Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Your prospects don't want to buy your services. They want to buy the results that your services create. They don't want a website. They want more leads and customers. They don't want social media management. They want more visibility and more eyeballs. Your services aren't what you do. Your services are what your clients achieve because of what you do.
[00:00:20] Welcome to the Agency Hour podcast, where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their communities, their teams, and their families. And in this week's episode, I'm going to give you a preview of a workshop that I ran this week in the agency community. I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to come and join that agency community for $1. And in this workshop, we talked about how to differentiate yourself from every other agency. How to clearly communicate what it is you do to your prospects so that they're excited and not confused. And also how to halve the amount of time it takes you to write a proposal and get it out the door. Stay with us.
[00:00:54] If your proposals take hours to create, your team describes the same services differently every time they talk to prospects. And and you find yourself constantly explaining what you actually do. Well, you're not alone. This is a super common problem that we see with agencies. And in the next eight to nine minutes, I'm going to show you why this happens and how the most successful agencies have solved it forever. You know what the difference is between agencies that are constantly scrambling for new clients and the ones that have prospects lining up? It's not their talent. It's not even their results. It's not social proof. It's something much simpler and honestly, much easier to fix. See, most agency owners think they have a sales problem or a marketing problem, but after working with thousands of agencies, I can tell you it's actually a communication problem. You're most likely brilliant at what you do, but you're terrible at explaining what you do in a way that makes prospects excited instead of confused. And here's the kicker. This isn't just hurting your sales conversations. It's making everything harder. Your proposals take forever because you're reinventing the wheel every time. Your team sounds different when they talk to prospects because nobody's really clear on how to position your services.
[00:02:01] Even your existing clients sometimes struggle to refer you because they can't easily explain what makes you different.
[00:02:08] But when you fix this one thing, when you get crystal clear on how to talk about what you do, everything else starts falling into place. And that's exactly what I want to show you today. Quick side note, you shouldn't even be wasting time writing proposals anymore, in my opinion. But that's a conversation for another time anyway. The difference between agencies that struggle and agencies that scale isn't talent, isn't pricing. It isn't even the quality of the work. It's clarity. And that clarity starts with something most agencies completely overlook. Let me paint a picture that might feel familiar. You're in a sales conversation with a perfect prospect. They need exactly what you do. The budget's right, they're ready to move forward, and then they ask. So walk me through exactly what you do for clients like us.
[00:02:49] And suddenly you're rambling. You're talking about websites and SEO and social media management and email marketing. You're listing features. You're getting technical. And you can see it in their eyes. They're getting confused, not excited. And meanwhile, your team is having the same problem. One team member describes your social media service by saying, well, we create and schedule engaging social media posts across your platforms and manage your online community interactions. While another describes it completely different by saying, we develop custom content calendars, we design branded graphics and provide daily posting with hashtag research and blah, blah, blah. They're not wrong, but they're both making the same mistake. They're listing features and over explaining what it is that you do. And here's what's really happening. You and your team have become victims of your own expertise. You know your services so well that you've forgotten how to talk about them in a way that makes sense to someone who doesn't live in your world.
[00:03:44] You're speaking agency language to people who speak business language.
[00:03:49] Now, what if there was a completely different approach?
[00:03:51] What if every service you offered was described not by what you do, but what the client receives and achieves? What if your entire team could articulate your value in exactly the same way every single time? What if creating proposals became as simple as selecting from a menu of clearly defined outcomes? This is exactly what we see happening with the most successful agencies in our community. Instead of saying we do SEO, they say, we help you dominate local search so your ideal customers find you first, not your competitors. Instead of social media management, they say, we build an engaged community that turns followers into customers. The difference isn't what they do, it's how they talk about what they do. And when you get this right, prospects stop asking, how much does it cost? And they start asking, when can we get started?
[00:04:39] Let me tell you about Thomas Amos from DesignBox in the UK. He showed me his entire client management system built in notion. Every service clearly defined with specific benefits and outcomes. Every team member knows exactly how to position each offering. The result, his clients understand exactly what transformation they're investing in.
[00:04:59] Click up here if you want to check out Tom's growth plan management system for yourself. So here's my point. Your prospects don't want to buy your services. They want to buy the results that your services create.
[00:05:09] They don't want a website, they want more leads and customers. They don't want social media management. They want more visibility and more eyeballs. Your services aren't what you do. Your services are what your clients achieve because of what you do. When you position a service correctly, it doesn't start with we create or we manage or we optimize. It starts with you'll achieve or your business will experience or your customers will.
[00:05:34] Think about it this way. When someone buys a drill, they don't want to drill. They want a hole. Actually, what they want is they want to hang a picture on the wall. And when someone hires your agency, they don't want a website or a marketing campaign. They want more leads, more sales, more growth, more time, more freedom.
[00:05:49] The agencies that get this right have what I call a master services list with benefits. Every service is clearly defined. Every benefit is client focused. Every team member can articulate the value in exactly the same way. And every proposal becomes a conversation about transformation, not transaction. Look, the agency landscape is more competitive than it's ever been. Prospects have more choices, more information, and less patience for agencies that can't clearly articulate what it is they do and their value. If you can't explain what you do and why it matters in a way that makes perfect sense to someone who's never worked with an agency before, you're going to lose to someone who can. But here's the opportunity. Most agencies are still stuck in feature focused thinking. They're still talking about what they do instead of what their clients achieve.
[00:06:32] So while they're confusing prospects with technical jargon, you could be inspiring them with clear, compelling outcomes. The goal for your prospects is to stop shopping on price and start buying on value.
[00:06:44] So last week I ran a live workshop specifically on this topic, how to build your master services list with benefits. And we didn't just talk theory. We actually rolled up our sleeves and did the work together. Of course, that workshop happened inside the agency community, where agency owners go to stop feeling like they're figuring everything out alone and start building predictable, profitable businesses with the confidence that comes from knowing exactly what to do next if you'd like to access the agency community along with our step by step process to finally go from stumbling through sales conversations and spending hours on every proposal to having your entire team speak with one voice about services that prospects immediately understand and want to buy. In the links right below this video, don't sit on this one. That workshop recording is exactly what you need to fix this problem once and for all. Now, I mentioned something earlier that probably caught your attention. I said you shouldn't be writing traditional proposals at all anymore. And I meant it. And I know that might sound crazy to some of you, especially if you've been grinding out proposal after proposal hoping one will stick, but there's actually a completely different approach that lets you close three to $15,000 clients with just a 15 minute conversation. No 20 page proposals. No waiting weeks for a decision, no getting ghosted after you've spent hours crafting the perfect pitch deck. I break down this entire approach in your next video called Stop writing proposals. Close 3 to 15k clients with a 15 minute conversation. You'll see exactly why proposals are actually hurting your close rate and what successful agencies are doing instead. And hey, if this video helped you see why clarity matters more than complexity, hit that like button and subscribe for more strategies that are working right now in the agency space.
[00:08:22] Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Agency Hour podcast and if you follow this advice and you start closing more deals and you need help with fulfillment, go and check out our partner at E2M Solutions again. I'll put a link in the show notes here. There are our exclusive white label web development, local SEO and content partner. Go and check them out. They can help you with all of the client projects that you have. And again, if you know anyone who would benefit from hearing this, please share it with another agency owner and subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss another episode. I look forward to seeing you again next week on the Agency Hour. I'm Troy Dean and remember the Caesar salad was invented in nineteen nineteen twenty four.
