Hiring Salespeople for Marketing Agencies

Speaker A: Foreign. Hello, welcome to the Agency Growth Engine podcast with Ryan and Trice. We are sponsored by Healthy Brands Coaching and we have another hot topic for you today. Welcome Tricep.

Speaker B: What's up?

Speaker A: Glad to be here. We uh, we are going to talk about something that goes right into agency growth. As always, I'm helping people actually hire for sales roles in agencies. So I've been really busy at this. I don't know why but uh, I've got several agencies who've asked me to help them write the job descriptions, uh, write the, the ads putting out on Indeed and LinkedIn. And we're trying to find the right people to sell marketing services that the agency provides. And this has been one of the biggest challenges of agencies as they grow because guess who usually is the number one salesperson at an agency?

Speaker B: The owner.

Speaker A: The owner. And if they ever want to get out of the day to day, they've got to hire somebody to do this part, don't they?

Speaker B: They really do. They really do. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: When I owned my own agency, I sold, I measured it out one time. I was selling less than 5% of the uh, of my time and I was still effective as a salesperson but I was only. So can you imagine if I was selling 50% of the time or 90% of the time, like can you imagine like I would have been able to really move, move the mountains with that. But an agency owner has too many hats are wearing. They can't dedicate that much time to sales unless they have a really strong right hand person that lets them, that really allows them to have that freedom to go do that.

Speaker B: Yeah. Operational. Yep. I totally agree. It's one or the other.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So in doing this um, and working with agencies, I uh, wrote down to discuss today the three biggest mistakes that agencies make when hiring for the sales role. So that's a long title. I'll shorten it, I'll shorten it.

Speaker B: All right.

Speaker A: But, but here, here we go. We're going to start with the number one. We'll dive right in. So number one thing that agencies, uh, or agency owners uh, do when they go to hire is they try to uh, combine an account manager role and a sales role together. And if it's a small agency, sometimes they want this person to sell and account manage what they sell. And that can happen. Um, and if it's a little bit larger agency, um, they really want them to just sell. But the mistake is they hire a salesperson like they're hiring an account manager. They think it's the same skills. And I will tell you if you take the best account managers and you take the best salespeople and you, you, you know, break them down and how are they wired and, and uh, what are their traits? They are dynamically different. Actually. They are different. Two different animals. They're two different people. Wired two different ways and motivated entirely different ways. And so, um, I will talk about the account manager for a second.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: The person is designed for relationships, strategy, having communication. It's, it's about, it's about um, long term, long term relationships with them. Partnerships, right?

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: They have the, the skill sets, the social skill sets to maintain long term relationships. The best sales people out there, they don't have that trait. They have too short a patience. They, they move quickly, sometimes they talk fast, they move quickly. But they, they hunt, they bring people, they get new clients in. They don't love the long term relationships, else they would just never let them go. They would keep talking to them. But they, but the best salespeople need to let them go, hand them off to an account manager or to their teams and go, go hunt again. And so you have to identify, is this a combo? Is this a, uh, do I need a salesperson and account manager? Because if you do that, your account m. They might do good in account management. They're probably not going to be great at sales. They can handle income business, but they're not going to be great at it. Okay. You just have to swallow that pill, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I like this. Um, when I was in the agency world, I was on the account side and I used to, and I still tell people this all the time. What's your job? Well, um, your job is twofold. One, your job is to translate client problems into solutions. Like your job is to find more business for the company by solving the client's problems. Not necessarily selling it, but realizing, hey, you know, it sounds to me like you've got a problem with xyz. What we could do is, you know, whatever and um, that translate, that ability to translate and to see the strategy and to see that opportunity is a combination of relationship and you know, understanding their business and being a good strategist. And I think you're right. Like account managers that can do those two things together really, really well, have great long term relationships with customers.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Which is important in the agency world because you have a tendency by most clients to get fired every two to two and a half years. And if you can, I mean, let's be honest, you can stretch that to Three and a half or four or five or more. That's great for you because you're not having to work to grow to get business to replace the business you lost, you're growing instead. And that's ideal. And so for Me personally, you're 100% right. I was in sales and early in my career and it's funny you bring this up because I remember the COO of the company, the agency I went to work for, the very last interview I had, I was going to go on site with the client for like a number of months for, for quite a while. And um, he wanted to interview me because he wanted to make sure I wasn't too salesy because I was coming out of sales and I had managed business but I had come out of sales and he just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to be a fast talking schmoozer and that I could really have context and relationship development skills and not just be a quick, uh, handoff. And I, you know, so, so I totally agree with you.

Speaker A: So this is a, this is a fine line that when I'm talking with agency owners, that's exactly what, what you just said. That's exactly what they want. They want somebody that doesn't sound salesy. So the tendency for them is to overdo it and they, they hire people that are. And this is kind of, uh, my third point on this first one is they hire people that sound like marketers, marketing expertise and, and so they're looking for strategy out of their sales guy, their expertise. Um, yeah, really all that should matter is that they can find the prospect, listen to their problems and match your solutions, you provide to that problem to identify if it's a right fit or not. If it is, you've got a potential client and then a salesperson. It's up to them to prove that, you know, tie it down, close it.

Speaker B: Yeah, right, Yep.

Speaker A: And so they don't, in my opinion, they have to have enough to speak the language. To speak.

Speaker B: To speak, Yep.

Speaker A: But they don't have to be the expert, they don't have to have the deep level of knowledge. And the reason why I say that is because you've got usually a team behind you. And I found in sales for marketing agencies, the quicker you bring in one or two team members that, that you can get in front of that prospect and they can talk about the details, that immediately transfers a little bit of power to multiple people on your team. It builds the value of your team. And so that client or that prospect actually will Lean into you, your team, your services, and say yes a lot faster. When you don't pretend to be the solo guy out front that knows everything when you really don't. And that's why the sales guy, to me, the more they know in marketing or that they know too much in marketing, sometimes it's a hindrance because then when they go to hand off that prospect, you know, and onboard them and they give them to the team, there's disappointment sometimes because they've spent too much time on strategy and talking about them, and then the team isn't following that exact order. So there's some communication that can happen that can smooth that out, but you simply do not want to give so much power to the salesperson selling or bringing in the client that they don't want to be handed off to the team. And that does happen. I've seen it a lot.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right. I've seen. I've seen good combinations, and we can talk about this later in some of the other examples, but I've seen a couple as the person that they're selling to. Um, as a cmo, um, I've seen interesting examples along the way and that reflect on all the points we've just discussed. Um, and I'll give you some context later as we. As we get into these further. So.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Well, was that my transition to go to number two? Let's go.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: He just. I think he just kicked me into number two.

Speaker B: I think we did. Yes. We're just going to keep moving into this thing.

Speaker A: Sweet. All right. This one. This one's really, uh, I. This one almost slipped by me as we got ready to start on recording. And I didn't have this written down. I was like, I got to put this in here. This is a big one. Um, you hire a salesperson in a company without a sales manager or somebody who knows how to sales manage. And if the agency owner isn't a salesperson, doesn't have a lot of sales background and has never sales managed, you're setting the salesperson up to fail because you're put. You're bringing them in assuming that they're just going to be on their own. Go, go, go, go, go. They're going to go get a list. I'm going to tell him who to call. He's. He knows. He's automatically just going to know who our target audience is because he's going to look at our other clients and he's going to be like the energizer Bunny, he's going to go all day and go get me new business. Such a false, false uh, you know, idea about hiring. Yeah. A sales guy. Most sales guys, if you do, I say guys, gals, people, um, most sales people, they, they need some attention on a regular basis. They need to be directed because if you don't direct them, they will guide themselves off the road, they will go off the rails, they will go different direction. You have to keep them honed in, they have energy, they will do a good job. If you keep them honed in, keep reminding them who your target is and getting them better and better at finding uh, that target and talking to that target about the pain points that they have. The more you can give them in this area the better they're going to do. But these people will not self manage themselves to success the way that you have in your head. You have to plan it and you have to manage them.

Speaker B: Yeah, I um, so I got into sales early in my career right out of college and got into management quickly. Um, I'd managed in college as well. And so that was a sort of natural progression for me. And as a young person managing people that were older than me, this was especially true because if I, and I failed at it, to be honest, I mean we were, we were lucky, we did well but it wasn't because of me. So I had two really experienced guys that worked for me and I met with them every week and we talked about all this stuff but I wasn't really good at directing them and reminding them who our customer base was. It was really just more about like performance and etiquette and churn, you know, m measurement and, and I was also doing some selling on my own with big clients at the same time. And so um, the thing I really, really lacked, you're touching on it. I'll say it a little differently but it was validation. They needed to be validated. That one.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: That they could work and be self managed and that it was that they were doing it. They were, they were being um, successful in it. They needed to know that you believed in them.

Speaker A: They need way they need a coach, they need a cheerleader, they need that. And, and they'll say a lot of times they'll say they don't need it

Speaker B: 100%, they need it.

Speaker A: They, they need that uh, I almost said partner in crime. It's not a partner in crime but they need that, that uh, that person who is going to be interested in what they got going on. Um, excited that they have these prospects and somebody they can talk to about them if you let them go home and uh, all they can do is talk to, you know, their spouse or their dog about, you know, the conversations they're having. And the pro, they're going to be bored to tears and they're going to leave that job.

Speaker B: They're not going to feel real lonely.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean you've got to have somebody there with them. So yeah, you can get past one salesperson in an agency or in any business to be honest, and you get to the second one or third win, the more you can add to the team. The team starts to feed off each other a little bit. There's energy, synergy, all those things. Um, but until you have that, the agency owner sometimes has to be that role. So in interviewing people this last week for sales roles, um, that worked in agencies and they talk about the things they didn't like or the things that failed for them. I hear this things weren't lined up. Um, they felt like they were off on their own. Um, what the agency owner promised was going to happen didn't happen. And so I think that's because the agency owner thinks this stuff's automatic, that salespeople just automatically know the rules of sales and when I hire them that's automatically going to be just plug right into my business and I can go off and do what I do. And it could not be worse because it's usually the opposite. Salespeople take more management sometimes than yes, your social media person or SEO guy or web guy.

Speaker B: Yeah, because you're, it's a difference between coaching and mentoring and product next or you know, project, um, management and execution management. With all these other groups you're measuring, you're, you're managing to execution. So it's a tangible thing for a client that you're delivering. Sales is different and it is, it's so mentorship driven and coaching driven that it's a different kind of thing. So you have to approach those people very differently. And you know, so we have a mutual friend who's in sales and he is way up the food chain and he needs as much validation as anybody because yeah, he, it's lonely frankly.

Speaker A: A senior level salesperson with a uh, lifetime of experience, they still aren't self motivated. They need help and motivation and they need a partner. They are friends.

Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know if you know, that is probably true in some cases for sure. Um, not, not always as far as the self motivation, but they need, where their motivation comes from is other people being excited about their, uh, success, which is what validation is. And so they, they get charged up when they find out the CEO or the CMO or the COO are like, yes. And all, they just get fired up and like, yeah, I'm doing it, I am killing it.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And that's what they don't necessarily need. I mean they need paychecks and things and all that, but it's really that peer to peer validation that they're just saying like, you know, I'm really killing it right now. This is, this is awesome. Um, and without it, they, it feels like a very lonely existence because they're like, no one cares about what I'm doing and I'm not having any success. And like, yeah, so, yes, I totally, I love this point.

Speaker A: So, um, you know, you know, I'm a coach. I've coached a lot of soccer and I played a lot of soccer. And you know, when I went through training, I'm going to, we're going to do a podcast on this topic.

Speaker B: I'm getting renamed.

Speaker A: Um, when I went through how, uh, to, how to coach and went through my licensing, um, they talk about the three components that you, that you help train for your players. Um, and it is the tactical. Um, there's the tactical, you know, the strategy on the field. On field strategy, positioning.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: There's the technical. How you execute what you do, um, is important. So your footwork, your, you know.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Um, all the different things you do to get, get ball moved down the field, uh, as an individual. And then you have, uh, your mental side. The mental side is really important. And I had a discussion the other day with somebody in business and I said, whether it's on the soccer field or in business, the mental part of the game is ignored so much in business today. And I said this is the part that really needs attention. It's. And, but all three, it takes all three. And I found this to be true in business also that all three are present. If you go looking for them, they're there. And, and mental for the salesperson is extremely important. And this is a different type of person than most, than most every role in an agency. They are absolutely, they're the black sheep. They feel different, they, they act different. And so this is why it is hard to find somebody that you say, oh, it's a culture fit. That salesperson is a culture fit. They don't always feel like a culture fit because they are wired differently to do, to be effective at what they do. And so you, you got to kind of give the two positions, I give a little bit of, um, uh, a little bit of leeway when it comes to culture fit. One is the salesperson and the other one is the web developer. Because the web developer doesn't always want to be social. They, they like head down dark, dark room sometimes and into code. And they don't love social time all day long. Um, so that's why they sometimes lock themselves in another room. Salespeople. Salespeople on the other spectrum, other side of the spectrum of that. So they don't always fit the rest of this group.

Speaker B: Yep. So I love this point. Um, and I'll also, I'll take it into another place. One of the, one of the hot topics right now is sales enablement. And I think one of the big gaps for agencies is they do not think about the journey of a customer from I don't know you at all to uh, let's do business together. Right. So they don't think about that even though that's their job for clients to think about. M. But also a lot of agencies now are like we execute on SEO, paid search, um, social and um, web development. And that's your primary digital stack. Right. Where in the customer journey are they? Is that right? It's research and customer journey and strategy isn't even a part of that equation. And it should be, but it's not. And so they don't think about it at all. And what they miss is that a salesperson, especially one who might be on their own, doesn't recognize that they have the customer needs things from them throughout this process. And it could be conversations, it could be a case study, it could be video, it could be conversations with other, um, strategy people, executable people, the owner, whatever. Right. And that just that thought process around developing the tools that, and the technology, the stack that a salesperson needs to target, find, engage and continue to engage with a customer, they don't develop any of those tools. And then they wonder why the success, this fellow person is not successful.

Speaker A: Yeah, it goes right back to that topic of number two.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Is they're not managed. They're not. They're out on their own. And the idea that they hired him and it's just going to happen.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. CMOs right now are falling into this trap where sales enablement is a dirty word to this two marketers because they don't want to serve the sales team. You know, and that's old school. Right. The old school was marketing served the sales group. And that's changed a lot, especially in Big corporations. But um, my, the point I'm making is you, if you're a small business especially, you really, really need to be good at this because the more you sort of automate and have it clear what the sales process is and what tools they have at their disposal and help them craft sequences and all the things, the better they are at their jobs. And once that stuff is developed, um, you, you have a little more freedom as a marketing team then to do what you want to do. But the first thing you have to do is make sure that that group can do what they want to do as a sales group and that you have a great partnership. Um, I'm learning more and more about ABM strategy and you know, it's an area where I haven't done a lot of work myself. And this is especially true in that arena because you're, you look at the journey of a customer holistically from beginning through the marketing process and it allows

Speaker A: you to be sales specific along the way and look like. And very. And look like an expert in their area.

Speaker B: Yeah. 100. And to that point it make. It enables your salespeople to look like m. More like they're a, um, blend of strategy and sales together and that they're real partners to the company when truth may be they're not at all. But they've got all the tools, they've heard all the right questions, they've got all the right answers because they've gotten all that information from the organization.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And they've got a really, really good internalized view of what their part of that is and how the customer, how the, how the organization serves customers.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, man, if you have somebody that's enabled in that way and empowered to take all of that knowledge and go do something with it, that's a really, really powerful salesperson right there because they can, you really can make the customer feel very comfortable that this isn't just like, hey, I'm calling you because I think we'd be a good fit for you. They really know they're a good fit and how they can be a continued good fit. That's, that's a, that's a really powerful, um, stance to be in when you're talking to a potential customer. So I, I think agencies that are out there and, and marketing people that are out there for that matter, think about sales enablement and think about, have you really given that sales organization the tools they need to be successful? And if you've got to put people that are solely dedicated to that for A little while. It'll, it'll be great because you can point to that and say the sales group was able to grow and increase because we partnered with them better, and that therefore meant they could execute better.

Speaker A: Yeah. You're touching on what we, what we did on the last, uh, episode where we talked about do what to do what you teach or, or sell. Right. And, and I think that, so this, that conversation you moved over to the client side, but that conversation actually bridges right back to this.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Um, managing the sales is sales process is if you've done a good job and you understand process and then you have to have a good sales process and, uh, you can turn around and teach that sales enablement and process to others. And then that makes you very valuable as an agency. And it aligns your marketing sales together.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it allows you to jump the shark a little bit and be like, we're not just going to serve you as a X and Y strategy execution company, but also as a growth strategy company. And why not? I mean, your clients, frankly are probably not great at thinking about this either. And if they are great, learn something from them and offer the opportunity to maybe help them even more on that side. But if they're not, what a great framework for growing their business by helping their sales organization partner with their marketing organization.

Speaker A: We might need to do a separate episode just on that piece of. On that piece. I love that as you're getting into it, because I, I know I've got friends that, that teach this, that know this very, very well. Um, I think I've been doing it and not even knowing that what it was called. You know, it's like, you know, we, we probably need to isolate that as a separate topic. Um, yeah, but the, the underlining on number two is hiring, uh, a salesperson without them, without them, like having a manager being managed. The idea that that's got huge failure to it. This, the conversation, what you just said all wraps right into that perfectly. Um, and going to number three, um, is the pay. It's not paying them right now. I'm not saying you're not paying them enough. I'm saying you're not paying them. Right. You set them up to win. And so, and I've set, I set up a lot of sales commissions for different types of industries, different types of things, um, price points. And you know, I've been involved in a lot of this over the years. And so when it comes to agency services, the biggest mistake out of the gate is that when you're figuring out your pricing that you're charging for your services, your, whether that's hourly rate or whether that's um, like a package of service or SEO or something individual or websites even, they don't put in the right percentage for the commission for the salesperson. Like oftentimes it's not even in there as a cost. And so putting that in there is important. But I'm going to add one more to this that goes outside the sales realm is if you have an account manager team. I love setting up account manager teams to get incentivized, to keep clients. So I build in roughly somewhere in the ballpark of uh, 15 to 20% commission in all my services because I want to make sure I'm paying the account manager for doing a good job incentivizing them and I want to make sure that the, that I can keep paying the salesperson. So hear this one out. A lot of agencies, um, and it kind of depends on the type of salesperson you got. If you got a new doors only, that's all they do. A lot of them pay like the first, the first month of whatever the service is. Um, uh, the first payment of a website or something like that, that, that goes, goes to the sales guy. Um, and so the first payment of a monthly service is sometimes that's it, it's one and done. They got it in their paycheck and that's, that's how they got paid. Um, the problem is with that, I'm going to state this. The problem with that is it might work short term, year two tops. What happens is, is those good sales people get burnt out. It gets exhausting. Um, one and done. Go get a new one. One and done. Very few people that actually understand marketing and have ever had the patience to learn to be a marketer or, or understand marketing are, are wired in a way where they can do that for, for five and ten years. They don't, they're not built to do that. So, so this is a difference maybe, uh, in hiring for this role. I do believe you need to hire somebody that has the marketing expertise and I do believe you need to hire somebody that has a sales expertise. They need both in these roles, but if you want them to work out long term, you're going to have to build an incentive program that works well that actually makes them hungrier and love it, more and more excited and more passionate to keep going. And the only way to do that is to keep paying them commission and a reoccurring revenue month after month off of that business. So I like to set people up on a, on a, a conservative base pay that they can accept and live off of and then not cap them and give them a percentage of the reoccurring revenue on everything they sell everything. And it's usually a flat percentage and they love the compounding. So salesperson, the longer they stay at your agency, the more they make. They can, they can make, they can be the highest paid person in the agency. Hell, they can make, they can make more money than the owner. I don't care. As long as they keep going and selling and bringing in revenue and clients, victory, we all win. And so this is something I have to really coach them on. They're like, what if they end up making 130 to $150,000? Like that means you're winning. It means the agency is killing it and thriving. And ah, that's what that means because the fear is that they're going to hire this person and that person makes more than their operations person, their operations or the, the ten year uh, employee that's led this, you know, creative department, you know, the brand strategist and all this other stuff. And I'm like, I don't care. None of those people are going to grind it, grind at the phone and go out and pull up customers. This is a unique skill set that is tied to revenue. It's one of the few that you can tie directly to revenue to bring into the client or bring it, bringing the agency. So that's, that's what I like to do. I like to set them up to win and keep winning and keep making them hungry to go get more interesting

Speaker B: because you're, you know, in that regard. Right. Like you could be um, in a situation where you're for one client even potentially double paying because you, you have a really strong account manager who helped grow that business in the, in let's call it year two or six months in they added services because they, they love this person and you know that they recognize that they need some additional thing. So the account manager got paid because they grew their business and the salesperson got paid because they brought the client in.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So that's an interesting situation. I mean you uh, know, let me tell you.

Speaker A: Can I tell you why this march

Speaker B: in business, that's not a bad thing for sure.

Speaker A: Well, can I tell you why this makes sense for today's, today's world?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, you just talked about sales enablement. So the person who consults the best about the sales side of the sales enablement is the agency salesperson because they're doing it too. And so the salesperson and account manager tag team on accounts. So usually when the account it's going to happen anyway. So usually when the account manager wants to upsell and do more sales enablement or anything that's, uh, in that ballpark, they reach out to the salesperson and say, I need you to come back in to this equation. And they tag team on talking to the client. So they're bringing the sales expertise and the marketing expertise back to that client to deliver the knowledge and information they need to make a decision to say yes or no to, to that next level of services that the agency is offering.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I see it. You know, like it, um, obviously there's a lot of math and the P and L to work out on how, how to do that well, but I, I, I don't disagree with anything you said. I, I think I would love to have been commissioned as an account manager with million dollar clients. That would have been amazing.

Speaker A: Um, we would just lower your percentage like we always do,

Speaker B: 100%.

Speaker A: It's all relative here. All right.

Speaker B: My billable rate would have probably changed.

Speaker A: No, but, um.005% of. No.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. I mean, yeah. So, um, but that's fine because you're like, hey, look, my job is to create a deeper relationship. I'm now incentivized to do that. Um, I will tell you, I had, I'll tell you who the client was. So it's fine. I had a client when I worked in the agency world. No, I won't say who it was, but they build their manufacturer of diesels, trucks, so buses, um, diesel trucks, dump trucks. You know, anything with that sort of body style. Right. Huge, um, company. And they hired us for a strategy piece really driven by technology. How do we integrate our technology better? How do we connect all these pieces that are not there are legacy. A lot of legacy systems. They're not talking to each other. How do we do that? Big strategy, engagement and worked, um, on that for a really, really long time. And then CMO loved what we delivered, but refused to act on any of it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And for whatever reason and, and then proceeded to fire us because I had a bunch of guys who were PhDs who were working with me on this project and they were all smarter than him and they made him feel like a dummy, frankly. And he kind of had short guy complex a little bit. So I, you know, I get it. But I called my boss and I said, look, we're we, we're going to get fired. Yeah, this is on Thanksgiving actually too. So we're going to get fired. And uh, and for all you agency people out there, you know, beginning fired, that first time is kind of like a milestone. It's gonna happen. But it, it hits hard a little bit.

Speaker A: It does hit hard.

Speaker B: Uh, you gotta learn to like realize it, calm down. Part of the process. It is. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I called my boss and said, we're gonna get fired. And I said, but I will tell you this, this is a million dollar client. And they hadn't spent anywhere near that. But I said they have huge projects, huge technology issues, huge website problems, SEO, uh, problems of the ying yang. And we're not even talking about the promotion or sales enablement aspects of their business yet. I said this is a million dollar a year client. But what they need is they need to feel like we really need them. They need a dog and pony show. They need to feel really engaged. They need the owner, you know, the CEO of the company. They need a bunch of bigwigs to shake hands and make them feel good about themselves and give them that feel good factor of working with a big agency.

Speaker A: You are either, yeah, uh, you're either that agency or you are not. And that's good to know that too. Right? You need to recognize you are that or not and you're doing the right thing. You're saying we're not.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm like, if I said they want to feel like a heavy hitter, they're, they're not Ford, you know, they're not a gigantic company, but they are a big, really, really big company. So you can, they want to feel like, you feel like they're really meaningful to you. And sure enough, you know, we did the whole thing and this guy really turned the corner and became a great partner. Million dollar client for probably four or five years. And I personally didn't see a dime of it. I mean, I got paid, I got, I had a job, you know, but I, I balanced three clients and they were all big clients. Right. And so I would, I think that's your. You got a great point. Like my incentivization, you know. Incentivization, Yep, that's, that's the word. Um, was to do great work and have a great team and serve the, you know, these big companies in, in meaningful ways. But it sure would have been great to also have been compensated for that because I think, you know, I think all of the people besides me would have felt the, the, the pressure of that Differently. Um, if they, you know, and I think a lot of it, it, it's either internal and inherent. You either have that or you don't. I definitely do, but not everybody does. And if you incentivize them in that way, you're putting your money where your mouth is. You're saying, this is important to me and therefore it's important to you.

Speaker A: I like setting up the sales role in the account manager to constantly be looking for new ideas, improvements for clients.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And, and the way that you pay them or structure their pay can encourage that. Um, like you said, not everybody's wired for money to do that. Um, I would say 100 of the time that I have instilled this, this strategy into pay, they get, they get incentivized. It's not, it's not about that. It's actually about the change of behavior. 100 of the time it changes behavior. And it doesn't make people like, sell something that the client doesn't need or improper, inappropriately sell stuff. It makes them look for the opportunity. And the number one thing that I have preached forever that clients want is they want new, fresh ideas from their agency. And the second you stop delivering that and bringing that, you're gone, you're toasted. And so when you incentivize your team to focus on the things that the clients want, it matches. You keep clients longer, you keep happier clients, and everybody is, is, you know, skip and zippity do it all down the street together, holding hands. So that, that is what you want to set up for success.

Speaker B: I want to give the example. We talked about this offline before the show. So many of the things we've talked about today happened in one client engagement. Uh, so I was the client. We are hiring a new agency partner. We have an existing agency partner. But we realize we have a major shift to make. And that shift is that we need to, um, focus a little more on account based marketing and sales enablement versus demand generation. And there's, you know, lead generation is still happening, but we're doing a lot of top of funnel work and we had been for a while and we saw results. But it wasn't because top of funnel is so difficult to measure. We couldn't see exactly how that was working. And so we wanted to shift ABM because one, we had a really great targeted list which wasn't huge that we thought we could work from. And we thought that that would be really impactful if we knew we could hone it in on a very like, focused group of People. And two, we had a really, completely rebuilt sales organization and we really needed to do a lot of sales enablement and a lot of ABM to support them and help clients get nurtured. And that was a new area for me. Like I kind of mentioned this earlier, uh, in the show. And so, um, in kind of one fail swoop, we decided we were going to fire our web development agency and hire an agency that was holistic, could do it all, but had a lot of expertise in abm. And the web development agency was also our SEO agency. And they did a horrible job communicating with us. Um, horrible. And they really wanted to have like one monthly hour long phone call and then just be left to do whatever work we've hired them to do, which is, you know, for me not gonna work and. And for you not either. I know, I know. We both feel pretty strongly about this. So we've talked about it before on this show.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So we go through the process of interviewing a couple of ABM agencies. Right? They're all really qualified HubSpot partners. Um, they, they really understand ABN. They bring a lot to the table. But their sales process, one in particular, who ended up being the vendor we selected, um, their sales process was so in line with all the things we just talked about today. That one, they had a sales director to the, the woman that was our sales rep was a blend of strategy and sales. So we always felt like she was asking us the right kinds of questions to lead us, lead us to pull you through.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: 100%. They were leading us down a path of like one, I use validation a lot today. Validating why ABM strategy was a great approach for us. Two, validating why they were a great partner for us because like, they're asking all the right questions. They totally obviously get it. And then three, feeling like they, they really care about us, they really want our business, they really get it and they're going to be great partners to us because to your last point, you know, they seem like the kind of group that isn't going to die on the vine and not bring new ideas to us because they really understand what this process should look like ideally. And I've never seen a group of people better aligned to serve the onboarding process with a client. Uh, even as an agency guy, I've never seen it. We did a crappy job in comparison to what these guys were like. And that was the difference. The sales BP of sales, myself, COO of the company. I thought we were going to disagree. And going into like Making the decision because I liked these guys a lot. But I knew they were going to be the most expensive partner.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And I thought these guys are never going to pick them because they're the most expensive. They're going to feel like they're going to be overserved and they're going to pick the niche agency over the bigger firm because they think niche is better. And I couldn't have been more wrong. Everybody agreed and the reason was they were serving us the way we wanted to serve our clients. They knew we would. We knew we'd never be the cheapest, but that we would always be the best partner. And that ended up being the deal breaker was we knew, um, these guys are going to be the same way we are, so we're going to get a lot out of this. And our COO said something really interesting. He said, I feel like if I chose someone else and it failed, I would always look back and regret not picking them the first time because they clearly get it and I don't want to regret this in two years. And I was like, that's, that's really powerful.

Speaker A: Yeah, you can really feel, um, when, when. And so this is this. It is about sales team, but, but it's all sales people. But it's also about like the way that you set things up, uh, internally. If you start with the customer, what the customer wants with customer needs, and then you back up and set your organization teams, account managers and sales to be focused on serving those things and then they're rewarded as that happens, that, that alignment is powerful. But, but that's not what happens. What happens in most cases is it starts with, I found a salesperson. Here's what that person wants to get paid. Uh, I'm going to have to raise the base higher than what I wanted to. I might lower the commission a bit and I'm going to hire a salesperson. It has nothing to do with the customer. It has to do with filling a role. And that is backwards from the way that we really need to be thinking about our agency teams and how we're setting them up for success. It starts with the client's needs and it does change and transform how you build out your agency or how you morph and change your agency and the future. You brought up, you know, you brought up, you know, account account based management and selling today. Like you brought up sales, um, enablement. These are the types of conversations that agencies, they might be having them, but they don't know what to do about that. How do I change My agency, how do I, how do I, how do I align it better to serve those clients needs and do those things and they're making small adjustments. That's a mistake in most cases. You got to flip this thing on its head and read and start over because it moved faster than your agency could change its, its business model and its, its accountability or organization chart.

Speaker B: It's, here's what I, yeah, here's what I really, really like. I'm just realizing this is. You're saying that because I think today's agency. I'm going to say something bold.

Speaker A: Not on this show. Don't do it.

Speaker B: Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. I think today's agencies, you, you don't realize it, but you're selling account based marketing, right? You're targeting a specific type of people, you are cultivating some type of engagement with them, you're connecting with them, you're moving through a process. Right. And you, this is the way digital agencies can move from just being services based to just what you said, client focused engagements and then therefore client focused selling. Because one, you've identified your target, you've got a process. You understand the journey, you understand the tools and materials you need. You have great people aligned to this selling process and then you have the marketing that's needed to continue to cultivate them throughout that journey, which is exactly what your customers want you to do. SEO from an account based mentality. Paid search from an account based mentality. Website from an account based mentality. Because you want to understand your targets, the journey they go through, the decisions they have to make, the questions they have, you want to be addressing all those things and then you want to enable the sales organization to address all of them along the way as well. There are so many great tools out there now that you do that. So instead of selling reoccurring revenue, monthly retainer based solutions, one off, you know, each of these things, bundle them together under account based marketing and deliver this as a whole package and make it customer centric and then do it for yourself. You're the model. Because yeah, to everything we just said, that's exactly what we're asking people to do in a sales process. And, and yet we haven't done any of the work to help them along the way. We're just leaving them out there on an island and saying, well this guy, this, this person's got to crush it or they're out of here.

Speaker A: We can't, um, but you're not helping them. Uh, we can't fix, we can't fix all that on this show. Right? We can't. It's a big, I mean, it's huge.

Speaker B: It's a giant can of worms right there.

Speaker A: I mean, we could have a whole podcast series on this topic. It's just because. Because of what I was saying is people are so far behind, uh, uh, in so many ways. There are agencies out there and you're finding some of them that really are in this. And so I think we can come back and actually make it. Make an episode on that topic alone. I've, like, I've even got a couple people I'd love to have guest. Guest in on that one. Um, yeah, but, uh, that's a good one.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think having. I'd love to hear what some agency people have talk, you know, how they think about this stuff.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm going to recap real quick and then we're going to close it down. We're going to close this thing down. Is uh, the, the three biggest mistakes agencies make when hiring salespeople. Number one was they hire for the wrong skill set. You hiring them, you're hiring them to bring in business. You don't need a glorified account manager. You need a salesperson that can do that, can have a good, good, uh, you know, good communication, good conversation. Um, and they do have marketing background also, but they don't need to be the expert. You've got a team of experts if they need. If you want to bring one of those guys in. So number one, yeah, hiring for the wrong skill set. Number two, uh, hiring them on board without the, without having a sales manager or somebody who's going to actually play that role to some degree, uh, and understanding what that role means. What are the needs of that sales. The salespeople, they need, they need that camaraderie. They need. They need that conversation with somebody to stay excited about the opportunities they have. Right? Yeah, absolutely. Three, uh, not setting them up to, to get paid. Right. Like it's their pay. The pay structure needs to, to be aligned with the agency, the clients, and motivating the salespeople to continue to bring in business or over, you know, long term. You don't want somebody to come in, sell for six months and then bail. You want somebody coming and sell for you for years. And so you can set that up to, to actually make them want to stay on board and keep going at it every day and stay motivated to do it. So those are my three big ones. Uh, great, great conversation today around really not just the sales person, uh, but the whole environment and setting them up with modern thinking and selling techniques to, to align with agency clients. I I thought it was great conversation and great uh, add ons there. Thank you Trice. Good stuff.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Always a pleasure.

Speaker A: All right, well, please subscribe, uh, like and share this episode and we look forward to seeing you next time.

Speaker B: Mhm.