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Agency Sales Book by Jason Kanigan

Fast Shortcut To Agency Sales: The Book Is Here!

Let’s talk about selling agency services, and the struggles agency founders have in doing so. If you’re one of these founders, especially a new agency founder, there’s a bit of information I’m about to share that no one may have let you know yet. The truth is that you have to develop certain competencies to have an agency business…or any kind of business. The first and foremost of those is the competency of reaching out and starting conversations with your ideal customer.

the fast shortcut to selling agency services jason kanigan agency sales book

The First Competency Agency Owners Need

New agency owners have their attention on the wrong thing. Ask yourself: what are you most concerned about at this time? Sales, right? Getting new customers paying you and onboarded for your services.

But this is wrong.

You have a way to go before you can do that. Right now, you need to develop that competency of connecting with and starting conversations well with members of your target market.

Let me be crystal clear: if you can’t do that, you won’t be making any sales.

Now the industry will shove any number of fancy tools at you supposedly for accomplishing this without you having to talk to anybody. I recognize that this idea is appealing. But it’s a lie.

Do you really believe emailing unqualified leads and asking them to sign up for your services is going to work?

Does it seem likely that doing some sort of Loom video auditing their site–an unsolicited criticism they didn’t ask for, remember–is going to result in them crawling on their knees over to you, begging you to help them?

Agency Sales Tactics That Work NOW

As I’ve said before and for many years, just about anything will work. If you give something enough time, and do it with enough repetitions, it’ll give you the result you want just by accident. Me standing in a pink bunny suit at the main intersection of the small town I live in, holding a sign in my paws with an offer on it, will eventually result in a customer. Traffic is light. I might have to wait a couple of years.

Do you want to wait a couple of years?

Or would you rather be on the road to making sales of agency services NOW?

Of course I understand that you’d like to get customers. And I’m telling you that the first step to get a customer is to develop the competency of reaching out to and starting good conversations with your target market.

You don’t need anything fancy to do this. Just a telephone and your voice.

Oh, and the right, proven words that open the door and get you what you want.

You Can Get That Compentency Today, Instead of Probably Never

As I said, no one talks about these competencies you have to develop as a business owner if you want to succeed. Why would they? Instead, they want to keep selling you magic bullets that don’t really work. I’m interested in equipping you with proven scripting to get those customers you want.

Oh, you could figure this wording out on your own. Maybe. It’d take you at least a month of consistent calling at least two hours every weekday, blindly trying different wording, getting hung up on, being treated like a flunky. What’s that? You’d never get past the first day? Correct.

So why not let me save you that time and grief, and actually give you something proven to work today.

Be On the Road to Selling Agency Services Within the Hour

You need to develop the competencies of reaching the person you want to talk to, and then starting a conversation with them effectively enough that there IS a rest of the call. I realize that might sound basic, but consider whether anyone else has ever put it so clearly to you.

Now I’ve distilled the precise wording that is required to accomplish those two things. I’ve put them in a book. But not a long book. This is what Kindle calls a Short Read. No padding. No filler. Just the facts. You’ll be through it in under an hour, and you won’t have to flip through it looking for the page you want to take notes from. It’s a mercifully brief, to-the-point little book. And it will help you today. Discover what I share with you in there, and you’ll be on the road to making sales of agency services like web design, PPC leadgen, SEO, social media and other services within the hour.

Think about how much time, energy, and grief this little book is going to save you.

Now go get it here. Start applying it today.

>> Jason Kanigan is a strategist who works with agency owners to increase the profitabilty and effectiveness of their organizations. Book a consultation with Jason here <<

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Advice On How To Start a Business

Some further advice on how to start a business: there is no "one right way". You have to make your own choices. Are there client fields that are likely to give you a better chance for success? Sure. But nothing is guaranteed.

Every business, and I mean every single one, does have a few specific things.

The person asking for advice who prompted this post said they had a budget of $500 for starting their business. Your budget does not matter. Put that money away, use it to pay for living expenses so your business can "stay alive". Don't get distracted by that money.

First you need to choose who you are helping, and what problems you are helping them solve.

These are also called your niche and your offers or services.

No one can pick these for you. There are no magic bullets on how to start a business. If you pick a popular niche, you get a lot of competition. If you pick a niche that not many other people are in, there's probably a reason--like the people in it don't understand why they need marketing help.

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How To Start a Business: Picking a Niche

I look for niches with good cash reserves, a quick payment cycle from their customers, a high offer price, and a topic I understand and like. That will make me automatically enthusiastic. It keeps me away from realtors (estate agents), engineering firms and pie sellers and moves me towards trades like electricians and roofers. Can you see why?

Realtors = long payment cycle, they get their money a month from now. Not good. Pie sellers = low offer price, which doesn't support my service cost. Trades = good service price, and they get paid today or close to it.

Now what services can you offer that you're confident in delivering?

A popular agency growth program I represent teaches you how to hire competent subcontractors, so you can find the customers and manage the projects, but these subcontractors actually do the work. And they do it at a lower price than you're charging, if you follow the directions, so you make money.

In the beginning I would not try to offer many services. Do not try to be all things to all people, or take money because it is waved in your direction. Choose one or two things you can get good at.

The Importance of Competencies In How To Start a Business

You need to develop COMPETENCIES in a number of areas to be successful in business. Delivery of services is one of these areas. Others are:

  • Lead generation
  • Qualification (sorting leads for the good ones)
  • Closing (turning some of the qualified leads into buyers)

and as I said above, Fulfillment or delivery of services, so you can give clients what they paid for.

What I said may sound dull but you might be astonished by how few people understand what they're getting into with a business, including an agency business...and how even fewer can explain how they're doing these four things in plain language.

Can you write down in plain language how you are doing each of these four things?

How are you generating leads?

If you can't explain this, I guarantee you do not have a business.

And continue doing this for the other three areas.

Getting Clarity When Starting a Business Is Critical

These are exactly the same things I'd ask you to explain, or or with you to develop, in a paid consultation so you get clarity.

Choose a method, and write it down. Email? LinkedIn messaging? Facebook ads? Phone calls? How are you going about generating leads?

If you can't explain it, you don't know what you're doing or how you're doing it. And if you don't know those things, you sure can't delegate it to someone else.

The agency business is a series of choices. We will work with these people, but not those. We will offer these services, ie. solve these problems, but not others. We will charge prices at this level, thereby solving the problems at this particular magnitude, but not others.

Where I see people struggling with their agency business is in their trouble making these choices. They sit there hoping someone else will give them the "one right way", the magic bullets. No. You have to choose. You must develop those competencies. There aren't many of them, really...less than a half-dozen. And the faster you choose and get to work, the faster you'll develop them.

If you pick a leadgen method, as an example, and after a few weeks determine it isn't working for you, you can erase what you wrote and pick a new approach. If cold email didn't work, you can change it to phone outreach.

How People Lose In Starting a Business

But what I've seen is people giving up on methods without having really tried them. They made four phone calls and say, "Cold calling doesn't work for me". Of course it doesn't! You didn't do it! You didn't develop any competency at it. Or they send 100 emails and give up, saying "Cold emails don't work for me". You can't truthfully say that: you didn't do the work. It takes far more than 100 emails to get anywhere, unless you're lucky.

So understanding the scale of what is required is necessary for success here.

One final thing: I see people get into programs for agency founders and give up. They say they're "overwhelmed" and when I ask them, "Why didn't you talk to a coach?" they tell me: "I didn't know I could do that".

I don't believe you if you say that. You gave up.

And I have to tell you the harsh truth: Giving Up is not the sign of an entrepreneur. If you give up so easily, you're probably not cut out to be a business owner. Sorry if that hurts, but it's the truth. Not everyone should be a business owner.

I have talked to people who didn't do much in a program, but didn't give up and when they spoke to me they decided to keep fighting. That's the sign of a true entrepreneur. Finding things out for themselves. Not taking No for an answer. Not getting "overwhelmed" and saying to themselves, "This is too hard. I'm stopping".

If you will learn, and keep going when the going gets tough, you might be a real business owner.

>> Jason Kanigan is a conversion expert and sales coach. Book a consultation with him here. <<

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Advice for a New Agency Founder

"Any advice for a new agency founder?" This was a real question posted in a large agency group yesterday.

My Answer: Focus on REVENUE GENERATING ACTIVITIES.

Playing around with your website is not a revenue generating activity.

Fiddling with your offer is not a revenue generating activity.

Similarly, writing copy is not a revenue generating activity.

Cleaning the company bathroom is unquestionably not revenue generating activity. Yes, I have seen founders try to hide from their business by doing this.

However, getting conversations with qualified prospective clients is revenue generating activity.

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Image by Photo Mix from Pixabay

Focused Advice for a New Agency Founder

Know and apply the difference between Pay Time and No Pay Time. As a result, do non-revenue generating activities in No Pay Time.

Also, do not believe that "being busy" is "being productive".

Set a specific money target and go for it. "Trying to make as much money as possible" is no target at all and dumb. Your subconscious needs a target. To survive, you need a money target. Those who don't set a specific money target (which you can achieve and then raise) tend to lose a little or a lot of money month after month until they have to go back to a j-o-b.

Therefore, set your money target for at least 2X of what you thought. You are responsible for EVERYTHING now. You can't go down to the company storeroom and pick up a pack of pens and a notebook. You have to pay for all that stuff now. You need more money than you think.

If you're not talking to at least two qualified prospects a day, you're bound for failure.

The Four Systems Every Agency Founder Needs To Be Concentrating On

Every business needs four systems:

  1. Lead Generation
  2. Qualification
  3. Closing
  4. Fulfillment.

Hardly anyone I've known over the past dozen years in the agency game thinks that way. They make things up as they go along. Then they end up with a sloppy set of processes and outcomes, and in fact are not even thinking of processes to make up systems at all. At that point they wonder why the business is slushy.

Be thinking every day about how you are accomplishing these four systems. How are you executing them, written in plain language first and then applying technology last? How can you improve them?

Advice for a New Agency Founder—What They Won't Tell You

Your business needs eyeballs (Traffic) and a way to turn some of those eyeballs into buyers (Conversion). Don't buy anything unless you understand EXACTLY where it fits in, in either generating Traffic or helping you with Conversion. Is there a hole in Traffic or a hole in Conversion that this thing can help you fill?

So many people buy a tech solution or other offer because the sales copy made it sound cool. They get things off Appsumo because "it's a deal". They have no idea where it fits into Traffic or Conversion, and therefore they never use it. I have watched people make this mistake again and again over 10+ years. Markedly, I have watched some specific people stay in the wrong mindset and remain broke for 10+ years. Don't be one of them.

Your job is to get at least two conversations with qualified prospects a day. "Qualified" means they admit they have a problem you can fix and want help fixing it; the size of the problem warrants your involvement; and they have a personality you can get along with. If you do this, you'll get 10 conversations a week. That's over 40 a month. Even if you suck as a salesperson, over a month you should land at least one client by accident. That's called a "laydown", someone who was waiting for someone like you to come along and wants to give you the money.

What New Agency Founders Need To Understand About Sales

A final mindset thing: There are without a doubt people out there who WANT to Give You The Money. They have money and they are desperately seeking Talent. "Please," they are praying, "send me someone COMPETENT who I can give this money to in exchange for them taking this Serious Problem off my hands." Understand, therefore, that they want this problem taken care of more than they want the money. Broke strugglers have an impossible time understanding this. Imprint it on your soul. Someone out there is desperate to give you money right now. You don't have to convince, force, or fool them into hiring you.

Print this out and tape it up in front of you in your work area. In addition, read it at the start of your day, the middle of your day, and the end of your day. Do not expect your mind and your memory to remember a darn thing on its own. For that reason you have to keep the instructions, the vision, the outcome you want right in front of you.

When I have not kept these principles in front of me over the past dozen plus years, I have forgotten them. That has led to trouble.

>> Jason Kanigan is a strategist who works with agency owners to increase the profitabilty and effectiveness of their organizations. Book a consultation with Jason here <<