you've got them believing that email marketing is working for them and generating a return on investment, of course you can upsell them ideas of putting together more lead magnets and more landing pages to further grow their email list. Because the bigger and healthier their email list, the more money they're going to make. So think about where your client is at and what they need right now, or what they think they want right now and work out what it is you can sell them as. A standalone wedge product that just gets your foot in the door, allowed you to build massive trust, so that you can then have a conversation with them about a growth plan, which I'll talk about in a moment. Okay. The key takeaway here is no matter what door opener you choose, the goal is the same. Start with what the clients already want and then show them what they actually need. You know, the classic example here is a client who comes in and says they want a website. And so let's build them the website, but also let's have a conversation about how they're driving traffic to that website or a client who wants to generate content. What we've learned over the years is that for every hour we spend generating content, we spend 10 hours promoting that piece of content. So if your client wants to start creating content, have a conversation with them about their content marketing strategy, not their content production strategy. Because most clients think if they produce content, that will move the needle. Marketing the content is what will move the needle, not just producing it. And so this is how you turn one time projects into long term growth plans. All right, let's talk about your offer for a moment. Clarity wins. And this is why your offer needs to be simple. People buy what they understand. It's another reason. By the way, I think websites are a great starting point because every prospect knows what a website is. If you talk to them about conversion rate optimization, it's only other agencies that know what you're talking about. The average business owner hasn't got a clue. Right? If a prospect doesn't immediately get what you do they won't buy. A confused mind does nothing. Walk into a Starbucks or a Just Greens or a salad bar and have a look at the comprehensive menu. And have a look at everyone else standing there looking at the menu, taking 3, 4, 5 minutes to make a decision. Why? Because they're overwhelmed with the choices. If there was just one coffee and one salad, you'd make a decision and place your order within five seconds. Because you've only got one choice. A confused mind generally does nothing. So if you have a bad offer, such as we offer custom digital transformation solutions for SMBs, right? No one except another agency or a business coach knows what you're talking about. The good version of that offer is we build conversion focused websites that generate leads. In fact, I would go one step further and say we build websites that make you more money. That's very clear. It's very specific. It's a good offer because the business owner gets it straight away. We've been reading Be Useful Here by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Max has been reading this book on my recommendation and we've been talking about a lot here in the office. I listen to the audiobook last year and it's fantastic listening to this audiobook because it feels like you've got Uncle Arnold in your ear coaching you throughout the day. The one of the lessons from this book is that his success wasn't random. He had a very clear, singular focus at every stage of his life. Become the best bodybuilder in the world, become the biggest movie star in the world. Win elections, right? His approach was make things simple and repeatable. By the way, the sidebar here is this great quote in the documentary where he talked about the fact that after he made his first couple of movies, Conan the Barbarian, it took a while for him to get his next main role. I think he was out of work for about three years as an actor and he was just doing his bodybuilding thing. And the documentary interviewer said, you know, didn't you ever think about just giving up? And he said, why would I think about giving up? Giving up was never in the plan.
[00:16:16] I never planned to give up.
[00:16:19] That was never in the plan. So why would I do that? One really good line he also says is plan B is to succeed at plan A, which I love so much. So make things simple, keep it repeatable, and have the plan have a very clear, singular focus. So the application here for your agency is that your offer should be so clear that a potential client could describe it in one sentence. And here's the thing about Referrals. If you're the clearer your offer is, the more referable you are. I remember years ago when I was starting out in the WordPress space, there was a guy who was a WordPress developer based out of the States. I can't remember his name. Bill something. Anyway, someone will leave a comment and let me know. Or they won't. Doesn't matter. Anyway, Bill's whole proposition was he was building websites on the Genesis platform back then. And his offer was, you send me your Photoshop file and in five days I turn it into a WordPress theme built on the Genesis framework. And back then I think he was charging fifteen hundred dollars for five days work. You send me your Photoshop file, I send you back a website built on the Genesis framework in WordPress. That was it. I don't care what the website is, I don't care what the design is. You're the designer. You send me the Photoshop files, I'll turn it into a Genesis based WordPress website in five days, right? And he had a wait list three months long. Then he put his price up to two and a half grand a week and he was making two and a half grand a week, which is whatever that is. $125,000 a year, right? Just turning PSD files into websites. Super clear offer. And it was so easy to refer to Bill because I wish I could remember his last name because you'd say, well, if you need, if you've got a PSD and it's all done, it's all signed off and you need to turn to a website and you're happy to use a Genesis framework and put it on WordPress, just send it to Bill, you'll get it back in five days, right? So clarity wins. This is why your offer needs to be simple. And try and explain your offer to your auntie or one of your kids school teachers. If they don't get it, if they need to start asking you questions, it's not clear enough. Now, clarity and simplicity alone won't keep clients. You need to keep delivering value and keep getting them results. This is how you take a client who wants an email marketing campaign or a website or a landing page and turn them into an ongoing recurring revenue package. And this is the power of growth plans. A simple offer helps you close deals, right? And I'll talk a little bit about paid discovery in a moment and how that's a really simple offer and why I think it's the best simple offer that you should have and a simple offer that they understand and can buy immediately will help you close more deals. But what keeps clients around for years is a customized growth plan that evolves with them. So, for example, if your first sale to a client is a website redesign or a new website build for 10 grand, the ongoing growth plan could then be SEO, conversion, rate optimization, content strategy for two and a half a month. That's an additional 30 grand a year. Right. And it's a year's worth of recurring revenue. And your client gets a year's worth of you and your team focusing on their business to help them grow, rather than just building a website that no one searches for. And the mistake I see happen all the time, and I made it myself plenty of times, is trying to do all of that for 15 grand in three months. Yeah, we'll do you a website and we'll do some keyword research and we'll make sure it's SEO and we'll do some conversion and optimization on the website, put together a content strategy plan or your ad templates, we'll do your email marketing, we'll develop a whole social media calendar for the next 12 months and we'll do all that for 15 grand and we'll get it done in the next three months. No, you won't. You're kidding. There's no way you can get that done in three months. Right. And so what happens is you're racing to cross the finish line. You end up pulling in extra freelancers and extra contractors to help you get over the line. There goes your profit. And you're constantly just trying to manage the expectations of the client and keep the relationship intact. Right. For 15 grand, you're better off building the website for 10 and chart. Or you're better off building the website For 5 as a loss leader on the front end so you can close more deals and then charging 30 grand over the next 12 months to do all the other work. 12 months is a more realistic timeline. And also in three months time, things can change. So the conversion rate optimization or the content strategy that you put together now, in three months time, you're going to need to revisit that. Right? And so you're better off, I think in, in our experience, you're better off charging less on the front end and, and more over the long term. Because if you charge five grand on the front end and two and a half a month over 12 months, you can end up with a $35,000 a year client. Now, what can you do for a client for $35,000 a year versus 15 grand? In three months, right? How much value can you add to them? How much can you help them improve? How much closer can you get them to your goals if you give your team that time to do that work? Now, by the way, if you're thinking, well, this is great, Troy, but you know, all I do is build websites. I've never really done SEO and I've never developed content for a client and I don't really know what I'm doing with paid ads and I certainly don't want to go on a learning journey to do that. Well, good news. You build a relationship with the customer, you put them on a growth plan, and then there are so many talented people all over the world who can help you deliver all those other services. And to make your life super stupid easy, we have partnered with a white label fulfillment provider called E2M Solutions who can help you with all of your WordPress development tasks. They can help you with all of your care plans, they can help you with your SEO campaigns, they can help you with all of your content writing needs. They've also just launched recently an ad management white label ad management service. And I do believe they are now in the high level space and are building funnels and automations in high level as well. And for those of you who were a part of it, they recently ran an AI accelerator program for us here at Agency Mavericks a couple of weeks ago, which was absolutely mind blowing. We have hung out with these guys at our live events over the years. They have sponsored many mav cons. They are continuing to sponsor mavcon again this year and we're very grateful for their partnership. So if you need any technical or creative help to deliver these ongoing services to your clients, please reach out to E2M Solutions. We'll put a link in the show notes here. You can get a discount off your first month if you are part of the Agency Mavericks community. And then that will give you the confidence to go and recommend these services to your clients, knowing that you don't have to be the one that does everything. And even if you have an existing team and there's no SEO skillset on your team, you can plug your team into E2M and they will work side by side in whatever project management system you use. They will work the way that you want to work. They will work with your tech stack, with your themes and your plugins. They're super flexible and we've heard nothing but great reports and that's why we continue to work with them. I think we're in our third or fourth year of a partnership with A2M now. So go and check out E2M. Let them know that you're there from Agency Mavericks and they'll help you with your capacity. Now let's talk about why clients want more than just a website or more than just the thing that they've told you they want. A website alone doesn't grow their business. Right. What happens after the site is live is what really matters. And you can apply this to anything. Hey, we need to do some email marketing campaigns. You go. Great. Here's some email flows in Klaviyo. You know the cart abandoned campaigns come in from Shopify, they go into this sequence, we send them back to the website, we've done our job well. Have we really like what happens if that customer gets the cart abandoned campaign, goes back to the website, starts clicking around and researching and finds something in a blog post that they don't agree with and then bounces. Who's looking at that data? Who's looking at the the whole customer journey? So always be thinking this thing that the client wants to buy from me, what does their client do before and after they use the thing that they want me to build? They want me to build a website. Where does their client come from to visit the website and where's their, where are their clients going after they visit our website? Right. And how do we build a loop around their customer? If I'm building email marketing campaigns, where does the email subscriber come from before they get my email marketing campaigns? And where are they going after that? Are they going to the YouTube channel? That is a graveyard. Are they going to the Facebook group that we've mentioned in one of those emails that was written three years ago that no one's updated as part of our nurture sequence? What's happening in that Facebook group? Not much. Well, that's damaging to the overall customer journey. So whatever you're doing for your client, think about where their client is going before and after using the thing that you've built for them. Okay. This is where agencies either win big or lose clients fast. Sell the long term vision, not just a one time deliverable. Right back to Arnie's book. He didn't just stop at bodybuilding. He used it as a stepping stone to movies, then politics and then business. And so for agencies, your first sale should do the same. It should open the door to long term success, not be the finish line. So what are the some of the most common mistakes that agencies make in this process? Well, one is Trying to sell everything at once. And we've spoken about that, right? Clients don't want a menu of services. They want a clear solution to their one problem that they've got right now.
[00:25:36] So keep the first offer simple and then expand into an ongoing growth plan. And when you've got a client into a growth plan, that's when a menu of services might make sense. The second mistake is not using paid discovery, otherwise known as digital roadmaps, to position the growth plan from day one. If you wait until the project is over to mention ongoing services, it's too late. Set the expectation early. Hey, happy to rebuild you a website right now. At some point I'd love to have a conversation about how you're getting traffic to that website, where the traffic goes after that website. How are we going to measure the success of the website? What are you doing with email? What are you doing with social? Make a part of your process when beginning a new project with every client to have that conversation. We do have other services that we offer. Happy to talk about those services later. But just know that building a website for you on its own or doing an SEO campaign on its own, or doing conversion rate optimization on its own, probably not going to fix the problem and get you the outcome you want, right? This just one part of the symphony. And usually magic is made when the symphony is playing together. Conversion and optimization is a great one too. CRO would say let's just look at the page and see how people are interacting. But if you have more data on the people who are interacting on that page and you realize that 70% of the people visiting this page are coming from YouTube and there's no video on this page. That's why they're all clicking that button, because they expect it to be a video. Because they hang out on YouTube all their time, right? And so they want a video on this page. They're clicking a button hoping a video pops up. Maybe we should put a video on this page. Now all of a sudden you're not just a conversion rate optimization specialist, you're a content and a messaging specialist, right? So look at what you're selling the client and ask yourself, how does this fit into the overall picture? Another mistake we see is treating clients as one time customers. If you're not thinking about how to retain clients from the start, you're missing huge revenue opportunities. Build a system for continued value. Here's how we'll keep optimizing your success every month and helping you get closer to your goals. So the key takeaways here from this episode are Clarity closes deals. Your offer needs to be easy to understand. So easy, in fact, that other people can refer clients to you and do the pitching and the selling for you. Because it's so clear and obvious and simple what it is you do. The second takeaway is that growth plans retain clients. Don't stop at the first sale. Use it as a wedge product to have a conversation with the client about ongoing success. And the third takeaway is that agencies that scale aren't just service providers, they're strategic partners in their client success and growth of their business. The best agencies aren't the ones with the most services, they're the ones with the clearest path for their clients to succeed. If you make it easy for people to say yes with a simple, compelling offer and then keep them invested with an ongoing growth plan, you'll build an agency that scales effortlessly.
[00:28:36] Hey, thanks for listening to the Agency Hour podcast, and please share this with anyone you think may need to hear it. I'm Troy Dean and remember Frank Sinatra was offered the starring role in Die Hard when he was in his 70s. It's never too late.
