How to Acquire and Retain Your First 50 Customers

Speaker A: Welcome to the Agency Growth series, the podcast dedicated to setting up, running and scaling your SEO agency. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Agency growth series by keyword.com I'm joined by Liam Quirk from Quirky Digital who will talk to us about how to acquire first 50 customers as an SEO agency. So if you're starting off with your own SEO agency or you're looking for practical tips on how to acquire more customers, Liam is your guy. Hi Liam, and welcome to the podcast.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me, Benjamin. Really appreciate it.

Speaker A: Before we begin with my questions, I'd like to give a bit of a background to Liam based on some limited research I've done. Liam Cork is a British SEO specialist and an entrepreneur. He developed his passion for SEO through his uncle's influence and began his career as an SEO apprentice in 2014 before eventually founding in 2020 at, uh, just 22 years old. Quirky Digital, an award winning seven figure SEO agency based out of Liverpool. Liam is also the associate director at. I'm probably going to say this wrong, but Tranmere Rovers Football Club and has been featured on Ekko's 30 under 30 list. Am I missing anything?

Speaker B: There's much more, but yeah, that was a very nice introduction. Appreciate it.

Speaker A: As I mentioned, we started quirky digital about five years ago in 2020. Uh, I'm curious to know what convinced you to go from employee to agency owner.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's crazy the way it's, it's five years now. But yeah, there are a few things. I mean, the main thing really like if I dig deep into it and it wasn't the decision which I was telling people at the time, but it was like, you know, my desire to be able to travel, you know, pretty much work from where it wants to be. And that was the kind of thing which, which always drove me, if I'm being honest. Although I started just before COVID so traveling was, was obviously, you know, a lot more difficult. But if I look back to it, you know, it was that actual freedom. But yeah, I mean that, that's obviously, you know, personally how I felt about it, but I also seen that there was like a gap, particularly in our local markets. A lot of the agencies focused on delivering quite basic packages. And um, so they were selling websites and then they sold my website and then they sold them SEO with pretty much how much money they had left from the website. And I was the person that actually had to deliver the results and it was a challenge. So I wasn't necessarily working on the types of campaigns That I wanted to be working on where it could be really focusing on content creation, content strategy, testing strategies, that type of stuff. There was no real, um, you know, no real room for me to do that in any of the local agencies. Didn't really want to just sit there ticking boxes. And that's ultimately why I started Quirky.

Speaker A: When you started your own agency, ah, one big challenge I'm assuming you, you ran into was finding your first few clients. How did you go about finding those first few clients? Was it pitching referrals in person, meetings, something else?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, what I did, I mean the main two things really was I was actually leveraging personal relationships that I had. So I pretty much told everyone I knew that I was starting my own business, you know, putting it all over social media. I was going through WhatsApp and pretty much everyone that I knew that I felt like I had a strong relationship with, I was telling them about the business. And that opened a lot of doors for me. It really did. People, not necessarily people that I knew had businesses, but people that they knew who had businesses that mentioned me through them. And that's what really got me off the ground. Some of them, funnily enough, are still clients to this day and they've really grew into big businesses online. So that, that's, that's the one thing I always think, you know, leveraging them, relationships that you have with people. And then obviously as time went on and um, to be honest, I always built LinkedIn when I worked for other people. So I've had a LinkedIn account for a long time. I've posted consistently on it for a long time. And because of that, um, you know, people that was meeting at, uh, networking events, people that I was meeting when I was working at other agencies, I, ah, had a lot of these people on LinkedIn. So when I was actually going away and talking about the new agency that I started, these people were sharing my content, all that type of stuff. So I kind of pivoted from like posting about other results that I'd had for agencies to post on my own results and like posting my own case studies and really started to regularly post them and actually talk about how I just started up on my own journey and that, that really gave me, uh, a bit of a head start, if I'm being honest.

Speaker A: Would you say that your most practical lead generation advice for SEO consultants who want to make the jump to building an agency would be to build this network?

Speaker B: For sure, yeah, definitely build a network around yourself. And I know it's not Easy for everyone. I was, I was fortunate in the fact that you know, I had worked in the industry for a while, so it was six years of working for people. I'd done bits of networking, that type of stuff. So people knew who I was. So it was obviously much easier for me. But you know, I needed other things to be able to back it up. And um, the hardest thing was when I started buying the shelf was the fact that I didn't really have any of my own case studies because I was always doing it for other people. So what I did, obviously I mentioned earlier that I had a few of my own websites, like lead generation websites in specific industries. So I actually used them as case studies which was cool. So I almost had my own mini businesses. I'll uh, use an example. So we had like a cosmetics website which was like Botox, lip fillers, that type of stuff. And I got that ranking top of the local searches and that was like my, my first own um, case study. So I actually said to uh, like a lot of local cosmetic companies, I've reached out to them and said look, I've done this, this is my own website. Do you want to come on board as you know, an SEO client, I'm happy to give you the leads from this website as part of the package. And for them it was a no brainer really because there was already leads coming through and then I actually replicated the same strategies um, onto their website and then I used them case studies on LinkedIn to actually demonstrate value. So that was good. And then obviously the own agency websites as well. I got that ranking very well for a lot of keywords and then that's the best social proof you can have really that you can rank your own websites.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, it's interesting because I saw your post just earlier today where you said, uh, to generate a steady stream of new leads for your agency, you should really focus on ranking your own SEO agency's website. And it's funny when, when I'm looking at some of the websites of the SEO agencies we work with, they look like dinosaurs from the early 2000s and yet they still get a steady stream of leads. I'm assuming that that's based on their network and past relationships and they've been established since 2006 or whatever. They've been established since you would say for a new agency looking to acquire more clients, being able to rank for relevant keywords for the website is very important.

Speaker B: For sure. Yeah, I know there are a lot of agencies who don't really focus on their own websites. But I think it's something which is quite untapped. We've always ranked well. It's only until maybe the past 18 months where we've changed our brand and we've understood our position and the types of clients that we want to work with when we've made that switch. The quality of leads that come through our websites has been much, you know, much higher value, which, which, which has obviously been really good. And we've had clients that have signed up with Quirky Digital who told me that they've searched for, you know, it might be national SEO company or SEO Co. Liverpool, SEO Co. Manchester, these different areas. And they actually said what made me choose Quirky over, uh, a competitors was the fact that we ranked top. And, you know, it's proof in the pudding, really.

Speaker A: Right, that makes sense. You've already covered a bit of this, uh, already in your answers. So you mentioned that you started off with working in network. I'm guessing that's going to be the strongest advice you could give to somebody who wants to get new clients and start their own SEO agency. And you've started then introducing case studies, sharing these case studies. The question, um, it's leading back to this is how has your lead generation strategy changed with your agency's growth and with what are you doing more or less of now?

Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's, it's an interesting question because it's something I've been thinking about recently, really I've been thinking about it. So I still do quite a lot of personal branding, which is good and obviously I post regularly on LinkedIn, that type of stuff. But what I would say is, since over the past maybe year or so, I've really focused on Marcus and the agency more. And that's a decision I've made because I didn't want, you know, for example, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow. I didn't want the agency's lead generation to be just purely focused on me and my personal brand, on being too reliant on it. So now the agency is a big focus and, um, you know, when we do proposals, it's not about me, it's about the team. I'm a good way of getting people through the door, but I'm not the person who's actually delivering the results. So I shout about the expertise of the team just as much as a shout about my personal expertise. And that's something which is, which has really changed. The other thing is, I know I talked about it before, like building up your network. That Type of stuff. When I first started the agency, I went to like a lot of local networking events to actually get my name out there. And um, when I started the business I really enjoyed it because I felt like I was a businessman, if that makes sense. That was almost a validation that I was a businessman. Um, and it built some good relationships, if I'm being honest. And I've still got these people on my social channels today, they still see my content. Some end up being clients a couple of years later. But I don't really do, I don't really go to them types of events anymore. And um, that's purely through, not necessarily saying it's a bad thing to do. It's just purely through personal preference where I feel as if my time is probably best off being spent in other areas and higher growth areas. So that's something which still pays dividend to this day, but I do less of it. And we've got plans in place to, you know, grow teams within our agency to focus on that type of stuff, but it's definitely something I, uh, you know, I'll talk a step away from. And then probably last point is we've actually, we have more of a focus now on getting leads out of our existing clients. So Ben, who's our like head of like our client relationship team, he spends a lot of time building up relationships with clients, constantly updating them of progress, value that we're adding and ultimately because of that and talking about what we're doing within the agency, the plans that we have to actually grow the agency, these clients who, you know, really like what we do and really like us, they refer business to us and they'll refer their clients to us because they know about, you know, how we're trying to grow and that type of stuff. And um, most of our clients are really receptive of that and we do encourage people to refer to us. We've got a client referral scheme where we get 15% of any ongoing business. So that's something we've pushed. Um, we don't oversell it. That's something, you know, I think that a lot of agency owners neglect, particularly when they're starting out.

Speaker A: You've touched upon this already in your, your answer. You talk about time management and you also say that you, you have somebody who's actually dedicated to client relationship management. Obviously there's a lot of work that goes on in an agency, especially when it's scaling like Quirky Digital has. What's your agency's approach to generating a steady stream of Leads while also juggling the massive amount of client work and operational work that you have to do. For many agencies, lead generation tends to take a backseat as they drown in client work. How does Quirky Digital manage that?

Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's a good point. Um, I think again, I touched on it. A lot of the lead generation that we do is based around the brand, our own websites. And once that's ranking it, it's kind of a tap and it just keeps, keep pouring, um, and, and the walls, it keeps coming out. Whereas I know a lot of agencies will kind of, you know, they'll throw a lot of money like paid advertise and that type of stuff. And that can be very difficult to manage where you get lots of loads of leads in at once, whereas we kind of just keep it steady. And um, what we do and it's something we, you know, I'd say we, we've only really started to get good about it is actually being able to manage expectations in terms of when we get leads coming through. For me, being an agency owner, you know, I want revenue to, to grow as much as possible, profits to grow as much as possible. But you've got to understand, um, that you've got a team there that needs to deliver the work. And um, I've only really recently really started to focus on that and focus on the fact that, you know, just because a lead wants to start with us doesn't necessarily mean that they need to start now or next month. We have a bit like a wait list where people can join with us. And um, let's say if we've got time for a local client to join, we, we can get a local client drafted in who's ready to start with us. But if it was a big project, you know, we really need to plan by when these, these things fit in. So we have spent a lot of time like creating our own, like resource dashboards to be able to understand when we're nearly at capacity. And that's come with obviously talent that I hire within the business. So we've got some really experienced people in the team and I think a lot of people, when they first start their agencies, they focus on making hires of people can, that can do the stuff that they don't want to do, when in reality that will only get you so far what you want to be aiming towards getting in people that have got better skill sets than yourself. And once you do that, you start to uh, be able to manage your time a lot, a lot better. It can be a difficult challenge. Challenge doing both. So being able to create like a bit of a, you know, a wait list of people to start can help. Um, and then obviously, you know, I, I allocate specific times of sales, which is important, so there are specific days where I just focus on sales and then the rest of the time that's, you know, ultimately putting out fires or you know, deal dealing with stuff that other people can't deal with. And that's, that's the type of, you know, that's the agency life, if I'm being honest.

Speaker A: When you're starting an SEO agency, I'm guessing one of the biggest milestones is landing that large contract. I'm curious to know how Quirky Digital competes with larger agencies that have more lead generation resources. And can you speak, uh, to a time when your agency got picked over larger agencies bidding for an SEO contract?

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's, yeah, it is always nice when you, you know, you land like a, like a five figure a month retainer. They're obviously always nice and you know, we haven't landed lots of them, but the times that we have, you know, it's always been exciting. It's always led to more growth, happens to hire more people. The way we kind of pitch ourselves against larger agencies, I mean, I have to be careful of what I'm saying if they're watching, but when we actually do our pitches, we involve the delivery team. So rather than, you know, just saying, you know, this is, this is the company, this is the agency. Get the heads of departments involved with the sales process and um, almost show them, show them their expertise, highlight how good they are, the types of campaigns that they've worked on previously. Because what I tend to find is with a lot of like the bigger agencies that we come across, it's often like they'll have like business development directors or sales directors doing it who obviously are very good at selling or actually showing expertise. Normally they're talking about case studies that uh, the agency has done, not necessarily stuff that they've done themselves. You can often see gaps in it. Whereas when it's the actual team who are going to be delivering it and you know, it's very rarely me, it's the heads of the department getting them in and talking about their expertise that, that really stands out. I think it's, that's obviously something which, which we highlight. We can talk about, you know, like highlighting like agility really and how responsive we can be. And that's one thing that I know. I mean we're obviously growing now. And we're, we're a team of 18 and we're not a massive agency, but we'd still be considered as a small agency. What we found is as we've got bigger, we've got more client, we've got more people in the business. Sometimes we're not as responsive as we used to be. Like, we don't respond right away. You know, it's always within an hour. But we kind of, uh, still when we're going up against bigger agencies than us, we will highlight that we're more responsive than them and we can, you know, we can jump on task quickly. If there's an emergency, we can be there and um, you know, we can help them out. So it's, yeah, it's something we um, you know, know we really highlight that we really push on when we've won like big, big contracts in the past. The points I touched on, they really talk to it. One thing that really helped us stand out in this instance, like we had a very nice specific case study which aligned exactly with um, the client's goals. They weren't actually competing, but it was a very similar industry and it was a very similar strategy. So we pretty much shown them a strategy and was like, this is where this can be applied specifically for the same types of keywords that you want to rank for. And um, obviously we talked about how that would align with their budgets, that would align with their goals. Yeah, it worked really well. Whereas I feel as if obviously bigger agencies, I feel as if they struggle to do that. Obviously they have lots and lots of case studies. But to actually, as I mentioned before, to have someone on the delivery team actually talk through what this campaign looks like, you know, it really stands out.

Speaker A: With that in mind, what would you say is the key to convincing large clients that a small agency can deliver at their scale?

Speaker B: The fact that you can be agile. It's going to be a, be careful in saying this, but like a personalized service, a lot of the bigger agencies is very checkbox. And this is uh, And I understand processes have always got to be followed. Like we've got processes in place, but there are times where you've kind of got to deviate away from processes in order to get things right. Don't get me wrong, there are some processes that you can create that will deliver, like, if done correctly, will deliver way more value than one person's thinking can. But a lot of like the types of leads that we get, it might be people that have hit by algorithm updates. It might be that SGL hasn't worked for them previously. So there's a lot of like problem solving being involved. So showcasing that you can solve problems during that initial pitch process is something which I think a lot of people overlook. A lot of people will just do like quite a basic order to someone's website and say, you're missing this, you're missing this, you're missing this. When in reality what they should be doing is saying, there was one time where we had a client who was missing this. This is the type of impact I had for them. And um, you know, being able to show that the fact that, you know, you can make it personalized towards the clients can, yeah, can really benefit them.

Speaker A: And uh, along the way, assuming you've made some mistakes, I'm curious to know what was the biggest mistake you've made when going after a large contract. What did you do to recover?

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. So I mean, to be honest, there haven't been any that stand out. But what I would say is something that I do struggle with personally is like following up, like following up with the leads. And I know how important it is to be consistent. But there are times where um, you know, you might make contact with somebody, you might do a proposal for them, but your actual responses after the proposal on um is quick and snappy as they should have been. And sometimes that happens. You know, when it's founder led sales, you do get dragged into, you know, you do get dragged into the stuff. Other things might, you know, might become priority. And one thing that I always do is I always prioritize our uh, existing clients over new clients. And that's me at, you know, um, if there's an existing client that has a problem which my team can't resolve for whatever reason, or it's, you know, late in the evening, whatever it is, and I don't expect the team to be doing it, you know, I'll jump in and do it. And that's just naturally, you know, I'm an SEO person. I've also ever done as SEO, and I'm an SEO that's kind of turned into a salesperson or business development person. Whereas, you know, a good salesperson. They're on it constantly, they are constantly looking for, you know, constantly looking for opportunities, looking for reasons to follow for people, whereas that's not really me. And there might be a time where we've got people that are doing that for us, but for now it's, it's still an issue to this day.

Speaker A: You, you talk about uh, following up, uh, and Also the lack of follow up as one of the mistakes. Obviously tools can come help you with this. What I'm curious to know about what tools does your agency use for lead generation? Do you use any CRMs? Do you have any special secret tools that you use that help you with lead generation?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean uh, our lead generation process is you know, quite simple in terms of um, you know, people will contact us through our website. We often, we try and point people towards our website at all times. So if someone comes through or you know, if it's a LinkedIn message, a lot of the time I'll, you know, send someone a form to get more information from them which will then go through into our website. And we use HubSpot as obviously our, you know, our sales pipeline and so forth which to be honest we're still, still getting used to and uh, we've only moved over to it recently. So up until recently, you know, it was very, very manual process and it was a case of it was in my head and, and it was reliant on me to actually follow up with people. Whereas now we've got like flows set up. So if someone, let's say if someone inquires on our website and um, let's say we reach out to them, we book a call with them, we do a proposal, nothing happens from the proposal. We've got flows in place so that they're regularly getting emails about key studies, that type of stuff. Um, we don't push people too hard if I'm being honest. We really don't. So for me it's having clients that truly value SEO value or service and if someone, if you need to push someone too much, I do feel as if sometimes their declines which turn out to be sometimes, you know, they can be more of a pain than what they're worth. Sometimes they might have cashflow issues and that could be a reason as to why they need to be pushed. It could be that haven't really got time on hands to be able to give us the attention and ease that create a proper strategy. Sometimes content might m, take a while to get, to get approved and they're the clients which uh, they're the hardest ones to deliver results for and sometimes the most difficult ones to deal with. So we don't try to push people too much over the line. We give them a proposal, might follow them up once or twice, um, they'll get emails being reminded about the service. But uh, I'm not going to be the person who calls people up saying what do you Think about this proposal, because if someone wants to work with us, they'll work with us.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, I'm guessing that in the early stages of an agency, a, uh, lot of agency owners will be going out there trying to get as many clients as possible. And this, as you said, can backfire. With that in mind, do you have any specific lead qualification criteria that you put, uh, in place so that you can make sure that whenever there is a bunch of leads coming in, you know which ones you actually want to prioritize efforts on and which ones you might want to say no to? Uh, and does that happen? And did that happen at the start? Would you recommend that to an agency owner who's, you know, getting, starting to get some leads?

Speaker B: And so when we first started, pretty much, you know, anyone who had the budget for fbo, when I felt like we could do a good job for, I would take on, you know, we would take them on. And um, I've learned the hard way really, that that's not always the best way to approach it. So in terms of like qualification, as I mentioned before, we point people to our website to fill in the form and the form on the website will. I mean, we ask a lot of different. Like sometimes people feel, feel as if they're intrusive questions. But what I'm particular is, you know, have you used an SEO agency before? What was your experience like with them? If it was bad, you know, what was, you know, what was the reasoning behind you putting it bad? And um, sometimes you get stuff from there and you see stuff there, which makes you think, I don't really want to work with them. Sometimes there are answers on there, which, and sometimes you can look at. If you look at someone's analytics, you know, you plug them into, into software and you can see what types of keywords they're ranking for. You can actually tell if an agency's done a good job, job or not based off when they were working on the campaign. But if someone says they've had a bad experience and um, sometimes the reasoning behind it can be quite, quite vague. Sometimes it can be that, you know, they're too expensive. That type of stuff, you see them, types of words showing up, um, you know, it makes you think that this person, um, because we're certainly not the cheapest SEO company, right away, I'll make us think that they're probably going to think way too expensive as well. And they might be quite reluctant during the sales process. And um, you know, we don't really want to sell people stuff they can't afford. We obviously have qualifications in terms of what's your budget for SEO as well. So that's a challenging one because SEO budgets can really vary. But we put that in there just to see if they have got budget for it. Have they got, you know, are they willing to pay at least £1,000amonth for SEO and if it's below that, you know, there's no one trying to sell them something which is more expensive than what they've already got. And then more recently as well, we do actually credit check. We've had instances in the past where we've had to write large sums of money off because people might have had issues with cash flow, the business might have went under, uh, because they've, you know, other areas of the business has gone wrong. I mean that's it, you know, we've lost quite a bit of money. So what we do now is we have credit checking software which will basically give us an indication of how much money realistically that we should be giving them in credit, if that makes sense. And um, yeah, we've, we've really focused on that particularly this year.

Speaker A: Yeah. So we've talked a lot about acquiring new customers. Customer nightmares, which I'm sure you've had plenty of. Right. And you also mentioned a lot, you talk about these recurring customers and you spend a lot of time investing into recurring customers. And that would make sense given what you've said. Once you found a customer that isn't problematic, that is going to have an easy relationship with you. What's your secret to turning these one time originally one time contracts into recurring long term partnerships?

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I mean it's that, that's always the goal really, isn't it? When you, when you're running an agency, keeping clients for uh, uh, as long as possible, keeping strong relationships with them. And I think SEO agencies, we probably fell victim of this when we first started, is when you're an SEO, you want to always follow a strategy, you always want to create a strategy. You always want that first month to be about this is the strategy. And then after we've done that month, one strategy, that's when we deliver the campaign. And um, in my opinion that's the right way of doing it. But a lot of agencies will sign a client up and then they won't do anything for like they will do stuff but you won't communicate what they're doing with the clients within that first month. They'll kind of just hit you with a strategy at the end of the month when in reality what we do and at some point, you know, we really step upon, when we sign a new client up, the goal is to deliver as much value as you can within that first month. So we're not actually saying we're going to, you know, get them ranking overnight because that's very rarely the case. But what we do do is send them quick wins. We noticed this on the website, we fixed it. Here's a media opportunity where you can, you know, get a backlink, that type of stuff and just, just give them as much immediate value as possible that you can, that you don't really need to do before creating the strategy. If you, if you want to order a uh, website and you, you see an issue which could be detrimental to it, fix it or get them to fix it right away. And um, if it's a local client, you know, you can optimize a Google My business listing and that can literally get the phone ringing overnight if that's done correctly. So the little things you can do which don't take a lot of time, they can really deliver value. So doing that is important. And obviously when you're onboarding them as well, um, have very clear timelines uh, of when they're going to get stuck. So there is that initial move where strategy needs to be done and there might be some quick wins throughout the process. But we let people know when they can expect the first content, when they can expect the keyword research to be done and always sticking to them timelines. And um, if there is the odd time where something might take a little bit longer to deliver, tell them up front. And that goes along like in business for sure, if you tell someone this isn't going to be delivered within the same timeframe as you'd expected. And if you tell them that up front search, they're aware of it. They appreciate the honesty as opposed to fumbling about trying to get something done quickly and rushed. That's the last thing you want to do.

Speaker A: With that in mind, what is the one thing that most agencies get completely wrong about lead generation? Even maybe when they're following expert advice or what's the hardest truth about lead generation that small to medium sized agency owners don't want to hear?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean the main thing that people get wrong is, I mean I uh, love Alex Hormozy. Like I think he's really good. I mean he's, he's the lead generation guy. He's obviously got some, some amazing books, he's got some amazing content, but there's been like a, almost a army. I've noticed recently on, on LinkedIn that's happened over the past couple of years that believe that when it comes to selling SEO, it's all about having an offer, doing it at high volume and doing mass outreach and having an offer and landing in people's inboxes. And um, a lot of that I believe has come because of, you know, the rise of this type of content online. And um, I genuinely believe, you know, I've sold SEO for a long time now. It is, you've got to put proper research into it, there's proper relationships which are being built. You've got to truly understand, um, not just what the client wants from the SEO campaign, but what, like additional value did they get from it as well. So it's not just about delivering results, but it's about what else can you do for their business, what can your expertise do for their business. And it's understanding what all that stuff is. And you can't really do that by just saying, here's the offer, here's the package. It doesn't work. I mean, it will work for a short period of time, but nine times out of ten that, that, that uh, relationship will fail and you'll constantly have to be generating more leads. There are a lot, you know, SEOs that have been in the game longer than me that understand that and, but there are a lot of new agency founders that think it's all about having an offer and doing it with volume, doing it like on a mass scale. And then the, the other point you want me to go on to, like, probably harshest truths about lead generation.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly, yeah. What is the hardest truth about lead generation that small to medium sized agency owners don't want to hear?

Speaker B: Yeah, probably main thing, particularly when you're starting out, is when you are like you are by yourself and people know you're a small agency owner, potential clients might undervalue you and they'll try and put your prices down because, you know, you start off by yourself and you might be, you might be in your mind, you might be desperate for work, when in reality you shouldn't ever show that across to people. You should always be confident in your pricing, confidence in the value that you deliver. And that obviously comes over time. I was fortunate that I had a lot of experience when I started the agency, so I knew what I could deliver, whereas a lot of agency owners will start out with not much experience. So you might do anything that you can to get clients over the line. And, um, you know, you'll soon learn the hard way that that's the wrong way of doing things. Because them types of clients that get you down on price, they're the ones that will think that they own you and you work for them and they expect everything from you, you'll obviously feel undervalued. And if you've got a lot of them types of clients, you're not going to have a very good quality of life. And you know, it's all good and well, having, having clients, having people paying you money, but if you, you constantly feel like you under pressure from people, it's probably because you've done something wrong during the process. The sales process.

Speaker A: Yeah. So similarly to paying the right amount of money to get good SEO service, if you're being underpaid by a client, on the, on the contrary, you might be getting terrible quantity in terms of, of clients. He or she will just put too much pressure. They will have way too many expectations, yet they will underprice you, if I'm correct.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's it. And that's it. And I think it goes in waves as well. So when you're really small, that's what happens. And then as you start to make a bit of a name for yourself, you do start to work with the types of businesses that you want to work with. But then once agencies get past, I, uh, see it a lot like agencies that get past life, you know, 2, 3 million in terms of revenue. And to have like sales people that will just sell SEO to anybody to get their commissions, you see that a lot. And then they don't realize that someone on the other end is actually going to deliver that work. Um, and they're the ones actually have to manage the accounts and they're the ones that are put on the stress and put on the pressure. So that happens quite a lot. And I do see it a lot. And the amount of, you know, people that I've hired or spoke to when I've been interviewing for new people to join the company, a lot of the times the reason that they leave is because that's happened to where they already are.

Speaker A: You might think that by winning a potential contract, by undercutting yourself will be a benefit, but at the end of the day, you might set yourself up for a trap.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Bottom line, always stay confident. Always stay confident.

Speaker A: I think that's a good summary of it and thank you very much for that. And, uh, I think that's it for me today. So I'd like to thank you for joining us on this episode. I've learned a lot and I hope to see you on one of the next episodes. And if you want to say anything or any parting words.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me. Um, on. You know, if people want to find out more about quirky digital, you know, feel free to look at our social media channels. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. You know, I do share a lot of agency growth advice on there as well, so that's something which I'll never stop.

Speaker A: Thank you once again.

Speaker B: Cheers. Cheers, Benjamin.